THE VAN DORN PROTECTIVE SERVICES operators guarding the roof of the armory had kept a sharp eye on the door from the stairs, as instructed by Joseph Van Dorn, though every cheer that went up had drawn their attention to the parade ground and bleachers below and the next machine descending from the sky.
Now they lay unconscious at Harry Frost’s feet, surprised by hammer blows of his fists after he sprang not from the stairs’ penthouse but from the elevator’s, where he had hidden since dawn.
Frost steadied a Marlin rifle on a square stone between two notches in the parapet and waited patiently for Josephine’s head to completely fill the circle of his telescopic sight. She was coming straight at him, preparing to circle the armory as required by the rules, and he could see her through the blur of her propeller. This might not be as satisfying a kill as strangling her, but the Van Dorns had left him no opportunity to get close. And there were times a man did best to take what he could get. Besides, the telescope made it seem as if they were facing each other across the dinner table.
THE INSTANT ISAAC BELL saw the stone notches in the armory’s crenellated parapet, he rammed his control wheel forward as hard as he could and made the Eagle dive. That roof was precisely where he would lay an ambush. The rules of the race guaranteed that Frost’s victim would have to fly so close, he could hit her with a rock.
Driving with his right hand, he swiveled his Remington autoload rifle with his left. He saw a startled expression on Josephine’s face as he hurtled past her. Ahead, among the stone notches, he saw the sun glint on steel. Behind the flash, half hidden in shadow, the bulky silhouette of Harry Frost was drawing a bead on Josephine’s yellow machine.
Then Frost saw the American Eagle plummeting toward him.
He swung his barrel in Bell’s direction and opened fire. Braced on the solid roof of the armory, he was even more accurate than he had been from the oyster boat. Two slugs stitched through the fuselage directly behind the controls, and Bell knew that only the extraordinary speed of his dive had saved him when Frost underestimated how swiftly he would pass.
Now it was his turn. Waiting until his spinning propeller was clear of the field of fire, the tall detective triggered his Remington. Stone chips flew in Frost’s face, and he dropped his rifle and fell backwards.
Isaac Bell turned the Eagle sharply—too sharply—felt it start to spin, corrected before he lost control, and swept back at the armory. Frost was scrambling across the roof, leaping over the bodies of two fallen detectives. He had left his rifle where he had dropped it and was holding a hand to his eye. Bell fired twice. One shot shattered glass in the structure that housed the elevator machinery. The other nicked the heel of Frost’s boot. The impact of the powerful centerfire .35 caliber slug knocked the big man off his feet.
Bell wrenched the Eagle around again, ignoring the protesting shriek of wind in the stays and an ominous grinding sound that vibrated through the controls, and raced back at the red brick building to finish him off. Across the roof, the door of the stair house flew open. Soldiers with long, clumsy rifles tumbled through it and fanned out, forcing Bell to hold his fire to avoid hitting them. Frost ducked behind the elevator house. As Bell roared past, he saw the killer open a door and slip inside.
He looked down at the avenue in front of the building, saw that Josephine had alighted and that there was space for him. Down he went, blipping his motor. He hit the cobblestones hard, spun half around, recovered, and, when the tail skid had slowed him nearly to a stop, jumped down and ran up the front steps of the armory, drawing his pistol.
An honor guard of soldiers in dress uniforms holding rifles at port arms blocked his way.
“Van Dorn!” Bell addressed their sergeant, a decorated man of action whose chestful of battle ribbons included the blue-and-yellow Spanish-American War Marine Corps Spanish Campaign Service Medal. “There’s a murderer in the elevator house. Follow me!”
The old veteran sprang into action, running after the tall detective and calling upon his men. The inside of the armory was an enormous cathedral-like drill space as wide as the building and half as deep. The coffered ceiling rose as high as the roof. Bell raced to the elevator and stair shafts. The elevator doors were closed, and the brass arrow that indicated its location showed that the car was at the top of the shaft.
