The man in the gray suit had disappeared. We didn’t see the two we had dubbed The Enemy, either. But I didn’t feel any safer. Maybe they were in disguises, too. Or maybe they’d called in even more reinforcements, so that any of the people we saw might be enemies.
There was an old woman in a dirty coat—even though it was summer—with all kinds of junk in a shopping bag, who watched us with interest when we checked on the numbers in the first bank of phones. I even suspected her, but when we moved on, she didn’t follow us.
And there was a young guy with long stringy hair, in patched jeans and a sweatshirt so faded I couldn’t even guess what color it had originally been. He lounged against a wall, smoking a cigarette, and kept an eye on us too. When I murmured something to call the boys’ attention to him, Charlie dismissed him with a glance.
“He’s just bumming around, killing time until somebody comes in on a plane, probably. Nobody to worry about.”
“But he’s watching us,” I hissed.
“It’s probably our outfits,” Eddie volunteered. “You know, the same as we watched the lady with the purple hair and all the jewelry.”
“It’s none of these numbers,” Charlie said a minute later, after checking half a dozen pay phones.
“It wouldn’t have to be any of the telephones in the airport,” I said glumly as we moved along toward the next bank of telephones, which were all over the place. “It could be phones anywhere in San Francisco.”
“But it looks like locker numbers, too,” Eddie said. “Which sort of suggests a place where there are both lockers and pay phones, don’t you think? Like a bus station or an airport, and since the guy with the coded message was flying in here, the airport’s more likely. We better do this systematically, or we’re going to forget which phones we’ve already checked.”
“Right. Straight down this side, back up the other side, then we do the same in all the other concourses, and on the other levels.”
“We could be here for weeks,” I said, discouraged. “And we may be wrong about it being a phone number in the first place.”
“Well, until Aunt Molly comes, or The Enemy show up and kidnap us,” Charlie said, annoyingly cheerful, “we’ve got nothing else to do, anyway. So let’s check phone numbers.”
“And when we go past a bank of lockers,” Eddie added, “we’ll check those, too.”
We found the locker number first. I stared at it, disbelieving. Four-seven-eight-two. I moistened my lips and rechecked it against the scrap of paper. I squeaked when I touched Charlie’s arm to get his attention.
“This is it! This is the right locker! Isn’t it?”
Charlie read the numbers aloud. “Four-seven-eight-two! Hey, it is!”
We stared at the locker as if by sheer willpower we might be able to see what was inside it. “What do you suppose it is? Microfilm? Stolen jewels? Stolen military secrets?” Eddie was half-grinning, half-scared. “Or maybe drugs?”
I glanced quickly around, but I didn’t see anyone at the moment who appeared to be observing us, though that didn’t give me any sense of security.
“What do we do now?”
“We keep looking for the phone number,” Charlie said promptly. “If we were right about the lockers, we could very well be right about the phone number. Come on, let’s hit the next bank of phones down there.”
“There are so many we could easily miss some,” I commented as we reluctantly left the locker area.
“Sure. I know there are a whole lot more phones downstairs, near the baggage area and the rental car booths. But I’m making a bet,” Charlie said, “that it will be somewhere near that locker. Because it doesn’t make sense, does it, that whoever’s supposed to get the message from the newspaper is going to have to run all over the whole airport to do whatever he has to do with the phone and the locker.”
“Put something in, or take something out,” Eddie said.
And once again Charlie was right.
In a secluded section of phones, some of the most private ones we’d found, there were the numbers we were looking for. I didn’t remember what the final digit had been, but the first numbers were the same as the ones we had written down from the crossword puzzle. And the adjoining phones had consecutive numbers, all beginning like the number we had, with the final digit different in each booth.
I practically tingled with excitement, and I could see that the boys did, too. Only I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. “What do we do now? Wait here until someone calls one of these phones? It’s probably too late, the call has already been made. That would explain why we haven’t seen any more of The Enemy. They got what they wanted, and they left the airport.” I felt relieved, yet disappointed, too.
Charlie looked thoughtfully around the open cubicles. “I don’t think so. Unless you forgot part of that message written into the puzzle, it didn’t give a time or a date or anything like that. A person wouldn’t know when to expect a call. And nobody would just sit here for hours, or days, waiting for one. No, it has to be something else.”
“Something connected with the locker,” I said slowly. The only thing I could think of that would connect with the locker was . . . “A key,” I thought aloud. “They’d need a key to get into the locker, wouldn’t they? But how would that be connected to a phone number?”
