The Three Goblets
It was particularly cozy in the Union Club library that night. It always was, when it was raining hard outside. The wind whipped the rain and splattered it against the two-story-high windows, and that made the calm warmth inside seem calmer and warmer. Griswold's gentle and rhythmic snoring seemed all the counterpoint we needed.
I tried not to think of my wet raincoat in the cloakroom, and of the inevitable time when I would have to leave in order to try to locate a taxi. Sufficient unto the hour—
I stretched my legs out lazily and said, "Ever think about what a consistently bad press policemen get? Even in a society where they are clearly the stalwart wall between the law-abiding citizen and the criminal, they get hardly a kind word."
"Copper!" murmured Baranov. "Flatfoot! Cossack! Pig!"
"No, no," I said, annoyed. "Those are just names. Anyone will yell a name at anyone when annoyed. I'm talking about cold blood. Think of all the mystery writers who give all the brains and insights to dilettantes in private life—to the Sherlock Holmeses, the Hercule Poirots, the Peter Wimseys—and where are the police? Why, they're Scotland Yard bunglers, one and all."
Jennings made an impolite sound with his lips. "You're living in the past, old boy," he said. "It's quite common now to have brilliant policemen do the job. From Appleby to Leopold, we have public hirelings solving the most difficult and subtle crimes. In fact, the police procedural is now much more popular than the old-fashioned Philo Vance bit."
I had them where I wanted them now. I said, "Not if we listen to Griswold." (And I kept one eye cocked at the sleeping figure, sitting bolt upright in his winged armchair with his scotch and soda firmly in his hand.) "He always solves the crime, while the police are helpless. That old fraud expects us to believe in his systematic usurpation of police duties."
Griswold's ice-blue eyes opened at once, as I expected they would. "This old fraud expects only fools to believe that—a post for which you qualify. The police force does its job, always has. The only trouble is that police work is routine—laborious and unglamorous routine—ninety-nine percent of the time. It is only the very occasional problem that lends itself to a flash of brilliant insight that allows the gifted individual to come into his own. For instance—"
He sipped at his drink and trailed off.
"For instance—" I insisted.
The general armory of the police in its war against crime [said Griswold] is not brilliance. It is not the armchair genius, weaving a chain of inexorable logic, and producing the criminal in a kind of breathtaking legerdemain, because that won't work.
For one thing, that sort of thing would never stand up in court. It works in books, where the accused will confess once he's exposed, or kill himself, but that never happens in real life. The accused denies everything, and his lawyer casts doubt on everything, and if all you've got to present to a judge and jury is brilliance, the accused will get off.
The police have to gather evidence by going from possible witness to possible witness, and trying to get statements or identifications that they think will stand up under cross-examination. They have to track down guns or documents or pawn tickets, or, for that matter, bodies, by endless searches, by combing trash cans, or dragging ponds. It requires the concentrated and boring labor of dozens of people over weeks and months.
In fact, I'll tell you the single most important tool of police work—the informer.
You all know that our government cannot stop leaks, no matter what it does. Well, neither can the various criminal enterprises. There is always someone who will talk.
The motives? They are various. There are informers who seek revenge, who fancy themselves ill-used and are burning to get even. There are informers who could use a little extra money and who charge all the traffic will bear for the information they claim they have. There are informers who are chiefly interested in the blind eye: the privilege of continuing a life of mild crime—pickpocketing, purse snatching—knowing that the police will be tender about it, provided they are useful blabbers.
That's not glamorous either. Mystery writers who expect to use informers in their tales have to give up on brilliance and make do with violence. Usually, the informer is found dead in chapter four, and can only gasp out just enough to puzzle the detective.
Of course, sometimes—very rarely, when compared with the grand total of police work—everything fails. In that case, once in a while, they may come to me. And, occasionally, I can help with just that final piece of the puzzle, which they don't see because they are too worn out with their endless routine.
There was the case of the big diamond-smuggling flap that arose a few years ago. You may have read about it in the papers. If not, it doesn't matter; my part wasn't mentioned, you may be sure.
The police could not solve the method used to transport the diamonds. They searched desperately almost everything suspicious that came into the country, and never found a diamond.
They were small diamonds, individually not very lavish, well within the middle-class reach, but in the aggregate, thousands of carats were involved, and millions of dollars. And it was continuing in an open-ended fashion. Finally, one of the Treasury Department agents came to me. He was very nervous about it, because it was one of the times when I was particularly on the outs with the government. I had called someone a nasty name which he thoroughly deserved, and I was placed off bounds.
