Had Marco sabotaged Abby’s husband’s machine so that she could win? There he was, in his crazy Russian disguise. She was the only one who knew who he really was and the only one who suspected he had done something terrible. But she was afraid to ask.
I must, she thought. I have to ask him. And if it is true, then I have to admit everything, all the lies. She walked up to Marco. He was waving his Dmitri slide rule, and he looked as distraught as the others, but she realized with a terrible sense of lost trust that she could not be sure he wasn’t pretending. She said, in a low voice, “I have to talk to you.”
“Oh, poor Josephine!” he cried in full Platov mode. “You are seeing all happening in front of eyes.”
“I have to ask you.”
“What?”
Before she could speak, she heard a scream. Abby was screaming. Then, miraculously, a cheer from every throat. She whirled toward the creek. Everyone was looking downstream. Baronet Eddison-Sydney-Martin was limping unsteadily along the bank, soaking wet, covered in mud and fumbling with a cigarette he could not light.
BELL TOLD ANDY MOSER that he was certain that he had seen Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s propeller fall off. “Is it common?”
“It happens,” said Andy.
“What would cause it?”
“Lots of things. A crack in the hub.”
“But he inspected the machine every time he flew. He walked around it and checked mounts and stays and everything. Just like all of us do. So did his mechanicians, just like you do for me.”
“Could have hit a rock bouncing on the field.”
“He would have noticed, felt it, heard it.”
“He’d notice if it shattered the propeller,” said Andy. “But if a rock hit right on the hub at the same moment he had his hands full just getting her into the air and his motor was straining loudly, maybe he didn’t. Couple of months ago I heard about a propeller getting unstable because it was stored standing up. Moisture sunk into the bottom blade.”
“His was brand-new and used nearly every day since he got it.”
“Yeah, but you get these cracks.”
“That’s why it was painted silver,” countered Bell, “so little cracks would show.” That was standard procedure on pushers. His own propeller was not because a silver propeller spinning in front of the driver would dazzle him.
“I know, Mr. Bell. And obviously it wasn’t around long enough to rot, either.” Moser looked up at the tall detective. “If you’re asking me was it sabotage, I’d say it sure as heck could have been.”
“How? If you wanted a fellow’s propeller to fly off, what would you do?”
“Anything I could to throw it out of kilter. When the propeller is off balance, it vibrates. Vibrations will break it or rattle the hub loose, or even shake the motor right off its mounts.”
“But you wouldn’t want it shaking that much because the fellow you’re trying kill would notice and stop his motor and volplane down as fast as he could.”
“You’re right about that,” Andy said gravely. “The saboteur would have to really know his business.”
But that, Isaac Bell had to admit, was true of every mechanician in the race, with the possible exceptions of Josephine’s disguised detectives. Another truth he could not ignore was that Preston Whiteway had gotten the wish he had so unabashedly hoped for back in San Francisco. He had had to wait long past Chicago and halfway across Kansas, but a “winnowing of the field” had indeed turned the race into a contest that pitted the best airmen against plucky tomboy Josephine.
Eddison-Sydney-Martin had probably been the best—and his winnowing by sabotage had hardly been natural. But steady Joe Mudd was proving himself to be no slouch, while the thoroughly unpleasant but undeniably courageous Steve Stevens was a fast flier who pushed ahead unintimidated by the vibrations endangering his machine.
Bell had no way of knowing who the saboteur would try to attack next. In fact, the only thing that the tall detective knew absolutely for sure was that his first job was still what it had always been: keep Harry Frost from killing Josephine.
BELL WONDERED WHETHER the machine-gun raid at Fort Riley could have been an elaborate feint by Harry Frost, a distraction to lull Josephine’s protectors into loosening the cordon they kept around her each night at the fairgrounds and rail yards. With that possibility in mind, Bell laid an ambush. He waited for dark—after sad good-byes with the Eddison-Sydney-Martins, whose support train steamed out of the tiny Morris County Fairgrounds rail yard back to Chicago—and climbed onto the roof of Josephine’s private car. For hours, he lay in wait, scanning the trains parked on the other side of Whiteway’s special and listening for the crunch of boots on gravel ballast.
