SSC (1950) Six Deadly Dames by Frederick Nebel

of crystal. You knew that much. When he came back here with me to get his ice, you gave him this.”
    Friedman laughed. “Ah, be yourself, guy!”
    “I'm being myself, sweetheart. We've got a letter from the Anglo-Continental Indemnity Company, of London and Geneva. They're looking for that hunk of ice, and this is not it.”
    “I don't get you at all.”
    Donahue wagged his finger. “Listen. A guy named Alfred Poore and a jane named Irene Saffarrans brought the diamond over here from France. Poore lifted it from a dowager duchess in Cannes this winter past. Coming over, the jane planted it on an artist named Crosby. They were afraid of the Customs. Crosby got knifed to death by a guy named Babe Delaney, who made Poore and the Saffarrans jane let him in on the racket. He'd found things out. Poore gunned for Delaney and I got Poore and they sent him to the Big House. Nobody concerned got the ice. “It turned out that the ice had been planted in one of Crosby's hats, and when he got home Crosby gave his janitor, a guy named Adler, some old clothes-among them the hat. The Saffarrans jane got clear after Poore went up, and she hooked up with a guy named Bruhard. Bruhard bumped off Adler in Grove Street, got the hat but not the diamond. Adler had got the hat cleaned. Bonalino worked in the hat-cleaning store, and when he took the lining out he found the ice. He hocked it here. Bruhard got gunned out in Forty-second Street, the jane got ten years. Nobody concerned got the real ice. Do you get me now?”
    “No, I don't. I loaned Bonalino two-fifty on this diamond. He paid me two-fifty and got the diamond back. That's all I know, and you can believe it or lump it.”
    Donahue's voice rose-“I don't believe it and I'm not going to lump it!”
    “Listen, master-mind.” Friedman leaned on the counter and laid narrowed eyes on Donahue. “I don't know what your game is, but it's not on the up and up. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I don't have to carry on a conversation with you. Why don't you get a brainwave and take the air?”
    Donahue got interested. “So you've decided to get tough, eh? Trying to brazen it out, eh? Well, pipe this, sweetheart: It won't work. That diamond was worth ninety thousand bucks till it reached here. Do you want to play house with me or do you want me to go to Headquarters and tell what I know? They don't know that Bonalino hocked it. They think he had it in his possession from the beginning. I kept back the news to clear Bonalino.”
    “Go to Headquarters.”
    “Yeah? You keep books, you know. You're supposed to enter every article pawned here. You know that, don't you?”
    “Sure.” Friedman swung a ledger on to the counter, flipped the pages, stopped, turned the ledger around so that Donahue could read it, and laid a finger on an entry.
    “There it is. I valued it wholesale at eight hundred. I loaned two-fifty on it. My books are okey. Go to Headquarters.”
    Donahue looked up at him, smiled without humor. “Your brain's not lame, Friedman-not at all.”
    “There it is-in black and white.”
    “Okey. But I don't believe everything I read. Be seeing you some more, baby.”
    Donahue went out wearing a sultry look that was not without chagrin.
    Asa Hinkle, the Interstate in person, looked up from his flat-topped desk when Donahue entered and said:
    “You look down-hearted, Donny, my boy.”
    Donahue paced the floor a turn or two, scowling. He was baffled, and now that he was away from unfriendly eyes, his manner showed it. “That guy Friedman wasn't born yesterday.”
    “Oh, that's it!”
    “I felt like caving in his mug.”
    “Only a city dick can do that-and get away with it. What did he say?”
    “Nothing worth a damn. He made the entry in his book okey. The guy's solid and he knows it. He valued it at eight hundred. If anybody argues he can say that was what he valued it at. There's no proof he had the real diamond. No proof at all. It's changed hands so much