The Race

1

The Adirondack Mountains, Upper New York State

1909

MRS. JOSEPHINE JOSEPHS FROST – a petite, rosy-cheeked young woman with a tomboy’s pert manner, a farm girl’s strong hands, and lively hazel eyes – flew her Celere Twin Pusher biplane eight hundred feet above the dark forested hills of her husband’s Adirondack estate. Driving in the open air, in a low wicker chair in front, she was bundled against the cold headwind in padded coat and jodhpurs, a leather helmet and wool scarf, gloves, goggles, and boots. Her motor drummed a steady tune behind her, syncopated by the ragtime clatter of the drive chains spinning her propellers.

Her flying machine was a light framework of wood and bamboo braced with wire and covered with fabric. The entire contraption weighed less than a thousand pounds and was stronger than it looked. But it was not as strong as the violent updrafts that cliffs and ravines bounced into the atmosphere. Rushing columns of air would roll her over if she let them. Holes in the sky would swallow her whole.

A gust of wind snuck up behind and snatched the air that held her wings.

The biplane dropped like an anvil.

Josephine’s exuberant grin leaped ear to ear.

She dipped her elevator. The machine pitched downward, which made it go faster, and Josephine felt the air lift her back onto an even keel.

“Good girl, Elsie!”

Flying machines stayed up by pushing air down. She had figured that out the first time she left the ground. Air was strong. Speed made it stronger. And the better the machine, the more it wanted to fly. This “Elsie” was her third, but definitely not her last.

People called her brave for flying, but she didn’t think of herself that way. She just felt completely at home in the air, more at home than on the ground where things didn’t always work out the way she hoped. Up here, she always knew what to do. Even better, she knew what would happen when she did it.

Her eyes were everywhere: glinting ahead at the blue mountains on the horizon, glancing up repeatedly at the aneroid barometer that she had hung from the upper wing to tell her her altitude, down at the motor’s oil pressure gauge between her legs, and searching the ground for breaks in the forest big enough to alight on if her motor suddenly quit. She had sewn a ladies’ pendant watch to her sleeve to time how much gasoline she had left. The map case, and compass ordinarily strapped to her knee, were back at the house. Born in these mountains, she steered by lakes, railroad tracks, and the North River.

She saw its dark gorge ahead, so deep and sheer that it looked like an angry giant had split the mountain with an ax. The river gleamed at the bottom. A break in the trees beside the gorge revealed a golden meadow, the first sizable opening she had seen since she had taken to the air.

She spied a tiny splash of red, like a flicker’s red crest.

It was a hunting hat worn by Marco Celere, the Italian inventor who built her flying machines. Marco was perched on the cliff, rifle slung over his back, scanning for bear through field glasses. Across the meadow, at the edge of the trees, she saw the hulking silhouette of her husband.

Harry Frost raised his rifle and aimed it at Marco.

Josephine heard the shot, louder than the motor and drive chains clattering behind her.

HARRY FROST HAD A WEIRD FEELING he had missed the Italian.

He was a seasoned big-game hunter. Since retiring rich, he had shot elk and bighorn sheep in Montana, lion in South Africa, and elephants in Rhodesia, and he could have sworn the bullet had gone high. But there was his wife’s swarthy boyfriend squirming on the edge of the cliff, hit but not dead.

Frost levered a fresh.45-70 shell into his Marlin 1895 and found him in the scope. He hated the sight of Marco Celere – oily black hair brilliantined slick to his skull, high forehead like a vaudeville Julius Caesar, thick eyebrows, deep-set dark eyes, waxed mustache curled at the tips like pigs’ tails – and he was taking great pleasure in smoothly squeezing the trigger when suddenly a strange noise clattered in his head. It sounded like the threshing machine at the farm at the Matawan Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where his enemies had locked him up for shooting his chauffeur at the country club.

The bughouse had been worse than the most monstrous orphanage in his memory. Powerful politicians and high-priced lawyers claimed credit for springing him. But it was only right to let him out. The chauffeur had been romancing his first wife.

Unbelievably, it was happening again with his new bride. He could see it written on their faces every time Josephine hit him up for more dough to pay for Marco’s inventions. Now she was begging him to buy the Italian’s latest flying machine back from his creditors so she could win the Atlantic – Pacific Cross-Country Air Race and claim the fifty-thousand-dollar Whiteway Cup.

Wouldn’t that be swell? Winning the biggest air race in the world would make his aviatrix wife and her inventor boyfriend famous. Preston Whiteway – the snoot-in-the-air, born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth San Francisco newspaper publisher who was sponsoring the race – would make them stars, and sell fifty million newspapers in the process. The chump husband would be famous, too – a famously cuckolded, fat old rich husband – the laughingstock of all who despised him.

Rich he was, one of the richest men in America, every damned dollar earned himself. But Harry Frost wasn’t old yet. A little over forty wasn’t that old. And anyone who said he was more fat than muscle hadn’t seen him kill a horse with a single punch – a trick he had performed famously in his youth and lately had made a birthday ritual.

Unlike the treachery with the chauffeur, this time they wouldn’t catch him. No more flying off the handle. He had planned this one down to the last detail. Savoring revenge, going about it like a business, he had resurrected his formidable talents for management and deception to lure the unsuspecting Celere on a bear hunt. Bears couldn’t talk. There’d be no witnesses deep in the North Country woods.

Convinced he had shot higher than he meant to, Frost aimed low and fired again.

– -

JOSEPHINE SAW CELERE whiplashed from the cliff by the force of the bullet.

“Marco!”

THE CLATTER IN HARRY FROST’S SKULL GREW LOUD. Still peering down the barrel of his rifle at the wonderful empty space where Marco Celere had been, he suddenly realized that the noise was not a memory of the Matawan farm but real as the 405-grain lead bullet that had just blown the bride thief into the gorge. He looked up. Josephine was flying over him in her damned biplane. She had seen him shoot her aeroplane inventor.

Frost had three cartridges left in his magazine.

He raised the rifle.

But he didn’t want to kill her. She’d stay with him now that Marco was out of the way. But she saw him kill Marco. They would lock him back in the bughouse. Second time around he’d never get out. That wouldn’t be fair. He wasn’t the betrayer. She was.

Frost whipped the rifle skyward and fired twice.

He misjudged her speed. At least one shot passed behind her. With only a single bullet left, he gathered his wits, settled his nerves, and led the biplane like a pheasant.

Bull’s-eye!

He had scored a hit, for sure. Her flying machine lurched into a wide, clumsy turn. He waited for it to fall. But it kept turning, wobbling back in the direction of the camp. It was too high to hit with a pistol, but Frost jerked one from his belt anyway. Bracing the barrel on his powerful forearm, he fired until it was empty. Eyes bugging with rage, he flicked a snub-nosed derringer out of his sleeve. He emptied its two shots futilely in her direction and pawed at his hunting knife, to cut her heart out when she smashed into the trees.

The clatter grew fainter and fainter and fainter, and Harry Frost could do nothing but watch helplessly as his treacherous wife disappeared beyond the tree line and escaped his righteous wrath.

At least he had blown her lover into the gorge.

He lumbered across the meadow, hoping for a glimpse of Celere’s body smashed on the river rocks. But halfway to the rim of the cliff, he stopped dead, poleaxed by a horrible realization. He had to run before they locked him back in the bughouse.

JOSEPHINE FOUGHT WITH ALL HER SKILL to guide her machine safely to the ground.

Harry had hit it twice. One bullet had nicked the two-gallon gasoline tank behind her. The second was worse. It had jammed the link between her control lever and the wire that twisted the shape of her wings. Unable to warp them to bank the machine into a turn, she was dependent entirely on its rudder. But trying to turn without banking was like flying a glider before the Wright brothers invented wing warping – god-awful awkward and likely to slide her sideways into a deadly flat spin.

Lips tight, she worked the rudder like a surgeon’s scalpel, taking measured slices of the wind. Her mother, a frantic woman unable to cope with the simplest task, used to accuse her of having “ice water in her veins.” But wasn’t ice water handy on a crippled flying machine, Mother? Slowly, she brought the biplane back on course.

When the wind gusted from behind, she smelled gasoline. She looked for the source and saw it dripping from the fuel tank. Harry’s bullet had punctured it.

Which would happen first? she wondered coolly. Would the gasoline all leak out and stop her motor before she could alight on Harry’s lawn? Or would sparks from the engine and chains ignite the gasoline? Fire was deadly on a flying machine. The varnish of nitrate fabric dope that stiffened and sealed the cotton canvas covering her wings was as flammable as flash powder.

The only field nearer was the meadow. But if she alighted there, Harry would kill her. She had no choice. She had to land the machine at the camp, if she had enough gasoline to reach it.

“Come on, Elsie. Take us home.”

The forest inched slowly beneath her. Updrafts buffeted her wings and rolled the airship. Unable to warp them to counteract, she tried to keep the machine on an even keel using her elevators and rudder.

At last she saw the lake beside Harry’s camp.

Just as she got close enough to see the main house and the dairy barns, her motor sputtered on the last fumes of gasoline. The propellers stopped turning. The pusher biplane went silent but for the wind whispering through the wire stays.

She had to volplane – to glide – all the way to the lawn.

But the propellers, which had been pushing her, were dragging in the air. They held her back, reducing her speed. In moments she would be gliding too slowly to stay aloft.

She reached behind her and jerked the cable that opened the engine’s compression valve so the pistons would move freely and allow the propellers to spin. The difference was immediate. The aeroplane felt lighter, more like a glider.

Now she could see the dairy pasture. Speckled with cows and crisscrossed with fences, it offered no room to come down safely. There was the house, an elaborate log mansion, and behind it the sloping lawn of mowed grass from which she had earlier taken to the air. But first she had to clear the house, and she was dropping fast. She threaded a path between the tall chimneys, skimmed the roof, and then coaxed the rudder to turn into the wind, taking great care not to slide into a spin.

Eight feet above the grass, she saw that she was moving too fast. Air squeezed between the wings and the ground had the effect of holding her up. The biplane was refusing to stop flying. Ahead loomed a wall of trees.

The gasoline that had soaked into the varnished canvas ignited in a sheet of orange flame.

Trailing fire, unable to slant her wings sharply to slow enough to touch her wheels to the grass, Josephine reached back and jerked the compression cable. Closing the valve locked the eight-foot propellers. They grabbed the air like two fists, and her wheels and skids banged hard on the grass.

The burning biplane slid for fifty yards. As it slowed, the fire spread, scattering flame. When she felt it singe the back of her helmet, Josephine jumped. She hit the ground and threw herself flat to let the machine roll past, then she sprang to her feet and ran for her life as flames engulfed it.

Harry’s butler came running. He was trailed by the gardener, the cook, and Harry’s bodyguards.

“Mrs. Frost! Are you all right?”

Josephine’s eyes locked on the pillar of flame and smoke. Marco’s beautiful machine was burning like a funeral pyre. Poor Marco. The steadiness that had gotten her through the ordeal was dissolving, and she felt her lips quiver. The fire looked like it was underwater. She realized that she was shaking and crying, and that tears were filling her eyes. She couldn’t tell if she was crying for Marco or herself.

“Mrs. Frost!” the butler repeated. “Are you all right?”

It was the closest by far she had ever come to getting killed in an aeroplane.

She tried to pull her handkerchief from her sleeve. She couldn’t get it out. She had to take her glove off. When she did, she saw her skin was dead white, as if her blood had gone into hiding. Everything was different. She now knew what it felt like to be afraid.

“Mrs. Frost?”

They were all staring at her. Like she had cheated death or was standing among them like a ghost.

“I’m O.K.”

“May I do anything to help, Mrs. Frost?”

Her brain was whirling. She had to do something. She pressed her handkerchief to her face. A thousand men and women had learned to fly since Wilbur Wright won the Michelin Cup in France, and until this moment Josephine Josephs Frost had never doubted that she could drive an aeroplane just as fast and as far as any of them. Now every time she climbed onto a flying machine she would have to be brave. Well, it still beat being stuck on the ground.

She mopped her cheeks and blew her nose.

“Yes,” she said. “Drive into town, please, and tell Constable Hodge that Mr. Frost just shot Mr. Celere.”

The butler gasped, “What?”

She glanced at him sharply. How surprised could he be that her violent husband had killed someone? Again.

“Are you quite sure of that, Mrs. Frost?”

