NEW YORK HAD BEEN ICY COLD AND COVERED with a blanket of snow. Now, as Captain March banked his big airplane into the landing pattern over Tampa, it was as though Vicki were on some kind of futuristic spaceship coming down into a completely different world. Funny, she thought, this morning it was winter, this afternoon it’s summer.

When the ship rolled to a standstill in front of the unloading gate and the big door was swung open, Vicki breathed in a deep breath of the thick, sweet-scented air and sighed contentedly. “Golly,” she thought, “I’m falling in love with Florida! Me! A girl from Illinois!”

She quickly went through the routine of checking in at flight’s end, and then once more found herself face to face with the problem of what to do about Joey. She knew that she had to talk with him, but again she decided against going to the warehouse to see him. It would be better to get his address from Personnel and call him at his boardinghouse.

Just as she was making this decision, she heard a cheerful, familiar voice:

“Hi there, Miss Vicki!” Joey’s eager face certainly didn’t look like that of a suspected criminal. “I saw your plane come in, and I asked the boss for a few minutes off to come over and say hello.”

“You’re just the person I wanted to see, Joey,” Vicki told him. “Come over to the snack bar and I’ll buy you a coke.”

“Nothing doing!” The boy grinned. “I’ll come with you, but the cokes are on me.”

Vicki led the way to one of the booths, and when they had ordered, she said seriously, “Look here, Joey. You may be in trouble.”

Joey frowned, then his face brightened in his infectious grin.

“If you mean about that flashlight they found the night the gold shipment was stolen, forget it.”

“Forget it?”

“Sure. It was my flashlight all right. But either it was stolen from my locker, or I had left it around and somebody picked it up. The FBI men quizzed me about it, but I proved that I couldn’t have been anywhere near the airfield that night. I room with a fellow by the name of Pete Saunders. He works in the terminal checkroom. Well, that particular night, Thursday, I met Pete after work and we ate supper at Cicco’s Italian restaurant down by the docks. Then we went to a movie and got home a little after twelve. I told all this to the FBI man, and Pete told him too.”

“What I was thinking about,” Vicki said, “was the job offer that man made you in here the same afternoon—the man who promised you a hundred dollars to do a job for him and offered to give you twenty-five of it in advance.”

Joey’s eyes widened.

“How—how in the world did you know about that, Miss Vicki? I haven’t mentioned it to a soul. Not even Pete.”

“It just so happened, Joey, that I was sitting in the next booth—this very one we’re in now—and I couldn’t help overhearing.”

All Joey could say was an astonished: “Gee!”

“Have you seen him again? Mr. Duke? Wasn’t that his name?”

Joey finally found his voice. “Gosh, no! I figured he was nutty or something. Offering me all that money out of a clear sky. I wouldn’t have touched it for anything. It sounded either crazy or crooked, and I didn’t want any part of it.”

Vicki breathed a deep sigh of genuine relief. She’d been pretty sure that Joey wouldn’t get himself mixed up in something wrong. “If I were you, Joey,” Vicki said, “I’d go to Mr. Quayle, the FBI investigator, and tell him about your conversation with Mr. Duke.”

“Gee, Vicki!” Joey was so startled by the suggestion that he neglected to add the usual “Miss” which he automatically put in front of her name. “Do you think Mr. Duke might have had something to do with the stolen gold?”

Vicki thought for a swift moment. Her vague, unformed suspicions wouldn’t make any sense to the boy. She said: “Not necessarily. But some mighty peculiar things have been going on around this airport. And even though you proved that you weren’t in the warehouse Thursday night, it was your flashlight the prowler dropped, and up to now you’re the only person who has come under suspicion. I think you ought to go to Mr. Quayle, if, for no other reason, than to show that you want to do everything you can to help him. Besides, sometimes little odd, unrelated facts can be the key that opens up the whole mystery. I’m not saying this one is,” she added hastily, “I’m just saying that it could be.”

