Life was leaking from Frost’s eyes. He sucked air through his charred lips. But his voice was still strong, harsh and thick with scorn. “You didn’t get me. Lightning bolt hit my rifle.”
“I had you dead to rights,” answered Bell. “The lightning just happened to get you first.”
Frost croaked bitter laughter.
“Is that why Van Dorns never give up? You got weather gods on your side?”
Isaac Bell gazed down triumphantly at the dying criminal. “I didn’t need weather gods,” he said quietly. “I had Wally Laughlin on my side.”
“Who the hell is Wally Laughlin?”
“He was a newsboy. You murdered him and two of his friends when you dynamited the Dearborn Street news depot.”
“Newsboy? . . . Oh yeah, I remember.” He shuddered with pain and forced out another jibe. “I’ll hear about it in Hell. How old was he?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve?” Frost lay back. His voice grew weak. “Twelve was my grand year. I’d been a little runt getting used by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Then all of a sudden I started growing and growing, and everything went my way. Won my first fight. Got my first gang. Killed my first man—twenty years old, he was, full grown.”
A hideous parody of a smile twisted Frost’s burnt lips.
“Poor little Wally,” he muttered sarcastically. “Who knows what the little bastard could have made of himself.”
“He made a memory of himself,” said Isaac Bell.
“How’d he do that?”
“He had a kind soul.”
BELL STOOD UP and gathered his weapons.
Harry Frost called after him. Suddenly there was fear in his voice. “Are you leaving me here to die alone?”
“You’ve left crowds to die alone.”
“What if I told you something you don’t know about Marco Celere?”
Bell said, “Marco Celere showed up in Yuma three days ago, fit as a fiddle. You ran from the only murder you didn’t commit.”
Frost levered himself up on one elbow and shot back, “I know that.”
Intrigued, Bell knelt beside the dying man, watching his hands for a hidden knife or another pocket pistol stashed in his smoldering garments. “How?”
“Marco Celere showed up at Belmont Park six weeks ago.”
“Celere gave me the impression he was in Canada six weeks ago.”
“He was right in the middle of the race,” Frost crowed. “Prancing around the infield like he owned it. You damned Van Dorns never knew.”
“Platov!” said Bell. “Of course!” Marco Celere was the saboteur, though proving it in a court of law would be next to impossible.
“A little late on that one, Mr. Detective,” Frost sneered.
“How did you happen to see him?”
“He spotted me one night I was trying to get near Josephine’s machine. Walked up to me, big as life, and offered a deal.”
“I’d have thought you’d kill him on sight,” said Bell.
“You know that sawed-off coach gun the Italians call a lupa? He had it pointed at my head. Both hammers on full cock.”
“What deal?”
“Should I give you a gift for little Wally?” Frost asked mockingly. “Information you can use to get Celere? You think if I do you a favor, they’ll be nice to me in Hell?”
“I don’t see you getting a better chance than this one. What was the deal?”
“If I held off killing Josephine until after she won the race, then Marco would take me to a place where I could hide out in luxury for the rest of my life.”
“Where would this paradise be?” Bell asked skeptically.
“North Africa. Libya. The Turkish colonies that Italy is going to win in North Africa. He said we’d be safe as houses and live like kings.”
“Sounds like con-man palaver.”
“No. Celere knows his business. I’ve been over there, I seen it with my own eyes. The Ottomans—the Turks—they’re on their last leg and Italy’s so poor and crowded, they’re itching to grab their colonies. So Celere’s setting himself up to be the Italian Army’s gold-haired boy by supplying aerial war machines. He’ll be the national hero when Italy beats Turkey with his machine-gun aeroplanes and bomb carriers. But he knows he’s got to prove himself. They’ll only buy his machines if Josephine wins the race.”
“Why didn’t you take him up on it?”
Rage stiffened Frost’s ravaged face. “I told you, I’m not a chump. If he was so fixed there in North Africa that he could protect me, then he’d hold the key to my cell. I might as well be back in the orphanage.”
“Why didn’t he blow your head off with his lupa?”
“Celere’s like a juggler, always tossing a bunch of balls in the air. He bet on you protecting her and hoped I would change my mind—and that I would kill Whiteway when the time came.”
“What time came?”
“The wedding. He knew Whiteway was angling for Josephine. Marco figured I’d be so mad, I’d kill Whiteway, and Josephine would inherit the money and marry him. And if later I killed her, too, he’d get it all.”
Frost’s one good eye sought Bell’s two. “Marco started this. He’s the one who turned her head. So I reckoned the juggler seeing all his balls come crashing down was my sweetest revenge.”
“Another reason to kill her?” asked Bell.
“Marco knew the Stevens biplane would never make it. He needed Josephine to prove that his flying machines can be fighting machines.”
Bell shook his head. “All she wants is to fly.”
“I gave her the chance, she turned it against me. She deserves to be killed,” Frost whispered.
“You’re dying with hatred on your lips.”
ISAAC BELL WAS DEEPLY RELIEVED to find Texas Walt, sitting in the rain, holding his head.
“Feels like John Philip Sousa’s playing a steam calliope where my brain used to be.”
