The Race

  “Are you Marco Celere?”

  “That is my name, sir,” he replied, speaking with an Italian accent somewhat heavier than Danielle Di Vecchio’s though not as difficult to understand as Josephine had led Bell to believe. “Where is Josephine?”

  “Where have you been?”

  Celere smiled. “I wish I could answer that.”

  “You’re going to have to answer that before I let you within a mile of Josephine. Who are you?”

  “I am Marco Celere. I came awake two weeks ago in Canada. I had no idea who I was or how I got there. Then, gradually, my memory returned. In tiny bits. A trickle to start, then a flood. I remember my aeroplanes first. Then I saw a newspaper account about the Whiteway Cup Air Race. In it, I read, I have not only one but two machines, my heavy biplane and my swift monoplano, and suddenly it all came back.”

  “Where in Canada?”

  “A farm. To the south of Montreal.”

  “Any idea how you got there?”

  “I do not honestly know. The people who saved me found me by the train tracks. They assumed that I rode on a freight train.”

  “What people?”

  “A kindly farm family. They nursed me through winter into spring before I began to remember.”

  Challenging the man who Danielle had called a thief and a confidence man, who had changed his name from Prestogiacomo to Celere while fleeing his past, and who James Dashwood suspected might have murdered Danielle’s father in San Francisco and disguised the crime as a suicide, Bell kept peppering him with questions.

  “Any idea how you happened to get amnesia?”

  “I know precisely how.” Celere ran his fingers along the scar on his scalp. “I was hunting with Harry Frost. He shot me.”

  “What brings you to the Arizona Territory?”

  “I have come to help Josephine win the race in my flying machine. May I see her, please?”

  Bell asked, “When did you last read a newspaper?”

  “I saw a scrap of one last week in the Kansas City yards.”

  “Are you aware that your heavy biplane smashed?”

  “No! Can it be fixed?”

  “It ran into a mountain.”

  “That is most disturbing. What of the driver?”

  “What you would expect.”

  Celere put down his fork. “That is terrible. I am so sorry. I hope it was not the fault of the machine.”

  “The machine was as worn out as the rest of them. It’s a long race.”

  “But a magnificent challenge,” said Celere.

  “I should also warn you,” said Bell, watching his eyes closely, “that Josephine has remarried.”

  Celere surprised him. He would have thought Celere would be troubled to learn that his girlfriend had married. Instead, he said, “Wonderful! I am so happy for her! But what of her marriage to Frost?”

  “Annulled.”

  “Good. That is only right. He was a terrible husband to her. To whom has she been married?”

  “Preston Whiteway.”

  Celere clapped his hands in delight. “Ah! Perfect!”

  “Why is that perfect?”

  “She is a racer. He is a race promoter. A marriage made in Heaven. I can’t wait to congratulate him and wish her happiness.”

  Bell glanced at Texas Walt, who was listening at the door, then asked the Italian inventor, “Would you care to get cleaned up first? I’ll find you a razor and some fresh clothes. There’s a washroom in the back of the hangar car.”

  “Grazie! Thank you. I really must look a sight.”

  Bell exchanged glances with Texas Walt again and answered with a smile that didn’t light his eyes. “You look pretty much like a fellow who crossed the continent in a freight car.”

  Bell and Hatfield led him to the washroom and gave him a towel and razor.

  “Thank you, thank you. Could I ask one more favor?”

  “What would you like?”

  “Would there be some brilliantine?” He ran his fingers through his dirty hair. “That I might smooth my hair?”

  “I’ll rustle some up,” said Texas Walt.

  “Thank you, sir. And some mustache wax? It will be wonderful to be myself again.”

  “LIKE A FELLOW WHO CROSSED the continent in a freight car?” Texas Walt echoed Isaac Bell’s assessment with a dubious grin.

  Bell grinned back. “What do you think?”

  “Looked more to me like the man rode the cushions,” said Hatfield, using the hobo expression for buying a ticket for a parlor car. “Doubt he hit the rails ’til the last hundred miles.”

