Bell satisfied himself that he recognized all of the reporters. So far, only newspapers owned by Whiteway were covering the race, which made it a little easier to keep track. When and if the public got sufficiently fired up over the race, Whiteway had told him, other papers would have to write about it. Bell figured they would cross that bridge when they came to it. In the meantime, Whiteway was taking full advantage of his monopoly, and his reporters were telling the story exactly as he wanted it told. American fliers were the underdogs, and the lowest underdog of all was “America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”
A drinking man from the flagship Inquirer led the way, shouting at Eddison-Sydney-Martin, “If England’s champion could say anything he wanted to American readers, what would that be?”
“May the best man, or woman, win.”
Bell noticed that Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s hands were shaking. Apparently Archie had been correct about the baronet being painfully shy. Bell could see that addressing a group of people held greater terrors than flying three thousand feet in the air. His wife, Abby, a beautiful brunette, was at his elbow to lend support, but Bell was struck by the man’s courage. Despite his shaking hands, and a deer-blinded-by-a-searchlight rounding of his eyes, he stood his ground.
The Whiteway reporter pretended incredulity. “You can’t mean that, Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin. The London papers are proclaiming to the whole world that you are racing for England and the honor of Great Britain.”
“We Britons have in common with Americans an enthusiastic press,” the baronet replied. “In actual fact, you could say that I am virtually half American by the great good fortune of marrying my lovely Abby, who is a Connecticut Yankee. Nor do I believe, frankly, that the Whiteway Cup Air Race is anything like a boxing match, where only one man remains standing at the end. Every aviator here will win by his or her very presence. The knowledge we gain will lead to better flying machines and better drivers.”
A reporter who shouted out the name of a Whiteway business journal published in New York asked, “Do you see a commercial future in flying machines?”
“Will passengers pay to fly? Lord knows when we’ll see an ‘aero bus’ with such lifting capability. But just moments ago I saw a commercial venture that might hold lessons for the future. As I passed above Garden City, three miles to the north, and was volplaning down to Belmont Park, I noticed motoring beneath me a trades van headed here in the employ of the publishing house Doubleday, Page and Company. How, you might well ask, could I see that it was a Doubleday, Page and Company motor van from high above? Well, the answer is that in addition to the signs painted on the sides of the van, an alert advertising manager in their Garden City headquarters looked up at a sky filled with flying machines from Belmont Park and painted ‘Doubleday, Page and Company’ on top to catch the attention of aviators.”
The reporters scribbled.
The baronet added, “Obviously, it caught mine as I sailed above it. So perhaps the commercial future in flying machines lies in supine billboards.”
Isaac Bell joined in the laughter.
Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s long face brightened with sudden relief, like a man released early from prison. “Hallo, Josephine!” he called.
Josephine was hurrying toward her yellow airship, head down as if hoping to slip by unobserved, but she paused to return his wave, and then call warmly to the baronet’s wife, “Hello, Abby.”
“Here, you journalist chaps,” said the English airman, “wouldn’t you have a jollier time interviewing an attractive woman?”
As the reporters caught sight of Josephine, he vaulted onto his Farman and shouted urgently, “Spin it, Ruggs.”
Lionel Ruggs, his chief mechanician, spun the propeller. The Gnome rotary engine caught on the first pull, and the baronet rose from the grass, trailing blue smoke.
Isaac Bell moved swiftly to intercept the reporters stampeding toward Josephine, all too aware that anyone who wanted to do her harm could jam a press card in his hatband and unobtrusively join the mob.
Archie had already anticipated the possibility. Before the reporters reached her, she was surrounded by detectives, who gave each and every journalist the gimlet eye.
“Smooth,” Bell complimented Archie.
“That’s what Mr. Van Dorn pays me so much money for,” Archie grinned.
“He told me he wonders why you work at all, now that you’re rich.”
“I wonder, too,” said Archie. “Particularly when I’m demoted to ‘classy’ bodyguard.”