Bell walked him to the Rolls-Royce and drove it to the trestle, Walt cussing a blue streak at every bump. The mechanicians had repaired the Eagle’s undercarriage. Bell made Walt comfortable on the train. Then he took to the air and headed for Fresno, the last overnight stop before San Francisco. Josephine’s yellow machine and Joe Mudd’s red tractor biplane were tied down fifty yards apart on a muddy fairground. Joe Mudd leaned on crutches, joking with the mechanicians working on his undercarriage.
“Hard landing?” Bell asked.
Mudd shrugged. “Just a busted leg. Machine’s O.K. Mostly.”
“Where’s Josephine?”
“She and Whiteway are at the fairground hotel. I’d steer clear, if I were you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Stormy weather.”
Bell beckoned Josephine’s detective-mechanicians, who were ferrying tools and parts for Marco Celere, who was shaking his head over her motor. “Keep a sharp eye on Celere. Do not let him near Joe Mudd’s machine.”
“What if he makes a run for it?” asked Dashwood.
“He won’t. Celere’s not going anywhere as long as there’s any chance Josephine will win the race.”
He went to the fairground hotel. Preston Whiteway had rented the top floor of the two-story structure. Bell quickened his pace up the stairs when he heard the publisher shouting at the top of his lungs. He knocked loudly and entered. Whiteway was standing over Josephine, who was curled in a tight ball in a parlor chair, staring at the carpet.
Whiteway saw Bell, and instead of asking what had happened with Harry Frost he shouted, “You talk sense to her! Maybe she’ll listen to you!”
“What’s the matter?”
“My wife refuses to finish the race.”
“Why?”
“She won’t tell me. Maybe she’ll tell you. Where the hell’s my train?”
“Just pulled in.”
“I’ll be in San Francisco for the end of the race.”
“Where is Marion?”
“Gone ahead with her cameras,” Whiteway answered
. He lowered his voice to a hoarse stage whisper that Josephine could have heard in the next county and pleaded, “See if you can talk sense into her—she’s throwing away the chance of a lifetime.”
Bell replied with a silent nod.
As Whiteway backed out of the room, he appeared to see Bell for the first time. “You look like you’ve been wrestling grizzly bears.”
“You should have seen the other guy.”
“Help yourself to the whiskey.”
“I intend to,” said Isaac Bell.
41
“WANT SOME?” Bell asked Josephine.
“No.”
Bell filled a short glass, tossed it back neat, filled it again, and sipped. “Josephine, what did you say when Marco asked you to come with him to North Africa?”
She looked up from the carpet, eyes wide. “How did you know that?”
“He made Harry Frost the same offer.”
“Harry? Why?”
“Marco wanted Frost to kill your new husband.”
Josephine’s eyes went dead. “Marco’s worse than Harry,” she whispered.
“I’d say they were neck and neck. What was your answer, Josephine?”
“I told him no.”
Bell watched her closely as he said, “I’ll bet Marco thinks you’ll change your mind when you’re a rich widow.”
“Never . . . Is Preston in danger?”
“Harry Frost is dead.”
“Thank God . . . Do you think Marco has the guts to kill Preston without Harry’s help?”
Instead of answering that question, Isaac Bell said, “I know why you’re quitting the race.”
“No you don’t.”
“You’re quitting because Marco Celere, disguised as Dmitri Platov, sabotaged the best of the other machines.”
She looked away. “I wondered,” she whispered. “I didn’t just wonder, I suspected. But I didn’t stop him. Losing the race will be my punishment. I have been terrible.”
“Because you didn’t stop him or because you went along with Marco’s plan to frame Harry for murder?”
“Did Harry tell you that, too?”
Bell smiled. “No, I stumbled on that on my own.”
“Looking back, I know it was an evil plan. I knew it then but Harry deserved to be locked up again.”
“Why did you let Marco talk you into marrying Whiteway?”
“I was too tired to argue. I just wanted to win the race—”
“Perhaps you thought that if one marriage could be annulled, so could another?”
“Sure, if we had no honeymoon. And I swear, Isaac, I had no idea Marco planned to kill Preston. Poor Preston, he’s just so . . . Poor Preston, he is such a fool, Isaac, he really loves me.”
Bell gave her a gently teasing smile. “Maybe Preston thinks that when you fall in with the wrong men and don’t see what they’re doing, that you’re not so terrible—just single-mindedly myopic in your determination to fly? Maybe that’s why he can’t believe you won’t finish the race.”
“I do not deserve to win . . . Are you going to arrest Marco?”
“I can’t, yet. I don’t have enough proof to make a case in court. Besides, I want him free to work on your machine in case you change your mind.”
“I won’t. The winner should win fair and square.”
“You and Joe Mudd are neck and neck. It would be good for the winner, and good for aviation, if you raced right down to the wire. Whatever you’ve done wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve driven a flying machine across the continent. Why don’t you sleep on it? Meantime, I’ll let Marco work on the machine overnight.”
