A man in Spain allegedly stuffed himself into a suitcase in order to steal valuables from other passengers' luggage on an airport shuttle bus, the BBC reports.

On Friday, a bus company employee noticed a passenger struggling to put a heavy suitcase into the luggage hold and notified authorities. The shuttle service had previously alerted police to a string of thefts aboard its buses.

Police officers noticed the suspicious suitcase was warm, so they opened it. Inside, they found the alleged thief doubled up like a contortionist and dripping with sweat. The man was also found with a head lamp, a sharp tool that police believe was used to open zippers and locks, a small bag and a cell phone. 

"Once the trip began, he would get out of the suitcase, search for valuable objects and hide them in a smaller bag he carried with him," regional Catalan police told the AFP news agency.

Police believe the alleged thief was loaded onto the bus by an accomplice, who would then retrieve him 90 minutes later when the shuttle arrived at Barcelona's Girona airport.

The two men, Krzysztof Grzegorz, 29, and Jouoastaw K, 31, were arrested, the Daily Mail reports.

"I believe this is what the British call an open-and-shut case," a police spokesman said.

And just in case you are still wondering how the purported pilferer managed to pull off the heist, the Spanish-language El Periodico newspaper posted a diagram of the bus-burglary scheme on its website.

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter @JoyJernigan.