Vicki’s mouth dropped open, speechless. Louise clapped her hand to her lips and her eyes grew wide. Nina said, “Daddy! That’s impossible!”
“Yes, that’s what you’d think,” her father replied.
“Had the box been tampered with?” Louise asked, after a minute.
“It didn’t seem so,” Mr. Curtin said. “As I say, it was taped with steel bands, and the shipping label from the museum in New York was intact. It had come down from New York yesterday by air express ...”
“Air express?” Vicki almost screamed the question. “Then it might have come down on our flight!” Suddenly she remembered the mysterious Mr. Jones, whom Cathy had said had “cop” written all over him. And there was the odd fact that he and Captain March had boarded the airplane in the hangar. Before she could marshal these confusing thoughts in her mind, Mr. Curtin went on.
“That’s right, Vicki. Air express. The case stayed in the warehouse out at the airport overnight—under a heavy guard, I might add—and was delivered to the exhibition hall about ten o’clock this morning.”
“And it hadn’t been tampered with, opened up?” Vicki asked the question again.
“If it had,” Mr. Curtin said, “it was the cleverest tampering job I’ve ever seen.”
“What—what were the coins worth?” Vicki asked.
“From the standpoint of their value as antiques,” Mr. Curtin answered, “they were priceless. For the gold they contained, figuring gold at thirty-five dollars an ounce, possibly a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe twice that.”