  “Exactly,” said Bell, who had ridden many a freight train while investigating in disguise. “He’s not dirty enough.”

  “Ah suppose some lonely ranch wife might have sluiced him off in her horse trough.”

  “Might have.”

  Texas Walt rolled a cigarette, exhaled blue smoke, and remarked, “Can’t help wonderin’ what Miss Josephine is gonna think. Suppose she’d have agreed to marry Whiteway if she had known Celere was alive?”

  “I guess that depends on what they meant to each other,” answered Bell.

  “What do we do with him, boss?”

  “Let’s see what he’s up to,” answered Bell, wondering whether in Marco Celere’s miraculous return lay the explanation for Harry Frost’s angry You don’t know what they were up to.

  MARCO CELERE EMERGED from Bell’s hangar car bathed, shaved, and brilliantined. His black hair gleamed, his cheeks were smooth, his mustache curled at the tips. Bell’s own mustache twitched in the thinnest of smiles when Texas Walt glanced his way. The sharp-eyed Texan had noticed, as had he, that Celere’s clean-shaven cheeks were slightly paler in color than his nose and chin. The difference was almost imperceptible, but they were looking for false notes, and there it was, an indication that he had until recently worn a beard.

  Josephine expressed astonishment that Celere was alive. She said she had never given up hope that he had somehow survived. She took his hand and said, “Oh, you poor thing,” when he told his story. She seemed happy to see him, Bell thought, but she turned quickly to the business of the race.

  “You couldn’t have come at a better time, Marco. I need help keeping the aeroplane running. It’s getting pretty worn down. I’ll have my husband put you on the payroll.”

  “There is no need for that,” Celere replied gallantly, “I will work gratis. After all, it is in my interest, too, that my machine win the race.”

  “Then you better get to work,” said Bell. “Weather’s clearing. Weiner of Accounting just announced we’re taking off for Palm Springs.”

  MINDFUL THAT ISAAC BELL was watching him like a hawk, Marco Celere waited patiently to have a private conversation with Josephine. He made sure he was never alone with her until after she arrived at Palm Springs. Only the next morning, while they fueled the machine for the short flight to Los Angeles, did he dare to chance speaking. They were alone, pouring gasoline into the overhead gravity tank, while the mechanicians joined the police in clearing spectators from the field.

  Josephine spoke first. “Who died in the fire?”

  “I found a body in the hobo jungle. Now Platov doesn’t exist.”

  “Dead already?”

  “Of course. A poor old man. They die all the time. What did you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Maybe married life confuses you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is it like?” Marco teased. “Being Mrs. Preston Whiteway?”

  “I postponed my ‘honeymoon’ until after the race. You know that. I told you I would.”

  Marco shrugged. “This is like opera buffa.”

  “I don’t know anything about opera.”

  “Opera buffa is the funny kind. Like vaudeville comics.”

  “This is not funny to me, Marco.”

  “To me, it’s worth getting shot.”

  “How? Why?”

  “It’s ju
st that if something were to happen to Preston Whiteway, you would inherit his newspaper empire.”

  “I don’t want his empire. I just want to fly aeroplanes and win this race.” She searched his face, and added, “And be with you.”

  “I suppose that I should feel grateful you still feel that way.”

  “What would happen to Preston?”

  “Oh, now Mr. Whiteway is ‘Preston’?”

  “I can’t call my husband Mr. Whiteway.”

  “No, I suppose you can’t.”

  “Marco, what is it? What are you getting at?”

  “I just wonder, will you keep helping me?”

  “Of course . . . What did you mean, if something happens to Preston?”

  “Such as Harry Frost, your insanely jealous former husband, murdering your new husband.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Marco reached over and turned back the sleeve of her blouse, uncovering the bandaged bullet wound on her forearm. “Nothing you don’t already know about the man.”

