Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1898 — Fooled by a Smuggler. [ARTICLE]

Fooled by a Smuggler.

“All this talk about smuggling recalls some of the things I learned when I was in the service,” announced a retired crook catcher the other day. “Xew ways of beating the government are being devised right along and many of the tricks I discovered are old now. There used to be more trouble with tile diamond smugglers than there appears to be at present. I have found the sparklers in women's back hair, hat ornaments, hollowed shoe heels and sewed up in various articles of wear; in dog collars, in horses’ hoofs, in fruits and vegetables, in trunks with false bottoms, in pipes and cigars, in canes, on the necks of carrier pigeons and. even buried in men’s flesh after the manner of the Kaffir diamond thieves. “But the man who did the slickest business, without ever being suspected, told me about it afterwards. He was a retired detective who had served with great credit. Shortly before resigning he claimed to have received a beautiful diamond ring with three very large stones, from a New Yorker for whom he had been able to save a good deal of money. It was certainly a magnificent ring nnd the matter was duly exploited in the papers. He professed to be doing a private business, that took him across the river frequently, and he would often use the ferry three or four times a day. He always wore the dazzling ring and I looked at it every day for months. Yet that fellow was making big money smuggling diamonds. “How? Why, he had a paste ring made exactly like the genuine one. He would wear the paste one over, leave it to be set with diamonds, wear them back, have them replaced with paste, and thus carry on the game right before our admiring eyes. We never suspected the rascal.”