The Race

  But things had gone badly wrong. Harry had actually shot Marco—she had seen him blasted off the cliff with her own eyes—and Harry was never caught.

  Fearing Marco was dead, Josephine had felt punished for what was, she had to admit in retrospect, an evil plan. She had begun to wish she had not let Marco talk her into it. Just as now part of her regretted following through with their plan to make Whiteway her champion in the race. It had simply never occurred to her that the rich, handsome publisher would fall in love with a tomboy farm girl.

  Some women might rate the opportunity to become the legal wife of a newspaper magnate as better luck than she deserved, but Josephine did not want any part of it. She loved Marco and she had grieved for him. And now, suddenly, unexpectedly, he was back, alive and well, like an unexpected Christmas gift delivered late.

  “Marco?” she whispered. “Marco? What happened?”

  “What happened?” Marco murmured, softly as he continued to appraise the monoplane’s battered wing. “Your husband missed, but by not as much as we had hoped. That bloody .45-70 nearly blew my head off.”

  “I knew we should have used blanks. Changing the sights was too risky.”

  “Harry Frost was too smart for blanks. I told you that already. He’d have felt a lesser recoil, heard a lesser report. It had to be a real bullet. But I underestimated how canny he is. He sensed something was wrong with the sights in one shot. So bloody sharp that he compensated for the gun firing high on the second shot. Next I knew, I was flying off the cliff.”

  “I saw.”

  “Was I convincing?” Marco asked with another, almost imperceptible wink.

  “I thought you were dead—Oh, my darling.” It was all she could do to keep from hugging and kissing him.

  A smile twitched his whiskers. “So did I. I fell on the ledge, like I was supposed to, but I passed out. It was dark when I woke. I was freezing. My head was splitting. I couldn’t move my arm. All I knew was, I was still alive, and by some miracle Harry hadn’t found me for the coup de grâce.”

  “That was because he knew I saw him shoot you. He ran.”

  “Just as we planned.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to die. Or even be hurt.”

  Marco shrugged. “A minor detail. Nonetheless, the plan worked. Sort of. Harry’s on the run. Unfortunately, he’s overplaying his part—he should have been caught and locked up by now, or shot dead. But you have a wonderful aeroplano in the race, just as we planned.”

  “What about you, Marco?”

  Marco didn’t seem to hear her. He said, “You will win the greatest race in the world.”

  “Win? I’m a day behind already, and it just started.”

  “You will win. I will see that you win. Don’t you worry. No one will stay ahead of you.”

  He sounded so sure, she thought. How could he be so sure? “But what about you, Marco?”

  Again, he didn’t seem to hear her question, saying, “And you have a suitor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every one at Belmont Park said that Preston Whiteway has fallen in love with you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s just a crush.”

  “He had your marriage annulled.”

  “I didn’t ask him to. He just went ahead and did it.”

  “You were supposed to charm him into buying you an aeroplane. But when you ask, ‘What about you, Marco?’ you seem to have already answered your own question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t sound like there is anyplace in your scheme for Marco.”

  “It’s not my scheme. I just wanted your aeroplane. Like we planned.”

  “You got more than we originally planned.”

  Josephine felt hot tears spring to her eyes. “Marco, you can’t believe that I would prefer Whiteway to you.”

  “How can I blame you? You thought I was dead. He is rich. I am a poor aeroplane inventor.”

  “He could never replace you,” she protested. “And now that you’re back, we can—”

  “What?” Marco asked bleakly. “Be together? How long would Whiteway let you fly my monoplano if he saw you with me?”

  “Is that why you pretended you were dead?”

  “I pretended I was dead for several important reasons. One, I was badly injured. If I stayed in North River, Harry would have killed me in my hospital bed.”

  “But how—”

  “I rode a freight train to Canada. A kind farm family took me in and nursed me all winter. When I learned that you were with Whiteway and in the race and that Harry was still free, I decided to tag along, in disguise, keeping an eye on things, before miraculously walking out of the woods as Marco, as we planned.”

  “When will you?”