“Gee!” Joey said again. “If you think I should, I’ll certainly do it.”

“And do it right now,” Vicki advised, “before you report back to work.”

Joey looked anxiously at the clock over the lunch counter.

“I’m supposed to be back on the job in five minutes. Van’s a good guy, but he gets sore when people are late.”

“Just tell him the FBI sent for you again. I know it’s a sort of fib, but under the circumstances I think it will be all right. And it ought to satisfy your boss.”

As the two were about to get up from their seats, a tall, dark-haired young man in a leather windbreaker loomed over the booth.

“Hello there, Joey!” His browned face smiled at Vicki. “Hello,” he said.

Joey jumped to his feet. “Hi, Steve! Miss Vicki, this is Steve Miller, the pilot I was telling you about the other day.”

“Hello, Steve.” Vicki returned his smile. “Do you think you can make a pilot out of this fellow?”

“I think so. At least, I give him ‘A’ for eagerness.”

“But you’ve got to admit that I took over the controls for a while yesterday.” Joey beamed.

“That’s right. And almost flipped us over on our back. You’re a pilot, Miss Barr—oh, Joey’s told me all about you—so you tell him that you’ve got to learn to fly level before you can do nip-ups and bells. Just as you have to learn to sit on a horse while he’s walking, before you can keep your seat when he’s going at a gallop.”

“That’s true, Joey.” Vicki smiled. “You do exactly as Mr. Miller tells you, and we’ll pin a pair of wings on you yet.” “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Barr,” Steve Miller said as he turned to go. “Maybe some afternoon when we’re both free you’d like to take my ship up for a spin.”

“Thanks awfully. I might just take you up on that one of these days.” She turned to Joey. “Now you do what I suggested before you go back to work.”

“Sure thing, Miss Vicki,” Joey said.

Vicki came downstairs late on Monday morning. Except for Mrs. Tucker puttering around somewhere back in the kitchen area, the big Curtin house was quiet as a church. At the sound of Vicki’s footsteps on the stairs, the housekeeper popped her head out the dining-room door.

“’Morning, Miss Vicki. I’ll have some breakfast on the table for you in a jiffy. You don’t want to miss the big goings-on downtown this morning. This is the day the pirates land.”

Vicki sat down at the big dining table and Mrs. Tucker brought her a glass of orange juice.

“You can’t live in Florida without having orange juice for breakfast,” she remarked. “And the girls left you this note.”

Vicki opened it and read:

“Dear Vic: Had some errands to do, so Nina and I have gone on ahead. Wanted to let you get your beauty sleep. Don’t miss the big pirate invasion. The ship comes in about noon. I’ll manage to find you in the crowd—I hope. Love, Louise.”

Vicki looked at her watch. Ten-thirty. She’d have plenty of time. She ate her breakfast and read the morning paper. It was devoted almost entirely to the coming visit of the JosÉ Gasparilla and the pirate crew that was expected to land and conquer the city shortly after noon. Headlines in the New York papers yesterday had been devoted to the United States new satellite. Here a small story about it was almost lost at the bottom of page one. Vicki giggled. This week Tampa turned back the clock and the calendar a hundred and fifty years!

There was one story on an inside page that caught her eye. It was a follow-up on the theft of the gold coins. The carefully worded account contained no new facts, simply stated that the local police and the FBI were pressing their investigation and that Mr. John Quayle, chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Tampa district, was confident that the case would be broken soon. There was no mention of Joey Watson or the flashlight clue.

The part of the story that most interested Vicki was a spread of pictures of the antique coins that had been forwarded from the museum in New York. Even in the black-and-white newspaper reproduction, she could see that the coins were of exotic design and extraordinarily beautiful. One showed a huge bird in flight. Another bore the likeness of a sea nymph, her hair blowing above the waves. A third showed the profile of a forgotten queen wearing a tall, many-pointed crown. Her face was encircled by laurel branches and the entire coin was rimmed with stars. On a hunch, Vicki tore the picture out of the paper and slipped it into her purse.