“Am I quite sure?” she echoed. “Yes, I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

The butler’s dubious expression was a chilling reminder that it was Harry who paid his salary, Harry who paid for everything, and Mrs. Frost was now a woman alone with no one to count on but herself.

The bodyguards didn’t look surprised. Their long faces said, There goes our meal ticket. The butler, too, was already getting over it, asking as routinely as if she had just ordered a glass of iced tea, “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Frost?”

“Please do what I asked,” she said in a voice with a slight tremor as she stared at the fire. “Tell the constable my husband killed Mr. Celere.”

“Yes, madam,” he replied in a blank tone.

Josephine turned her back on the fire. Her hazel eyes were wont to shift toward green or gray. She did not have to look in a mirror to know that right now they reflected a colorless fear. She was alone and she was vulnerable. With Marco Celere dead and her husband an insane killer, she had no one to turn to. Then the thought of Preston Whiteway flowed into her mind.

Yes, that’s who would protect her.

“One more thing,” she said to the butler as he started to walk away. “Send a telegram to Mr. Preston Whiteway at the San Francisco Inquirer. Say that I will visit him next week.”

2

“Hoopla!”

ISAAC BELL, CHIEF INVESTIGATOR of the Van Dorn Detective Agency, thundered up San Francisco’s Market Street in a fire-engine red gasoline-powered Locomobile racer with its exhaust cutout wide open for maximum power. Bell was a tall man of thirty with a thick mustache that glowed as golden as his precisely groomed blond hair. He wore an immaculate white suit and a low-crowned white hat with a wide brim. His frame was whipcord lean.

As he drove, his boots, well-kept and freshly polished, rarely touched the brake, an infamously ineffective Locomobile accessory. His long hands and fingers moved nimbly between throttle and shifter. His eyes, ordinarily a compelling violet shade of blue, were dark with concentration. A no-nonsense expression and a determined set of his jaw were tempered by a grin of pure pleasure as he raced the auto at breakneck speed, overtaking trolleys, trucks, horse carts, motorcycles, and slow automobiles.

In the red-leather passenger seat to Bell’s left sat the boss, Joseph Van Dorn.

The burly, red-whiskered founder of the nationwide detective agency was a brave man feared across the continent as the scourge of criminals. But he turned pale as Bell aimed the big machine at the dwindling space between a coal wagon and a Buick motortruck stacked to the rails with tins of kerosene and naphtha.

“We’re actually on time,” Van Dorn remarked. “Even a little early.”

Isaac Bell did not appear to hear him.

With relief, Van Dorn saw their destination looming over its shorter neighbors: Preston Whiteway’s twelve-story San Francisco Inquirer building, headquarters of the flamboyant publisher’s newspaper empire.

“Will you look at that!” Van Dorn shouted over the roar of the motor.

An enormous yellow advertising banner draped the top floor proclaiming in yard-high letters that Whiteway’s newspapers were sponsoring the

WHITEWAY ATLANTIC-TO-PACIFIC CROSS-COUNTRY AIR RACE

The Whiteway Cup and $50,000

To be awarded to the

First Flier

To Cross America in Fifty Days

“It’s a magnificent challenge,” Bell shouted back without taking his eyes from the crowded street.

Isaac Bell was fascinated by flying machines. He had been following their rapid development avidly, with the object of buying a top flier himself. There had been scores of improved aerial inventions in the past two years, each producing faster and stronger aeroplanes: the Wright Flyer III, the June Bug, the bamboo-framed Silver Dart, the enormous French Voisins and Antoinettes powered by V-8 racing-boat engines, Santos Dumont’s petite Demoiselle, the cross – English Channel Blériot, the rugged Curtiss Pusher, the Wright Signal Corps machine, the Farman III, and the Celere wire-braced monoplane.

If anyone could actually navigate a flying machine all the way across the United States of America – a very big if-the Whiteway Cup would be won in equal parts by the nerve and skill of the airmen and by how ingeniously the inventors increased the power of their engines and improved systems of shaping their wings to make the airships turn more agilely and climb faster. The winner would have to average eighty miles a day, nearly two hours in the air, every day. Each day lost to wind, storm, fog, accidents, and repairs would increase dramatically those hours aloft.

“Whiteway’s newspapers claim that the cup is made of solid gold,” Van Dorn laughed. “Say,” he joked, “maybe that’s what he wants to see us about – afraid some crook will steal it.”

“Last year his papers claimed that Japan would sink the Great White Fleet,” Bell said drily. “Somehow they made it home safe to Hampton Roads. There’s Whiteway now!”

The fair-haired publisher was steering a yellow Rolls-Royce roadster toward the only parking space left in front of his building.

“Looks like Whiteway has it,” said Van Dorn.

Bell pressed hard on his accelerator. The big red Locomobile surged ahead of the yellow Rolls-Royce. Bell stomped the anemic brakes, shifted down, and swerved on smoking tires into the parking space.

“Hey!” Whiteway shook a fist. “That’s my space.” He was a big man, a former college football star running to fat. An arrogant cock to his head boasted that he was still handsome, deserved whatever he wanted, and was strong enough to insist on it.

Isaac Bell bounded from his auto to extend a powerful hand with a friendly smile.

“Oh, it’s you, Bell. That’s my space!”

“Hello, Preston, it’s been a while. When I told Marion we’d be calling on you, she asked me to send her regards.”

Whiteway’s scowl faded at the mention of Isaac Bell’s fiancée, Marion Morgan, a beautiful woman in the moving-picture line. Marion had worked with Whiteway, directing his Picture World scheme, which was enjoying great success exhibiting films of news events in vaudeville theaters and nickelodeons.

“Tell Marion that I’m counting on her to shoot great movies of my air race.”

“I’m sure she can’t wait. This is Joseph Van Dorn.”

The newspaper magnate and the founder of the nation’s premier detective agency sized each other up while shaking hands. Van Dorn pointed skyward. “We were just admiring your banner. Ought to be quite an affair.”

“That’s why I called for you. Come up to my office.”

A detail of uniformed doormen were saluting as if an admiral had arrived in a dreadnought. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two men ran to park the yellow Rolls-Royce.

Whiteway received more salutes in the lobby.

A gilded elevator cage carried them to the top floor, where a mob of editors and secretaries were gathered in the foyer with pencils and notepads at the ready. Whiteway barked orders, scattering some on urgent missions. Others raced after him, scribbling rapidly, as the publisher dictated the end of the afternoon edition’s editorial that he had started before lunch.

“‘The Inquirer decries the deplorable state of American aviation. Europeans have staked a claim in the sky while we molder on the earth, left behind in the dust of innovation. But the Inquirer never merely decries, the Inquirer acts! We invite every red-blooded American aviator and aviatrix to carry our banner skyward in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race to fly across America in fifty days!’ Print it!

“And now. .” He whipped a newspaper clipping from his coat and read aloud, “‘The brave pilot dipped his planes to salute the spectators before his horizontal rudder and spinning airscrew lofted the aeronaut’s heavier-than-air flying machine to the heavens.’ Who wrote this?”

“I did, sir.”

“You’re fired!”

Thugs from the circulation department escorted the unfortunate to the stairs. Whiteway crumpled the clipping in his plump fist and glowered at his terrified employees.

“The Inquirer speaks to the average man, not the technical man. Write these words down: In the pages of the Inquirer, ‘flying machines’ and ‘aeroplanes’ are ‘driven’ or ‘navigated’ or ‘flown’ by ‘drivers,’ ‘birdmen,’ ‘aviators,’ and ‘aviatrixes.’ Not ‘pilots,’ who dock the Lusitania, nor ‘aeronauts,’ who sound like Greeks. You and I may know that ‘planes’ are components of wings and that ‘horizontal rudders’ are elevators. The average man wants his wings to be wings, his rudders to turn, and his elevators to ascend. He wants his airscrews to be ‘propellers.’ He is well aware that if flying machines are not heavier than air, they are balloons. And soon he will want that back East and European affectation ‘aeroplane’ to be an ‘airplane.’ Get to work!”

Isaac Bell reckoned that Whiteway’s private office made Joseph Van Dorn’s mighty “throne room” in Washington, D.C., look modest.

The publisher sat behind his desk and announced, “Gentlemen, you are the first to know that I have decided to sponsor my own personal entry in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and the fifty-thousand-dollar prize.”

He paused dramatically.

“Her name – yes, you heard me right, gentlemen-her name is Josephine Josephs.”

Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn exchanged a glance that Whiteway misinterpreted as astonished rather than confirmation of a foregone conclusion.

“I know what you’re thinking, gentlemen: I’m either a brave man backing a girl or I’m a fool. Neither! I say. There is no reason why a girl can’t win the cross-country aerial race. It takes more nerve than brawn to drive a flying machine, and this little girl has nerve enough for a regiment.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Are you referring to Josephine Josephs Frost?”

“We will not be using her husband’s name,” Whiteway replied curtly. “The reason for this will shock you to the core.”

“Josephine Josephs Frost?” asked Van Dorn. “The young bride whose husband took potshots at her flying machine last fall in upper New York State?”

“Where did you hear that?” Whiteway bristled. “I kept it out of the papers.”

“In our business,” Van Dorn replied mildly, “we tend to hear before you do.”

Bell asked, “Why did you keep it out of the papers?”

“Because my publicists are booming Josephine to build interest in the race. They are promoting her with a new song that I commissioned entitled ‘Come, Josephine in My Flying Machine.’ They’ll plaster her picture on sheet music, Edison cylinders, piano rolls, magazines, and posters to keep people excited about the outcome.”

“I’d have thought they’d be excited anyway.”

“If you don’t lead the public, they get bored,” Whiteway replied scornfully. “In fact, the best thing that could happen to keep people excited about the race will be if half the male contestants smash to the ground before Chicago.”

Bell and Van Dorn exchanged another look, and Van Dorn said, disapprovingly, “We presume that you utter that statement in confidence.”

“A natural winnowing of the field will turn it into a contest that pits only the best airmen against plucky tomboy Josephine,” Whiteway explained without apology. “Newspaper readers root for the underdog. Come with me! You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Trailed by an ever-expanding entourage of editors, writers, lawyers, and managers, Preston Whiteway led the detectives down two floors to the art department, a lofty room lit by north windows and crammed with artists hunched over drawing boards, illustrating the day’s events.

Bell counted twenty men crowding in after the publisher, some with pencils and pens in hand, all with panic in their eyes. The artists ducked their heads and drew faster. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two ran to him, bearing mock-ups of sheet music covers.

“What have you got?”

They held up a sketch of a girl on a flying machine soaring over a field of cows. “‘The Flying Farm Girl.’”

“No!”

Abashed, they held up a second drawing. This depicted a girl in overalls with her hair stuffed under what looked to Bell like a taxi driver’s cap. “‘The Aerial Tomboy.’”

“No! God in Heaven, no. What do you men do down here for your salaries?”

“But Mr. Whiteway, you said readers like farm girls and tomboys.”

“I said, ‘She’s a girl!’ Newspaper readers like girls. Draw her prettier! Josephine is beautiful.”

Isaac Bell took pity on the artists, who looked ready to jump out the window, and interjected, “Why don’t you make her look like a fellow’s sweetheart?”

“I’ve got it!” yelled Whiteway. He spread his arms and stared bug-eyed at the ceiling, as if he could see through it all the way to the sun.

“‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air.’”

The artists’ eyes widened. They looked carefully at the writers and editors and managers, who looked carefully at Whiteway.

“What do you think of that?” Whiteway demanded.

Isaac Bell observed quietly to Van Dorn, “I’ve seen men more at ease in gun battles.”

Van Dorn said, “Rest assured the agency will bill Whiteway for your idea.”

A brave old senior editor not far from retirement spoke up at last: “Very good, sir. Very, very good.”

Whiteway beamed.

“ ‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air’!” cried the managing editor, and the others took up the chant.

“Draw that! Put her on a flying machine. Make her pretty – no, make her beautiful.”

Invisible smiles passed between the detectives. Sounded to Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn like Preston Whiteway had fallen for his personal entry.

Back in Whiteway’s private office, the publisher turned grave. “I imagine you can guess what I want from you.”

“We can,” Joseph Van Dorn answered. “But perhaps it would be better to hear it in your own words.”

“Before we start,” Bell interrupted, turning to the only member of the entourage who had followed them back into Whiteway’s office and taken a faraway chair in the corner, “may I ask who you are, sir?”