“Two men here!” he ordered. “Don’t let him out if the car descends. The rest, follow me.”
He bounded up four flights of stairs, with the soldiers clattering behind, reached the roof, and stepped outside just as Joe Mudd’s red Liberator roared around the building, yards ahead of Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s blue Curtiss Pusher.
Bell ran to the elevator house. The door was locked.
“Shoot it open.”
The soldiers looked to their sergeant.
“Do it!” he ordered. Six men pumped three rounds of rifle fire into the door, bursting it open. Bell bounded in first, pistol in hand. The machine room was empty. He looked through the steel grate floor. He could see into the open, unroofed car, which was still at the top of the shaft immediately under him. It, too, was empty. Harry Frost had disappeared.
“Where is he?” shouted the sergeant. “I don’t see anyone. Are you sure you saw him in here?”
Isaac Bell pointed at an open trapdoor in the floor of the car.
“He lowered himself down the traction rope.”
“Impossible. There’s no way a man could hold on to that greasy cable.”
Bell dropped into the elevator car and looked down through the trap. His sharp eyes spotted twin grooves in the grease that thickly coated the braided steel wire that formed the traction rope. He showed the sergeant.
“Where the heck did he get a cable brake?”
“He came prepared,” said Bell, climbing up the side of the car to run for the stairs.
“Any idea who he was?”
“Harry Frost.”
Fear flickered across the old soldier’s face. “We were chasing Harry Frost?”
“Don’t worry. He won’t get far.”
“Chicago’s his town, mister.”
“It’s our town, too, and Van Dorns never give up.”
26
THAT EVENING, Isaac Bell parked a big Packard Model 30 within pistol shot of the three-story mansion on Dearborn Street that housed the Everleigh Club, the most luxurious bordello in Chicago. He kept the bill of a chauffeur’s cap low over his eyes and watched two heavyset Van Dorns climb the front steps. Out-of-town men who would not be recognized by the doorman and floor managers, they were dressed in evening clothes to appear to be customers wealthy enough to patronize the establishment. They rang the bell. The massive oak door swung open, the detectives were ushered in, and it swung shut behind them.
Bell watched the sidewalks for cops and gangsters.
Stealthy movement beside a pool of streetlamp light caught his attention. A slight figure, a young man in a wrinkled sack suit and bowler hat, eased past the light, then veered across the sidewalk on a route that took him close enough to the Packard for Bell to recognize him.
“Dash!”
“Hello, Mr. Bell.”
“Where the devil did you come from?”
“Mr. Bronson gave me permission to report in person. Got me a free ride guarding the Overland Limited’s express car.”
“You’re just in time. Do you have your revolver?”
James Dashwood drew from a shoulder holster a long-barreled Colt that had been smithed to a fare-thee-well. “Right here, Mr. Bell.”
“Do you see those French doors on the third-floor balcony?”
“Third floor.”
“Those stairs lead up from the balcony to the roof. I’d prefer not to engage in a public gun battle with anyone trying to escape from that room through those doors. Do you see the knob?”
Dashwood’s keen eyes penetrated the shadows to focus on the barely visible two-inch bronze knob. “Got it.”
“If it moves, shoot it.”
Bel
l tugged his gold watch from its pocket and traced the second hand. “In twenty seconds, our boys will knock on the hall door.”
Twenty-three seconds later, the knob turned. Dashwood, who had been trained by his mother—a former shootist with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show—fired once. The knob flew from the door.
“Hop in,” said Bell. “Let’s hear what this fellow has to tell us.”
Moments later, the heavyset Van Dorns exited the front of the bordello, balancing a man between them like friends helping a drunk. Bell eased the Packard along the curb, and they bundled the man into the backseat.
“Do you realize who I am?” he blustered.
“You are Alderman William T. Foley, formerly known as ‘Brothel Bill,’ less for your handsome mug than for your managemental prowess in the vice trade.”