  38

  A LOUD, BRIGHT CARNIVAL pitched its tents near Dominguez Field, just south of Los Angeles, and was doing a roaring business from the spillover of the quarter-million spectators who thronged to cheer the arrival of the last two contestants for the Whiteway Cup and send them off to Fresno in the morning.

  Eustace Weed was sick with fear over the impending order to contaminate Isaac Bell’s aeroplane fuel and had no desire to go to a carnival. But Mr. Bell insisted that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy.” He backed up this observation with five dollars’ spending money and strict orders not to bring any change back from the midway. A friend of Mr. Bell’s, a guy Eustace’s age named Dash who’d been hanging around, placing a lot of bets on the race, ever since Illinois, walked over with Eustace from the rail yard and promised they’d meet up later to walk back to the support train.

  Eustace won a teddy bear by knocking over wooden milk bottles with a baseball. He was debating mailing it to Daisy or delivering it in person—as if somehow everything would turn out fine—when the toothless old barker who handed him his prize whispered hoarsely, “You’re on, Eustace.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Drop it in Bell’s gasoline tank right before he takes off.”

  “What if he sees me?”

  “Palm it when you fill the tank so he don’t.”

  “But he’s sharp as all heck. He might see me.”

  The toothless old guy patted Eustace’s shoulder in a friendly way and said, “Listen, Eustace, I don’t know what this is about and I don’t want to. All I know is, the fellows who told me to pass you the message are as bad as they get. So I’m advising you, whoever this sharp Bell is, he better not see you.”

  The carnival had a Ferris wheel in the middle. It looked eighty feet tall, and Eustace wondered would they leave Daisy alone if he rode to the top and killed himself by jumping off. Just then, Dash showed up.

  “What happened? Lose all your money? You look miserable.”

  “I’m O.K.”

  “Hey, you won a teddy bear.”

  “For my girl.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Daisy.”

  “Say, if you married her, she’d be Daisy Weed,” Dash joked like it was a new idea. Then he asked if Eustace was hungry and insisted on buying him a sausage and a beer that went down like sawdust and vinegar.

  TWO HARD-FACED MEN with hooded eyes were waiting for Isaac Bell outside the Eagle Special’s hangar car. They were dressed in slouch hats, shirts with dirty collars, four-in-hand ties loose at the neck, and dark sack suits bulging with sidearms. One man had his arm in a sling that was noticeably fresher and whiter than his shirt, as was the bandage on his companion’s forehead. Josephine’s detective-mechanicians were eyeing them closely, scrutiny the two men returned with sullen bravado.

  “Remember us, Mr. Bell?”

  “Griggs and Bottomley. You look like you tangled with a locomotive.”

  “Feel that way, too,” Griggs admitted.

  Bell shook their hands, taking Bottomley’s left in deference to his sling, and told the detective-mechanicians, “They’re O.K., boys, Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley, Southern Pacific rail dicks.”

  The Van Dorns looked down their noses at the railroad police, who commonly represented the bottom of the private detective heap, until Bell added, “If you remember the Glendale wreck, Griggs and Bottomley were instrumental in getting to the bottom of it. What’s up, boys?”

  “We had a hunch you’d be the Van Dorn ramrodding the Josephine case.”

  Bell nodded. “Not something I want to read in the newspaper, but I am. And I have a funny feeling, based on the evidence of recent ministrations by the medicos, that you’re going to tell me you ran into Harry Frost.”

  “Ed plugged him dead center,” said Griggs. “Gut-shot him. Didn’t even slow him down.”

  “He wears a ‘bulletproof ’ vest.”

  “Heard of them,” said Griggs. “I didn’t know they worked.”

  “We do now,” observed Bottomley.

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Burbank. Dispatcher wired us someone was busting into a maintenance shop. Thieving louse was just piling into a motortruck when we got there. Louse opened fire. We shot back. He walked straight at us, walloped me in the head, and shot Tom in the arm.”

  “By the time we could see straight,” said Bottomley, “he was gone. Found the motortruck in the morning. Empty.”

  “What did he steal?”

