operates.
These stones should in the ordinary way have arrived at their
destination, and they had not arrived. In the reports of the salvage
operations at Prestwick there was no word of any diamonds, but, after
all, the investigators who were working on the problem hadn't been
alerted to look for diamonds. The waiting merchants were uneasily aware
that their gems, if they had been caught in the plane's fierce
combustion, might very possibly be so damaged and blackened that they
would be unrecognizable to any but a trained eye. They were not unduly
perturbed, however; in accordance with a long-established practice,
they had all insured their shipments against loss or damage—most of
them at Lloyd's of London—for 10 per cent more than the actual purchase
price.
It
was not strange that they shouldn't have known for certain on what
plane their costly cargo had been sent. Air mail doesn't operate in the
cut-and-dried manifest manner of deep-sea transport; nevertheless a lot
of jewels are sent by plane, and successfully, across the Atlantic.
After all, they don't weigh much. American dealers buy their diamonds
abroad in the rough because there is no duty to pay on uncut stones,
whereas cut and polished diamonds are dutiable to the amount of 10 per
cent. Buying at the Christmas season is generally pretty heavy; in 1954
it was exceptionally so. When the perturbed authorities began looking
into the records of registered packages and insurance, it appeared
that the dealers had reason to feel misgivings. Nine hundred thousand
pounds worth of diamonds might very well have been aboard the wrecked
Strato-cruiser: at any rate that amount had been sent by the company,
by air mail, in forty separate registered packages. The company usually
splits up its large shipments in this manner so that the