EPILOGUE
“oh! say! let us fly, dear”
MARCO CELERE SAW a way out of his predicament. Rather than wait helplessly for Josephine to change her mind, and fearing she would not, he placed a long-distance call from the hotel telephone. Preston Whiteway snatched up his telephone like a man who had been waiting all night for news from Fresno. “Will she fly?”
“This is Marco Celere, inventor of your aeroplane and chief mechanician.”
“Oh . . . Well? Will she fly?”
“I understand,” Celere answered suavely, “that Mr. Bell is discussing it with her over breakfast. There’s time still—there’s a low fog on the field the sun hasn’t burned off yet. But I have a suggestion. If Josephine cannot win the Whiteway Cup, surely her flying machine can.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If she doesn’t agree to finish the race, I will fly the last leg from Fresno and win the race for her.”
“Against the rules. One driver, one machine, all the way.”
“We are men of the world, Mr. Whiteway. They are your rules. The Whiteway Cup is your race. Surely you can change your own rules.”
“Mr. Celere you may know something about building flying machines, but you don’t know the first thing about newspaper readers. They’ll buy any lie you print—unless it’s a lie about something you’ve already convinced them to love. They love Josephine. They want her to win. They don’t give a hang about your flying machine.”
“But it would be so good for aviation—” Celere pleaded.
“And even better for you. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The telephone banged dead in Celere’s ear.
Celere listened outside the hotel dining room. He heard Bell speaking urgently. Then he heard Josephine say loudly and clearly, “No.”
Celere hurried out on the field to his monoplane. The fog was still heavy, and he could barely see Joe Mudd’s and Isaac Bell’s machines. Josephine’s Van Dorn mechanicians were watching him suspiciously even though he had been guiding their efforts since Yuma, Arizona.
“We should start the motor,” he said.
“Why? She’s not going anywhere.”
“Mr. Bell is very persuasive. He still may convince Josephine to change her mind. Let us fill her tanks, spin her motor, and make it warm for her.” They exchanged glances. Celere said, “I don’t see Joe’s Mudd’s mechanicians hanging about this morning. They’ll be ready to go when the fog lifts. Shouldn’t we be? Just in case?”
That got them going. It was after all a race, and though they were better detectives than mechanicians, they had been competing daily for forty-eight days and four thousand miles.
“Start fueling. I will be right back.”
He went to the tiny stateroom they had given him on the train and returned carrying a yard-long, six-inch-wide corrugated paper tube sealed at either end and shoved it into the driving nacelle.
“What’s that?” asked a detective.
“San Francisco Inquirer flag, which Josephine is supposed to wave when she lands at the Presidio. What is wrong with motor?”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not like the sound.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
Celere looked the detective-mechanician in the eye. Then he flashed his most winning smile. “Let us make a deal, you and me, sir. I will not arrest criminals. You will not tell me that a flying-machine motor sounds like it will not suddenly stop in the sky.”
“Sorry, Celere. You’re right. What do you hear?”
“Bring me soapbox.” He climbed on the box and into the nacelle and played with the throttle, revving and slowing the Antoinette. He cocked his ear, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Pull chocks. Let’s taxi her around a little.”
“Careful you don’t run into anything. Can’t see fifty feet.”
The mechanicians pulled the wooden blocks that were holding the wheels in place.
Celere revved the motor. “You hear? You hear?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Listen . . . Here, I make go faster.”
He opened the throttle all the way. The Antoinette’s crisp burble increased to a roar. He turned the rudder, shaped the wings, raced fifty yards along the grass, and soared into the fog.
BELL ORDERED his Eagle made ready to fly, but there was no following Celere
in the fog because no one knew which way he had gone. He had to wait until some railroad dispatcher wired a report that he had been spotted. Nearly an hour later, Isaac Bell received a telephone call from the railroad detectives Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley.
“Are you sure you got Harry Frost?”
“I laid him personally on a slab of ice in the Fresno police station.”
“Yeah, well, we just had our second dynamite robbery in two days. Fellow walked into our Merced shop with a coach gun, terrorized the poor old clerk into loading two hundred pounds of dynamite, detonators, and ice tongs on a track inspector’s handcar, and pumped off. We found the handcar three miles down the line next to an empty hayfield. Not a trace of the fellow or the dynamite or the ice tongs.”
“Ice tongs?” Bell echoed, mystified. “What else did he take?”
“Isn’t two hundred pounds of dynamite enough?”
“What else?”
“Hold on! . . . Hey, Tom, Mr. Bell wants to know did he take anything else . . . Oh yeah. Tom says he took a flashlight and some electric cable.”
“What kind of detonators? Fulminate of mercury?”
“Electric.”
“Did you find any truck or wagon tracks?”
“That’s the funny thing. The only wheel tracks were out in the middle of the field. Nothing by the road except footprints. Strange, don’t you think?”
“Not if he came and left on a flying machine!”
“Oh. Never thought of that . . . You still there, Mr. Bell?”
Isaac Bell was running to his American Eagle. “Spin her over!”
The Gnome’s urgent Blat! Blat! Blat! caused Joe Mudd to turn aside and let Bell take off ahead of the Liberator. Bell picked up the Southern Pacific tracks and headed north toward San Francisco. He had less than two hundred miles in which to catch up with Marco Celere.