  “After you win.”

  “Why wait so long?”

  “I just told you, Whiteway would be as jealous of me as Harry. Maybe not as violent, but angry enough to cut you off and take his aeroplane. He does own it, doesn’t he? Or did he give you the title?”

  “No. He owns it.”

  “Too bad you didn’t ask for the title.”

  She hung her head. “I didn’t know how I could. He’s paying for everything. Even my clothes.”

  “The rich are often kind, never generous.”

  “I don’t know how long I can bear looking at you and pretending you’re not you.”

  “Concentrate on my hairy disguise.”

  “But your eyes, your lips . . .” She pictured him as he had looked, his sleek black hair, noble forehead, elegant mustache, deep-set dark eyes.

  “Lips do not bear thinking about until you win the race,” he said. “Drive my airplane. Win the race. And don’t forget, when you win the race, Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air will be a made woman with heaps of money. And Marco, the inventor of the winning Celere Monoplano, will be a made man, with Italian Army contracts to build hundreds of aeroplanes.”

  “What has it been like for you to look at me all this time?”

  “What is it like? Like it has always been from the first day I set eyes on you. Like an ocean of joy that fills my heart. Now, let’s get your machine fixed.”

  ISAAC BELL TRIED TO SLEEP in a blanket roll under the monoplane, but his mind kept seizing on Harry Frost’s strange statement. Suddenly he sat up, galvanized by an entirely different and even stranger thought. He had been struck by his aeroplane’s resilience—and grateful for it saving his life—even before Andy Moser’s admiring remark that Di Vecchio “built ’em to last.”

  Bell pulled on his boots and ran to the rail-yard dispatch shack, where they had a telegraph. The peculiar strength of the American Eagle stemmed from multiple braces and redundant control links. Not only had its inventor used all the best materials, he had anticipated structural failure and designed to prevent catastrophe.

  Such an inventor who built to last did not seem to be the sort of man to kill himself over a bankruptcy. Such a man, Bell thought, would rise above failure, seeing a bankruptcy as nothing worse than a temporary setback.

  “Van Dorn,” he told the New York Central Railroad dispatcher. He had a letter of introduction signed by the president of the line. But the dispatcher was delighted to help anyone in the air race.

  “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I want to send a telegraph.”

  The dispatcher’s hand poised over the brass key. “To whom?”

  “James Dashwood. Van Dorn Agency. San Francisco.”

  “Message?”

  Bell listened to the dispatcher tap the letters of his message into the Morse alphabet.

  INVESTIGATE DI VECCHIO SUICIDE.

  SPEED CELERE INVESTIGATION.

  ON THE JUMP!

  22

  “LOOK AT HER GO!”

  Throttle full, Antoinette engine discharging a high-pitched snarl that sounded like ripping canvas, Josephine’s yellow monoplane streaked past Weehawken, New Jersey, at first light.

  “Spin h
er over!”

  Isaac Bell was already at the Eagle’s controls, having learned by telephone that Dmitri Platov and the Van Dorn mechanicians had worked all night to replace Josephine’s alettone and its wind-mangled mounts. The aviatrix had just taken off from Bedloe’s Island. Bell had his Eagle positioned at the head of the pier he had landed on the day before to take off over the river. His Gnome rotary was already warm and ready to fly. It blatted to life on one pull of the propeller.

  “Chocks!”

  They yanked the chocks from the wheels, and the monoplane started rolling. Andy and his helper ran beside the wings, steadying them, as Bell raced across the smooth boards between the railroad tracks and soared after Josephine.

  He stayed close behind her as they flew up the middle of the Hudson River, eyeing the ships and boats for signs of Harry Frost, rehearsing flying with one hand and swiveling the rifle with the other. After fifteen miles, the two yellow aeroplanes veered toward the New York side, where the city of Yonkers stained the sky with smoke.

  Although Bell was following Josephine’s aeroplane, he practiced navigating by a race map sketched with pertinent landmarks. With the stiff paper strapped to his leg, he traced the oval Empire City Race Track, which grew visible a couple of miles inland beside a huge pit of mud where steam shovels were digging a new reservoir for New York City.

