The Race ib-4 Page 10

  “Where did it come from?” asked Bell.

  “I’ve seen it used. But not on our machines, thank you very much.”

  Bell turned to the Russian. “Have you seen aluminum used this way?”

  “Aluminum lightweight. Aluminum on struts, aluminum on crossing members, aluminum on framing. But counterbracing anchor? Only fools.” He handed it back to Lionel Ruggs, his ordinarily cheery face stern. “Is person doing should being shot.”

  “I’ll pull the trigger myself if I find the bloody bastard,” said the mechanician.

  11

  ISAAC BELL RAN TO THE RAIL YARD, where Archie had set up a field office in a corner of Josephine’s hangar car. He scanned the reports that were coming in by telegraph, telephone, and Van Dorn messenger. Harry Frost was still on the run despite his wounds.

  Or to put it more accurately, Bell had to admit, Harry Frost had vanished.

  All hospitals had been alerted to look out for the wounded man. None had responded. Frost could be dying in a ditch or dead already. He could be hiding in the farmland around the racetrack. Or he could have made his way to Brooklyn, where gangsters would take him in, for a price, and provide midwives and crooked pharmacists to treat his wounds. He could have run east into rural Nassau and Suffolk counties. Or north to the vast, thinly populated Long Island hunt country, where the owners of great American fortunes rode to the hounds.

  Bell telephoned the New York office. He ordered more agents sent out from Manhattan, and others to double the watch on the railroad and subway stations and the ferries. And he dispatched apprentices to hospitals with stern instructions not to engage but to call for help. When he had done all he could to encourage the manhunt, Bell left a dozen detectives with orders to stick close to Josephine and raced his borrowed Pierce to the Nassau Hospital in Mineola, where they had taken Archie.

  Archie’s beautiful wife, Lillian, a young blond-haired woman of nineteen, was standing outside the operating room in a long duster, having driven from New York. Her astonishingly pale blue eyes were dry and alert, but her face was a mask of dread.

  Bell took her in his arms. He had introduced her to Archie, sensing that the high-spirited only child of a widowed “shirtsleeve” railroad tycoon would bring particular joy to his friend’s life. He had been more than right. They adored each other. He had persuaded her crusty father to see Archie for the man he was and not a fortune hunter. You changed my life, Archie had thanked him simply at the wedding where Bell was best man. Ironically, years earlier, he had already changed Archie’s life when he proposed that Archie become a Van Dorn detective. If only he hadn’t.

  Bell watched over the top of her head as a surgeon came out of the operating room, his expression grave. When he saw Bell holding Lillian, relief flickered in his eyes as if the fact that a friend was comforting her would make it easier to tell her that her husband had died.

  “The doctor is here,” Bell whispered.

  She turned to the doctor. “Tell me.”

  The doctor hesitated. To Isaac Bell, Lillian Osgood Abbott was the little sister he had never had. He could forget that she was so exquisitely beautiful that most men found it very difficult to speak to her on first meeting. In this awful instance, Bell guessed that the doctor could not bear to utter any word that would cause tears to track her cheeks or her brave mouth to crumble.

  “Tell me,” she repeated, and took the doctor’s hand. Her firm touch gave the man courage.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Abbott. The bullet did much damage, barely missed the heart and shattered two ribs.”

  Bell felt a cavern open in his own heart. “Is he dead?”

  “No!. . Not yet.”

  “Is it hopeless?” Lillian asked.

  “I wish I could. .”

  Bell held tighter as she sagged in his arms.

  He said, “Is there nothing that can be done?”

  “I. . nothing I can do.”

  “Is there anyone who can save him?” Isaac Bell demanded.

  The doctor gave a deep sigh and stared sightlessly back at him. “There is only one man who could even attempt to operate. The surgeon S. D. Nuland-Novicki. In the Boer War, he developed new procedures for treating gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Nuland-Novicki-”

  “Get him!” cried Lillian.

  “He is away. He’s lecturing in Chicago.”

  Isaac Bell and Lillian Osgood Abbott locked eyes in sudden hope.

