The Race ib-4 Page 14

  “Shall I order champagne?”

  “I already have.”

  “SERIOUSLY, DARLING, why did you decide not to take flying lessons?” Marion asked later upstairs. Bathed, perfumed, and arrayed in a long emerald green peignoir, she patted the chaise longue. Bell brought their glasses and sat beside her.

  “No time. The race starts next week, and I’ve got my hands full, with Harry Frost trying to murder Josephine and a saboteur wrecking flying machines.”

  “I thought Archie shot Frost.”

  “Three times, with that little German pistol he insisted on carrying.” Bell shook his head in dismay. “I thought I shot Frost, too. He’s wounded but definitely not out of action. A Cincinnati banker reported that Frost’s jaw was swollen and that he was slurring his speech, but otherwise he was healthy, which hardly sounds like a man carrying a bunch of lead in him.”

  “Maybe you missed?”

  “Not with my Browning. It doesn’t miss. And I know I saw Archie pepper him point-blank. He couldn’t have missed. But Frost is a big man. If the slugs missed his vitals, who knows? Still, it’s something of a mystery.”

  It was Isaac Bell’s habit to discuss his cases with Marion. She was an educated woman, with a quick and insightful mind, and always brought a new perspective to a problem. He said, “Speaking of mysterious misses, Frost himself apparently missed one of his shots at Marco Celere. An easy shot no hunter would fluff. I discovered that the rifle he probably used had a damaged telescopic sight. Yet another reason why I want to see Celere’s remains.”

  “Could Harry Frost have worn some sort of armor when he attacked?”

  “Armor won’t deflect bullets. That’s why gunpowder put the knights out of business.”

  “Chain mail?”

  “That’s an interesting thought because with modern alloy steel perhaps you could manufacture chain mail strong enough to stop a bullet. Lord knows what it would weigh. Some years ago the Army was testing so-called bulletproof vests. But they were too hot and heavy to be practical. . Interesting thought, my dear. I’ll have Grady Forrer sic his Research boys on it first thing in the morning.”

  Marion stretched luxuriously. “Are there any other mysteries I can solve for you?”

  “Several.”

  “Starting with?”

  “Where is Marco Celere’s body?”

  “Any others?”

  “Why does the Italian lady I bought my aeroplane from insist that Marco Celere stole her father’s secrets while Josephine insists that Miss Di Vecchio’s father worked for Celere and therefore had no secrets to steal?”

  “What is Miss Di Vecchio like?”

  “Startlingly attractive.”

  “Really?”

  “In fact, so attractive that it is hard to believe that Marco Celere, or any man, would turn his back on her.”

  “How did you escape?”

  Bell touched his glass to hers. “I’m immune.”

  “Blind to beauty?” she teased.

  “I am in love with Marion Morgan, and she has spoken for my heart.”

  Marion returned his smile. “Maybe Marco had his eye on Josephine.”

  “Josephine is cute as a button but hardly in Miss Di Vecchio’s class. She’s a pretty little thing, pert and flirtatious, but more farm girl than femme fatale.

  “But ambitious? At least about flying,” Bell said, “and very skilled navigating flying machines. There are men who are drawn to accomplished women.”

  “Well, love is strange, isn’t it?”

  “If Marco and Josephine were lovers at all. Archie thinks she was in love with Marco’s flying machines. And as you know Archie has a pretty good eye for that sort of thing.”

  Marion asked, “What does your eye tell you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. Except she vehemently defends Marco on the question of who stole whose invention.”

  “Could it be that Josephine is defending her flying machine more than she’s defending her lover?”

  “That is very possible,” said Bell. “While Marco, I suspect, was in love with a girl who could afford to buy his flying machines.”

  “Then everyone got what they wanted.”

  “Except Harry Frost.” Bell’s eyes grew bleak, then hot with anger. “Poor Archie. Frost did such a terrible thing. How a man would load such monstrous ammunition into a weapon is beyond me.”