“I’ll have you arrested.”
“You’re running for reelection on the reform ticket.”
“The alderman was carrying these,” said one of the detectives, presenting Bell with two pocket pistols, a dagger, and a sap.
“Where is Harry Frost?”
“Who?” Bill Foley asked innocently. Like any successful Chicago criminal who had graduated to public office, Foley could recognize Van Dorn detectives when seated between them in the back of a Packard. He was emboldened by the knowledge that they were less likely to shoot him in an alley or drown him in Lake Michigan than certain other parties in town. “Harry Frost? Never heard of him.”
“You were spending his money tonight in the most expensive sporting house in Chicago. Money he paid you this afternoon to cash a five-thousand-dollar check at the First Trust and Savings Bank. Where is he?”
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Too bad for you.”
“What are you going to do, turn me in to the sheriff? Who happens to be my wife’s uncle.”
“You’re running for reelection on the reform ticket. Our client publishes a newspaper in this town that you would not want as your enemy.”
“I’m not afraid of Whiteway’s papers,” Foley sneered. “Nobody in Chicago gives a hang for that California pup who—”
Bell cut him off. “The people of Chicago may continue to put up with your bribery and corruption a bit longer, but they will draw the line at even a hint that Alderman William T. Foley would endanger the life of Miss Josephine Josephs, America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”
Foley wet his lips.
“Where,” Bell repeated, “is Harry Frost?”
“Left town.”
“Alderman Foley, do not try my patience.”
“No, I ain’t kidding. He left. I saw him leave.”
“On what train?”
“In an auto.”
“What kind?”
“Thomas Flyer.”
Bell exchanged a glance with James Dashwood. The Thomas was a rugged cross-country auto, which was why Bell had chosen them for his support train. Such a vehicle—capable of traversing bad roads and open prairie, and even straddling railroad tracks when washouts and broken ground made all else impassable—would make Frost dangerously mobile.
“Which way did he go?”
“West.”
“Saint Louis?”
Alderman Foley shrugged. “I got the impression more like Kansas City—where your air race is going, if I can believe what I read in the newspapers.”
“Is he alone?”
“He had a mechanician and a driver.”
Bell exchanged another look with Dash. There was five hundred miles of increasingly open country between Chicago and Kansas City, and Frost was prepared for the long haul.
“Both are gunmen,” Foley added.
“Names?”
“Mike Stotts and Dave Mayhew. Stotts’s the driver. Mayhew’s the mechanician. Used to be a telegrapher ’til they caught him selling horse-race results to the bookies. Telegraphers are sworn to secrecy, you know.”
“What I don’t know,” said Bell, frowning curiously at Foley, “is why you’ve turned unusually talkative all of a sudden, Alderman. Are you making this up as we go along?”
“Nope. I just know Harry ain’t coming back. I done him his last favor.”
“How do you know Frost isn’t coming back?”
“Never thought I’d see the day, but you damned Van Dorns ran him out of town.”
ISAAC BELL LED JAMES DASHWOOD into a chophouse to feed him supper while the kid reported what he had discovered in San Francisco.
“Last you wired me, Dash, you found that Celere and Di Vecchio were both in San Francisco last summer. Celere had arrived earlier, working as a translator, then built a biplane he subsequently sold to Harry Frost, who shipped it back to the Adirondacks and hired Celere to work on Josephine’s flying machines at their camp. Both Celere and Di Vecchio had fled Italy one step ahead of their creditors. Di Vecchio killed himself. What new do we know?”
“They got in a fight.”
Two immigrant Italian fishermen, Dashwood explained, had overheard a long and angry shouting match in the street outside their boardinghouse. Di Vecchio accused Marco Celere of stealing his wing-strengthening design.
“I already know that,” said Bell. “Celere would claim it was the other way around. What else?”