  The doctor said, “But even if Nuland-Novicki could board the Twentieth Century Limited in time, your husband will never last the eighteen hours it will take to get here. Nineteen, with the extra time from here to Long Island. We can’t move him to New York.”

  “How long does he have?”

  “Twelve or fourteen hours at most.”

  “Take us to a telephone,” Bell demanded.

  The doctor led them at a dead run through echoing halls to the hospital’s central telephone station. “Thank God, Father’s at home,” said Lillian. “New York,” she told the operator. “Murray Hill four-four-four.”

  The connection was made to Osgood Hennessy’s limestone mansion on Park Avenue. The butler summoned Hennessy to the telephone.

  “Father. Listen to me. Archie’s been shot. . Yes, he is desperately wounded. There is a surgeon in Chicago. I need him here in twelve hours.”

  The doctor shook his head, and said to Bell, “The Twentieth Century and the Broadway Limited take eighteen hours. What train could possibly make it from Chicago to New York faster than those crack fliers?”

  Isaac Bell allowed himself a hopeful smile. “A special steaming on tracks cleared by a railroad baron who loves his daughter.”

  “COMMISSIONER BAKER’S ENEMIES call him a lightweight,” growled Osgood Hennessy, referring to New York City’s recently appointed police commissioner. “I call him a damned good fellow.”

  Six Traffic Squad touring cars and a motorcycle that the department was testing with a view to forming a motorcycle squad were racing their engines outside Grand Central Terminal, prepared to escort Hennessy’s limousine at the highest possible speed over the Manhattan Bridge, across Brooklyn, and into Nassau County. The streets were dark, dawn a faint hint of pink in the eastern sky.

  “Here they are!” cried Lillian.

  Isaac Bell exploded from the railroad terminal, running hard, with his hand locked on the arm of a youthful, fit-looking Nuland-Novicki, who was scampering alongside like an eager schnauzer.

  Engines roared, sirens howled, and in seconds the limousine was tearing down Park Avenue. Lillian handed Nuland-Novicki the latest wire from the hospital. He read it, nodding his head. “The patient is a strong man,” he said reassuringly. “That always helps.”

  AT BELMONT PARK that same pink hint of dawn reflected on the shiny steel rail down which Dmitri Platov’s revolutionary thermo engine was scheduled to speed on its final test run. The freshening sky gave urgency to the task of a man crouched under it. If he stayed much longer, early risers would see him loosening bolts with a monkey wrench. Already, he smelled breakfast. The breeze traveling across the infield carried whiffs of bacon frying on the support trains in the yards on the other side of the grandstand.

  Mechanicians would appear any minute. But sabotage was slow work. He had to wait before he turned each nut to sluice the threads with penetrating oil to prevent the loud screech of rusty metal. Then he had to mop the drips that would be noticed by sharp eyes performing the last earthbound tests before experimenting on Steve Stevens’s biplane, which was waiting near the rail under canvas.

  He would have finished by now, except that the detectives guarding Josephine Josephs’s flying machine made a habit of sweeping the infield. Silent, unpredictable, they would appear out of nowhere shining flashlights, then vanish just as suddenly, leaving him to wonder when they were coming next and from which direction. Twice he had crouched, nervously rubbing his arm, while he waited for them to move on.

  His final step, when he had loosened the fishtail tha
t held two abutting ends of rail, was to work matchsticks into the space he had opened. If anyone tested the joint, it would not feel loose. But when assaulted by the enormous forces unleashed by the thermo engine, the rails would part and the joint burst open. Its effect would be like a railroad switch opened to shunt a train from one track to another. The difference was, this was a single rail, and the “train,” Platov’s miracle engine, would have no track to shunt onto but would fly through the air like a self-propelled cannonball. And God help anyone who got in its way.

  12

  “HARRY FROST IS NOT DEAD,” said Isaac Bell.

  “By all accounts,” said Joseph Van Dorn, “Harry Frost was shot twice by you and three times by poor Archie. He’s got more lead in him than a tinsmith.”