  Marion took his hand. “I spoke with Lillian on the telephone. I’ll see her at the hospital tomorrow.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Tired and hopeful. Poor thing. It’s a nightmare – both of our nightmares – only I’m older and have loved you longer, and I don’t worry in that same way. Lillian admitted to me that since Archie returned to work after their honeymoon, she was afraid every day until he came home safe. Darling, are you taking such chances learning to fly because you’re worried about Archie? Or trying to make up for what happened to him?”

  “I’ve always been keen to fly.”

  “But are you keen to fly for the wrong reasons? Isaac, you know I never trouble you with worrying about your safety. But this seems unusually risky. What can you possibly do up in the air if Frost shoots at her?”

  “Shoot back, and finish Harry Frost once and for all.”

  “Who will fly the aeroplane while you’re busy shooting?”

  “I can drive it with one hand. . Well, actually, to be perfectly honest,” he admitted with a rueful smile, “I will be able to drive with one hand soon. Today, I was hanging on tight with both.”

  Marion extended her arms. “Can you demonstrate that?”

  15

  “WOULD YOU GIVE ME SOME ADVICE on that straightening-up-fast stunt just before you touch the ground?” Isaac Bell asked Josephine. The race was starting in three days, and he had scheduled a certification test to get an official pilot’s license from the Aero Club.

  “Don’t!” Josephine grinned, “is the best advice I can give you. Practice blipping your magneto instead, and don’t try stunts your machine isn’t up to.”

  “My alettoni are the same as yours.”

  “No, they’re not,” she retorted, her grin fading.

  “The wing bracing is the same.”

  “Similar.”

  “Just as strong.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” she said seriously.

  The subject always turned her prickly, but Bell noticed that she no longer repeated her earlier assertion that Danielle’s father had worked for Marco Celere. It was almost as if she suspected that the opposite was true.

  Gently he said, “Maybe you mean I’m not up to it.”

  She smiled, as if grateful Bell had let her off the hook. “You will be. I’ve been watching you. You have the touch – that’s the important thing.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Bell. “I can’t fall too far behind you if I’m going to protect you.”

  In fact, Bell had devised a defense in which he was only one element. Van Dorn riflemen would spell one another on the roof of the support car, easily climbing to their gun perch through a hatch in the roof. Two roadsters in a boxcar with a ramp would be ready to light out after her if for any reason Josephine strayed from the railroad tracks. And every day detectives would take their places in advance at the next scheduled stop.

  A commotion broke out at the hangar door.

  Bell glided in front of Josephine as he drew the Browning from his coat.

  “Josephine! Josephine! Where is that woman?”

  “Oh my God,” said Josephine. “It’s Preston Whiteway.”

  “Josephine! Josephine!” Whiteway barreled in. “There you are! I bring good news! Great news!”

  Bell holstered his weapon. The best news he could think of was that Van Dorns had arrested Harry Frost.

  “My lawyers,” shouted Whiteway, “have persuaded the court to annul your marriage to Harry Frost on the grounds that the madman tried to kill you!”

  “Annulled?”

  “You are f
ree. . Free!”

  Isaac Bell observed the meeting between Josephine and Whiteway long enough to form an opinion of its nature, then slipped out the door.

  “Cut!” he heard Marion Morgan order sharply. Her camera operator – hunched over a large machine on a strong tripod – stopped cranking as if a hawk had swooped down and seized his arm. It was well known among Miss Morgan’s operators that Mr. Bell did not want his picture taken.

  “My darling, how wonderful to see you.” He thought she looked lovely in her working outfit, a shirtwaist and long skirt, with her hair gathered high to be out of her way when she looked through the camera lens.

  She explained that she and her crew had been trailing Preston Whiteway all morning to shoot scenes for the title card that would read

  The Race Sponsor’s Arrival!!!!

  Bell took her into his arms. “What a treat. Can we have lunch?”

  “No, I’ve got to shoot all of this.” She lowered her voice. “How did Josephine take the news?”

  “I got the impression she was trying to dampen Whiteway’s excitement over the prospect of her being ‘Free! Free!’”

  “I imagine that Preston’s working around to asking her to marry him.”

  “The signs are all there,” Bell agreed. “He’s beaming like bonfire. He’s wearing a fine new suit of clothes. And he shines like he’s been barbered within an inch of his life.”

