“And so,” Mr. Curtin said, “the theft was accomplished by the simple device of Van Lasher switching the crates.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Quayle said, “it was as simple as that. The next morning, at the same time the fake crate was delivered to your committee, the crate containing the gold was delivered to Raymond Duke. Naturally, we checked on all deliveries made that morning, but Duke showed our man the bill of lading for a shipment of perfume, and we had no reason to doubt him.”
At that moment Mrs. Tucker interrupted with a plate of sandwiches and a fresh pitcher of lemonade. Mr. Quayle turned his attention briefly from the gold coins to the food.
“Being a bachelor,” he said to the housekeeper, “I don’t often get chicken sandwiches like these.” He helped himself to another one.
As she sipped on her lemonade Vicki couldn’t get her mind off the old man who had been the starting point of the whole case so far as she was concerned.
“How,” she asked, “did Duke and Eaton-Smith get Mr. Tytell to work for them after he found out what was going on?”
“By another simple method,” the FBI man replied. “They threatened to kill him if he made a false move.”
“But when I saw him in Ybor City and in the art supply store no one was with him,” Vicki said. “So he couldn’t have been completely a prisoner. Why couldn’t he have gone to the police? They’d have protected him.”
“They had one other weapon,” Mr. Quayle said. “It appears that the old man has a grandson in New York. Tytell was unable to support him and the boy is in a charitable institution. They threatened to hurt the boy if Tytell went to the police. Naturally, the Tampa police would have gotten in touch with the New York force to assure the boy’s protection. But the old man was scared out of his wits and wasn’t thinking straight. That’s why he was so frightened when you saw him that day in front of Duke’s house.”
“But he did try to get away on my plane to New York,” Vicki reminded him.