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Clue of the Gold Coin

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<h2>CHAPTER XII The Disappearance</h2> <hr class="divider2" /> PROMPTLY AT THREE O’CLOCK VICKI ENTERED the airport terminal building. From a pay phone she put in a call for Mr. Quayle’s office upstairs. He had asked her to report anything to him that didn’t “feel” right to her. Her meeting with Mr. Tytell yesterday certainly qualified as not “feeling right.” She had tried to call him yesterday but had been unable to reach him. But, once again, the FBI man wasn’t in his office. His secretary thought he’d be back shortly. Vicki went to the reservations desk to look at the passenger list for Flight 17. There was his name, all right. Amos Tytell. So the old man had made it! Before this day was over, Vicki thought to herself, she ought to have the answers to a lot of troubling questions! She looked around. The old man was nowhere in sight. 133 “Has Mr. Tytell checked in?” she asked the clerk at the desk. The girl looked down her list. “Why, yes. He was in over an hour ago to validate his ticket.” She looked at her watch. “About one-thirty.” Then he must be somewhere around, Vicki knew. Possibly in the snack bar. She had plenty of time, so she sauntered toward the restaurant. There was no sign of the old man at the counter or any of the tables, but Captain March was sitting on one of the stools, hastily gulping a cup of coffee. “Vic,” he said, “you’re just in time to do me a favor. I can’t find my best pair of pigskin gloves, and I think I may have lost them somewhere in the terminal. I have to rush to weather briefing, so be a good girl and see if they might be at Lost-and-Found. You’ll know them by the Abercrombie label.” Vicki walked across the big waiting room, casting her glance around for Mr. Tytell, but he was nowhere to be seen. At the Lost-and-Found desk, the boy in charge grinned when she asked about the captain’s gloves. “These were turned in Thursday,” he said, reaching under the counter and coming up with a new pair of pigskin gloves. “These the ones?” As she took the gloves, Vicki’s eye caught sight of an object lying on the lower shelf behind the boy. 134 “What’s that?” she asked sharply, pointing. “That—that violin case?” The boy turned and picked it up. “One of the porters found this old fiddle about an hour ago. Is it yours, miss?” Vicki looked at the worn leather case, with the frayed handle that exposed the metal of the clasp. It was Mr. Tytell’s, no doubt of that. But now it bore fresh scratches and there was a dent in the side as if someone had stepped on it. “Where was it found?” Vicki’s voice took on a strident note as a dark wave of dread swept over her. “Outside somewhere. The porter didn’t say just where.” Vicki turned and ran up the stairs to Mr. Quayle’s office on the second floor. When she burst through the door, the secretary looked up and shook her head. “He hasn’t come back yet, Miss Barr. And I really don’t know when he’ll be in. Is there anything I can do for you?” “May I leave him a note?” “Certainly. You’ll find paper on that desk over there.” Vicki hastily scribbled a message, telling the FBI investigator about her meeting with Amos Tytell yesterday; his checking in at the reservations desk; and her finding of the battered violin case that appeared to show marks of a struggle. She folded the note and gave it to the secretary.135 Then she went down the stairs with a heavy heart. Twenty minutes later, when the passengers boarded her plane, she looked in vain for Mr. Tytell among them. But when the last of them had come aboard, and the ground crew had secured the door and wheeled away the loading ramp, he was still absent. Since finding the violin case in Lost-and-Found, Vicki had had an awful feeling that he would not board the plane. <hr class="divider" /> 136</div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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