Have you ever passed a border crossing between two countries? If so, you were probably questioned by a customs inspector. A customs inspector often asks travelers what they are bringing into the country with them. If a person is bringing in goods of great value, the inspector may ask him to pay customs on them. Some people try to hide the valuables they have with them so that they will not have to pay these taxes. But customs inspectors are hard to fool. They see scores of travelers every day. They soon learn how to pick out a person who may be smuggling something across the border. The clue may be in the way the person walks. Or it may be in the way he talks. Or it may be just a strange feeling the inspector has that makes him suspect a person of smuggling. Inspector Joseph Koehler had worked for the U.S. Customs Service for years. He had seen many travelers. One day a group of passengers arrived on a flight from Belgium . They came up to his inspection post. Koehler took special notice of one of the women among them. At first he did not know what had made him pick her out of the group. She was tall and well-dressed. A smart hat sat on her dark hair. Her dark cloth coat was trimmed with fur. She waited calmly in line for her baggage to be inspected. The woman's baggage was made up of a purse and two suitcases. She showed no sign of fear when Koehler opened them. She answered all his questions calmly. Yet Koehler could not rid himself of the feeling that something was wrong. Something about this woman set off a small alarm in his mind. Suddenly he knew what it was. The woman was too tall! Many tall women came through his inspection lane every day. But this woman's height didn't seem right somehow. Then Koehler saw her shoes. They had very thick soles. The woman was smartly dressed. Why would she wear such ugly, thick-soled shoes? Koehler called a second inspector. The tall woman was taken to a room reserved for questioning. There it was found that the soles of her shoes were hollow. The inspector pried them open. A handful of diamonds spilled out on the floor. More diamonds were found under a false bottom in one of her suitcases. Their total weight was 3377 carats. It was one of the largest diamond hauls ever made by U.S. Customs. The young woman broke down in tears. Then she told her story. For years she had dreamed of coming to live in America , she said. At last she had managed to obtain the papers she needed to immigrate to the United States . Then a strange man called on her. He said he would pay her fare and give her one hundred American dollars in cash. All she had to do was smuggle the diamonds past U.S. Customs. The man gave her the shoes and the suitcase with the false bottom. He also bought her a plane ticket. Just before she got on the plane, he gave her a sealed envelope. He said that in it was the hundred dollars he had promised her. The weeping woman handed the envelope to a customs inspector. It was still sealed. He tore it open. It contained only eighty dollars. The woman had been short–changed by twenty dollars. But that proved to be the least of her troubles. She was later tried and sentenced to eighteen months in prison for her part in the smuggling. The reason she seemed too tall was that .