Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“Ah! Ha!” I answered, assuming a chuckle as though highly amused as well as intensely interested in the prospect. “I say, my good woman, be sure I am not disappointed. Let us meet again at this same place to-morrow night.”

She nodded and grinned understandingly, and as I placed a few francs in her bony hand she hobbled off down St. Roch toward the church of that name on the corner of Rue St. Honoré.

The Famous Shadow

I had but to cross a short block to my pension at 29 Rue des Pyramides, where, from the fourth étage, the windows looked down upon Rue d’Argenteuil and St. Roch from the large, high ceilinged room filled with ancient but dependable antique furniture, where I slept and also made my headquarters when in Paris.

Waiting for me was my dependable assistant, Operative O. B. Hobbs, who had just finished a case in Spain and reported now for instructions on the work which had brought me to Paris. Hobbs was long, lean, lank and thirty-five, with the eye of a hawk and the beak of an eagle.

In the world-wide International Police and Detective Organization to which we were attached he was known as the best shadow among all of our thousands of operatives. And, though shadowing is considered generally as the most onerous of any branch of detective work, very strangely, Hobbs liked to shadow and never lost his man.

He had an almost uncanny ability in the way of disappearing and reappearing in the most unexpected way and in the most unexpected places when on this work. Besides being a clever shadow he was an excellent all round detective, with good judgment and plenty of well directed nerve. The first thing to do was to explain to Hobbs something about the work we were in Paris to perform.

“The Maiden Lane jewel merchants of New York,” I began, “are, as you know, all members of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, but there is a scurvy outfit with headquarters on the Bowery who call themselves the Jewelers’ Exchange.”

“I know ’em,” replied Hobbs. “Receivers of stolen goods.”

“Right,” I responded, “though, according to the ethics of the criminal profession, I presume we may speak of them as smugglers.”

Hobbs smiled at this, for the Bowery Jewelers’ Exchange were known in inner police circles the world over as a slippery, tricky bunch, hard to catch and harder to handle, even after being caught, which they were at times, with “the goods on.”

A Crooked End

“In this case,” I continued, “the Maiden Lane crowd are our clients. A bunch of diamonds, pearls and all kinds of jewels, set and unset, are reaching this country from France and a few other points in Europe without being declared to our customs service. That means, of course, they are being smuggled into the country.

“As we know, there is more or less of this sort of thing going on in a small way through small channels, ordinary passengers on steamships who think it funny to beat their own country out of what rightfully belongs to them. But here we have to deal with this jewel smuggling proposition on a truly huge scale.

“This Bowery exchange have been and are right now receiving the stuff. They have agents in Paris, Antwerp and other places. The better class of jewelers, say, for example, along the Rue de la Paix in Paris, are, comparatively speaking, straight.

“Even where they are not so, they have to come to America in order to be arrested on any such charge as smuggling into our country. But we are not interested in the merchant end of it right now. What we are interested in is the crook end of it.”

“The crook end of it?” repeated Hobbs, all interest and keen as a bloodhound to take up his part of the work at once.

“Yes,” I went on, “I mean, a gang of crooks are operating in Paris, getting hold of all kinds of jewels, by one means and another, all having to do with thievery of course, and getting the swag through this Jewelers’ Exchange on the Bowery.”

“Apaches?” questioned Hobbs.

On the Marne Banks

“Perhaps,” I answered. “At any rate, coincident with the jewels reaching America through the Bowery exchange, which the Maiden Lane merchants rightfully want to put out of business, the French police are having a tremendous lot of trouble over jewel thefts at social functions.

“A necklace or a tiara, for instance, will be lifted from some guest and disappear instantly as if by magic. The préfet suspects some society man or woman — some fraud or poser no doubt — is nabbing the stuff and slipping it out of the various houses where these thefts occur to confederates waiting outside. This may be done by tossing valuable articles out of windows or off of balconies to whoever happens to be waiting for them.

“And, mark this, in several instances all the guests have been lined up and searched in the good old-fashioned way, without the slightest clew being derived from these methods.”

“So,” grinned Hobbs, “I suppose, as usual, all we have to do is — catch the thieves.”