When Mrs. Tucker came in to clear the table, Vicki asked, “Aren’t you going downtown to see the fun?”

The housekeeper smiled a motherly smile. “I haven’t missed one yet.”

Outside, the sun was shining down out of a cloudless and brilliantly blue sky. A gentle breeze blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, ruffling the fronds of the tall palms that lined the streets and serving to make the heat bearable. As she approached the downtown part of Tampa, the traffic grew heavier and the crowds thicker until, by the time she had made her way to the waterfront, the throng was so jammed that she could hardly push her way through. Golly, Vicki thought, she’d never seen so many people in one place in all her life! Not even in New York. The paper had said that more than half a million people were expected to jam the streets today, and Vicki estimated that the figure couldn’t be far wrong. This was more than four times the normal population of the city. She wondered how all of them had managed to find places to stay.

She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd just in time to see a big drawbridge swing up to allow a big sailing ship to enter the upper Bay. It was an authentic-looking pirate ship, a full-rigged sailing vessel. Hundreds of colorful pennants flew from lines rigged all over its superstructure, and its decks and yardarms were jammed with men in fierce-looking pirate costumes, waving cutlasses and shooting pistols into the air. The ship’s sails were furled and a pair of tugboats, tiny by comparison, were pushing the big ship through the water.

Dozens of cruisers, sailboats, outboards, and skiffs were clustered all around her, like chicks around a mother hen. Everybody was shouting and yelling. People in the crowd that milled around Vicki were craning their heads to see over other people’s heads, and fathers were holding little children on their shoulders to let them see the fun. Peddlers circulated through the crowd carrying trays of souvenirs—pirate flags, Confederate flags, tiny brass figures of pirates, pistols, cutlasses, and model ships.

Caught up helplessly in the surging throng, Vicki was pushed this way and that. But she found that she too was cheering and shouting with the rest of them and having the time of her life. Then the pirates landed, amid a wild chorus of cheering and yelling and firing of blank pistol shots. The costumed members of Ye Mystic Krewe clambered onto gaily decorated floats, and amid the strident music of half a dozen bands, the parade began to move slowly up the street away from the docks.

On one of the floats, wearing a huge black beard, an eye patch, and brandishing a revolver in the air, Vicki saw a figure that looked vaguely familiar. She blinked and stared a second time. It was Mr. Curtin! He wore a striped red-and-white sash around his waist, and on his head was perched a tricornered hat with a huge skull and crossbones painted on its front.

Carried along by the tide of the crowd, Vicki waved frantically and yelled at the top of her voice: “Hi, Mr. Curtin! Hi, Mr. Curtin!”

Finally he saw her and waved back. “Yo-ho-ho, Vicki, and a bottle of rum! Where are the girls?”

“I don’t know!” Vicki shouted. But by this time the crowd had swept her away, and in an instant she lost sight of Mr. Curtin and his float.

The whole city was enjoying itself. When she finally wormed her way out of the middle of the huge throng, Vicki could see couples dancing in the streets under the waving palms to the music of the bands. Children were running around everywhere, carrying balloons and little toy models of ships and pirate swords. Over at the wharf, now securely tied up and deserted by its crew, the JosÉ Gasparilla, its pennants flapping in the gentle breeze, rocked to the motion of the water and squeaked as its sides rubbed against the rubber-tire fenders that lined the dock.

Free at last from the thickest part of the crowd of swarming people, Vicki stopped to catch her breath. There wasn’t a chance in a million, she thought, that she would find Nina and Louise. Well, it was a pleasant day, so why not walk around and see the sights! She hadn’t had a chance to do much sight-seeing since she had been in Tampa.