  Bell saw Thoroughbreds cantering around the track on their morning workouts, but the racetrack’s infield was deserted of flying machines, and the only hangar train in the rail yard was the long yellow Josephine Special. He learned upon alighting behind Josephine that every other flying machine still in the race had already taken off for Albany.

  While the mechanicians poured gasoline, oil, and water in Josephine’s tanks, and gasoline and castor oil in Bell’s, they reported that even though Steve Stevens’s double Antoinette twin-propellered tractor biplane had turned in the best time from Belmont Park to Yonkers, the cotton planter was mad as hell at Dmitri Platov for helping Josephine fix her plane at the Statue of Liberty.

  “De idea is dat,” they mimicked Platov affectionately, “every peoples racing together.”

  “So Mr. Stevens yelled at poor Dmitri,” the mimics went on, switching to a Southern drawl, “Y’all is a socialist.”

  Bell noticed that Josephine did not join in the laughter. Her face was tight with tension. He assumed that she was deeply upset to be so far behind this early in the race. Ordinarily polite and pleasant to everyone, she was railing at her mechanicians to “Hurry it up!” as they made further repairs to her whirlwind-damaged wing.

  “Don’t worry,” Bell said gently, “you’ll catch up.”

  The tall detective motioned one of the Van Dorns on her support train to join him. “Any idea why that flap fell off the wing?”

  “She got caught in a pocket tornado.”

  “I know that. But could the hinge have been weakened beforehand?”

  “Sabotage? First thing I looked for, Mr. Bell. Fact is, that machine’s never been out of our sight on the ground. Mr. Abbott made that darned clear. We watched like hawks for sabotage. We slept next to it at Belmont. With one man always awake.”

  Andy and his helper arrived in a Thomas Flyer via a ferry from the Palisades of New Jersey before Josephine’s mechanicians were finished. They drove it up the ramp into the American Eagle Special, and Bell sent the train ahead.

  It was noon before Josephine could take to the sky.

  She circled the grandstand for Weiner of Accounting’s deputy to record her departure time, climbed to a thousand feet, and headed north. Isaac Bell flew a little above and a quarter mile behind. His race map said it was a hundred and forty miles to Albany’s Altamont Fair Grounds. The route was easy to follow, the New York Central Railroad tracks hugging the east bank of the river, until, above the city of Hudson, he saw a number of short lines merge in from the east. At that confusing junction, the race stewards had marked the correct tracks to follow with long white canvas arrows.

  The two monoplanes proceeded north without incident, eventually overtaking Bell’s white-roofed Eagle Special train, which was loafing along waiting for them to catch up. The fireman shoveled on a little more coal to keep pace with the flying machines.

  Suddenly, ten miles short of Albany, Bell saw Josephine drop in a steep volplane.

  Isaac Bell followed her down in a longer series of descending loops and was still high up when she alighted on a freshly mown hayfield outside the village of Castleton-on-Hudson. Through his field glasses, he could see why she had found a place to land. Steam was gushing from the Antoinette. Something had gone wrong with the motor’s water cooling.

  Bell swung back toward the New York Central tracks. He flew low over the Eagle Special and pointed where he’d come from, and then spotted the yellow-roofed Josephine Special, which was highballing to catch up. He swooped in front of the locomotive and turned in the direction where Josephine was. The train stopped at the next siding, where the Van Dorn had already parked. Brakemen jumped down, waving a red flag in back and throwing a switch in front so the special could pull off the main line.

  Bell alighted beside Josephine and told her that help was on the way. It came aboard two roadsters, Preston Whiteway’s Rolls-Royce, with two detective-mechanicians, who got straight to work on her machine, and Bell’s Model 35 Thomas Flyer, with Andy Moser, who replenished gas and castor oil and adjusted the Gnome. Josephine’s problem turned out to be more complicated than a broken water hose. The entire water pump was shot. The Thomas Flyer raced back to the train to get the new part.

