“Oh, we’re not flying,” Peggy explained. “We just wanted to be here first so that we wouldn’t miss some people we want to see.”
“Oh, seeing off some friends,” the uniformed man said. “You must really be fond of them to come out at a late hour like this just for the fun of waving good-by!”
“Well, you might say that,” Randy said, reluctant to give away the real purpose of their visit.
“If you wait right here, you can’t miss them,” the man smiled. “In fact, here come the first ones now.”
Looking down the long corridor, Peggy and Randy saw a knot of passengers approaching at a leisurely pace. None of them seemed, even at this distance, to be Stacy Blair. Peggy cast a puzzled look at Randy.
“They’ll probably be along in a minute or two,” he said reassuringly. “I guess it’s only the new travelers who hurry to be the first on board.”
They stood quietly by as the passengers checked in, one by one, offering their tickets for inspection to the uniformed official. As each passenger passed through the gate, the inspector checked off his or her name against a master list on his little standing desk.
Peggy watched with mounting alarm as name after name was checked off, and still Paula’s parents did not appear. Catching her expression, the airline official paused in his paperwork.
“Say,” he said, “you’re not waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Blackstone, are you? Because if you are, I got word that they had canceled, and your trip out here would be for nothing.”
“No,” Peggy said, “not Blackstone. Why?”