At that moment her eye was attracted to a painted sign atop one of the dockside buildings:

VISIT GLAMOROUS YBOR CITY—
Enchanted Land of Fiesta and Romance

Ybor City! The Granada Restaurant! The little old man on the plane had appeared to be trying to direct her attention to it. The mysterious Mr. Duke had gone there after his peculiar talk with Joey. She hadn’t been able to rid her mind of the nagging thought that these two events might be connected. So why not go and see the place for herself? She walked for some time through the crowded streets before she could find an empty taxi.

Ybor City was quite different from the modern section of Tampa. Here the streets were narrow and ancient buildings of brick and stucco sat flush with the sidewalk. Unlike the broad, palm-lined boulevards of modern Tampa, there were few trees in evidence in Ybor City. Some of the buildings had doorways of intricate iron grillwork, and on some, balconies overhung the sidewalks to make sheltered arcades. This Latin Quarter of Tampa, Vicki thought, was indeed a city within a city, a bit of old Spain dropped down in the middle of a modern American metropolis.

She saw signs in some of the store windows printed in Spanish, and most of the people in the streets, aside from those whose clothes and bearing marked them as tourists, had a dark-haired, dark-complexioned Latin look. Flags, small gold-colored ships, and other souvenirs of the Gasparilla Festival filled the shopwindows and were hawked by peddlers on the street.

Attracted by the old-world charm of the Quarter, Vicki stopped the taxi, paid her fare, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. She was in no hurry and decided to walk around and see the sights and visit the Granada Restaurant when she came to it! She walked leisurely down the street.

As she passed an old brick house with an iron grill around its doorway, she noticed a sign: F. R. Eaton-Smith—Travel Agency.

Now why was that name so familiar? Suddenly she remembered. Of course! That was the name of the man on the plane the other day—the day the gold was stolen—the man who had told her he was a world traveler and lecturer and operated a travel agency in Tampa. It struck her as a little odd that he should have his office out here in the Latin Quarter instead of downtown Tampa. The windows were filled with attractive travel posters from all over the world.

She halted momentarily to look at them, and at that moment a truck pulled up to the curb and stopped. The driver stepped up to Mr. Eaton-Smith’s door and rang the bell while two other men wrestled a large crate out of the back of the truck and deposited it on the sidewalk. The crate was marked Air Express in large letters, and Vicki noticed casually that it was securely wrapped around with metal bands.

Just then Mr. Eaton-Smith answered the bell and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“Crate for you, sir,” the truckman said.

“Just carry it into the front hallway, boys,” he said.

His glance went to Vicki, whose progress along the sidewalk had been momentarily blocked by the truckmen and their burden. As he stared at her, he looked exactly as he had on the plane when he had given her a hand with old Mr. Tytell—dignified, slightly portly, slightly bald, and with his eyes scarcely visible behind the highly polished, rimless glasses.

He smiled, stepped up to Vicki, and offered his hand.

“Well, well,” he said, “aren’t you the little hostess from the airplane the other day?”

“Hello, Mr. Eaton-Smith,” Vicki said, accepting his hand. “It isn’t often that I run into my passengers after they have left the plane.”

“And it’s a real pleasure to see you again, Miss—”

“Miss Barr,” Vicki said.

“Oh, yes, of course. Miss Barr. This is a pleasant time to be visiting Tampa, with the Festival in full swing.” He glanced over his shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Barr, I’d better attend to this express shipment.”

Nodding his head politely, he disappeared into the house.

Vicki strolled on, and turning a corner, saw a sign that read: Granada Restaurant. It was on a street with the un-Spanish name of Fifth Avenue.

The Granada was a colorful restaurant, and judging by the number of people seated at the tables, a popular one. The foyer just inside the door was floored with bright mosaic tile as were the walls of the room. A tiny fountain in the middle of the hall was surrounded by small potted palms and brightly colored flowers. A huge archway provided the entrance to the restaurant proper.

As Vicki paused under the archway and looked around the room, a dark-haired waiter, wearing a short white jacket, stepped up and greeted her with typical Spanish politeness.