  “Mr. Bell,” said Andy, “it’s going to take them two hours at least.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Could I ask you a favor?”

  “Of course,” said Bell, hand deep in his pocket, thinking Andy needed a loan. “What do you need?”

  “Take me up.”

  “Flying?” Bell said, puzzled, because Andy was terrified of heights and never wanted to fly. “Are you sure, Andy?”

  “Don’t you realize where we are?”

  “Ten miles short of Albany.”

  “Twenty miles west of Danielle. I was wondering could we fly over that Ryder Asylum, and you waggle the wings and maybe Danielle will see us?”

  “It’s the least we can do. Spin her over and hop on. We’ll buzz by real close.”

  Bell was not surprised that Andy had a map. The lovesick mechanician had even marked the asylum with a red heart. They found a rail line they could follow into the closest town and took off, Andy squeezed in behind him, reading the map. At sixty miles per hour and boosted by a west wind, Bell was in sight of the gloomy red brick building in less than twenty minutes. He circled it repeatedly. A face appeared at every barred window. One of them had to be Danielle’s. A flying machine was a startling sight for the vast majority of people outside a big city who had never seen one. The halls were probably alive with inmates, nurses, and guards, gawking, exclaiming. The Gnome’s distinctive exhaust sound would surely alert Danielle that it was her father’s machine even if she could not see it.

  Poor Andy’s face expressed a jumble of joy and sadness, excitement and frustration.

  “I’m sure she hears us!” Bell shouted.

  Andy nodded, understanding Bell was only trying to help. Bell descended deeper into the valley and circled close over the turret where he had interviewed Danielle in Ryder’s private rooms. He checked the railroad watch he had hung from the king post. Plenty of time and fuel, he thought. Why not kill two birds with one stone: give poor Andy a break, and ask Danielle about the death of her father.

  The lawn was broad inside the wall. He put the Eagle down easily. Guards came running, urged on by Dr. Ryder, who glued a smile to his face at the unwelcome sight of Isaac Bell.

  “Quite an entrance, Mr. Bell.”

  “We’ve come to visit Miss Di Vecchio.”

  “Of course, Mr. Bell. She’ll need a moment to get ready.”

  “Bring her out here. I im
agine she will enjoy a breath of fresh air.”

  “As you wish. I’ll bring her shortly.”

  Andy was staring at the bleak structure, with its small barred windows. “That man doesn’t like you,” he observed.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “But he obeys you.”

  “He has no choice. He knows that I know his banker. And he knows that if he ever harms a hair on Danielle’s head, I will paste him in the snoot.”

  The first thing Bell noticed about Danielle was that her white patient’s dress was brand-new. The second was that she regarded Andy Moser more like a kid brother than a boyfriend. He backed away to let them have a moment together. Andy was tongue-tied. Bell called, “Andy, why don’t you show Danielle what you’ve done to her father’s machine?”

  Andy fell to the task eagerly, and Danielle walked around it with him, oohing and ahhing, and stroking the canvas with her fingertips. “Many improvements,” she announced at last. “Is she still temperamental, Mr. Bell?”

  “Andy’s turned her into a lamb,” said Bell. “She’s rescued me more than once.”

  “I never realized you already knew how to fly.”

  “He’s still learning,” Andy said grimly.

  “Your father built a real sweetheart,” said Bell. “She’s amazingly strong. The other day, a stay was damaged, and the others held together for it.”

  “Elastico!” said Danielle.

  “Was your father elastico?” Bell asked gently.

  Her big eyes lighted in happy memory. “Like biglia. India-rubber ball. Rimbalzare! He bounced.”

  “Were you shocked how he died?”

  “That he killed himself? No. If you stretch banda too much, too many times, it breaks. A man breaks when too much goes bad. But before, he was rimbalzare. Is Josephine piloting Celere’s monoplano in the race?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does she fare?”

  “Behind by a full day.”

  “Brava!” Danielle smiled.

  “I was surprised to learn that Marco had another machine in the race. A big biplane with two motors.”