“Maybe,” Charlie said, running a hand over the top of the divider between one cubicle and the next, “it’s not the number that’s important, but the booth. Maybe this is where they left another message . . . or the key.”
“I can’t remember what that last number was!” I cried in frustration, then remembered to lower my voice, although we were sort of off the main traffic area, and there was hardly anybody close to us. “So how do we know which booth? And what good will it do us if we figure it out? Charlie, what if it’s the key—or a message—and they’ve taped it somewhere in one of the booths? What if the number of the phone is just to tell which booth to look in?”
It was in the third one we tried. I put my hand under the little shelf that gave you a place to write or rest a purse. There was old used chewing gum under there, and I almost jerked my hand away, and then I felt it.
Hard metal, small, key-shaped, and covered with Scotch tape.
“Bingo!” I said, and pulled it free.
I held it out on my palm, and Charlie nodded, grinning from ear to ear.
“Let’s see if it fits the locker. Anybody want to bet that it doesn’t?”
“No takers,” Eddie assured him, grinning, too. “It’s got the number right on it, see?”
“Why did they need the number in the coded message if it was on the key?” I wondered.
“Insurance, maybe,” Charlie guessed. “Double checking, sort of. Or to make it possible for whoever was picking up whatever’s in the locker to locate the right locker first, before he had the key on him. It would be faster that way, for a getaway. This has to be something illegal, so they’d want to pick up the merchandise, whatever it is, and take off as soon as possible.”
We had to force ourselves not to run back to the lockers. I even forgot to watch for The Enemy, I was so excited. What would we find?
My fingers were unsteady as I inserted the little key into the lock.
The door swung open, and we stared into the locker at a briefcase, one of those thick metal ones. For the first time it occurred to me that we might be doing something illegal ourselves to touch it.
I hesitated. “What if what they’re doing isn’t against the law? What if we’re interfering in a legitimate business? People must use these lockers for such things—”
“Sure. They’re the good guys, right?” Charlie said. “They knocked an old lady over the head and stole her stuff, put her in the hospital. Come on, let’s take it out and see if we can get into it.”
I just stood there, looking at the briefcase, which had to be very important—and not ours—until Charlie made a sound of disgust and shoved me aside.
“Okay. I’ve got it. Now let’s go somewhere private and see if we can find out what it is.”
“What about the key?” Eddie asked, hesitating. “Do you think maybe we should lock the locker again and stick the key back where it was? I mean, it looks like they didn’t get all the message because they didn’t know the part Gracie remembered, so they didn’t find the phone yet, or they’d have taken the key. Should we put it back where we found it?”
“We don’t have any tape or anything—” Charlie began, but I interrupted.
“We’ve got chewing gum! We’ll stick it on with that!”
So that’s what we did. By now I was so nervous I had goose bumps all over. No matter which direction I looked, I felt as if someone was staring holes in my back.
“Where is a private place to see if the case will open?” Eddie asked as soon as the key had been returned, darting wild glances up and down the concourse. “What are those blue doors that don’t say anything on them? Could we go into one of those rooms?”
“I think they’re private lounges, something like that,” Charlie said. “I’m pretty sure they’re locked, but we could try a few of them.”
It didn’t take long to find out that we couldn’t get into one of those places without a key, or pushing a button to get someone to open the door for us. I was more and more anxious to get that briefcase out of sight. “How about down at the end, in that boarding area where there isn’t anybody right now?” I’d begun to wish we hadn’t disguised ourselves, because while we looked different from the kids who’d arrived on Flight 211, we sure hadn’t made ourselves invisible.
“Okay,” Charlie accepted, and we hurried in that direction.
According to the sign, there wouldn’t be a flight leaving from this gate for an hour and a half, Flight 107 for Albuquerque. We sank into chairs, Charlie in the middle with the case on his lap.
“It’s locked,” he said.
“Naturally,” Eddie said. “Are we going to try to pick the lock?”
“Maybe,” I said uneasily, “we should take it to the security police.”
Charlie gave me an exaggeratedly charming smile. “Sure, Gracie. And tell them what? We just found it? They wouldn’t even investigate, see what’s in it. They’d leave it at the lost and found department, if they have such a thing, until someone shows up and describes it well enough so they’ll take his word for it that it belongs to him. It has initials on it—see, L.J.S. So all that would happen would be that L.J.S. produces identification with those initials and says it’s his, and they give it to him. After what we’ve been through, we’re not handing it to the cops and never finding out what this is all about.”
We’d been so engrossed in ourselves we’d forgotten to be on guard, and when the voice spoke behind me I almost collapsed in a puddle on the floor.