“It looks as if something’s up,” she said in a low voice.
“I don’t go to the movies for nothing,” Cathy remarked. “That Mr. Jones has ‘cop’ written all over him. We must be carrying something pretty important today. A shipment of diamonds, maybe, or gold.”
Gold! Suddenly Vicki remembered the antique gold coins that were being sent from the New York museum to the Pirate Festival in Tampa. Could they possibly have them on board this flight? That could account for Mr. Jones and the captain riding the ship out from the hangar. And especially if, as Cathy had suggested, Mr. Jones had “cop” written all over him. Oh, well—! She shrugged off the thought. If they were carrying a shipment of gold, she’d never know about it.
Vicki looked at the passenger list which she still had under her arm. There was Mr. Jones’s name all right, along with an assortment of other typical American names: Smith, Cooper, Levin, Carpenter, Fagan, Morris ... One name caught her eye. She pointed it out to Cathy.
“F. R. Eaton-Smith. My, that sounds important. Who do you suppose he could be?”
“Sounds English,” Cathy commented. “But let’s go. Here they come.”
An attendant had opened the wire gate, and now the passengers for the flight were streaming across the apron to the loading ramp. Vicki stood by the plane’s open doorway, the passenger list in her hand, and checked off the names one by one as the passengers entered.
“You are Mr.—?”
“Cooper.”
Vicki made a check beside his name.