He was dressed in a brown suit and vest, celluloid stand-up collar, and bow tie. His hair was brilliantined to his skull like a shiny helmet. He blinked at Bell’s question. Whiteway answered for him.

“Weiner from Accounting. I had him deputized by the American Aeronautical Society, which will officially sanction the race, to preside as Chief Rule Keeper. You’ll be seeing a lot him. Weiner will keep a record of every contestant’s time and settle disputes. His word is final. Even I can’t overrule him.”

“And he enjoys your confidence in this meeting?”

“I pay his salary and own the property he rents to house his family.”

“Then we will speak openly,” said Van Dorn. “Welcome, Mr. Weiner. We are about to hear why Mr. Whiteway wants to engage my detective agency.”

“Protection,” said Whiteway. “I want Josephine protected from her husband. Before Harry Frost shot at her, he murdered Marco Celere, the inventor who built her aeroplanes, in an insane fit of jealous rage. The vicious lunatic is on the run, and I fear that he is stalking her – the only witness to his crime.”

“There are rumors of murder,” said Isaac Bell. “But, in fact, no one has seen Marco Celere dead, and the district attorney has filed no charges as there is no body.”

“Find it!” Whiteway shot back. “Charges are pending. Josephine witnessed Frost shooting Celere. Why do you think Frost ran? Van Dorn, I want your agency to investigate the disappearance of Marco Celere and build a murder case that will require that hick-town prosecutor to get Harry Frost locked up forever. Or hanged. Do what you must, and damn the expense! Anything to protect the girl from that raving lunatic.”

“Would that Frost were only a raving lunatic,” said Joseph Van Dorn.

“What do you mean?”

“Harry Frost is the most dangerous criminal not currently behind bars that I know of.”

“No,” Whiteway protested. “Harry Frost was a first-class businessman before he lost his mind.”

ISAAC BELL DIRECTED A COLD GLARE at the newspaper publisher. “Perhaps you are not aware how Mr. Frost got started in business.”

“I am aware of his success. Frost was the top newsstand distributor in the nation when I took command of my father’s papers. When he retired – at the age of thirty-five, I might add – he controlled every newsstand in every railroad station in the country. However cruel he’s been to poor Josephine, Frost commanded great success in forging his continental chain. Frankly, as one businessman to another, I would admire him, if he weren’t trying to kill his wife.”

“I’d sooner admire a rabid wolf,” Isaac Bell countered grimly. “Harry Frost is a brutal mastermind. He ‘forged his continental chain,’ as you put it, by slaughtering every rival in his path.”

“I still say he was a fine businessman before he became a lunatic,” Whiteway objected. “Instead of living on the interest of his wealth when he retired, he invested it in steel, railroads, and Postum Cereals. He possesses a fortune that would do J. P. Morgan proud.”

Joseph Van Dorn’s cheeks flamed with such fury that they were suddenly redder than his whiskers. He retorted sharply, the normally faint Irish lilt in his voice thickening into a brogue as heavy as a Dublin ferry captain’s.

“J. P. Morgan has been accused of many things, sir, but even if they were all true, he would not be proud of such a fortune. Harry Frost possesses the managemental skills of General Grant, the strength of a grizzly, and the scruples of Satan.”

Isaac Bell put it plainly: “We know how Frost operates. The Van Dorn Detective Agency tangled with him ten years ago.”

Whiteway snickered. “Isaac, ten years ago you were in prep school.”

“Not so,” Van Dorn interrupted. “Isaac had just signed on as an apprentice and the god-awful truth is Harry Frost got the best of both of us. When the dust had settled, he controlled every railroad newsstand within five hundred miles of Chicago, and those of our clients who were not bankrupted were dead. Having established that blood-soaked foundation right under our noses, he expanded east and west. He’s as slippery as they come. We could never build a case that would stand up in court.”

Whiteway saw an opportunity to negotiate a low fee for the Van Dorn services.

“Have I put too much faith in the famous Van Dorn motto, ‘We Never Give Up. Never’? Ought I shop around for better detectives?”

Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn stood up and put on their hats.

“Good day, sir,” said Van Dorn. “As your cross-country race will span the continent, I recommend you ‘shop around’ for an investigative outfit with a national reach equal to mine.”

“Hold on! Hold on! Don’t go off half-cocked. I was merely-”

“We admitted the drubbing Frost dealt us in order to warn you not to underestimate him. Harry Frost is mad as a hatter and violent as a longhorn, but, unlike most madmen, he is coldly efficient.”

Bell said, “Faced with the choice between the asylum or the hangman, Frost has nothing to lose, which makes him even more lethal. Don’t think for a moment he’ll be content harming Josephine. Now that you’ve made her your champion in the race, he will attack your entire enterprise.”

“One man? What can one man do? Particularly a man on the run.”

“Frost organized gangs of outlaws in every city in the country to build his empire – thieves, arsonists, strikebreaker thugs, and murderers.”

“I have no objection to strikebreakers,” Whiteway said staunchly. “Someone’s got to keep labor in line.”

“You’ll object to them beating up your fliers’ mechanicians,” Isaac Bell shot back coldly. “The infields of racetracks and fairgrounds where your racers will land their machines at night are a favored habitat of gamblers. The gamblers will make book on your race. Gambling draws criminals. Frost knows where to find them, and they’ll be glad to see him.”

“Which is why,” said Van Dorn, “you must prepare to battle Frost at every stop on the route.”

“This sounds expensive,” Whiteway said. “Appallingly expensive.”

Bell and Van Dorn still had their hats on. Bell reached for the door.

“Wait – How many men will it take to cover the entire route?”

Isaac Bell said, “I traced it on my way west this past week. It’s fully four thousand miles.”

“How could you trace my route?” Whiteway demanded. “I haven’t published it yet.”

The detectives exchanged another invisible smile. No Van Dorn worth his salt arrived at a meeting ignorant of a potential client’s needs. That went double for the founder of the agency and his chief investigator.

Bell said, “There is a necessary logic to your route: Flying machines can’t cross high mountains like the Appalachians and the Rockies, the competitors’ support trains will have to follow the railroad lines, and your newspapers will want the greatest number of spectators to take notice. Consequently, I rode the Twentieth Century Limited from New York City to Chicago on the Water Level Route up the Hudson River and along the Erie Canal and Lake Erie. At Chicago I transferred to the Golden State Limited through Kansas City, south to Texas, and crossed the Rockies at the lowest point in the Continental Divide through the New Mexico and Arizona territories and across California to Los Angeles and up the Central Valley to San Francisco.”

Bell had traveled on the excess-fare express trains under the guise of an insurance executive. Local Van Dorns, alerted by telegraph, had reported at the station stops about the fairgrounds and racetracks where the fliers were likely to land each night. Their dossiers on gamblers, criminals, informants, and law officers had made compelling reading, and by the time his train eased alongside the ferry on Oakland Mole, Isaac Bell’s encyclopedic knowledge of American crime had been brought thoroughly up to date.

Weiner spoke suddenly from his chair in the corner.

“The rules stipulate that to conclude the final leg of the race the winner must first fly a circle completely around this building – the San Francisco Inquirer Building – before he alights on the Army Signal Corps’s grounds at the Presidio.”

“Protecting such an ambitious route will be an enormous job,” Van Dorn said with a stern smile. “As I advised earlier, you need a detective agency with field offices that span the nation.”

Isaac Bell removed his hat and spoke earnestly. “We believe that your cross-country race is important, Preston. The United States lags far behind France and Italy in feats of distance flying.”

Whiteway agreed. “Excitable foreigners like the French and Italians have a flair for flying.”

“Phlegmatic Germans and Britons are making a go of it, too,” Bell observed drily.

“With war brewing in Europe,” Van Dorn chimed in, “their armies offer enormous prizes for feats of aviation to be employed on the battlefield.”

Whiteway intoned solemnly, “A terrible gulf yawns between warlike kings and autocrats and us overly peaceable Americans.”

“All the more reason,” said Isaac Bell, “for ‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air’ to vault our nation to a new level above the heroic exploits of the Wright brothers and aerial daredevils circling crowds of spectators on sunny days. And as Josephine advances the United States, she will also advance the brand-new field of aviation.”

Bell’s words pleased Whiteway, and Van Dorn looked at his chief investigator admiringly for deftly flattering a potential client. But Isaac Bell meant what he said. To make aeroplanes a fast, reliable mode of modern transportation, their drivers had to tackle wind and weather across the vast and lonely American landscape.

“Harry Frost must not be allowed to derail this great race.”

“The future of air flight is at stake. And, of course, the life of your young aviatrix.”

“All right!” said Whiteway. “Blanket the nation from coast to coast. And to hell with what it costs.”

Van Dorn offered his hand to shake on the deal. “We will get on it straightaway.”

“There is one other thing,” Whiteway said.

“Yes?”

“The squad of detectives who protect Josephine?”

“Handpicked, I assure you.”

“They must all be married men.”

“Of course,” said Van Dorn. “That goes without saying.”

BACK IN BELL’S AUTO, roaring down Market Street, a beaming Van Dorn chuckled, “Married detectives?”

“Sounds like Josephine traded a jealous husband for a jealous sponsor.”

Isaac Bell left unspoken the thought that the supposedly naive farm girl had made a swift transition from a rich husband to pay for her airships to a rich newspaper publisher to pay for her airships. Clearly, a single-minded woman who got what she wanted. He looked forward to meeting her.

Van Dorn said, “I had a strong impression that Whiteway would prefer Frost hanged to being locked up.”

“You will recall that Whiteway’s mother – a forceful woman – writes articles on the immorality of divorce that Whiteway is obliged to publish in his Sunday supplements. If Preston desires Josephine’s hand in marriage, he will definitely prefer hanged in order to receive his mother’s blessing, and his inheritance.”

“I would love to make Josephine a widow,” growled Van Dorn. “It’s the least that Harry Frost deserves. Only, first we’ve got to catch him.”

Isaac Bell said, “May I recommend you put Archie Abbott in charge of protecting Josephine? There’s no more happily married detective in America.”

“He’d be a fool not to be,” Van Dorn replied. “His wife is not only remarkably beautiful but very wealthy. I often wonder why he bothers to keep working for me.”

“Archie’s a first-class detective. Why would he stop doing what he excels at?”

“All right, I’ll give your friend Archie the protective squad.”

Bell said, “I presume you will assign detectives to Josephine, not PS boys.”

Van Dorn Protective Services was a highly profitable offshoot of the business that supplied top-notch hotel house detectives, bodyguards, valuables escorts, and night watchmen. But few PS boys possessed the spirit, vigor, enterprise, skill, and shrewdness to rise to the rank of full-fledged detective.

“I will assign as many full detectives as I can,” the boss replied. “But I do not have an army of detectives for this job – not while I’m sending so many of my best men abroad to set up our overseas offices.”

Bell said, “If you can spare only a limited corps to protect Josephine, may I recommend that you comb the agency for detectives who have worked as mechanicians?”

“Excellent! Disguised as mechanicians, a small squad can stick close by, working on her flying machine-”

“And set me loose on Frost.”

Van Dorn heard the harsh note in Bell’s voice. He shot an inquiring glance at him. Seen in profile, as he maneuvered the big auto through heavy traffic, his chief investigator’s hawk nose and set jaw looked to be chiseled from steel.

“Can you keep a clear head?”

“Of course.”

“He bested you last time, Isaac.”

Bell returned a wintery smile. “He bested a lot of detectives older than I was back then. Including you, Joe.”

“Promise to keep that in mind, and you can have the job.”

Bell let go of the shifter and reached across the Locomobile’s gasoline tank to envelop the boss’s big hand in his. “You have my word.”

3

“MAULED BY A BEAR,” said North River town constable John Hodge, as Isaac Bell’s eyes roamed inquiringly over his scarred face, withered arm, and wooden leg. “Used to be a guide, taking the sports hunting and fishing. When the bear got done, I was only fit for police work.”

“How did the bear make out?” asked Bell.

The constable grinned.

“Winter nights, I sleep warm as toast under his skin. Civil of you to ask – most people won’t even look me in the face. Welcome to the North Country, Mr. Bell. What can I do for you?”

“Why do you suppose they never recovered Marco Celere’s body?”

“Same reason we never find any body that falls in that gorge. It’s a long way down to the bottom, the river’s swift and deep, and there’s plenty of hungry animals, from wolverine to pike. They fall in the North, they’re gone, mister.”

“Were you surprised when you heard that Harry Frost shot Celere?”

“I was.”

