Flint, a one-legged burglar, steals some jewels and then gets into a fight over his girlfriend with a man at a dance hall and is arrested. He manages to hide the jewels in his cheek while he is put in his cell and during the magistrate's hearing, and then hides them in the roof of his cell during his two-month sentence. Unfortunately one night there is a fire and he is taken to another cell. Then the damaged prison building is closed and put up for sale, and Flint and his associates have to try to get back in to recover the loot.
This is one of a series of comic stories about the Minerva Club, an association of fairly warm-hearted criminals. The others are The Trojan Crate, The Ransom of Angelo, Three Heads are better than one, and A Stroke of Genius.
"To Lottie with love", Today, 5 January 1963, p. 32
Reprinted as "Flint's Diamonds" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #237, August, 1963.
Reprinted in Ellery Queen's Double Dozen; 19th Mystery Annual, 1964.
Included in the collection The Minerva Club and other stories, USA, Crippen and Landru, 2009.
Included in The Minerva Club, Farrago Books, 2020.