“I asked specifically for you. You’re not demoted.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Josephine’s a crackerjack, and I’m glad to look after her. But the fact is, it’s a job for the PS boys.”
“No!”
Bell whirled about to look his old friend full in the face. “Don’t make that mistake, Archie. Harry Frost intends to kill her, and there isn’t a Protective Services man on the entire Van Dorn roster who can stop him.”
Archie was nearly as tall as Bell and as rangily built. Bell may have floored him in their long-ago college boxing match, but he was the only one who ever did. Archie’s easygoing style, handsome looks, and patrician manner concealed a toughness that Bell had rarely encountered among men of his class. “You give Frost too much credit,” he said.
“I’ve seen him operate. You haven’t.”
“You saw him operate ten years ago, when you were a kid. You’re not a kid anymore. And Frost is ten years older.”
“Do you want me to replace you?” Bell asked coldly.
“Try firing me, I’ll appeal straight to Mr. Van Dorn.”
They stared hard at each other. Men standing nearby backed away assuming punches would fly. But their friendship ran too deeply for fisticuffs. Bell laughed. “If he catches wind of us bull moose locking horns, he’ll fire both of us.”
Archie said, “I swear to you, Isaac, no one will hurt Josephine while I’m on watch. If anyone dares try, I will defend her to my dying breath.”
Isaac Bell felt reassured, not so much because of Archie’s words but because during their entire exchange he never took his eyes off her.
A HEAVILY LADEN, immaculately lacquered Doubleday, Page delivery van rolled into Belmont Park. The driver and his helper wore uniform caps with polished visors that were the same dark green color as the van. They pulled up at the grandstand service entrance and unloaded bales of World’s Work and Country Life in America magazines. Then, instead of leaving the grounds, they steered onto the stone-dust road that connected the train yard to the infield and followed a flatbed Model T truck that was carrying a Wright motor from a hangar car to the flying machine it was meant to power.
The gate that barred the way across the racetrack into the infield was manned by Van Dorn detectives. They waved the Model T through but stopped the Doubleday, Page van and regarded the duo, attired like trustworthy deliverymen, with puzzled expressions.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
The driver grinned. “I bet you wouldn’t believe me if I said we was delivering reading matter to the birdmen.”
“You’re right about that. What’s up?”
“We got a motor in the back for the Liberator. The mechanicians just got done with it and asked us to lend a hand.”
“Where’s their truck?”
“They had to pull the bands.”
“Joe Mudd’s my brother-in-law,” interjected the helper. “Knew we was delivering magazines. Long as the boss don’t find out, we’re O.K.”
“All right, come on through. You know where to find him?”
“We’ll find him.”
The green-lacquered van wove through the busy infield. The driver steered around flying machines, mechanicians, autos, trucks, wheelbarrows, and bicycles. Crammed in the back of the van, so tightly they had to stand, were a dozen of Rod Sweets’s fighters. Dressed in suits and derbies, they were a clear cut above the usual pug uglies in order to ensure the smooth flow of opium and morphine to doctors
and pharmacists. They stood in tense silence, hoping their outfits would help them disappear into the crush of paying spectators when the clouting was over. No one wanted to tangle with Van Dorns, but the money Harry Frost had paid in advance was too rich to refuse. They would take their lumps. Some of them would get collared. But those who escaped back to Brooklyn intact wouldn’t have to work for months.
Harry Frost stood with them, watching Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s blue Farman biplane through a peephole drilled in the side. He felt strangely calm. His plan would work.
Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin was tearing up the sky, fighting to set a speed record for biplanes on an oval course marked by pylons fifteen hundred yards apart. The course was three miles. To beat the record, he had to circle twenty laps in less than an hour, and he was cutting the corners tightly by banking with great skill. But unbeknownst to the Englishman, every high-speed turn he hurled the sturdy Farman into could be his last. When the Jonas boys’ aluminum anchor failed under the terrific forces, the sabotaged wire tension stay would rip from the wing it counterbraced, and the wing would break. At that fatal moment, every eye in the grandstand and every eye in the infield would fly to the falling machine.