It was a hot night. Windows, skylights, and roof hatches were open. Murmured conversations and occasional bursts of laughter mingled with a quiet sighing of locomotives bedded down with banked fires producing just enough steam to power lights and warm water.
Around midnight, he heard someone knock at Josephine’s rear vestibule. Whoever it was, he must have come through the train, as Bell had seen or heard no one on the ballast. Nonetheless, Bell drew his Browning and aimed it through an open roof hatch at the door. He heard Josephine call sleepily from her stateroom, “Who is it?”
“Preston.”
“Mr. Whiteway, it’s kind of late.”
“I must speak with you, Josephine.”
Josephine padded into the front parlor, wearing a simple dressing gown over cotton pajamas, and opened the door.
Whiteway was dressed in a suit with a silk necktie, and his hair was combed in grand golden waves. “I want you to know that I’ve put a lot of thought in what I am about to say to you,” he said, and began pacing about the narrow parlor. “Odd. I feel a little tongue-tied.”
Josephine curled up in an overstuffed chair, tucked her bare feet under her, and watched him warily. “I hope you are not changing your mind,” she said. “I’m doing much better. My times are improving. I’ve been catching up. And now that the poor baronet is out of the race, I have a very good chance.”
“Of course you have!”
“Joe Mudd isn’t as fast. And Steve Stevens can’t keep going much longer.”
“You’re going to win. I’m sure of it.”
Josephine grinned. “That’s a relief. You looked so nervous, I thought you were dropping me . . . But what are you trying to say?”
Whiteway stood to his full height, thrust out his chest and belly, and blurted, “Marry me!”
“What?”
“I’ll make a wonderful husband, and you’ll be rich, and you can fly aeroplanes every day until we have children . . . What do you say?”
After a long silence, Josephine said, “I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s very nice of you to offer, but—”
“But what? What could be better?”
Josephine took a deep breath and climbed to her feet. Whiteway opened his arms to embrace her.
“THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” whispered Marion when Bell reported to her at breakfast in the Josephine Special’s lavish dining car. Her enormous coral-sea green eyes were wide and so beautiful that for a long moment Bell lost his train of thought.
“Did she say yes?” Marion prompted.
“No.”
“Good. Preston is too in love with himself to be a loving husband. If she’s as sweet a girl as I read in the newspapers, she deserves better.”
“You’ve seen more of her than the newspaper readers.”
“We’ve only said hello in passing. But I would have thought she would have answered ‘Maybe.’”
“Why?” Bell asked.
Marion thought on that. “She strikes me as someone who gets what she wants.”
“It was a sort-of maybe. She said she had to think about it.”
“I suspect she has no one to talk to. I’ll give her an ear. And an opinion, if she wants one.”
“I was hoping you would say that,” said Bell. “In fact, I was hoping you
would put your mind to what Harry Frost meant when he said that she and Celere were up to something.”
Marion glanced out the window. A stiff wind was spinning miniature tornadoes of coal smoke, wheat chaff, and cinders around the trains. “No flying today. I will do it right now.”
“I WANT TO BE LIKE YOU WHEN I GROW UP,” Josephine grinned at Marion. They were alone in the front parlor of Josephine’s private car, curled up in facing armchairs. Coffee cups sat between them untouched.
“I hope I don’t seem that old. Besides, you are grown up. You’re driving a flying machine across the continent.”
“That’s not the same. I want to be a straight shooter like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me straight off that Isaac overheard Preston asking me to marry him.”
Marion said, “I also told you that I’m very curious what you think of his proposal.”