  “Not enough to kill him.”

  “We’ve not seen hide nor hair of him. No hospital has heard of him. No doctor has reported treating a broken jaw accompanied by unexplained gunshot wounds.”

  “Outlaw doctors charge extra not to report gunshot wounds.”

  “Nor have we received proof of any sightings by the public.”

  “We received numerous tips,” said Bell.

  “None panned out.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

  “At least he’s out of commission.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Isaac Bell.

  Joseph Van Dorn smacked a strong hand on his desk. “Now, listen to me, Isaac. We’ve been down this road repeatedly. I would love that Harry Frost were not dead. It would be good for business. Preston Whiteway would continue paying a fortune for cross-country protection of our Sweetheart of the Air. Happily, he’s willing to pay us to find Frost’s corpse. But I cannot in good conscience continue to bill him for a dozen agents around the clock.”

  “There is no corpse,” Bell replied.

  The boss asked, “What evidence do you have that he is not dead?”

  Bell jumped up and paced long-leggedly around the Hotel Knickerbocker suite that Van Dorn commandeered for his private office on the occasions he was in New York. “Sir,” he addressed him formally, “you have been a detective longer than I.”

  “A lot longer.”

  “As such, you know that a so-called hunch by an experienced investigator is bedded in reality. A hunch does not come from nothing.”

  “Next you’ll be defending sixth senses,” Van Dorn retorted.

  “I don’t have to defend sixth senses,” Bell shot back, “because you know better than I, from your long experience, that sixth senses are the same as hunches. Both are inspired by observations of things and events that we’re not yet aware we have seen.”

  “Do you have any idea what you observed that provokes your hunch?”

  “Sarcasm is the boss’s privilege, sir,” Bell answered. “Perhaps I observed how agilely Frost carried himself when he ran, sir. Or that shock registered on his face only when Archie broke his jaw, sir. Not when we shot him, sir.”

  “Will you please stop calling me sir?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bell grinned.

  “You’re darned chipper today.”

  “I am so relieved that Archie has a fighting chance. Dr. Nuland-Novicki said the most important thing was getting through the first twenty-four hours, and he has.”

  “When can I visit him?” asked Van Dorn.

  “Not yet. Lillian’s the only one they’ll allow in his room. Even Archie’s mother is cooling her heels in the hallway. The other reason I’m chipper is, Marion arrives any day from San Francisco. She’s hired on with Whiteway to take moving pictures of the race.”

  Van Dorn fell silent for a moment, reflecting on their exchange. When he spoke again, it was soberly. “What you say is true about hunches – or, if not entirely true, is certainly agreed upon by experienced fieldmen.”

  “The unrecognized observation is a compelling phenomenon.”

  “But,” said Van Dorn, raising a meaty finger for emphasis, “experienced fieldmen also agree that hunches and sixth senses have enriched bookmakers since the first horse race in human history. This morning I learned that you’ve doubled your bets, summoning to Belmont Park some of my best men who are already thinly dispersed about the continent.”

  “‘Texas’ Walt Hatfield,” Bell answered boldly and without apology. “Eddie Edwards from Kansas City. Arthur Curtis from Denver. James Dashwood from San Francisco.”

  “I wouldn’t put Dashwood in that company.”

  “I’ve worked with the kid in California,” said Bell. “What Dash lacks in experience he makes up in doggedness. He is also the finest pistol shot in the agency. He would have drilled Harry Frost a third eye in his forehead.”

  “Be that as it may, it costs money to move men around. Not to mention the danger of derailing cases they’re working on.”

  “I conversed with their field office managers before I summoned them.”

  “You should have conversed with me. I can tell you right now that I am sending Texas Walt straight back to Texas to finish his San Antone train robbery case and Arthur Curtis to Europe to open the Berlin office. Archie Abbott turned up some good locals. Arthur’s the man to run them, as he speaks German.”

  “I need the best, too, Joe. I’m juggling four jobs: protecting Josephine, protecting the cross-country air race, hunting Frost, and investigating what exactly happened to Marco Celere.”