I don't blame the underlings, however, so I was willing to listen to him, and to help if I could. He told me about the diamond smuggling and it seemed there had been a break in the case. As one might expect, it came about through the use of an informer.
On that basis, the Treasury knew that a package was coming into the United States—a package that carried the diamonds, either directly or indirectly—that is, the diamonds would be in the package, or information concerning the when and how of their arrival would be there. The informer had no fine details, but he was' certain of the basic facts—he said—and it was going to be a big operation.
The package arrived at the time and place foretold. It was duly intercepted and was taken to headquarters, where it was opened (with all due precautions, I might add, in case it was a booby trap—which it wasn't).
Inside the box were three fine goblets of beautiful etched glass of delicate shape and fragile structure. Quite expensive, but declared in full, and customs paid in advance by a reputable source there was no real reason to distrust.
I said, "There was nothing else in the package? Just the goblets?"
"Just the goblets."
"No diamonds?"
"Not one."
"What did you do?"
The agent said, "Well, to begin with, we went over those goblets for anything we could find—"
"You mean the diamonds might have been added to the molten glass, so that they were now part of the goblets?"
"Not at all," said the agent stiffly. "Diamonds are carbon. They oxidize at elevated temperature, and mol- ten glass would certainly damage them. Besides, they would show up at once on refractive index measurements and we tried that just to be thorough."
(There's the value of police work! I have no equipment to run such tests, or the expertise for doing them, if I had the equipment.)
"What else did you do?" I asked.
"There was etching on the glass. It consisted of abstract shapes and it occurred to us it might carry coded information. It didn't. We photographed it and studied those photos under a low power microscope. We could find nothing, no irregularities at all in the symmetry of form—and perfect symmetry carries no information."
"The goblets must have been wrapped in something. What about that?"
"Oh, yes. They were wrapped in tissue paper, several thicknesses. We took them apart and went over them carefully, each sheet, both sides. We studied them under warmth, under magnification, under ultraviolet light. Nothing showed up. We had our invisible ink experts give it the full treatment. Nothing."
"The box itself?"
"We didn't ignore it, I assure you. We went over every inch of it inside and out, as carefully as we had done the tissue paper. We even removed the tape used to secure the box, as well as the various labels and stamps, so that we could study the portion of the box underneath, to say nothing of the tape, labels and stamps themselves."
"And I presume you found nothing."
"Not a damn thing."
I thought about it awhile and said, "Has it occurred to you that your informer may be mistaken—or lying?"
The agent grimaced. "Right away. We had him in. I don't know if he has a mother's grave, but he swore on it. We find ourselves believing him."
"Perhaps you picked up the wrong package."
"It fits every detail of the informer's advance description. The chances against its being wrong are astronomical." "How big was the package?"
"Twelve inches by nine inches by six inches, just about."
"And the goblets?"
"About six inches tall. Three inches across the opening.''
"Were any of the three cracked, chipped or damaged in any way."
"No, no. They were in perfect shape."
"And do you have the package now, exactly as it was to begin with?"
"Of course," said the agent gloomily. "We have to pass it on to the rightful owner with some lie about its having been lost or mislaid. Strictly speaking, we had no business taking it."
"No search warrant?"
"No."
"Well, don't worry. There's just a chance I may get you your diamonds."
And of course I did—in a way that you've probably already guessed. Just one of those few times when a moment of brilliance outweighs all the patient work of a crime laboratory.
Griswold took another sip of his drink and settled back in his chair.
We cried out, as one, "Where were the diamonds?"
Griswold looked surprised. "Unbelievable," he muttered. "You heard me ask the size of the box and of the goblets. Goblets of that size, placed in a box that size, would rattle around and, despite the tissue paper wrapping, would be reduced to slivers. Yet they were not cracked or chipped, though the agent specified they were fragile.
"That meant they were well packed, and these days, as you well know, the most common packing consists of light pellets of some kind of foam plastic. My own favorites are those that look like peanuts.
"In any case, the tendency is to ignore packing. You scarcely even look at it; you just get rid of it.—But I looked at it. I went through that box, looking at each of the pieces of plastic, and many of them showed signs of having been tampered with—something hard having been pushed in, and the end compressed to wipe out the hole of entry.
"We pulled all those plastic bits open, and nestling inside of a lot of them were very pretty diamonds. What a haul we made!"