“Why? I understand Frost was known to be a violent man. Long before he was sent up for murdering his chauffeur.”

“Early the same morning that Mrs. Frost’s butler reported the shooting, Mr. Frost had already filed a complaint that his rifle had been stolen.”

“Do you think he owned another?”

“He said that one was his favorite.”

“Do you think he reported it falsely, to throw off suspicion?”

“Don’t know.”

“Was the rifle ever found?”

“Boys playing on the railroad tracks found it.”

“When?”

“That same afternoon.”

“Do you suppose Frost might have dropped it if he hopped a freight train to escape?”

“I never heard about rich sports riding the rails like hobos.”

“Harry Frost wasn’t always rich,” said Bell. “He escaped from a Kansas City orphanage when he was eight years old and rode the rails to Philadelphia. He could hop a freight in his sleep.”

“Plenty of trains come through” was all the constable would concede.

Bell changed the subject. “What sort of man was Marco Celere?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did you never see Celere? I understand he arrived last summer.”

“Stuck to himself, up there at the Frost camp.”

Bell looked out the window at North River’s muddy Main Street. It was a warm spring day, but the blackflies were biting, so few people stirred out of doors. It was also what the stationmaster had called “Mud Week,” when the long winter freeze finally melted, leaving the ground knee-deep in mud. The only facts that the closemouthed constable had volunteered concerned being mauled by the bear. Now Hodge waited in silence, and Bell suspected that if he did not ask another question, the taciturn backwoodsman would not speak another word.

“Other than Josephine Frost’s report,” Bell asked, “what proof of the shooting do you have?”

“Celere disappeared. So did Mr. Frost.”

“But no direct evidence?”

Constable Hodge pulled open a drawer, reached inside, and spread five spent brass cartridge shells on the desk. “Found these at the edge of the meadow just where Mrs. Frost said she saw him shooting.”

“May I?”

“Go right ahead.”

Bell picked one up in his handkerchief and examined it. “.45-70.”

“That’s what his Marlin shoots.”

“Why didn’t you give these to the district attorney?”

“He didn’t ask.”

“Did it occur to you to mention them?” Bell asked patiently.

“Figured he had his case with Mrs. Frost being the witness.”

“Is there anyone who could show me where the shooting occurred?”

To Bell’s surprise, Hodge sprang from his chair. He circled his desk, wooden leg clumping the floor. “I’ll take you. We better stop at the general store for a bunch of stogies. Shoo away the blackflies.”

Puffing clouds of cigar smoke beneath their hat brims, the North River constable and the tall detective drove up the mountain in Hodge’s Model A Ford. When they ran out of road, Hodge attached a circle of wood to his peg so he didn’t sink into the mud, and they continued on foot. They climbed deer trails for an hour until the thick stands of fir trees and birch opened onto a wide meadow of matted winter-browned grass.

“By this here tree is where I found the shell casings. Clear shot across to the lip of the gorge where Mrs. Frost saw Celere fall off.”

Bell nodded. The cliff was a hundred and fifty yards across the meadow from the trees. An easy shot with a Marlin, even without a telescopic sight.

“What do you suppose Celere was doing out on the rim?”

“Scouting. The butler told me they went out for bear.”

“So to go ahead like that, Celere must have trusted Frost?”

“Folks said Mr. Frost was buying airplanes for his wife. I guess he’d trust a good customer.”

“Did you find Celere’s rifle?” Bell asked.

“Nope.”

“What do you suppose happened to it?”

“Bottom of the river.”

“And the same for his field glasses?”

“If he had ’em.”

They walked out to the edge of the gorge. Isaac Bell walked along it, aware that he was not likely to see any signs of an event that occurred before winter snows had fallen and melted. At a point near a single tree that stood lonely sentinel with its roots clinging to the rim, he noticed a narrow shelf immediately below. It thrust out like a second cliff, six feet down and barely four feet wide. A falling body would have to clear it to plummet to the river. Gripping the roots where erosion had exposed them, he lowered himself to it and looked around. No rusty rifle. No field glasses. He peered over the side. It was a long way down to the glint of water at the bottom.

He hauled himself back up to the meadow. As he stood, resting his hand on the tree for balance, he felt a hole in the bark. He looked more closely. “Constable Hodge? May I borrow your hunting knife?”

Hodge unsheathed a strong blade that had been fashioned by honing a steel file. “Whatcha got there?”

“A bullet lodged in the tree, I suspect.” Bell used Hodge’s knife to gouge the bark around the hole. He carved an opening large enough to dislodge a soft lead wad with his fingers in an effort not to scratch it with the blade.

“Where the heck did that come from?”

“Maybe Harry Frost’s rifle.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You’ll never know.”

“Maybe I will,” said Bell, recalling a court case argued a few years earlier by Oliver Wendell Holmes where a bullet was matched to the gun that fired it. “Do you happen to have that rifle the boys found on the tracks?”

“In my office. I’d have given it back to Mrs. Frost, but she left. Mr. Frost of course was long gone. Anyone left on the property out there is no one I would give a fine rifle to.”

They returned to North River. Hodge helped Bell find a bale of cotton wool packing material at the railroad depot. They set it up at the empty end of the freight yard. Bell stuck his calling card in the center of the bale and paced off one hundred and fifty yards. Then he loaded two.45-70 shells into Frost’s Marlin, found the calling card like a bull’s-eye in the telescopic sight, and squeezed off a round.

The bullet missed the card, missed the cotton wool bale, and twanged off an iron signal post above it.

Constable Hodge looked pityingly at Isaac Bell. “I naturally assumed that a Van Dorn private detective would be conversant with firearms. Would you like me to shoot it for you?”

“The scope is off-kilter.”

“That’ll happen,” Constable Hodge said, dubiously. “Sometimes.”

“It could have been damaged when it was dropped on the tracks.”

Bell sighted in on the mark the bullet had pocked in the iron post and calculated the distance down. He levered out the spent shell, which loaded a fresh cartridge into the chamber, and squeezed the trigger. His calling card flew from the bale.

“Now you’re getting the hang of it,” Hodge said. “Keep it up you could be a pretty good shot, young feller.”

Bell dug the bullet out of the bale and wrapped it in a handkerchief along with the slug he had pulled from tree. He walked to the post office and mailed them to the Van Dorn laboratory in Chicago, requesting examination under a microscope to determine whether the bullet he had test-fired revealed rifling marks that resembled those on the bullet in the tree.

“Is anyone living out at Frost’s camp?” he asked Hodge.

“No one you’d want to meet. About the only thing still going is the creamery. They send milk into town to sell. Cook, maids, butler, gardeners, and gatekeeper, they all left when Mrs. Frost did.”

Bell rented a Ford auto at the livery stable, and followed directions for several miles to the Frost camp. The first he saw of it was the gatehouse, an elaborate structure built of boulders and a grillwork of massive logs under its steep roof that gave the lie to the term “camp,” an Adirondack affectation similar to dubbing a Newport mansion a “cottage.” The gatekeeper’s living quarters, a large, handsome bungalow, was attached to it. No one came when he called and pounded on the door.

He drove under the stone arch and onto a broad carriage drive. The drive was surfaced with crushed slate and graded in a manner far superior to the muddy, potholed public road from town. Piercing mile after mile of forest, the level roadbed gouged through hillsides and was carried across countless streams and brooks on hand-hewn stone culverts and bridges ornamented in the Arts and Crafts style.

Bell drove through five miles of Harry Frost’s land before he finally saw the lake. Across the water stood a sprawling house of timbers, shingles, and stone. Large cottages and outbuildings surrounded the house, and in the distance were the barns and silos of the creamery. As the smooth slate drive skirted the lake and drew closer to the compound, he saw numerous outbuildings: blacksmith shop, smokehouse, laundry, and, at the far end of a broad lawn, an aeroplane hangar – a large, wide shed recognizable by the front elevators of a biplane poking out the gable end.

Isaac Bell stopped the Ford under the porte-cochere of the main house, accelerated the motor slightly, and opened the coil switch. The place seemed deserted. With the motor off, the only sounds he could hear were the faint ticking of hot metal and the soft sigh of a cool breeze blowing off the lake.

He knocked on the front door. No one answered. He tried the door. It was unlocked, a massive affair.

“Hello!” Bell called loudly. “Is anyone home?”

No one answered.

He stepped inside. The foyer opened into a great hall, an immense chamber brightly lighted by tall windows. Twenty-foot-tall stone fireplaces dominated each end. Rustic chairs and couches clustered on woven carpets. Gloomy European oil paintings were hung in gold frames that glittered. Timbers soared high overhead. The walls and ceiling were papered with birch bark.

The tall detective stalked from opulent room to opulent room.

Anger began to heat his breast. Scion of a Boston banking family, and bequeathed a personal fortune by his grandfather, Isaac Bell was accustomed to the accoutrements of great wealth and no stranger to privilege. But this so-called camp had been paid for with riches founded on the suffering of innocent men, women, and children. Harry Frost had committed so many crimes forging his empire that it would be difficult to single one out were it not for a Chicago depot bombing he had engineered to destroy a rival distributor. Frost’s dynamite had killed three newsboys waiting for their papers. The oldest had been twelve.

Bell’s boot heels echoed though an empty corridor and down a stairway.

At the foot of the stairs hulked a heavy oak door, studded with nailheads.

Bell jimmied the lock and discovered a vast wine cellar carved from the living stone. He strode among the racks, noting excellent vintages from the last twenty years, a large number of the fine ’69 and ’71 clarets and some astonishingly rare bottles of 1848 Lafite, laid down nearly twenty years before Baron Rothschild bought the Médoc estate. Frost had even purchased a long row of Château d’Yquem bottles of the 1811 Comet Vintage. Although, based on the low quality of the art hanging upstairs, Bell suspected a crooked wine merchant’s variant on fake Academy paintings.

Upon leaving the wine cellar, he stopped suddenly, arrested by the sight of a wedding photograph on a center table. Harry Frost, dressed up in top hat and morning coat, glowered truculently at the camera. Expensive tailoring could not hide his bulk, and the top hat made him appear even wider. Bell studied the photograph closely. Frost, he realized, was not the fat man a first glance might suggest. There was something lithe and long-legged about his stance, a man poised to spring. Violent as a longhorn, Joe Van Dorn had characterized him. Quick as one, too, Bell suspected. And as strong.

Josephine stood like a child beside him, her youthful face expressing bravery, Bell thought, and something more – a sense of adventure as if she were embarking into the unknown and hoping for the best.

Arrayed stiffly behind the couple was a family of what looked like farm folk dressed for church. Bell recognized the stone fireplace behind them. They had been married here at the camp in this vast, echoing room. A strong resemblance in all the faces, but Frost’s told Bell that no one but Josephine’s own family had attended.

He went outside. He circled the house and inspected the outbuildings. A carriage house had been converted to a firing range, with an arsenal of pistols and rifles locked in a glass case. Similar cases held collections of swords, cutlasses, flick-knives, and daggers.

The garage contained expensive automobiles – a Packard limousine, a Palmer-Singer Skimabout, a Lancia Torpedo – and several motorcycles. The stable of vehicles fit the picture forming in Bell’s mind of Frost as a restless recluse. He lived like a king but also like an outlaw. The camp was as much a hideout as it was an estate, and Frost, like all successful criminals, was prepared for a quick getaway. It seemed as if Harry Frost knew that, despite his wealth and power, it was only a matter of time before he would commit an atrocity that would make him a fugitive.

Bell looked into the blacksmith shop. The forge was cold. In the smithy’s scrap heap he saw horseshoes that had been twisted out of shape. Harry Frost’s Chicago calling card, Bell recalled, bent with Frost’s bare hands to demonstrate his almost inhuman strength, then thrown by his thugs through the bedroom windows of his rivals. It was an article of faith among the drunks in the West Side saloons that Frost had killed a Clydesdale with his fist.

Hanging above the twisted shoes, grimy with smoke, was a framed award that Frost had received for contributing money to a civic group. Bell turned on his heel and walked into the sun, whispering the newsboys’ names: Wally Laughlin, Bobby Kerouac, Joey Lansdowne. It had been an elaborate funeral, their fellows maintaining the newsboy tradition of hiring hearses and mourners and paying clerks to write obituaries and letters of condolence. Wally Laughlin, Bobby Kerouac, Joey Lansdowne, barely out of childhood, priests promising their mothers they’d find a better place in Heaven.