“You’re meeting someone, seÑorita?” He spoke with a soft Spanish accent.

“No. I’m alone.”

“Then here’s a nice table for you.” The waiter led the way to a small table in a corner. “Will this be comfortable?”

For Vicki’s purpose, the corner table was perfect. Sitting here, she could view the entire room and the entrance as well. She herself was half shielded by a cluster of palms growing out of a blue-and-white urn.

In the opposite corner of the room, a musician in a Spanish costume was softly playing Spanish tunes on an accordion.

To the waiter who was standing by, she said, “Do you have other musicians here, possibly at night?” She indicated a piano beside which the accordionist was standing as he played.

“SÍ, sÍ! At dinner we have also the piano and a violin.” Vicki’s heart quickened. A violin! Maybe she was on the right track after all!

“Your violinist?” she asked. “Is he a tall, thin, elderly man with gray hair?”

The waiter laughed and slapped his expansive stomach as though Vicki had made a funny joke.

“You do not know Pedro, seÑorita. He is big like me. Even fatter.” He put his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss into the air. “But his violin—it is the sweetest in Ybor City.”

“Then you don’t know a violin player named Mr. Tytell?”

The waiter wrinkled his brows and slowly shook his head. “Tytell-a?” He put a soft vowel sound on the end of the name. “No, seÑorita. Only Pedro plays the violin at the Granada.”

Vicki’s heart fell as quickly as it had leaped up a moment before. To cover her disappointment, she gave her attention to the menu the waiter had handed her. She wasn’t hungry, having eaten a big breakfast only a short time before, but she felt that she had to order something to justify her presence. She ordered a sandwich with an unpronounceable Spanish name.

The sandwich fascinated Vicki. It contained sausage, cheese, sliced tomato, sliced olives, pimento, and capers. And it was so huge that it would have made a complete meal by itself. Along with it, the waiter brought a silver pot of coffee, which, when he poured it into a delicately made demitasse cup, proved to be as thick and sweet as hot chocolate. Vicki looked around the room as she nibbled at the sandwich’s ample contents.

Most of the patrons were Americans, tourists in town for the Festival, she guessed, by looking at their pale, untanned faces. Scattered among them were people with distinctly Spanish faces, many of them dressed in colorful Spanish costumes. These, she knew, must be the natives of the Quarter. The air was filled with a cheerful babble of conversation that was a mixture of English and Spanish.

Suddenly a loud, cheerful Spanish-accented voice made Vicki turn her head sharply. Raymond Duke was coming through the arched doorway.

“Arturo!” he hailed the waiter who had served Vicki’s lunch. “CÓmo estÁ? How goes it?”

“Bueno, SeÑor Duke!” The waiter’s dark eyes and broad smile beamed a hearty welcome. It was plain that Raymond Duke was a regular patron of the Granada.

“Hello, Duke!” a group at a nearby table called. “Come over and sit with us.”

Duke stepped briskly to their table, shook hands all around, and sat down in an empty chair. “Was it hot in Havana?” one of the men asked.

“Not on Veradero Beach.” Duke flashed a white-toothed smile.

A few more words and Duke excused himself. He sat down alone at a small table with his back toward Vicki. After ordering his lunch from the ubiquitous Arturo, he took some papers out of his pocket and settled down to read them.

Every minute or so, as Duke was eating his lunch, various people stopped by his table to say hello. “How’s the Duke?” “That was a mighty fast trip to Havana!” “What’s the good word, Duke?” He certainly was a popular man in Ybor City, Vicki could see that plainly.

Duke took his time finishing lunch. Vicki sipped at her coffee and finally ordered another pot which she didn’t want. At last, Duke called for his check, paid it, and got to his feet. Vicki called for her own check at the same time, and by the time Arturo had taken her money and returned with her change, and she had stepped out once again into Fifth Avenue, she saw Duke’s tall, broad-shouldered figure down at the end of the block.