Frost had seen them fall. From five hundred feet, it took a remarkably long time to hit the ground. In that time, no one, not even the Van Dorns, would see his fighters emerge from the van. Once out, it would be too late to stop them. They would slash a swath like a football wedge, and he would charge through the cleared space straight at Josephine.
ISAAC BELL WAS ADMIRING how sharply Eddison-Sydney-Martin cut the corners when, thirty minutes into the speed record attempt, a wing came off. It seemed like an illusion. The engine kept roaring, and the biplane kept racing. The broken wing separated into two parts, the top and bottom planes, which remained loosely attached to each other by wire braces. The rest of the airship hurtled past them on a steep downward trajectory.
Thousands in the grandstand gasped. As one, they surged to their feet, blood draining from their faces, eyes locked on the sky. The mechanicians in the infield looked up in anguish. A woman screamed—Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s wife, Bell saw. The stricken aeroplane was falling nose down, when it began to spin. Terrible forces tore its canvas, and it shed ragged strips of fabric that trailed after it like long hair.
Bell could see Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin grappling with the controls. But it was hopeless. The biplane was beyond control. It hit the ground with a loud bang. Bell felt it shake the earth a quarter mile away. A collective moan rippled across the infield and was echoed by the crowd in the grandstand.
Bell heard another scream.
The tall detective’s heart sank even as he exploded into action. The English airman’s wife was running toward the wreckage, but it wasn’t Abby who had screamed. She held both hands pressed to her mouth. The scream, a hopeless shriek of terror, had come from behind him.
Josephine.
BOOK TWO
“balance yourself like a bird on a beam”
10
ISAAC BELL YANKED HIS BROWNING PISTOL from his shoulder holster and ran full tilt up the middle of a double row of flying machines.
The sight of a tall man in a white suit running toward them with a gun in his hand scattered the mechanicians who were staring at the wreckage behind him. At the end of the path they cleared for him Bell saw Josephine with her back to him. In front of her, the red-haired Archie Abbott was shielding her with his own body. In front of Archie, six Van Dorn detectives fought shoulder to shoulder to block a flying wedge of thugs charging with fists, clubs, and lengths of sharpened bicycle chain.
Behind the attackers stood a dark green Doubleday, Page delivery van with its back doors open wide. Harry Frost leaped through the doors with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.
A Van Dorn drew his gun. A bicycle chain snaked it out of his bloodied hand. A club to his skull sent him pinwheeling. A second detective was knocked to the trampled grass. The remaining four fought to hold the line, but they were overwhelmed by the flying wedge and flung aside, opening a clear path to Archie and Josephine. Harry Frost charged up it with the speed and power of a maddened rhino.
Isaac Bell triggered his Browning. It was a highly accurate weapon, but he was running at full speed so he aimed for the larger target of Frost’s body instead of his head. Bell’s bullet went home. He saw it pluck Frost’s coat, but it did not slow the big man’s charge. Nor did it prevent Frost from leveling his gun at Archie.
Bell was almost to them, close enough to recognize Frost’s gun as a Webley-Fosbery. Knowing Frost’s predilection for brutality, Bell feared that the weapon was loaded with the .455 “Manstopper” hollow-points.
Archie stood his ground and aimed his pistol at Frost. It was a small-scale 6.35mm Mauser pocket pistol, an experimental model that the factory owners had presented to him when his honeymoon took him through Germany. Bell had argued that it was too light to count on. But Archie had smiled, “It’s a keepsake of our honeymoon, and it doesn’t wrinkle my suit.”
Coolly, he let Frost close the range before he squeezed off three bullets.
