Nelson Hart

But sometimes the stage directions go out the window, and the police have to frantically ad-lib.

That's what happened in the case of Nelson Hart in Canada, as Mark Stobbe tells us.

They told him to take a train from Halifax to Montreal and deliver a briefcase.

For reasons that aren't completely clear, he awakened the suspicions of the, um, security in the train station, and they thought he was up to no good.

Uh, he probably was behaving furtively or something.

So they searched him, and they opened the briefcase, and all there was in it was photocopier paper, which raises the question, even to somebody as stupid as Nelson Hart, why his criminal associates have got him delivering photocopier paper from Halifax to Montreal hand-delivered.

So he gets to Montreal, and he's puzzled.

So they take him to supper in a casino, um, divert him a bit, and then they sneak into the hotel room, and they substitute the handle on the case, on the briefcase.