Bell entered the boathouse at the edge of the lake. Inside, he found flatboats and canoes and a sailboat with its mast shipped. From the boathouse he walked through tall grass to the aeroplane hangar. It contained enough parts to assemble several flying machines. But the machine he had seen through the open end was missing its engine and propellers.

He heard voices in the direction of the smokehouse.

Bell walked quietly toward them, keeping the squat windowless stone structure between him and whoever was talking on the other side. He stopped beside it. A voice was droning on and on. It sounded like a middle-aged or older man, talking some trapped listener’s ear off. Bell’s own ear was struck by the accent. The speaker spoke the flat a’s heard in the Adirondack region. But this was no local Upstate New Yorker, not with the unmistakable d’s for th sounds and snaky s’s of Chicago.

The subject of his monologue tagged him as a denizen of the notorious Levee District, where crime and vice were daily fare.

4

“YOU WANT TO MAKE A PILE MONEY, you get yourself a bordello – What’s that? No, no, no. Not here! Who’s your customers here? Cows? You go to Chicago! You go over dere by the West Side. You purchase a house for six thousand. You bring a carpenter by to build a buncha walls for a couple hundred bucks. You get ten girls. Twenty visits a night. Dollar a visit – you don’t want no cheap fifty-cent house – and you let the girls keep half. You pay the house off in two months. From then on, you’re making three thousand a month. Profit! ”

“I gotta go do my chores,” said a younger, slower voice.

Bell removed his broad-brimmed hat to venture a quick glance around the corner. The middle-aged talker was sitting on a barrel with his back to him. He had a bottle of beer in his hand and was wearing a city man’s derby, shirtsleeves, and vest. The younger was a farm boy in a straw hat. He was clutching a bucket and a rake.

“And don’t forget your profits selling booze to the visitors. And the girls. The girls always blow their easy money. They want morphine, cocaine, wine, you take your cut. Salesman comes by to sell’em dresses, you take your cut.”

“I gotta go, Mr. Spillane.”

The farmhand shuffled out of sight in the direction of the creamery.

When Bell rounded the corner of the smokehouse, and the man on the barrel whirled to face him, he instantly recognized the grizzled fifty-year-old from the wanted posters.

“Sammy Spillane.”

Spillane stared long and hard, trying to place him. It had been ten years. He pointed at Bell, shaking his finger, nodding his head. “I know you.”

“What are you doing here, Sammy? Was Harry Frost running an old folks’ home for retired bruisers?”

“You’re a goddamned Van Dorn, that’s who you are.”

“How did you get out of Joliet?” Sammy’s pale skin told him he’d been locked up until recently.

“Time off for good behavior. Time to paste your nose into that pretty face.”

“You’re getting a little long in the tooth to mix it up, aren’t you, Sammy?”

“I am,” Sammy conceded. “But me old gal Sadie blessed me with two fine sons. Come out here, boys!” he called loudly. “Say hello to a genuine Van Dorn detective, who forgot to bring his pals with ’im.”

Two younger and bigger versions of Sammy Spillane stepped into the sunlight, yawning and rubbing sleep from their eyes. At the sight of Isaac Bell they darted back inside and returned with pick handles, slapping the heavy bulging ends menacingly in their palms. Bell did not doubt that they had learned their trade as strikebreakers intimidating union marchers. Their father, meanwhile, had drawn a Smith amp; Wesson revolver, which he pointed at Bell.

“What do you think of my boys, detective?” Spillane chortled. “Chips off the old block?”

“I’d have recognized them anywhere,” said Isaac Bell, looking the big young men up and down. “The resemblance is strongest in the squinty pig eyes. Though I do see a bit of their mother in those sloping foreheads. Say, Sammy, did you ever get around to marrying Sadie?”

The insult provoked them to charge simultaneously.

They came at the tall detective from both sides. They raised the pick handles expertly, tucking their elbows close to their torsos so they didn’t expose themselves and trusting in wrist action to swing the thick hickory shafts with sufficient power to smash bone.

Their attack momentarily blocked Sammy’s field of fire.

Bell kept it blocked by slewing sideways. When Sammy Spillane could see him again, Isaac Bell’s white hat was falling to the grass and the two-shot.44 derringer the detective had drawn from inside the crown was aimed squarely at his face. Sammy swung his revolver toward Bell. Bell fired first, and the Chicago gangster dropped his gun and fell off the barrel.

His sons halted their rush, surprised by the crack of gunfire and the sight of their father curled up on the ground, clutching his right arm and moaning in pain.

“Boys,” Bell told them, “your old man has decided to sit this one out. Why don’t you drop the lumber before you get hurt?”

They separated, flaring to either side. They stood twelve feet apart, each only six feet from Bell, an easy reach with the pick handles.

“You got one shot left, Mr. Detective,” said the bigger of the two. “What are you going do with it?”

Bell scooped his hat off the ground, clapped it on his head, and aimed at a spot between them. “I was fixing to shoot your brother in the knee, figuring he could use that pick handle as a cane for the rest of his life. Now I’m reassessing the situation. Wondering if you’re the one.” The gun barrel yawned from one to the other, then settled between them, rock steady.

“You shoot him, you’ve gotta deal with me,” the smaller warned.

“Same here,” said the bigger, adding with a harsh laugh, “Mexican standoff. ’Cept you’re short a Mexican – Daddy, you all right?”

“No, dammit,” Sammy groaned. “I’m shot in the arm. Kill him before he blows your fool head off! Get him, both of you. Stick and slug! Now!”

Sammy Spillane’s sons charged.

Bell dropped the big one with his last bullet and shifted abruptly to let his brother’s pick handle whiz an inch from his face. Young Spillane’s momentum threw him off balance, and Bell raked the back of his neck with the derringer as he tumbled past.

He sensed movement behind him.

Too late. Sammy Spillane had retrieved the pick handle dropped by the son Bell had shot. Still on the ground, he swung it hard with his unwounded arm.

The hardwood shaft slammed into the back of Bell’s knee. It hardly hurt at all, but his leg buckled as if his tendons had turned to macaroni. He went down backwards, falling so hard that it knocked the wind out of his lungs.

For what felt like an eternity, Isaac Bell could neither see, breathe, nor move. A shadow enveloped him. He blinked his eyes, trying to see. When he could, he saw Spillane’s smaller son was standing astride him, lifting his pick handle over his head with both hands. Bell could see the thick bulge of wood blot out a chunk of the sky. He saw the man’s entire body tighten to put every ounce of his strength into the downward blow.

Bell knew that his only hope was to draw his automatic from the shoulder holster under his coat, but he still couldn’t move. The pick handle was about to descend on his skull.

Suddenly fueled by a rush of adrenaline, Bell found the strength to reach into his coat. Realizing he could move again, he immediately changed tactics, and instead of drawing his pistol, he kicked up between the man’s legs. He connected solidly with the hard toe of his boot.

Young Spillane froze, rigid as a statue. He stood with his arms locked high in the air. The pick handle began slipping from his paralyzed fingers. Before it hit the ground, an inch from Bell’s head, he tumbled backwards, screaming.

Isaac Bell stood up, brushed off his suit, and stepped on Sammy’s hand when he reached for his fallen Smith amp; Wesson.

“Behave yourself. It’s over.”

He checked that the brother he had shot was not bleeding from an artery and would survive. The man he had kicked caught his breath in deep gasps. He glowered at his father and brother on the ground beside him and up at the tall detective standing over them. Sucking air into his lungs, he groaned, “You got lucky.”

Isaac Bell opened his coat to reveal the Browning pistol in his shoulder holster. “No, sonny, you got lucky.”

“You had another gun? Why didn’t you use it?”

“Mr. Van Dorn’s a skinflint.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The agency has strict rules about wasting lead on stumblebum skunks. We also make a practice of leaving at least one skunk conscious to answer our questions. Where’s Harry Frost?”

“Why the hell would I tell you?”

“Because if you tell me, I won’t turn you in. But if you don’t tell me, your daddy is going back to Joliet for assaulting me with a firearm, and you two are going down to Elmira for assaulting me with pick handles. And I’ll bet those New York cons doing their bit don’t like Chicago fellows.”

“The boys don’t know where Harry is,” Sammy Spillane groaned.

“But you do.”

“Harry went on the lam. Why would he tell me where he’s running?”

“He would tell you,” Bell answered with elaborate patience, “so that you would know where to go to help him, Sammy, with money, weapons, and your crook colleagues. Where is he?”

“Harry Frost don’t need no money from me. And he don’t need no ‘crook colleagues,’ neither.”

“A man can’t run without help.”

“You don’t get it, Mr. Detective. Harry has dough stashed in every bank in the country. You track him in New York, he’ll get dough in Ohio. You follow him to Ohio, he’ll be shaking hands with a bank manager in California.”

Bell watched the wounded gangster through narrowed eyes. Spillane was describing a fugitive who thoroughly understood how big and fragmented America was, the kind of modern criminal that even a continental outfit like the Van Dorn Detective Agency found difficult to track across state lines and through myriad jurisdictions. He made a mental note to have the Van Dorn field offices circulate wanted posters to every bank manager in their territory. Admittedly a long shot, as banks numbered in the tens of thousands.

“I suppose he has pals everywhere, too?”

“Not ‘pals’ you’d call friends. But guys he helped so they’d help him back. How do you think I got here after Joliet? Harry looked out for people who could help when he needed it. Always. From the first newsie I beat – from the first time I worked in his sales department – Harry Frost was always there for me.”

“If he knows you’ll help him, he must have told you where he was headed. Where is he?”

“Daddy don’t know, mister,” chorused Sammy’s sons.

“Mr. Frost was scared they’d throw him back in the bughouse.”

“He wouldn’t tell nobody.”

Isaac Bell saw that this was going nowhere. “How did Frost make his getaway?”

“Hopped a freight.”

The railroad tracks through the village of North River ran north and south. North to Canada. South to Saratoga and Albany, and from there Boston, Chicago, or New York Any direction he chose. “Northbound freight?” Bell asked. “Or southbound?”

“North.”

South, thought Bell. And with Whiteway’s publicists “booming” Josephine’s participation in the race, locating the aviatrix would be as simple as buying a newspaper.

“I have one more question,” said Isaac Bell. “If you lie again, I’ll put all three of you back in prison. Where is Marco Celere?”

Sammy Spillane and his sons exchanged baffled glances.

“The Italian? What do you mean, where?”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell do you think Harry’s running from?”

BELL GOT BUSY ON THE QUESTIONS he had to answer to capture Harry Frost before he hurt Josephine. Waiting for the train to Albany, he wired Grady Forrer, Van Dorn’s research man in New York, for a report on what Harry Frost had been up to since he retired at the young age of thirty-five and asked him to scour the newspapers for a wedding announcement that might shed light on how Frost had met and married Josephine.

As his train was approaching, he fired off a telegram to Archie Abbott at Belmont Park, where the competitors were gathering in the mile-and-a-half racetrack’s infield, instructing him to ask Josephine when and how she first met Marco Celere.

Archie’s reply was waiting at the Albany station.

Josephine met Celere last year in San Francisco, when she and her husband went to California for an aviation meet. Marco Celere had recently immigrated there from Italy.

Who, exactly, was the flying-machine inventor?

Bell wired James Dashwood, a hardworking young Van Dorn detective in the San Francisco office, to investigate Marco Celere’s activities there.

Were the aviatrix and her instructor lovers? Or was Frost jealous for no reason? It was a difficult question. Constable Hodge had reported that Frost and his wife did not socialize in North River. No one in the town knew them as a couple. And Marco Celere was an outsider who lived at the Frosts’ secluded camp while working on his aeroplane. Bell would have to pose the delicate question to Josephine himself.

The Interboro Rapid Transit subway whisked Bell from Grand Central Terminal to the basement entrance of the Hotel Knickerbocker, where the Van Dorn Detective Agency maintained New York offices. He found Grady Forrer in the subterranean bar off the downstairs lobby. Research had failed to find any newspaper announcement about Frost’s wedding, but Forrer had managed to turn up some gossip. Josephine was an Adirondack dairy farmer’s daughter – a local North River girl who had grown up a few short miles from Frost’s lavish camp – information that the closemouthed Constable Hodge had not volunteered.

Bell went upstairs to the office and telephoned him long-distance.

“Joe Josephs’s girl,” John Hodge answered. “Heck of a tomboy, but pretty as a picture – and about as independent as I’ve ever seen. A good kid, though. Sweet-natured.”

