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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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and
watched. She was watched until the time, a few days later, when she
booked passage, third-class cabin, on the Normandie, New York bound. In
New York she was seized, her baggage examined, the false bottom opened,
and diamonds with a retail appraisal of $286,346, were found. She and
her husband and other relatives who had come to greet her were arrested
and later fifty-five defendants were indicted.
The
examinations and trials revealed that charming women were used as
"carriers" of the diamonds from Antwerp to New York and that over a
period of three years they had smuggled into the United States diamonds
with an appraisal value of more than two million dollars. Thirty of the
defendants pleaded guilty to charges placed against them and either
were fined heavily or sent to prison. The others, trapped in Belgium,
dared not return to the United States. They decided to trust their fate
to the Belgian authorities. But time caught up with them, as did the
Nazis. It is not known now what happened to them.
Names
of these individuals purposely have not been mentioned here. The trade
knows all about the story, as well as the identity of the people
involved. They are paying the penalty. So it would seem to be a cruelly
unnecessary thing to dig up their past and publicly identify them now
merely for the purpose of giving an air of substantiality to a story.
This,
of course, was not the only large case of smuggling, although it was by
far the most sensational. What had bothered the importers, as we have
seen, was that the smuggled diamonds were depressing the market. Until
1930 rough diamonds entering this country faced a 10-per-cent duty; cut
diamonds, 20 per cent. The case cited above finally stirred Congress
into action. It was decided that, in order to make smuggling
unprofitable, there would be a '
(130)
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