“I don’t know. I mean, what does he want to marry me for?” She gave Marion one of her big open grins. “I’m just a silly girl two seconds off the farm.”
“Men are strange creatures,” Marion smiled back. “Most of them. Maybe he loves you.”
“He didn’t say he loved me.”
“Well, Preston is not very bright in many ways. On the other hand, he is handsome.”
“I suppose.”
“And very, very wealthy.”
“So was Harry.”
“Unlike Harry, Preston, for all his many, many faults, is no brute.”
“Yes, but he’s big like Harry.”
“And getting bigger,” laughed Marion. “If he isn’t careful, he’ll end up like President Taft.”
“Or Steve Stevens.”
They both laughed. Marion watched her closely, and asked, “Are you considering it at all?”
“Not at all. I don’t love him. I mean, I know he’d buy me aeroplanes. He said he’d buy me aeroplanes at least until we have children. Then wants me to stop flying.”
“Good Lord,” said Marion, “Preston is even a bigger fool than I thought.”
“You don’t think I should marry him . . . do you?”
Marion said, “I can’t tell you that. You have to know what you want to do.”
“You see, if I win the fifty thousand dollars, I’ll have my own money. I’ll buy my own aeroplanes.”
Marion said, “Dear, if you win the cross-country race, they’ll be lining up to give you aeroplanes.”
“Really?”
“I am sure of it. They know that customers will buy aeroplanes you fly. So marrying Preston really has nothing to do with aeroplanes, does it?”
“If I win.”
“Isaac says you have no doubt you’ll win. And,” she added with another laugh, “he has no doubt you’ll win. He’s bet three thousand dollars on you.”
Josephine nodded distractedly and looked out her railcar window. The wind was still rattling the glass. She closed her eyes and started to form words with her lips, then pressed her lips tightly together. She was aching to talk, Marion thought. It seemed as if Preston’s proposal was forcing to her think about things she would prefer not to.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s really troubling you?”
Josephine pursed her lips and exhaled sharply. “Can you keep a secret?” Her hazel eyes bored pleadingly into Marion’s.
“No,” Marion answered, “I can’t. Not from Isaac.”
Josephine rolled her eyes. “Why are you so honest, Marion?”
“I prefer to be,” said Marion. “What do you want to tell me?”
“Nothing . . . When I saw Marco shot, I was so surprised.”
“I would think so.”
“It was the last thing I expected.”
“AND THEN,” Marion Morgan confessed to Isaac Bell, “I blundered. Instead of keeping my silly mouth shut while she completed her thought, I said something imbecilic like ‘Who would expect to see one’s husband shoot one’s friend?’ and Josephine shut up tight as a clam.”
“The last thing she expected,” Bell mused, “implying she expected something else to happen. As if she was ‘up to something,’ just like Harry Frost said . . . Is she going to marry Preston?”
“She finally said, no, absolutely not.”
“Will she change her mind?”
“Only if she were to fear that she would definitely not win the race.”
“Because she wouldn’t win the fifty thousand dollars, and Preston is rich?”
“You should have seen her eyes light up when I told her that if she wins inventors will give her aeroplanes. I don’t think she ever thought of that before. It’s like she doesn’t think very far ahead. She’ll do anything she has to to keep herself in flying machines. Including marrying Preston. But only for the machines. She’s not the kind of girl who wants a bunch of kids, jewels, and houses.”
“Which reminds me,” asked Isaac Bell, taking Marion in his arms, “when are you going to marry me?”
Marion looked at the emerald on her finger. Then she smiled into his eyes. She traced his golden mustache with the tip of her finger and kissed him firmly on his lips. “The moment you absolutely insist. You know I would do anything for you. But until then, I am very, very happy and totally content to be your fiancée.”
THE KANSAN WIND howled all that day and through the night and into the next morning.
With no one flying anywhere, Andy Moser took the opportunity to completely disassemble Bell’s Gnome and put it back together, cleaned, polished, tuned, and tweaked.