“Do you know how she and Frost met?”

“Not the sort of thing I’d busy my head about.”

As for Harry Frost’s activities since he retired, Research reported that he traveled around the world on big-game hunts. In which case, why had Frost missed such an easy shot at Celere? The hunter fired five shots. The last three at Josephine’s flying machine, two of which hit, she had reported to Constable Hodge. If the scope was improperly sighted, and he missed the first shot, an experienced rifleman would have noticed and compensated, even if he had to rely on the rifle’s iron sight. It seems highly unlikely he missed twice, Bell reasoned. The bullet in the tree could have been the first shot, the one that Josephine had seen wing Celere but not kill him. So the second killed him. Frost missed the third when he shot at her aeroplane – understandable, as big-game hunters had little experience shooting at flying machines. But he had corrected again, and the fourth and fifth nearly killed her.

TWO DAYS LATER, the Chicago laboratory reported that, under a microscope, the bullet Bell had test-fired had revealed rifling marks that might resemble those on the bullet in the tree, but the bullet in the tree was too battered for the laboratory to be positive. The Van Dorn gunsmith did agree with Bell’s speculation that the bullet in the tree could have passed through the body of the man it killed. Or only creased him, he suggested. Or missed him completely. Which was a reason, other than the river, to explain the lack of a corpse.

5

“GOOD THING THE HORSES AREN’T RUNNING,” Harry Frost muttered aloud. “They’d choke on the smoke.”

Frost had never seen so many trains crowding the Belmont Park Terminal.

Back in the old days, when he was one of the regular sporting men arriving at the brand-new track in their private cars, it would get pretty crowded on race day, with thirty ten-car electrics delivering spectators from the city. But nothing like this. It looked to him like every birdman in the country was steaming in, with support trains of hangar cars and Pullmans and diners and dormitories for their mechanicians – every car painted with the hero’s name like a rolling billboard. Locomotives belched about the rail yard, switch engines shuttled express and freight cars onto extra sidings. When the electric train he had ridden out from Long Island City let him off, it was on the last open platform.

He spotted Josephine’s train first off.

All six cars, even her hangar car, were painted yellow – the color that that San Francisco snake Whiteway painted everything he owned. All six cars shouted “Josephine” from their sides in a bold red headline font, outlined and drop-shadowed like the cover of the sheet music for that damned song.

The song Preston Whiteway had commissioned had marched across the country like an invading army. No matter where Harry Frost fled, it was impossible to escape the tune, banged out by saloon piano players, rattling from gramophones, hummed by men and women in the street, storming through his skull like a steam calliope.

Up, up. . higher. . The moon is on fire. . Josephine. . Goodbye!

Good-bye, it would be. Red-faced with rage, Harry Frost strode out of the terminal. Not only had Josephine betrayed their marriage, not only had Celere betrayed the trust that had suckered him into investing thousands in his inventions, now they had made him a fugitive.

He had consulted lawyers secretly. Every single one warned that if it ever went to trial, a conviction for a second murder charge would be a catastrophe. His wealth would not help a second time around. His political connections, the best money could buy, would disappear when the newspapers whipped his “day in court” into a Roman circus. When he cornered a New York Court of Appeals judge in his mistress’s Park Avenue apartment, the man had told Frost flat out that his only hope of escaping the hangman would be to rot the rest of his life in the insane asylum.

But capturing him would not be easy, they would discover. He had lived like a hermit since he was released from Matawan. Even before, his face had never been well known to the public. That “Newsstand King” stuff was confined to the business. Average citizens, like those leading the rush out of the terminal toward the Belmont grandstand, had never seen his picture.

Besides, he smiled, stroking the full beard and mustache he had grown, now he himself saw a stranger in the mirror. The beard had made him look twenty years older by growing in surprisingly gray compared to his heavy crown of black hair, which had barely begun to be salt-and-peppered. Eyeglasses with the lenses tinted in the European way made him look a little like a German professor. Although wearing his flat sportsman’s cap, he might even pass himself off as an Irish writer.

His only fear was that his bulk would give him away. The middle-aged professor in the beard and tinted glasses filled as much space as the Newsstand King. More, even, because his dark sack suit was a veritable tent of loosely cut wool, deliberately chosen to conceal his weapons and “bulletproof” vest. He had no intention of being stopped from killing Josephine, much less locked up for murdering a woman who deserved it. His firearms included a highly accurate Browning pistol for covering his escape, a pocket pistol and derringer for emergencies, and a powerful Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. He had sawed four inches off the barrel to hide it in his pocket and loaded it with the “man-stopper” hollow-point expanding bullets.

A Chicago priest had manufactured the bulletproof vest of multiple layers of silk specially woven in Austria. Frost had invested secretly in the enterprise and owned shares in the company formed to market the inch-thick garment. The Army had rejected it for being too heavy and too hot. Frost’s weighed thirty-six pounds, a negligible burden for a man of his size and strength. But it was undeniably hot. On the short walk from the train he was wiping his brow with a handkerchief. But it was worth the discomfort, as it would stop modern high-velocity, smokeless-powder slugs fired from revolvers and pistols.

He had been disappointed when he shot at Marco Celere long-range. He had missed seeing the betrayer’s fear as he died. Didn’t even get to see the body. He’d do it up close, this time, and squeeze the life out of Josephine with his bare hands.

He stayed within the crowd lining up to buy tickets, then shuffled among them toward the grandstand. He knew she was here because the incessantly buzzing, droning motors overhead told him they were practicing today. The wind was light, so a dozen machines were up in the sky. Josephine would be either flying or in the infield adjusting and tuning the machine that Preston Whiteway had bought for her.

He had to hand it to the race organizers, they knew their business. With weeks to go before the starting day, they had convinced fifty thousand people to ride out to Nassau County and pay twenty-five cents each to watch the birdmen practice. The aviators weren’t racing around pylons or trying to set altitude records – none of the usual exhibitions of soaring, diving, and altitude climbing expected at flying fairs – just buzzing about in the air when they felt like it. But the stands were noisy with men and women cheering their heads off, and Frost could tell by the awe on their faces and their ceaseless “ooohhhs” and “aaahhhs” why they paid their quarters. The sight of enormous machines held up by invisible forces took the breath away. They weren’t as fast as locomotives and racing cars, but it didn’t matter. Big as they were, they hung in the blue like they belonged there.

Suddenly he saw her!

Josephine came streaking down from the sky like a yellow sword. There was no mistaking her machine. It was painted that same damned Whiteway Yellow that the born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth sissy boy had trademarked.

Harry Frost had accompanied his wife to many an air meet to buy her aeroplanes, and he watched this one with a knowledgeable eye. He was impressed. The Italian’s final invention was a hell of a machine, as different from the last aeroplane Frost had bought for Josephine as a hawk was from a pigeon. The previous, the one from which Josephine had seen him shoot the bastard, had been a sturdy biplane. This was a mono, with a single wing, and even after it stopped rolling across the infield it still looked fast and nimble just sitting there.

His jaw tightened as he focused his horse-racing field glasses. There she was, jumping off, with the big grin she got on her face when she really liked an aeroplane. She didn’t look like she was mourning her boyfriend, and she didn’t look like she was missing her husband, either. He felt the blood flush hot under his beard. He mopped his brow. Time to do the deed.

He started down from the grandstand. The guard at the gate stopped him. He showed the infield entry badge he had bought the night before from a drunken track official in a Hempstead saloon, and the guard let him pass. He walked across the horse track and stopped dead, rocked by the sight of his own face on a poster nailed to the inside rail.

WANTED

Murder Suspect

HARRY FROST

REWARD

*** $5,000 ***

(Armed and Dangerous-Do Not Approach!!!)

Wire or Telephone

VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY

“We Never Give Up. Never.”

Frost’s brain started racing. Why were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters? What did Van Dorns care about him killing Marco Celere? What the hell was going on?

His printed face glared back at him.

It was the standard Van Dorn poster. Frost remembered it well from his Chicago days, when the private detectives were careening around the city trying to stop him by arresting the people who worked for him. When that failed, they had tried to get people to inform on him. A few dead informants put a stop to that, he recalled, grunting a laugh.

We Never Give Up?

Never?

Oh yeah? You gave up on me, pal.

He laughed again because the drawing they had mocked up of his face looked pretty much like he used to before he grew his beard. Frost was only vaguely aware that laughing to himself out loud drew the attention of others heading to the infield. None, however, connected his bearded face to the beardless poster.

Suddenly the laughter turned sour on his tongue.

Another wanted poster blared from the rail – same as the first-“WANTED / Murder Suspect / HARRY FROST / REWARD / *** $5,000 *** / (Armed and Dangerous-Do Not Approach!!!) / Wire or Telephone / VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY / ‘We Never Give Up. Never’”-except this one had a picture that showed what they guessed he would look like if he had grown a beard.

A cold shiver traveled up his spine. The artist had come damned close. It wasn’t quite like looking in the mirror, and it didn’t show his glasses, but the face looked familiar. He stopped to study the poster, angrily shrugging off people who bumped into him, ignoring their complaints, which died on their lips when they took in the size of him. Finally, he stood taller, and strolled slowly on, deciding that it was unlikely that people would link even the bearded face on the poster to his. Not in these crowds. Besides, anyone who knew his name would not dare turn him in.

To hell with the Van Dorns. He beat them ten years ago, and he would beat them again.

He walked among the flying machines, inhaling the familiar smells of gasoline and oil, rubber and canvas, and doping varnish, and worked his way circuitously toward her yellow machine. When he got within fifty feet, he plunged his hands into his pockets, caressing the sawed-off Webley with his right while his left gripped the haft of a spring-loaded dagger, which offered the option of dispatching a protector quietly.

Josephine had her back to him. She was standing on a soapbox, with her head buried in the motor. Frost closed in on her. His heart was pounding with anticipation. His face felt hot, his hands were sweating. He gripped his weapons harder.

Abruptly, he stopped.

He didn’t like the look of Josephine’s mechanicians. He hid beside a Wright Model A biplane and observed them through the front rudders. It did not take long to confirm his suspicions.

They wore the right clothes, the typical vests, bow ties, shirtsleeves, and flat caps. And they were a younger bunch, as he expected of men who tinkered with flying machines. But they were watching the crowds more than they were watching Josephine’s machine. Van Dorns! The mechanicians were detectives.

His brain raced again. Not only were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters, they were guarding Josephine. Why?

Whiteway! It had to be Whiteway. Buying the Italian’s flying machine out of hock would have cost a pretty penny. So would that yellow support train. But it would pay in spades by using Josephine to boom the race and sell newspapers. Preston Whiteway had hired the detectives to protect his investment in Josephine.

Or was it more than protecting his investment?

Frost’s skull suddenly felt like it would explode.

Was Whiteway sweet on her?

Machines were roaring on the ground and buzzing in the air. Everywhere he looked, everything was moving – loud machines, drivers, Van Dorns. He had to get a grip on himself. Deal with Whiteway later. First, Josephine.

But the Van Dorns guarding Josephine would carry those wanted posters in their memories. Her guards would stop anyone who looked even slightly like either picture.

He noticed that their eyes kept shifting toward a tall redheaded man standing nearby in a sack suit and bowler. A suspect? Did they think that Harry Frost had dyed his hair red, lost seventy pounds, and gained two inches? The fellow looked like a Fifth Avenue swell. But he had thin white lines of a boxer’s scarring on his brow. And his eyes were busy, looking everywhere even as he pretended not to.

Not a suspect, Frost surmised. Another goddamned Van Dorn – the chief of their squad, from the way the others were looking to him. Suddenly Frost realized who the swell was – Archibald Angel Abbott IV. No wonder they hadn’t bothered disguising him as a mechanician.

Archibald Angel Abbott IV was too well known to work covertly. He had always been a big deal in the blue-blooded society set – New York’s most eligible bachelor. Then the newspapers had made him famous when he married the daughter of the railroad tycoon Osgood Hennessy. She stood to inherit it all. Frost wondered why the hell Abbott hadn’t traded his guns in for golf clubs.

That question pierced Harry Frost’s seething skull like a lightning bolt.

Archibald Abbott had the right idea, continuing to work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency for a measly few bucks after he married rich. Retiring was a mug’s game. Harry Frost had learned that too late. He had lost his edge. From the time he was eight years old, Harry Frost had dreamed of not having to work to survive. He had achieved his dream. And what did it get him? Being made a monkey of. That was how he had been taken by Josephine and Marco – bunco artists he would have smoked in a flash in the old days.

