The Case Of The Smuggled Diamonds Episode 4

Van Marak gasped as he stared into a revolver which the big man held in his outstretched hand. “I – I did not expect him!” he exclaimed. Tommy felt absolutely helpless as the big man said: “Keep your mouths shut, both of you. And –”

He stopped abruptly, for from another room came the sound of breaking glass, and there followed a loud banging on the front door.

The big man leapt for the passage, but before he reached it the door was flung open and Hawke came in.

Hawke was carrying an automatic, but Tommy saw the crook’s revolver raised.

Tommy flung himself across the room, and the weight of his rush sent the big man against the wall.

As a result of the unexpected lunge from Hawke’s young assistant, the gun clattered to the floor.

Van Marak was hopping from one foot to the other.

“Ze t’ief, zat is him! He will ’ave ze jewels!”

Hawke said sharply: “I don’t think so! Keep where you are, van Marak – ah, the police!”

Frightened

Several men had come into the house, dragging along the frightened servant with them and led by Detective-Sergeant Willis, whom Hawke knew well.

“Sergeant, I’d like you to have the house searched at once.

“You’ll find another man here, I think, a foreigner, like this man in build – the genuine van Marak.”

The fat foreigner gasped: “It is mad, mad, yes!

“I am van Marak, I – ” he turned and rushed to the window, digging his hand into his inside breast pocket as he went.

Hawke reached him swiftly in a rapid move across the room and gripped his wrist tightly.

From powerless fingers dangled a leather washbag, and from it Hawke poured a stream of diamonds which flashed in the early morning sun.

“He – he did have them!” gasped Tommy. “Yes,” said Hawke grimly.

“He had them all right. It was a very clever plan worked out at a moment’s notice.

“The real van Marak had these diamonds and was robbed.

“He managed to phone me, but the thieves overheard him, attacked him, and got him out of the hotel.

“I suspect that was probably at the point of a gun which they had hidden in one of their pockets.

“When we arrived, the big man looked after you, but I was hot on the scent.

“They thought that by putting up a man to pretend to be van Marak, I would be completely hoodwinked.”

“The nerve of it!” exclaimed Tommy indignantly. “And he had the sparklers on him all the time!”

“Yes. The idea was that I would put the police on to the big man, who would not have the diamonds even if found.

“Without them there would have been little evidence against him.

“Meanwhile the impersonator was to dispose of the gems.

“But I ordered you to stick close to him, knowing he would make an effort to get rid of you.

Reluctance

“So he brought you here, not knowing that I had phoned for the police and, with them, was waiting.

“We all followed you here and didn’t lose any time.”

“Then you suspected van Marak when you phoned me?”

“I suspected the man who called himself van Marak,”corrected Hawke.

“Although he tried to pretend that the diamonds were smuggled, that explained his reluctance to have the police on the trail.

“But he made one blunder which I saw through immediately.

“Had he really been the victim he would have stayed in his room and faced me there.

“Instead, he hoped to get away without my seeing him, but when I followed him to the cab, he put up a brilliant act.

“Then he tried to stop me searching for you, and that was another pointer.

“I could have tackled him there, but I wanted to make sure I got the whole bunch of them.

“I knew someone with a different voice was involved.

“Thus I let him think that I trusted him.” They saw the real van Marak, not seriously hurt, later.

He insisted on paying a generous fee, for the diamonds were legally his, it transpired.

He had been pushed away from the telephone, and then forced from the hotel at the point of a gun held by the third crook – the man-servant at the Victoria house.

“’Ow you solve it is ze miracle!” van Marak declared.

“Ten thousan’ pounds of jewels, saved by you!”

Hawke smiled. “Ye-es, happily. And that is the key to the problem; the impersonator did not once say how much the jewels were worth.

“Had his sorrow been genuine he would have made a big point of it. That confirmed my suspicions.”

“Trust you not to miss a thing,” grinned Tommy.

The End

The Credit Draper

The new serial starting tomorrow is David J Simons’ award-winning novel, The Credit Draper. It is a fitting tale for our times.

Set against the backdrop of the First World War, it deals with displacement, hope, and cultural identity.

Young Avram Escovitz is sent to Scotland in 1911, to escape conscription into the Russian army.

He lives in Glasgow’s tight-knit Jewish community until war breaks out, and he is sent to work as a credit draper, selling wares on credit to the crofters and villages of the Western Highlands. Now he really is a stranger in a strange land. How will he survive in his new world, and how easy will it be to shake off his Jewish roots?

The novel was described as “an odyssey of cultural confusion and survival. Full of hope, honour and sadness,” by the McKitterick Prize judges, for which the book was shortlisted.

The Credit Draper is published by Saraband.

Tommy flung himself across the room, and the weight of his rush sent the big man against the wall