john quayle met their plane at the tampa airport the next morning. he took the little gold ship that vicki had been carrying in her handbag.
“better not let this go through customs,” he said. “we don’t want anybody, even the customs people, to know about it at this stage. if you will come with me, miss barr, i’m sure your friends won’t mind taking care of your luggage.”
when the two of them were alone in his office, mr. quayle looked at vicki for a long moment with a big smile on his face.
“the last time you were here, miss barr, i said that you were a good detective. now i want to repeat it—doubled. of course you were lucky, too, when the peddler offered to sell you the gold ship and when you saw the coin in the jeweler’s shop. but a good detective is one who is smart enough to take advantage of such breaks. and on158 the basis of the information you gave me yesterday over the phone, we’ve broken this case wide open. all but one or two small details, and we’ll soon know all about those too.”
a dozen questions popped into vicki’s mind, but she contained her curiosity and let the fbi man go on.
“we found out all about raymond duke and his business connection in havana as ramon garcia, his real name by the way. we searched his house from top to bottom and found nothing. he, of course, was gone. then we made a search of f. r. eaton-smith’s place, and that time we hit the jackpot. most of those old-fashioned spanish houses had their kitchens in the basement with big brick ovens for baking bread built into the wall. but the oven in eaton-smith’s house was extra special. it had been lined with modern firebrick, fitted with high-intensity gas burners and converted into a kiln. it was in this kiln that the gold coins were melted down and recast in the form of the souvenir ships. we found a handful of the antique coins that had been overlooked in the thieves’ haste to get the job done, and they’ve been identified. we also found all the metal-casting equipment, including the molds that had been made from the cheap souvenirs. needless to say, we didn’t find eaton-smith. he, too, had flown the coop.”
“and poor old mr. tytell ... he just159 couldn’t have been one of the gang. did you find him?”
“we haven’t yet found him, but we did find out all about him. he was an expert goldsmith, and ...”
at the word “goldsmith” vicki gasped. then he was one of the thieves! it just didn’t seem possible!
“... until a few years ago was regularly employed,” mr. quayle went on. “then, apparently, his health broke down and he couldn’t hold a regular job. our new york people went to work investigating him the day you reported him missing from your flight for which he had picked up his reservations. we’ll know more about him soon.”
“it hardly seems possible,” vicki mused, “that all those preparations in mr. eaton-smith’s house could have been made after the coins were stolen.”
“that’s right. they couldn’t have been. somehow, eaton-smith knew that the gold was coming to tampa, and when. so he made his preparations well in advance. our new york people are working on that angle too. but when we find him and raymond duke—and i assure you that the fbi will find them—we’ll learn about that, and a lot of other things too.”
“there was that third man,” vicki said. “the masked pirate i followed in ybor city.”
160 “when we get the others,” mr. quayle said, “we’ll find out about your pirate friend too, never fear.”
“the curious thing to me,” vicki said, “is how the coins were stolen in the first place. according to mr. curtin—you remember he was on the committee that arranged for the exhibition—the packing case didn’t show any signs of having been tampered with at all.”
“that puzzled me, too. but because it was so puzzling it gave me an idea that we’re working on.”
“an idea?”
mr. quayle smiled. “don’t worry. i’ll tell you all about it at the proper time. you’ve been our number one operative on this case, and i’ll certainly tell you everything after i’ve found out whether or not i’m right.”
mr. quayle patted the gold ship which he had put on his desk.
“it’s amazing,” he said “what people will do to get this pretty yellow stuff. now you go on and enjoy the rest of your vacation. i’ll call you if i need you.”
when vicki went back downstairs to the main terminal waiting room, a light rain was falling outside, one of those sudden showers so peculiar to southern florida that seem to come out of nowhere and stop as suddenly as they start. since161 she didn’t have a raincoat, she decided to wait it out.
she strolled over to the big plate-glass observation window that looked out on the airfield. then she saw something that made her heart pound, and a cold hand seemed to clutch her throat.
a short, stocky man, wearing a long black raincoat and a black hat, was striding across the concrete apron in the direction of the freight warehouse. he carried a valise in his hand. vicki would have known that hurried walk anywhere, and the long black coat, and the fact that she was looking at his back, made it all the more recognizable.
it was the masked pirate of the torchlight parade!
she hesitated for a second, debating whether or not she should call john quayle. then she decided against it. in the time it would take to make a phone call or to run upstairs to his office, the man would be gone. she dashed out into the rain.
the man strode on, not looking back. he passed the open warehouse door and walked on in the direction of a twin-engine cessna that stood on the apron beyond it. roy olsen, ignoring the light rain, was standing beside his plane, fiddling with the door handle. steve miller’s beechcraft stood some distance away.
162 as the man passed the warehouse, joey watson appeared from out of the interior.
“hi, van!” he called. “going somewhere?”
van! van lasher! the warehouse foreman! so he had been the masked pirate!
vicki ducked into the open door, and dragged the surprised boy with her.
“look, joey,” she said breathlessly. “i haven’t time to explain, so just do as i say. call mr. quayle. he’s in his office. tell him that van lasher is the third man. have you got that, joey? tell mr. quayle that van lasher is the third man!”
“but—but—” the boy stammered.
“joey!” vicki snapped. “this is important! tell quayle that van is here and it looks as if he has chartered roy olsen’s plane to take him somewhere. i’ll do what i can to stall him. now hurry, joey! hurry! and you’d better use the phone in the office.”
when she reappeared at the open door, vicki could hear roy olsen arguing with van.