Frost fingered his weapons. Josephine still had her head in the motor. He could seize her by the throat, let her see that it was him, then cut her heart out. But the awful truth was that he could not get near her. There were too many Van Dorns masquerading as mechanicians. He couldn’t kill them all. They would gun him down first. He was not afraid to die. But he was damned if he would die in vain.

He needed help.

He hurried back to the train terminal and boarded an electric to Flatbush, where he entered a Brooklyn savings bank. Fleeing poverty, riding the rails as a child, begging for pennies for food, he had vowed never to be caught short anywhere ever again. As he flourished – as he plowed the profits of the distribution empire into stocks that returned fortunes – he had banked money in states across the continent.

He withdrew three thousand dollars from an account that held twenty. The bank manager counted it out personally in his private office. After Frost picked it up, the banker casually laid on his desk a wanted poster similar to those Frost had seen at the racetrack.

This poster was tailored to bankers. It warned them to be on the lookout for Harry Frost, or someone who looked like Harry Frost, drawing from his account. Frost acknowledged the banker’s loyalty with a brusque nod. They both knew that it was the least the banker could do. If Frost hadn’t covered his losses on an ill-advised scheme involving other men’s money, the banker would be serving time in Sing Sing.

A trolley took him to the waterfront.

He walked to a Pennsylvania Railroad stockyard pier. Tugboats were shoving car floats alongside. Trainloads of cows, sheep, and pigs were herded from the freight cars into cattle pens. Frost headed for the pier building and pushed through a door that said “No Admittance.” Thugs masquerading as railroad police tried to stop him. Frost knocked both men down with his open hand and pushed through another door at the back of the building into a stable. A dozen beef cattle, each with a distinctive Mexican brand burned on its flank, were tethered to posts set in the floor.

There were two men with the cows. One was seated at a table on which were scattered cow horns. The other was removing a horn from one of the tethered animals by turning it in his hands, unscrewing it from a threaded rod that had been drilled in the base of the horn. Rod Sweets, the man at the table, didn’t recognize Harry Frost in his beard. He pulled a pocket pistol.

“Don’t,” said Frost. “It’s me.”

Sweets stared. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You will be if you don’t put that gun away.”

Sweets shoved it hastily back his vest. “Don’t tell me you’ve developed a taste for dope.”

The cow horns – sawn from the steers in Mexico, hollowed out, and fitted with threads – had been stuffed with Hong Kong opium before being screwed back on. Sweets smuggled hundreds of pounds of raw opium yearly into New York in this manner and presided over a vast refining and distribution network that supplied morphine to thousands of druggists and physicians. Protecting such an enterprise took an army.

“No dope,” said Frost. “I want to hire a crew.”

Rod Sweets’s men would not care that he hated Josephine for buncoing him nor that he hated Preston Whiteway for seducing her. Money was all they cared for. And money, he had plenty of.

Frost made arrangements with Sweets quickly. Then he hurried to the Red Hook saloon where could be found the brothers George and Peter Jonas, who specialized in tampering with the brakes and gasoline tanks of newspaper-delivery trucks. Again, money was all that was needed, and the saboteurs were falling all over themselves trying to persuade him that it was even easier to smash a flying machine than a motortruck.

“It’s all in the wires that hold ’em together,” said George, and Peter finished his brother’s thought: “A wire lets go, the wing falls off, down she goes.”

Harry Frost had spent many a long hour watching his wife at air meets. “The birdmen know that. They check their wires every time they go up.”

The brothers exchanged a quick glance. They didn’t know much about flying machines, but they knew the logic of machines in general, which was all they really had to know to break one.

“Sure, they check ’em,” said George. “They look for nicks, for kinks, for weak spots.”

Peter said, “So, like you says, Mr. Frost, we’re not going to sneak up on ’em with a hacksaw.”

“But,” said George, “they don’t always check the fittings that anchor the wire to the wing.” He glanced at his brother, who said, “We pull a steel anchor bolt.”

“We replace it with a cast-aluminum anchor bolt that looks just the same but ain’t so strong.”

“They don’t see it.”

“They go up.”

“They jerk hard in the air.”

“The anchor lets go.”

“The wing falls off.”

“They’re flying a cinder block.”

FROST TOOK A TROLLEY BACK TO FLATBUSH.

He felt an unexpected sense of well-being.

Back in harness. He’d been idle too long. For the first time since the nightmare of Josephine’s betrayal, he felt restored, alive again, even as he hid in the dark. The important thing, as always, was to move quickly, move before anyone knew what he was doing, and never do what they expected.

He rode an electric Long Island Rail Road train to Jamaica in the borough of Queens. At an auto rental, he hired the most expensive car they had – a Pierce. He drove it through truck and dairy farms across the Nassau county line to Garden City, and swept under the porte-cochere of the Garden City Hotel. It was a grand place. Before Josephine, before the chauffeur and the asylum, he had rubbed shoulders with Schuylers, Astors, and Vanderbilts here.

The staff did not recognize him behind his gray beard. He paid for a large suite on the top floor, where he ordered dinner served in his room. He drank a bottle of wine with it and turned in for a fitful sleep haunted by strange dreams.

He sat bolt upright at dawn, thunderstruck by the clatter of threshing machines. His heart pounded, as he listened for the squealing of the wheels when the guards rolled the morning breakfast slop down the corridor and the clanging of the ladle striking the cauldron. The same morning racket he still remembered from the orphanage. Only, gradually, did he begin to notice things. The bed was soft and the room was quiet. He glanced at the open windows, where white curtains fluttered in a warm breeze. There were no bars. He wasn’t in the bughouse. They hadn’t dragged him back to the orphanage. A smile crept across Harry Frost’s face. Not threshing machines. Flying machines. Morning practice at Belmont Park.

He had breakfast in bed, three short miles from the racetrack where Josephine and her new admirers were tuning their airships for the race.

6

“WHERE’S JOSEPHINE?” Isaac Bell inquired of the Van Dorn detectives guarding the gate to the Belmont Park Race Track infield.

“In the air, Mr. Bell.”

“Where’s Archie Abbott?”

“Over by the yellow tent.”

Bell had driven out to Belmont in a borrowed Pierce-Arrow to interview Josephine about her husband’s habits and the associates he might recruit. As the only person who had spent time with him in his reclusive years, she might even have an idea of where he would hide.

Bell saw right off that Whiteway had chosen a perfect place to start the air race. The Belmont infield was enormous. Encompassed by the longest racetrack in the country, a mile and a half, it was the size of a small farm. Nearly fifty acres of flat grass inside the track were overlooked by a grandstand that could seat thousands of paying spectators. It offered numerous two-hundred-yard stretches of grass on which the machines could gather speed to take to the sky and return to the ground, as well as room for tents, temporary wooden aeroplane hangars, trucks, and autos. The rail yard for the support trains was just on the other side of the stands.

Bell breathed deeply of the air – an exhilarating mix of burnt oil, rubber, and gasoline – and felt instantly at home. It smelled like a race-car meet made all the richer by the scent of the fabric dope that the aviators varnished their machines with to seal the fabric covering the frames. The ground was alive with machines and men rushing about, like at an auto meet. But here at Belmont, all eyes were aimed at the sharp blue sky.

Machines swept into the air, swooped and darted about – boundless as birds but a hundred times bigger. A vast variety of shapes and sizes sailed through the sky. Bell saw airships triple the length of racing cars lumber overhead on wings that spread forty feet, and smaller ones flitted by, some flimsy, some supple as dragonflies.

The noise was as thrilling, each type of motor blasting its own unique sound: the Smack! Smack! of a radial three-cylinder Anzani, the harsh rumble of Curtiss and Wright four-cylinders, the smooth burble of the admirable Antoinette V-8s that Bell knew from speedboats, and the exuberant Blat! Blat! Blat! of the French-built rotary Gnome Omegas whose seven cylinders whirled improbably around a central crankshaft, spewing castor oil smoke that smelled like smoldering candle wax.

He located Archie by making a beeline for an enormous tent of the same bright yellow as the banner he had seen on top of Whiteway’s Inquirer building, and they shook hands warmly. Archie Abbott was nearly as tall as Isaac Bell, redheaded, with compelling gray eyes and a sparkling smile. He was clean-shaven. Faint white lines of scar tissue on this aristocratic brow indicated experience in the prize ring. They had been best friends since college, when Archie boxed for Princeton and Bell had floored him for Yale.

Bell saw that Archie had used his time here well. He was friendly with all the participants and officials. His detectives- those disguised as mechanicians, newspaper reporters, hot dog salesmen, and Cracker Jack vendors, and those patrolling in sack suits and derbies – appeared familiar with their territory and alert. But Archie could not tell Bell any more than he already knew about Josephine’s relationship with Marco Celere, which was little more than speculation.

“Were they lovers?”

Archie shrugged. “I can’t answer that. She does get a little misty-eyed when his name comes up. But what she’s really nuts about is that flying machine.”

“Could it be that she’s misty-eyed for his mechanical expertise?”

“Except that Josephine is a whiz of a mechanician herself. She can take that machine apart and put it back together on her own, if she has to. She told me that the places she’ll be flying won’t have a mechanician.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her. Where is she?”

Archie pointed at the sky. “Up there.”

The two friends scanned the blue, where a dozen flying machines were maneuvering. “I’d have thought that Whiteway would have painted her machine yellow.”

“He did. Yellow as this tent.”

“I don’t see her.”

“She doesn’t circle around with the others. She flies off by herself.”

“How long has she been gone?”

Archie pulled out his watch. “One hour and ten minutes, this time,” he reported, clearly not happy to admit that the young woman whose safety and very life were his responsibility was nowhere in sight.

Bell said, “How in heck can we watch over her if we can’t see her?”

“If I had my way,” said Archie, “I’d ride in the machine with her. But it’s against the rules. If they carry a passenger, they’re disqualified. They have to fly alone. That Weiner accounting fellow explained that it wouldn’t be fair to the others if the passenger helped drive.”

“We’ve got to find a better way to keep an eye on her,” said Bell. “Once the race starts, it will be a simple matter for Frost to lie in wait along the route.”

“I plan to post men on the roof of the support train with field glasses and rifles.”

Bell shook his head. “Have you seen all the support trains in the yard? You could get stuck behind a traffic jam of locomotives blocking the tracks.”

“I’ve been considering a team of autoists to run ahead.”

“That will help. Two autos, if I can find the men to drive them. Mr. Van Dorn’s already complaining that I’m gutting the agency. Who is on this machine approaching? The green pusher?”

“Billy Thomas, the auto racer. The Vanderbilt syndicate hired him.”

“That’s a Curtiss he’s driving.”

“The syndicate bought three of them, so he can choose the fastest. Six thousand apiece. They really want to win. Here comes a Frenchman. Renee Chevalier.”

“Chevalier navigated that machine across the English Channel.”

Bell’s eye had already been drawn to the graceful Blériot monoplane. The single-wing craft looked light as a dragonfly. An open girder of strut work connected the cloth-covered wings to the tailpiece of rudder and elevators. Chevalier sat behind the wing, partially enclosed in a boxlike compartment that shielded him nearly to his chest. He was switching his Gnome rotary engine on and off to slow it as he landed.

“I’m buying one of those when this job is over.”

“I envy you,” said Archie. “I’d love to take a crack at flying.”

“Do it. We’ll learn together.”

“I can’t. It’s different when you’re married.”

“What are you talking about? Lillian wouldn’t mind. She drives race cars. In fact she’ll want one, too.”

“Things are changing,” Archie said gravely.

“What do you mean?”

Archie glanced around and lowered his voice. “We haven’t wanted to tell anyone until we’re sure everything’s O.K. But I’m not about to start a dangerous new hobby now that it looks like we’re going to have children.”

Isaac Bell grabbed Archie underneath the arms and lifted him joyfully off the ground. “Wonderful! Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” said Archie. “You can put me down now.” People were staring. It was not often they saw a tall man raise another high in the air and shake him like a terrier.

Isaac Bell was beside himself with happiness. “Wait ’til Marion hears! She’ll be so happy for you. What are you going to name it?”

“We’ll wait ’til we see what sort of ‘it’ it is.”

“You can get a flying machine soon as it’s in school. By then flying will be even less dangerous than it is now.”

Another machine was approaching the grass.

“Who’s driving that blue Farman?”