“Di Vecchio started it, shouting that Celere copied his entire machine. Celere shouted back that if that was true, why had the Italian Army bought his machines and not Di Vecchio’s?”
“What did Di Vecchio answer?”
“He said that Celere had poisoned the market.”
Bell nodded impatiently. This, too, he had already heard from Danielle. “Then what?”
“Then he started yelling that Celere better keep his hands off his daughter. Her name is—”
“Danielle!” said Bell. “What did keeping his hands off his daughter have to do with the Italian Army buying his aeroplane design?”
“Di Vecchio shouted, ‘Find another woman to do your dirty work.’”
“What dirty work?”
“He used a word that my translators found very hard to repeat.”
“A technical word. Alettone?”
“Not technical. The girl knew what it meant, but she was afraid to say it in front of Mother Superior.”
“Mother Superior?” Bell echoed, fixing his protégé with a wintery eye. “Dash, what have you been up to?”
“They were nuns.”
“Nuns?”
“You always told me people want to talk. But you have to make them comfortable. The girl was the only Italian translator I could get the fishermen to talk to. Once they started telling the story, they wouldn’t shut up. I think because the nun was so beautiful.”
Isaac Bell reached across the tablecloth to slap Dashwood on the shoulder. “Well done!”
“But finding her was what took me so long. Anyway, she was translating great guns until that word stopped her dead. I pleaded with them. I even offered to pray with them, and she finally whispered, ‘Gigolo.’”
“Di Vecchio accused Marco Celere of being a gigolo?”
Bell was hardly surprised, recalling that soon after Josephine and Harry Frost appeared in San Francisco the young bride had persuaded her husband to buy Celere’s biplane. “Did he mention any specifics?”
“Di Vecchio said that Celere persuaded an Italian Army general’s daughter to get him to buy his machine. From what they heard, the fisherman thought it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten women to make deals for him.”
“Did he accuse Celere of taking money from women?”
“There was some sort of engine he bought at a Paris air meet. It sounded like a woman put up the money. But in San Francisco, he was broke again. I think the Army deal fell through.”
“The machine smashed with the general on it.”
“That’s why Di Vecchio kept yelling that Celere sold them a lousy flying machine and ruined it for other inventors.”
“Did Di Vecchio accuse Celere of trying a gigolo stunt with Daniel
le?”
“That’s what Di Vecchio was warning him off about. ‘Don’t touch my daughter.’”
“Sounds like your fishermen stumbled onto a heck of a shout fest.”
“They didn’t exactly stumble. They lived there, too.”
Bell watched the young detective’s face closely. “You’ve turned up a lot of information, Dash, maybe enough to make it worth the wait. Did you get a lucky break or did you know what you were looking for?”
“Well, that’s the thing, Mr. Bell. Don’t you see? They were arguing outside the hotel where Di Vecchio died. The night he died.”
27
ISAAC BELL FIXED HIS PROTÉGÉ with an intense gaze, his mind leaping to the possibility that an angry argument had ended in murder. “The same night?”
“The same night,” answered James Dashwood. “In the same house where Di Vecchio asphyxiated himself by blowing out a gaslight and leaving the gas on.”
“Are you certain he killed himself?”
“I looked into the possibility. That’s why I thought I should report face-to-face, to explain why I’m thinking what I’m thinking.”
“Go on,” Bell urged.
“I was already investigating the suicide, like you ordered, when I heard about the shouting match. You told me about Marco Celere’s original name being Prestogiacomo. I discovered he was staying there under that name. You always say you hate coincidences, so I reckoned there had to be a connection. I spoke with the San Francisco coroner. He admitted that they don’t do much investigating into how an Italian immigrant happens to die in San Francisco. There’s a lot of them in the city, but they keep to themselves. So I wondered, what if I pretended that the dead man wasn’t Italian but American? And pretended he wasn’t poor but earning three thousand dollars a year, and had a house and maids and a cook? What questions would I ask when that fellow got gassed in a hotel room?”