Vicki had come to Ybor City on the off-chance that she might again see the little old man from the plane. Instead, she had run into the mysterious Mr. Duke, the man who had offered Joey some kind of “job” on the afternoon before the gold robbery. Could there possibly be a connection somewhere? She didn’t see how, but since she’d come this far, her detective instincts were too keen to let her stop now.

She sauntered in Duke’s direction.

It was well that she walked slowly. Duke was stopped half a dozen times in two blocks by people who loudly addressed him as “The Duke” and exchanged pleasantries with him. Finally he turned into the hallway of a house, pressed the buzzer, and when it was answered, disappeared through the door. Clearly this was neither his house nor his office or he would have gone in without ringing the bell. Vicki waited on the street for fifteen minutes, looking in the shopwindows and trying her best to act like a tourist. But Mr. Duke did not reappear. On an impulse, she retraced her steps to the Granada Restaurant.

The big room was now more than half empty, settling down as do all restaurants into the mid-afternoon doldrums. Arturo, the waiter, was sitting at a table writing out the evening menus in Spanish, in purple ink, on large sheets of yellow paper. He looked up as Vicki approached.

“Yes, seÑorita?”

“It’s about Mr. Duke. I have some business with him. Unfortunately I don’t have his address. I thought possibly you might help me.” She took a dollar bill from her purse and placed it on the table. “This is for your trouble.” The waiter took the bill and slipped it into his pocket. “Ah, yes,” he said. “But weren’t you here at lunch when Mr. Duke was here?”

“Yes—” Vicki hesitated. “But he was speaking to so many people—”

“SÍ, sÍ! I understand. And you wish to know where he lives?”

“That’s right. Or the address of his office.”

Arturo shrugged. “To find the Duke is like putting your finger on quicksilver. But his home is on Columbus Drive at the corner of Thirteenth Street. A red-brick house with a balcony. Perhaps you can find him there.”

Vicki inquired the way to Columbus Drive, and when the waiter told her that it was two streets up, she thanked him and left the cool interior of the restaurant.

Walking along the street, fascinated by the colorful costumes of the people and by the open-air stands where white-capped chefs were serving steaming hot bowls of bean soup to any passer-by that wanted one, Vicki took stock of the situation.

She knew that Mr. Raymond Duke was a regular patron of the Granada Restaurant. But since, on Thursday, she had heard him direct a taxi to take him there, this was not startling news. From the snatches of his various conversations with people in the restaurant that she had overheard, she knew that he had many and varied business connections. But he had told this to Joey, so again she had learned nothing new. Old Mr. Tytell was not playing in the Granada’s orchestra. She had leaped blindly to a conclusion that he was employed there when she had found the marked travel folder on the seat the elderly man had occupied.

What she had expected to discover in Ybor City, Vicki didn’t know. But what she had actually found was absolutely nothing. There really didn’t seem to be much sense in going on to Mr. Duke’s house. But since an impulse had made her inquire about his address, and since she was within a block of the house, there was no reason why she shouldn’t go on.

When she turned the corner into Columbus Drive, she saw that it was no different from any other street in Ybor City. The same curio shops, the same restaurants, the same crowds of festive people, the same sidewalk peddlers. She found the house with no difficulty. A balcony of wrought-iron grillwork overhung the front door.

She stood before the house for several minutes, looking at the intricate, old-fashioned grillwork over the door, peering at the heavily curtained windows. She was about to move on when the door opened and a man stepped out.

It was old Mr. Tytell! He still looked as shabby and harassed as he had on the plane. His sparse gray hair was still as badly in need of trimming. There was the same bewildered, hunted look in his eyes. When he looked up and saw Vicki, he recognized her immediately. He clasped her hand, almost desperately, she thought.

“Miss Barr!” he whispered. “Do you remember me?”