  MARION HAD HER CREW IN PLACE, cranking their camera, when Preston Whiteway lured the New York press to Josephine’s big yellow tent in the infield with the promise of an important change in the race. Bell kept a close eye on the gathering, accompanied by Harry Warren, Van Dorn’s New York gang expert, who Bell had asked to take over the Belmont Park squad for the wounded Archie.

  Bell saw that Whiteway had gotten his fondest wish: other newspapers could no longer ignore the Whiteway Cup. The aerial race was the biggest story in the country. But his rivals did not love him for it, and the questioning, two days before the race was to start, was openly hostile. Forty newspapermen were shouting questions, egged on by Van Dorn detective Scudder Smith, who had once been an actual newspaper reporter, or so he said.

  “If that detective has imbibed as excessively as it appears,” Isaac Bell told Harry Warren, “suspend him for a week, and dock his pay for a month.”

  “Scudder’s O.K.,” Harry assured him. “That’s just part of his disguise.”

  “Disguised as what?”

  “A drunken newspaper reporter.”

  “He’s fooling me.”

  “Can you deny, Mr. Whiteway,” a reporter from the Telegram howled aggrievedly, “that the extremely short hop from Belmont Park to Empire City Race Track in Yonkers is a ploy to charge more paying spectators from New York City?”

  “Is it not true that you could fly from Belmont Park to Yonkers in a glider?” shouted the man from the Tribune.

  “Ten miles, Mr. Whiteway?” asked the Times. “Could not the aviators simply walk?”

  “Or ride bicycles?” chimed in Detective Smith.

  Bell had to admire how cleverly Whiteway let his rivals’ reporters have their fun before he fired back with both barrels. In fact, he suspected Whiteway had probably planned the change all along to draw the other papers into his trap.

  “It is my pleasure to fulfill your expectation of some new sensation by announcing a last-minute change in the course. The first leg to Empire City Race Track in Yonkers will entail the competitors flying a full eighteen miles west from Belmont Park to the Statue of Liberty. Upon arriving at America’s symbol of freedom, the aviators competing for the gold Whiteway Cup will circle the statue, for hundreds of thousands to see from riverbanks and spectator vessels, and then steer their machines another twenty-two miles north to Yonkers, for a grand total the first day of forty miles. These brave fliers will use the opportunity to ‘work the kinks out’ while crossing two bodies of water – the treacherous East River and the broad Upper Bay – then fly up the middle of the wide Hudson River to alight safely, God willing, in the infield of the Empire City Race Track, where an excellent aviation field is offered by the racing course. . Thank you, gentlemen. I am sure that your editors anxiously await your stories to put extras on the street ahead of the competition.”

  He might have added that the Whiteway papers’ “EXTRA”s were already in the hands of every newsboy in the city. But he didn’t have to. The reporters were stampeding to the racetrack telephones, cursing that they had been hoodwinked and that the editors would take it out of their hides.

  “I HATE THAT DAMNED STATUE,” Harry Frost told Gene Weeks.

  Weeks, a grizzled Staten Island waterman, was leaning on the tiller of his oyster scow, which was tied to a muddy bank of the Kill Van Kull. The boat, twenty-three feet long and nearly ten wide, looked like many of its type, but its peeling paint and faded decks concealed the existence of an oversize gasoline engine that made it go much faster than oyster scows engaged in legitimate trade.

  “Why’s that, mister?”

  “Damned statue attracts foreigners. We got too many immigrants, we don’t need no more mongrel blood.”

  Gene Weeks, whose family had emigrated from England before Frost’s had stepped off the Mayflower, let the lunatic rant. Frost was flashing money for a ride on Weeks’s boat. A lot of money. In his younger days, Weeks would have taken it away from him and tossed him overboard. Or tried, he admitted on second thought. The lunatic was a big fellow, and the bulges in his coat were probably not a flask and lunch. So if he wanted the lunatic’s dough, he would have to earn it.

  “Where’d you say you want me to take you, mister?”