Bell saw the bullets pierce Frost’s lapels. But Frost kept coming. Speed, weight, and momentum were stronger forces than three 6.35mm slugs. Archie’s well-aimed bullets would ultimately kill Harry Frost, but not before the charging man wreaked bloody destruction. Bell aimed for Frost’s head. Archie blocked his line of fire.
Cool as ice, the redheaded detective tipped up the barrel to place the coup de grâce between Frost’s eyes. Before he could fire, another of the attackers’ sharpened chains whistled through the air like a bullwhip and slashed the Mauser out of his hand.
Isaac Bell jinked to the left and fired over Archie’s shoulder. He was sure he had hit Frost again. But the angry red-faced giant triggered his own weapon point-blank at Archie Abbott. The Webley boomed like a cannon.
Archie staggered as the hollow-point bored a tunnel through his chest. His legs crumpled under him. Frost jammed his revolver in his pocket and switched the knife to his right hand, burning eyes locking on Josephine as he brushed past Archie.
Archie hurled a mighty left hook as he fell.
Bell knew that with his body shattered, the punch was born of all that Archie had left—his courage and his skill. It caught Frost square on the side of his jaw with such force that bone cracked. Frost’s eyes widened with shock. His fist convulsed open. The knife dropped.
Bell was almost on him. He couldn’t shoot. Josephine was in his way.
Frost whirled and ran.
Bell started to chase after him. But as he leaped across his fallen friend’s body he saw bright red blood frothing from Archie’s coat. Without hesitating, he dropped to the ground beside him.
“Doctors!” he shouted. “Get doctors!”
Bell opened Archie’s coat and shirt and pulled a razor-sharp throwing knife from his own boot to cut away Archie’s undershirt. Air was bubbling from the wound. Bell looked around. People were gaping. But one set of eyes was cool and ready to help.
“Josephine!”
He handed her the knife.
“Quick. Cut me a patch of wing fabric. Like this.”
He indicated the size with his hands.
“Doctors!” Bell shouted to those watching. “Get moving, you men! Find doctors!”
Josephine was back in seconds with a neatly cut square of yellow fabric.
Isaac Bell pressed it over the wound and held three sides of the square down tight to Archie’s skin. As Archie’s chest rose and fell, Bell let air escape from the wound but allowed no more air to be sucked in.
“Josephine!”
“I’m here.”
“I need cloth to tie this down.”
Without hesitation, she removed her heavy flying tunic and then her blouse, which she sliced into long strips.
“Help me slip it under him.”
Bell rolled Archie onto the side of the wound while Josephine worked the cloth under him. Bel
l tied the ends.
“Grab those shrouds to keep him warm. Doctors!”
A doctor ran up at last. He banged his bag down, knelt beside Archie, and felt for a pulse. “Good job,” he said of the patch. “Are you a physician?”
“I’ve seen it done,” Bell answered tersely. On his own chest, he could have added, when he was twenty-two years old, by Joseph Van Dorn, calmly trying to save his apprentice’s life while tears were soaking his whiskers.
“What put the hole in him?” asked the doctor.
“Hollow-point .455.”
The doctor looked at Bell. “Is he a friend?”
“He is my best friend.”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. There’s a reason they call it a manstopper.”
“We need an ambulance.”
“One’s coming right now. The English birdman didn’t need it.”
WITHIN MINUTES ARCHIE was loaded into the ambulance and on his way to the hospital with two doctors riding with him. By then the Van Dorns had regrouped, and formed a powerful cordon around Josephine.
Harry Frost had escaped in the confusion.
Bell quickly organized a manhunt, which included alerting every hospital in the area.
“He’s carrying at least three slugs in him,” he said, “maybe four. And Archie broke his jaw.”
“We caught two of their crew, Isaac. Brooklyn toughs. I recognize one. He works for Rod Sweets, the opium king. What do we do with them?”
“See what you can get out of them before you hand them to the cops.” Bell had no doubt that Archie had romanced the local police when he first arrived at the racetrack. It was standard practice to cozy up and find who should be paid off to be friends in an emergency.