  “There, too, evidence points squarely at dead.”

  “There, too, we’re short a corpse.”

  “I exchanged wires with Preston Whiteway last night. He’ll settle for either body: Celere’s so we can convict Frost or Frost’s so we can bury him.”

  “Frost dead, is my vote, too,” said Bell. “Josephine would be safe, and I could hunt for Celere at my leisure.”

  “Why bother if Frost is dead?”

  “I don’t like murders without bodies. Something is off-kilter.”

  “Another hunch?”

  “Do you like murders without bodies, Joe?”

  “No. You’re right. Something’s off.”

  There was a quiet, tentative knock at the door. Van Dorn barked, “Enter!”

  An apprentice scuttled in with a telegram for Isaac Bell.

  Bell read it, his expression darkening, and he told the apprentice, who was balanced on his toes poised to flee, “Wire them that I want a darned good explanation for why it took so long to get those wanted posters into that bank.”

  The apprentice ran out. Van Dorn asked, “What’s up?”

  “Frost is not dead.”

  “Another hunch?”

  “Harry Frost just withdrew ten thousand dollars from the First National Bank of Cincinnati. Shortly after he left, our office there finally managed to drop off the special banks-only wanted posters, warning that Frost might come in looking for money. By the time the bank manager called us, he was gone.”

  “A long shot that paid off, those posters,” said Van Dorn. “Well done.”

  “It would have been a lot better done if someone did their job properly in Cincinnati.”

  “I’ve been considering cleaning house in Cincinnati. This tears it. Did they say anything about Frost’s wounds?”

  “No.” Bell stood up. “Joe, I have to ask you to personally oversee the Josephine squad until I get back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Massachusetts, east of Albany.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Young Dashwood unearthed an interesting fact. I had asked him to look into Marco Celere’s background. Turns out Frost wasn’t the only one who wanted to kill him.”

  Van Dorn shot his chief investigator an inquiring glance. “I’m intrigued when more than one person wants to kill a man. Who is it?”

  “A deranged Italian woman – Danielle Di Vecchio – stabbed Celere, screaming, ‘Ladro! Ladro!’ Ladro means ‘thief’ in Italian.”

  “Any idea what set her off?”

  “None at all. They locked her up in a private ins
ane asylum. I’m going up to see what I can learn from her.”

  “Word to the wise, Isaac: these private asylum fellows can be difficult. They hold such sway over patients, they become little Napoleons – Ironic, since many of their patients think they’re Napoleon.”

  “I’ll ask Grady to research a chink in his armor.”

  “Just make sure you’re back before the race starts. You younger fellows are better suited to chasing flying machines around the countryside and sleeping out of doors. Don’t worry about Josephine. I’ll look after her personally.”

  BELL CAUGHT the Empire State Express to Albany, rented a powerful Ford Model K, and sped east on twenty miles of dirt roads into a thinly populated section of northwestern Massachusetts. It was hilly country, with scattered farms separated by dense stands of forest. Twice he stopped to ask directions. The second time, he got them from a mournful-looking young truck driver who was changing a flat tire by the side of the dusty road. A wagon in tow contained a disassembled flying machine with its wings folded.

  “Ryder Private Asylum for the Insane?” the driver echoed Bell’s question.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I should think I do. Just over that hill. You’ll see it from the top.”

  The driver’s costume – flat cap, vest, bow tie, and banded shirtsleeves – told Bell that he was likely the aeroplane’s mechanician. “Where are you taking the flying machine?”

  “Nowhere,” he answered with a woebegone finality that brooked no further questions.

  Bell drove the Model K to the crest of the hill and saw below a dark red brick building hulking in the shadows of a narrow valley. Fortresslike crenellations and towers at either end did nothing to lighten the aura of despair. The windows were small and, Bell saw as he drew near, barred like a penitentiary’s. A high wall of the same bleak-colored brick surrounded the grounds. He had to stop the auto at an iron gate, where he pressed a bell button that eventually drew the attention of a surly guard with a billy club dangling from his belt.