  Frost unfolded a newspaper, an EXTRA edition, and spread it on the salt-crusted bench beside Weeks’s tiller. Mumbling cusswords at the harbor breeze that plucked at it, he showed Weeks a map of the first leg of the Whiteway Cup Cross-Country Air Race. “See how they’re going to circle that damned statue and head up the river?”

  “Yup.”

  The big fellow had penciled an X on the map.

  “I want to be here, with the sun behind me.”

  16

  “HAVE THE ODDS CHANGED FOR JOSEPHINE?” Isaac Bell asked the bookie Johnny Musto two nights before the race.

  “Still holding at twenty-to-one, sir. A thousand dollars on the Sweetheart of the Air will pay youse twenty thousand.”

  “I’ve already bet two thousand.”

  “Indeed you have, sir. Admiring your brave sporting instincts, I’m speculating upon the potential value of increasing your initial investment. If the little gal wins, youse can buy yerself a roadster, and a country estate to drive it to.”

  Enveloped in clouds of violet cologne, and attended by marble-eyed thugs pocketing the cash and watching for the cops, Johnny Musto was strolling the infield, muttering, “Place yer bets, gentlemen, place yer bets! Odds? Name ’em, they’re yers. One hundred dollars will earn youse fifty if Sir Eddison-Sydney-Thingamajig’s brand-new Curtiss Pusher clocks the best time to San Francisco. Same holds for Frenchie Chevalier driving his Blériot. One-to-two, gents, one-to-two on Chevalier. But if Billy Thomas flies faster for the Vanderbilt syndicate, one hundred will receive one hundred back.”

  “How about Joe Mudd? What are the odds on Mudd?” asked a sporting man with a large cigar.

  Johnny Musto smiled happily. Clearly, Bell thought, a man blessed by fortune.

  “The workingman’s flying machine offers a rare opportunity to win big – three-to-one. Three hundred dollars for a hundred ventured on Joe Mudd. But if you’re looking for a sure thing, bet one hundred dollars on Sir Eddison – So-and-So – Thingamajig and win fifty bucks to take your goil to Atlantic City. . Hold on! What’s that?” A man dressed in mechanician’s vest and flat cap was whispering in his ear. “Gents! The odds on Sir Eddison – So-and-So – Thingamajig are changing. One hundred will win you forty.”

  “Why?” howled a bettor, disappointed to see his potential winnings diminish.

  “His chances
of beating everybody just got better. His mechanicians chopped the canard off the front of his machine. They found out they don’t need a front elevator, already got one in the back. Sir-Eddison – So-and-So – Thingamajig’s Curtiss Pusher is racing headless. Nobody can beat him now.”

  THAT SAME NIGHT, the saboteur who had set the thermo engine on its murderously destructive final flight, killing Judd and laying waste to several aeroplanes, stood nervously rubbing his arm as he watched Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s mechanicians make final adjustments on the Englishman’s newly headless Curtiss. Removing the front elevator had made the pusher look very trim.

  The saboteur had studied it earlier while they were flying it in the last of the evening light, and he had agreed with all in the infield who knew their business that the Curtiss was flying considerably better than before, and somewhat faster. The bookmakers, who were already enamored of the Curtiss Motor Company’s new ninety-horsepower, six-cylinder engine – a reliable “power unit,” by all accounts – led the stampede to declare that the headless Curtiss Pusher was the aeroplane to beat, particularly in the hands of a champion cross-country aviator like the English baronet.

  At last the mechanicians covered the machine in canvas shrouds, turned off the generator powering their work lights, and trooped home to their bunks in the train yard. Keeping a sharp eye peeled for roving Van Dorn detectives, the saboteur took a carpenter’s brace and bit from his tool bag and went to work.

  “YOUR CERTIFYING EXAMINATION was scheduled to start five minutes ago, Mr. Bell.”

  The representative of the Aero Club, waiting beside Bell’s machine, gestured impatiently with his clipboard.

  Bell vaulted into the American Eagle’s driving seat, tossed his hat to a wing runner, and pulled on his goggles and helmet. “All set!”

  He had just finished hammering out last-minute tactics with Harry Warren. Andy and the boys had the monoplane waiting on a grass strip, with the motor warmed and chocks holding the wheels.