Joe Mudd’s bricklayers, masons, plasterers, and locomotive firemen tore the Liberator’s engine down into small pieces and finally isolated the cracked copper tube that was the source of the oil leak which kept turning the red machine black.
Russian Dmitri Platov directed Steve Stevens’s mechanicians in another futile effort to permanently synchronize the biplane’s twin motors. When Stevens complained rudely and threatened to dock everyone’s salary, the usually easygoing thermo engine inventor stalked away to help Josephine take the head off her Antoinette to replace a leaky gasket.
Isaac Bell watched them. Platov kept talking to her in an urgent, low voice. Bell wondered whether she was discussing Whiteway’s proposal with the Russian—an odd thought, but their conversation seemed so intense. Whenever he drifted close to overhear, they stopped talking.
“ WHY IS DETECTIVE BELL LURKING?” asked Marco Celere, giving Bell a friendly wave with his Dmitri Platov slide rule.
“He’s looking out for me.”
“Surely he is not afraid for your safety in the presence of kindly Platov?”
“I doubt he’s afraid of anything,” said Josephine.
Celere began chiseling the old head gasket off Josephine’s engine block. “You are somewhat prickly today, my dear.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Starting with Mr. Whiteway’s proposal?”
“What do you think?” she retorted sullenly.
“I think you should marry him.”
“Marco!”
“I’m serious.”
“Marco, that’s disgusting. How could you want me to marry another man?”
“He’s more than ‘another man.’ He’s the richest newspaper publisher in America. He, and his money, could be very helpful to you. And me.”
“What good will it do us if I’m married to him?”
“You would leave him for me, when the time is right.”
“Marco, it makes me sick to think you would want me to be with him.”
“Well, I’d expect you to postpone the honeymoon until after the race. Surely you could plead the necessity to concentrate on winning.”
“What about the wedding night?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
THE WINDS DROPPED. The Weather Bureau published reports that it might be calm for a few hours. Late in the afternoon, the racers swarmed off the Morris County Fairgrounds. Before dark, all alight
ed safely in Wichita, where Preston Whiteway strode dramatically into the glare of Marion Morgan’s Picture World Cooper-Hewitt mercury-arc lamps.
Marion’s operators were cranking two movie cameras, the second being an expense Whiteway had refused to bear until now despite Marion’s insistence that two cameras would create exciting shifts of view that would draw bigger audiences. She had one camera aimed at the publisher, the other trained to capture the reactions of the newspaper reporters.
Tomorrow, Whiteway announced, would be an official off day. It would not count against the fifty-day limit because, “Tomorrow I am going to throw the biggest party the state of Kansas has ever seen to celebrate my engagement to Miss Josephine Josephs—America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”
Marion Morgan looked up from her station between the cameras to lock astonished gazes with Isaac Bell. Bell shook his head in disbelief.
A San Francisco Inquirer correspondent had been primed to call out, “When’s the wedding, Mr. Whiteway, sir?” Other Whiteway employees chorused, as they had been instructed to, “Do we have to wait until the race is over?”
“Josephine wouldn’t hear of it,” Whiteway boomed back heartily. “At my beautiful bride’s special request we’re having a Texas-sized wedding in the great city of Fort Worth’s North Side Coliseum, which is known far and wide as ‘the most opulent and dynamic pavilion in the entire Western Hemisphere.’ We’ll be married the moment the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and fifty thousand dollars flies into Fort Worth, Texas.”
Marion flashed Bell a private grin and mouthed the word “Shameless.”
Bell grinned back, “Unabashedly.”
But there was no denying that when “booming” his air race, Preston Whiteway could lather up the public hotter than P. T. Barnum, Florenz Ziegfeld, and Mark Twain combined.
The only question was, why had Josephine changed her mind? Her times were improving, often surpassing the others. And her flying machine was running beautifully. She had no reason to fear she couldn’t win the race.