“but look, mister! i have to have clearance for a flight to cuba. i just can’t pick up and go on the spur of the moment.”
“all right,” van said, “i’ll double my offer. five hundred dollars!”
“sorry, mister. if i did a thing like that i’d lose my license for sure.”
“look here,” van said. “i’m in a tremendous hurry. i missed my plane, and if i’m not in havana163 by two o’clock i’ll lose a lot of money. i’ll make it a thousand. how’s that?”
“gee, mister, i’d like to take you,” roy said, “but i just can’t do it for any price unless i have legal clearance.”
“all right,” vicki heard van say, “how long will it take you?”
“twenty minutes maybe. a half hour at the most.”
“okay,” van said. “but hurry it up.”
vicki breathed a deep sigh of relief. the delay would give quayle and the airport police plenty of time to get here!
just at that moment joey rushed out of the interior of the warehouse.
“miss vicki,” he shouted excitedly, “i got mr. quayle!”
at the sound of joey’s voice van wheeled around. when he saw vicki, his face contorted in a horrible expression of anger. he whipped a pistol from his coat pocket and stuck it in roy olsen’s ribs.
“all right,” he snarled, “i’m tired of all this stalling! get in that airplane or i’ll blow you apart!”
roy, shock at the sudden turn of events showing in his white face, opened the door and climbed into the ship. van followed at his heels.
vicki almost panicked. van was getting away—and he had to be stopped! she looked in the direction of the terminal. there was no sign of164 quayle and his men. she looked inside the warehouse. by the time she called any of the other workmen and explained the situation to them, roy’s plane would be air-borne. and there would be nothing they could do, anyway, against a desperate man armed with a gun.
these thoughts flashed through her mind in a split second. then she saw steve miller’s plane. she made a dash for it.
when she reached the beechcraft, vicki opened the door and scrambled in. by the time she had stumbled up the narrow aisle between the passenger seats and settled herself behind the wheel, she could hear the grinding noise of the cessna’s starter and see its twin propellers slowly turning over. quickly she flicked the ignition switch and jabbed at the starter buttons. as she did so, the engines of roy’s plane caught with a tremendous roar and the propellers flashed in dazzling disks of reflected sunlight and a wild spray of falling rain.
at that moment the motors of the beechcraft started, and vicki spun the wheel to taxi the ship into roy’s path.
with van lasher’s gun at his back, roy had no choice but to try to get his plane into the air. he swerved just in time to miss the wing of the beechcraft by inches and headed out crosswise over the landing field.
vicki opened the throttle wide. the beech165 was a more powerful ship than the cessna and it answered the throttle like a race horse hurtling out of a starting gate. vicki pushed the wheel forward hard to keep the ship from taking off into the air.
again she intercepted roy, and again he swerved in time to avoid a collision. vicki said a silent prayer that no passenger plane was coming in for a landing, with all this crazy taxiing going on. certainly by now the tower would have seen the two planes racing madly across the field and warned off any ships that might already be in the landing pattern.
roy had straightened out now, and again was heading up the field. van must indeed be desperate, for he apparently was ordering roy at gun point to make a downwind take-off.
vicki took a last-ditch chance and cut in front of the cessna again. a collision at seventy miles an hour might kill everyone in both ships. but vicki had only one thought—to keep the other plane from getting into the air. again, roy swerved just in time, almost scraping his left wing against the high steel-mesh fence that edged the field.
out of the corner of her eye, vicki saw two airport jeeps dashing across the field in their direction. that would be quayle and the police getting into the chase. just then there was a smacking sound in front of her and a small166 round hole appeared in the glass window only inches from her head. van was using his pistol to scare her away!
once more, roy tried to straighten out for a take-off. and once more vicki managed to intercept him and make him swerve away. at the same time, the two jeeps cut in ahead of him. roy tried to swerve out of the way of this new menace, and in doing so the tip of one wing caught the wire of the fence. the cessna pivoted in a sort of exaggerated ground loop, fell over onto its injured wing, and came to a shuddering stop. roy cut the engines, and the whirring propellers slowed down and came to a standstill.
at the same time, vicki cut the motors of the beech and slammed on the wheel brakes.
the tip of a wing caught the wire of the fence
instantly a swarm of uniformed policemen surrounded the cessna. as vicki watched, her heart pounding wildly after the excitement of the chase, van lasher came out of the plane’s door and stepped onto the ground, his hands high in the air. in a moment roy olsen followed167 him and walked around to survey his wrecked plane. vicki saw mr. quayle walk up to lasher, say a few words, and wave him off in the custody of the police.
she got up from the pilot’s seat, walked slowly back down the aisle, all the energy drained from her in these past few harrowing minutes, and climbed down the step to the ground.
the fbi man came up to her, smiling.
“i might have known it was you in that plane. thanks to your keen instincts, we’ve caught all the other people in this gold coin case, so it just naturally168 figures that you’d trap lasher. if i’m not careful, j. edgar hoover will fire me and give you my job.”
vicki was looking sorrowfully at the wreckage of roy olsen’s beautiful plane. john quayle read the thoughts that were so clearly showing in her face.
“don’t fret about that plane, vicki,” he said. “i imagine the insurance company will be glad to take care of the damage.”
roy olsen joined them just in time to hear mr. quayle’s final words. he was still pale and shaken, but he was able to manage a smile.
“vicki,” he said, “my hat’s off to you. i was never so glad to make a crash landing in all my life.”
