“Oh, yes, Mr. Cooper. You’re bound for Atlanta.”
Atlanta was their one stop en route to Tampa. Vicki studied the man’s face quickly but carefully. Part of her job was to make her passengers feel welcome on board by remembering their names. The man walked down the aisle and took a seat by a window.
One by one the passengers filed through the doorway. An elderly couple. A woman with a little girl. A young man and woman in their early twenties who displayed all the familiar outward appearances of being honeymooners. The next man had a distinguished air about him. He was portly, dignified, well-dressed. His rimless glasses were so highly polished that Vicki could not see his eyes behind them, only brilliant reflections of sunlight.
“I am Mr. Eaton-Smith.” His voice was as dignified as his appearance.
So this was F. R. Eaton-Smith! His appearance certainly fitted his name. She turned to the next passenger.
He was a thin, frail old man, wearing a battered felt hat over his badly trimmed gray hair and a shabby overcoat with a frayed collar. He clutched a battered violin case under his arm, as though he had been unwilling to trust it with the rest of the luggage in the cargo compartment. He certainly didn’t look, Vicki thought, like a man who was accustomed to first-class air travel.
“Good morning,” Vicki said brightly. “Your name, sir?”
The old gentleman looked startled. “I—I’m Amos Tytell, miss.” He looked around the big cabin. “Where—uh, which seat is mine?”
“Take any seat you like, Mr. Tytell,” Vicki said. “But if you want to look at the scenery, I’d suggest that you sit next to a window. We’re going to have clear weather all the way.”
Finally the last of the passengers trooped aboard. The door was closed, the landing ramp wheeled away by the ground crew, and Captain March started his engines. One by one the big, four-bladed propellers whined as they turned over slowly, then coughed and spat small puffs of blue exhaust smoke and suddenly burst into a steady roar, the revolving blades making bright, shiny disks that gleamed and sparkled in the morning sun. The big ship vibrated with the pounding of the air stream against her sides and strained at the wheel brakes like a race horse impatient for the start. At last Captain March taxied out to the end of the runway, waited for his signal from the tower, and when he got it, gunned the ship down the concrete strip and lifted her into the air as smoothly and gently as a bird.