  “Five fifty-pound crates of dynamite, some blasting caps, and a coil of fuse,” answered Griggs.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Bell. “He loves his dynamite.”

  “Sure, Mr. Bell. But what has Tom and me racking our brains is how’s he’s fixing to blow up a flying machine.”

  “The race is headed to Fresno in the morning,” answered Bell. “I’ll telephone Superintendent Watt, tell him what you boys turned up, and ask him to set the entire California division of the Southern Pacific Railroad Police to inspecting main-line bridges and trestles for sabotage.”

  “But flying machines don’t use bridges.”

  “Their support trains do,” Bell explained. “And just between us, at this point in the race, after four thousand miles, the mechanicians and spare parts in their hangar cars are all that’s keeping them in the air. By any chance did you wound him at all?”

  “I think I creased his leg when I went down. Wouldn’t be surprised if he limps a mite.”

  “Well done,” said Isaac Bell.

  EUSTACE WEED DECIDED that since he had no other choice than to do this terrible thing to Isaac Bell, he would at least do it right so nothing bad happened to Daisy by mistake. That would be the worst, to get caught doing the terrible thing but also have Daisy hurt.

  To steady his nerves, he pretended that he was back in Tucson, hustling hick-town pool players in their hick-town parlor. One thing he knew for sure: if you wanted to win at pool, you had to trust yourself. At the end of the game, the dough was won by the guy who didn’t lose his nerve.

  He snugged the copper tube inside his left hand and kept it hidden while he poured the strained gasoline–and–castor oil mix into the American Eagle’s tank right under Isaac Bell’s nose. That way, he wouldn’t look suspicious pulling it from a pocket. Andy came over to report that the machine was ready. Bell turned away to speak to Andy. Eustace reached for the gas cap to screw it on with his right hand.

  Bell said, “Andy, let’s check the control post again.”

  Eustace passed his left hand over the open mouth of the tank.

  Isaac Bell’s thumb and forefinger closed around his wrist, hard as a steel shackle.

  “Eustace. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  EUSTACE WEED OPENED HIS MOUTH. He could not speak. Tears welled in his eyes.

  Bell watched him sternly. When he spoke, the chief investigator’s voice was glacial: “I’ll te
ll you what happened. You nod. Understand?”

  Eustace was trembling.

  “Understand?” Bell repeated.

  Eustace nodded.

  Bell let go his wrist, palming the copper tube as he did, shook it speculatively, then tossed it to Andy Moser, who took one look and glowered, “When the gas melts the wax, what’s inside leaks out. What is it? Water?”

  Eustace Weed bit his lip and nodded.

  Bell pulled a notepad from his coat. “Do you recognize this fellow?”

  Eustace Weed blinked at a drawing like you’d see in the newspaper.

  “A saloonkeeper in Chicago. I don’t know his name.”

  “How about this one?”

  “He worked for the saloonkeeper. He took me to him.”

  “And this one?”

  “He’s the other one who took me to see him.”

  “How about this man?”

  Bell showed him a sketch of a grim-faced man, more frightening than the others, who looked like a prizefighter who had never lost a bout. “No. I never saw him.”

  “This fellow is a Van Dorn detective who has lived for the past two weeks across the hall from Miss Daisy Ramsey and her mother. He shares his rooms with another fellow, a bigger fellow. When one has to go out, the other is there, across the hall. When Daisy goes to work at the telephone exchange, a Van Dorn man watches the sidewalk and another watches the telephone exchange. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Eustace?”

  “Daisy is safe?”

  “Daisy is safe. Now, tell me everything. Quickly.”

  “How do you know her name?”

  “I asked you her name back in Topeka, Kansas. You told me, confirming what we were already turning up in Chicago. It’s our town.”

  “But you can’t watch over her forever.”

  “We don’t have to.” Bell held up the pictures again. “These two will be locked back in Joliet prison to resume serving well-deserved twenty-year sentences. This saloonkeeper is about to go out of business and open a small dry-goods store in Seattle, a city to which he is moving for his health.”