“Why, certainly I do, Mr. Tytell.” Vicki said, trying to keep her voice calm and normal in tone. The unexpected sight of this old man who had been so much in her thoughts had sent her heart to pounding. So there was some connection between Tytell and Duke and the Granada Restaurant—and possibly with Duke’s talk with Joey, and—her imagination took a wild leap—maybe even with the stolen gold! But she said evenly:

“It’s nice to see you again. You look much better than you did the last time I saw you.” This was a fib—if anything the old violinist looked paler and more worried—but she felt that she had to say something to keep him here until she could put the mixed-up thoughts that were spinning around crazily in her head into some order. “A few days in Florida seem to have done you a lot of good.”

The old man still clung to her hand.

“Miss Barr—I want—I have to talk to you—”

At that moment a voice boomed from the open doorway.

“Old man! Get going!”

Raymond Duke stood in the entryway, glowering under dark eyebrows. “Yes, sir,” the old man muttered, and he scurried away like a frightened rabbit.

She looked at Duke. His dark frown had magically become a white-toothed smile. He bowed his head graciously.

“Ah,” he said, “the young lady from the restaurant.”

This observation again set Vicki’s heart to pounding. Had Duke seen her the day she’d overheard his conversation in the airport snack bar? She stammered a reply:

“The—the restaurant?”

“Ah, yes. It isn’t every day that a lovely young lady lunches at the Granada alone. Raymond Duke has an eye for beauty—if you will allow me to introduce myself—and even though you sat by yourself at a corner table, believe me that I noticed and admired you.”

Again Vicki noticed the slight lisp in his voice as he spoke.

Relieved, Vicki smiled. This was a break she certainly hadn’t expected—a chance to talk with this man, who like old Mr. Tytell, had been so much in her thoughts these past few days.

“I am flattered, Mr. Duke,” she said coyly.

“I see,” Duke said casually, “that you are acquainted with our elderly friend.” He nodded at the retreating figure of Mr. Tytell who was hurrying down Columbus Drive, and at that instant, turned a corner and disappeared from view.

“Not really,” Vicki replied casually. “I met him on the airplane coming down from New York last week. My name’s Vicki Barr. I’m a stewardess on Federal Airlines and Mr. Tytell was ill. That’s why I remembered him so well.”

“Ah, so,” Duke said, his smile never leaving his dark-skinned face.

“Does—does he work for you?” Vicki asked hesitantly. “He told me that he was a musician, a violinist.”

“Possibly he plays the violin. I don’t know. But here in Ybor City he works as a handyman. Runs errands.” He shrugged. “An old man can’t do much to earn a living.”

“I’m a little surprised,” Vicki ventured, “that, in view of his circumstances, he came to Florida from New York by first-class air travel.”

Again Duke’s face darkened momentarily, but the smile reappeared almost instantly. And once more he shrugged his shoulders in the gesture that is almost as much a part of the Spanish language as spoken words.

“QuiÉn sabe? Who knows?”

The conversation had come to a dead end. Vicki would have liked to prolong it, but she didn’t know what to say.

“It’s been pleasant meeting you, Miss—ah—Miss Barr,” Duke said. “Visit us in Ybor City again.” He inclined his head in a short, nodding bow. “AdiÓs.” And with that he turned and disappeared through the doorway.

Vicki walked slowly down the street. At the corner she hailed an empty taxi and directed the driver to the Curtin residence. Then she leaned back wearily in the seat and attempted to put in order the scrambled thoughts that still spun crazily in her head.

She had been right after all! She still couldn’t imagine what the connection between Duke and old Mr. Tytell could be. But the old man was running errands for Duke, and seemed frightened half to death! And he had whispered desperately: “I have to talk to you!”

Maybe she was letting her imagination run away with her. But one thing she was sure of. It was time to have another talk with Mr. Quayle of the FBI!

She leaned forward in her seat.

“Driver,” she said, “I’ve changed my mind. Take me to the airport.”