The Farman, another French-built airship, was a single-propeller pusher biplane. It looked extremely stable, descending as steadily as if it were gliding down a track.

“Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin.”

“He could be a winner. He’s won all of England’s cross-country races, flying the best machines.”

“Poor as a church mouse,” Archie noted, “but married well.”

The socially prominent Archibald Angel Abbott IV, whose ancestors included the earliest rulers of New Amsterdam, could gossip as knowledgeably about Germans, Frenchmen, and Britons as about New York blue bloods, thanks to a long honeymoon in Europe – sanctioned by Joe Van Dorn in exchange for scouting overseas branches for the agency.

“The baronet’s wife’s father is a wealthy Connecticut physician. She buys the machines and looks after him. He’s extremely shy. Look there, speaking of having a wealthy benefactor, here comes Uncle Sam’s – U.S. Army Lieutenant Chet Bass.”

“That’s the Signal Corps Wright he’s driving.”

“I knew Chet at school. When he starts in on the future of aerial bombs and torpedoes, you’ll have to shoot him to shut him up. Though he has a point. With the constant war talk in Europe, Army officers haunt the aviation meets.”

“Is that red one another Wright?” Bell asked, puzzled by an odd mix of similarities and differences. “No, it can’t be,” he said as it drew nearer. “The propeller’s in front. It’s a tractor biplane.”

“That’s the ‘workingman’s’ entry, Joe Mudd driving. It started out as a Wright, ’til it collided with an oak tree. Some labor unionists trying to improve their reputation bought the wreck and cobbled it together out of spare parts. They call it the ‘American Liberator.’”

“Which unions?”

“Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers teamed up with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. It’s a good little machine, considering that they’re operating on a shoestring. Whiteway’s trying to bar them.”

“On what grounds?” Bell asked.

“‘If workingmen find themselves with excess funds,’” Archie mimicked Whiteway’s pompous delivery, “‘they should contribute them to the Anti-Saloon League.’”

“Temperance? I’ve seen Preston Whiteway drunk as a lord.”

“On champagne, not beer. Drink is a privilege, to his way of thinking, which should be reserved for those who can afford it. Needless to say, when he had Josephine’s flying machine painted ‘Whiteway Yellow,’ Joe Mudd and the boys varnished theirs ‘Revolution Red.’”

Bell searched the sky for her. “Where is our girl?”

“She’ll be back,” Archie assured him, peering anxiously. “She’ll run out of gas soon. She’ll have to come back.”

A scream at a high pitch suddenly pierced the air like a pneumatic siren.

Bell looked for the source. It sounded loud enough to rouse a sleeping firehouse. Oddly, none of the mechancians and birdmen in the infield paid it any mind. The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

“What was that?”

“Platov’s thermo engine,” said Archie. “A crazy Russian. He’s invented a new kind of aeroplane motor.”

Still watching the sky for Josephine, Bell let Archie lead him to a three hundred length of rail at the beginning of which perched a strange mechanism. Mechanicians were assembling a large white biplane beside it.

“There’s Platov.”

Women in long white summer dresses and elaborate Merry Widow hats were gazing spellbound upon the handsome Russian inventor, whose thick, curly dark hair, springy as a heap of steel shavings, spilled from a straw boater with a bright red hatband, and tumbled down his cheeks in equally curly mutton-chop whiskers.

“Seems to have a way with the ladies,” said Bell.

Archie explained that they were competitors’ wives, girlfriends, and mothers traveling aboard the support trains.

Platov was gesturing energetically with an engineering slide rule, and Bell noted the gleam in his dark eyes of the “mad scientist.” Though in Platov’s case, the Russian appeared less dangerous than eccentric, particularly as he was busy romancing his admirers.

“He’s prospecting for investors,” Archie said, “hoping some fliers will try it in the race. So far, no one’s ready to give up propellers. But his luck might have changed. That fat fellow in white is a Mississippi cotton farmer with more money than brains. He’s paying to test the motor on a real flying machine. Mr. Platov? Come tell my friend Mr. Bell how your contraption works.”

The inventor touched his lips to several of the ladies’ gloves, tipped his boater, and bustled over. He shook Bell’s hand, bowed, and clicked his heels. “Dmitri Platov. De idea is dat superior motor-powering fly machine Platov is demonstrating.”

Bell listened closely. The “thermo engine” used a small automobile motor to power a compressor. The compressor forced liquid kerosene through a nozzle. An electric spark ignited the volatile spray, creating thrust.

“Is making jet! Jet is pushing.”

Bell noticed that the voluble Russian appeared to be well liked. His fractured English provoked snickers among the grease-stained mechanicians who gathered to watch, but Bell overheard them discussing the new engine with respect. Just like mechanicians at an automobile race, they were tinkerers, always on the lookout for ways to make machines faster and stronger.

If it worked, they were saying, the thermo engine had a good chance of winning because it tackled head-on the three biggest problems holding back flying machines: excess weight, insufficient power, and the vibration that threatened to shake their flimsy frames to pieces. So far, it was tethered to a rail, down which it had “flown” repeatedly at a high rate of speed. The real test would come when the artificers finished assembling the cotton farmer’s airship.

“De idea is dat no pistons is shaking, no propeller is breaking.”

Again Bell overheard agreement among the gathering of flying-machine workmen. Platov’s engine could be, in theory at least, as smooth as a turbine, unlike most gasoline engines, which rattled an airman’s molars loose. Another mechanician ran up. “Mr. Platov! Mr. Platov! Could you please come quickly to our hangar car?”

Platov grabbed a leather tool bag and hurried after him.

“What was that about?” asked Bell.

“He’s a tip-top machinist,” said Archie. “Supports himself working freelance, fashioning parts. The hangar cars have lathes, drill presses, hones, and gear shapers. If all of a sudden they need a part, Platov can make it faster than the factory can ship it.”

“Here comes our girl!” said Isaac Bell.

“At last,” said Archie, clearly relieved despite his earlier assurances.

Bell watched the yellow speck that his sharp eyes had spotted on the horizon. It grew larger rapidly. Sooner than Bell expected, it was close enough to present the shape of a sleek monoplane. He could hear the motor make an authoritative smooth burble.

Archie said, “That’s the Celere that Preston Whiteway bought back from Marco’s creditors.”

Isaac Bell eyed it appreciatively. “Marco’s last effort makes most of these others look like box kites.”

“It’s a speedster, all right,” Archie agreed. “But the talk around the infield is it’s not as strongly constructed as the biplanes. And there are rumors that that’s how Marco went broke.”

“What rumors?”

“Back in Italy, they say, Marco sold a machine to the Italian Army, borrowed against future royalties, and immigrated to America and built a couple of standard biplanes he sold to Josephine’s husband. Then he borrowed more money to build that one she’s flying on now. Unfortunately, they say, back in Italy a wing fell off the one he sold to the Italian Army, and a general broke both legs in the smash. The Army canceled the contract, and Marco was however you say persona non grata in Italian. True story or not, the mechanicians agree that monoplanes aren’t as strong as biplanes.”

“But all that biplane strength comes at the expense of speed.”

“Maybe so, but the birdmen and mechanicians I talked to all say that just getting to San Francisco is going to be the hard part. Machines that strive only for speed can’t stay the whole race.”

Bell nodded. “The sixty-horsepower, four-cylinder Model 35 Thomas Flyer that won the New York – to – Paris automobile race probably wasn’t the fastest, but it was the strongest. Let’s hope that Preston didn’t buy our client a death trap.”

“Considering the flocks of telegrams Whiteway sends her every day, you can bet he had that machine examined from stem to stern before he bought it. Whiteway wouldn’t take chances with her life. The man’s in love.”

“What does Josephine think of Preston?” Bell asked.

It was not an idle question. If anyone knew her state of mind regarding Whiteway, it would be Archie. Before he became the most happily married detective in America, Archibald Angel Abbott IV had enjoyed many years as New York City’s most avidly pursued eligible bachelor.

“In my opinion,” Archie smiled knowingly, “Josephine admires the aeroplane that Preston bought her very much.”

“No one has ever accused Preston Whiteway of exercising intelligence in his personal affairs.”

“Didn’t he once carry a torch for Marion?”

“Blithely unaware that he was risking life and limb,” Bell said grimly. “My point exactly.”

He started toward the open section of infield where the machines were alighting. Joe Mudd’s sturdy red tractor biplane had taken to the sky while Bell was listening to Platov and was approaching to land ahead of the yellow monoplane. While Josephine circled around to let it go first, the red biplane floated to the grass and rolled along for a hundred yards to a stop.

Josephine’s machine came down to earth at a steeper angle and a much higher rate of speed. It was traveling so swiftly that it seemed that she had somehow lost control of it and was falling out of the sky.

7

CONVERSATIONS CEASED.

Men put down tools and stared.

The yellow aeroplane was mere yards from smashing into the grass when Josephine hauled back on a lever that raised small flaps on the back of her wings and the elevator on her tailpiece. The airship leveled out, slowed, bounced on the grass, and rolled to a gentle stop.

There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then, from one end of the infield to the other, mechanicians and airmen whistled, clapped, and cheered her stunt, for it was clear that she had come down exactly as she had intended, relying on her skill to thumb her nose at gravity.

And when a slight figure dressed head to toe in white climbed out of her compartment behind the wing, a roar of approval thundered from spectators in the grandstand. She waved to the crowd and flashed a gleaming smile.

“Well done!” said Isaac Bell. “Preston Whiteway may be an idiot in his personal affairs, but he can spot a winner.”

He strode to the yellow machine, pulling ahead of the long-legged Archie. A burly detective dressed as a mechanician blocked his way. “Where you going, mister?”

“I am Van Dorn Chief Investigator Isaac Bell.”

The man stepped back, though he still eyed him carefully. “Sorry, I didn’t know you, Mr. Bell. Tom LaGuardia, Saint Louis office. I just got shifted here. I saw you talking to Mr. Abbott. I should have assumed you were on the level.”

“You did the right thing. Never assume when your client’s life is at risk. If you stop the wrong person, you can always apologize. If you don’t stop the right person, you can’t apologize to a dead client.”

Archie caught up. “Good job, Tom. I’ll vouch for him.”

Bell was already heading for Josephine. She had climbed onto a crosspiece that connected the landing wheels to lean into her motor and was adjusting the carburetor with a screwdriver.

Bell said, “Those hinged appendages on the back of your wings appear to give you extraordinary control.”

She looked down at him with lively eyes. Hazel, Bell noticed, a warm green color in the sunlight, edging toward a cooler gray. “They’re called alettoni. That’s Italian. It means ‘little wings.’”

“Did they slow your airship’s descent by enlarging the wing’s surface?”

Returning her attention to the carburetor, she answered, “They deflect more air.”

“Do alettoni work better than warping?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “They don’t always do what I want them to. Sometimes they act as a brake and slow me down instead of keeping me level.”

“Can they be adjusted?”

“The man who invented them is dead. So now we have to figure it out without his help.” She made a final adjustment, sheathed her screwdriver in a back pocket, jumped to the ground, and offered her gloved hand. “I’m Josephine, by the way. Who are you?”

“Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Isaac Bell. I’m Van Dorn’s chief investigator.”

“My brave protectors,” she said with a frank and open smile.

She was tiny, Bell thought. Barely an inch over five feet tall, with a pretty upturned nose. Her direct gaze was older than her years, though she had a young woman’s voice, thin and girlish. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell. I hope ‘chief investigator’ doesn’t mean Archie’s been fired?”

“Not at all. Archie is in charge of your personal safety. My job is to intercept your husband before he gets close enough to harm you.”

Her eyes darkened, and she looked fearful. “You’ll never catch him, you know.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too sly. He thinks like a wild animal.”

Bell smiled to put her at ease, for he saw that she was really afraid of Frost. “We’ll do what we have to to deal with him. I wonder whether you might give me any clues to his behavior. Anything that would help me run him to ground.”

“I can only tell you things about him that won’t help. I’m afraid I don’t know anything that will.”

“Then tell me what won’t help.”

“Harry is completely unpredictable. I never knew what to expect. He’ll change his mind in a flash.” As she spoke her eyes glinted toward the field where Joe Mudd’s red tractor biplane was taking to the air again, and Bell realized that she was assessing the competition as coolly as he would an outlaw in a knife fight.

“Can you tell me about friends he would call on?”

“I never saw him with a friend. I don’t know if he ever had any. He kept to himself. Completely to himself.”

“I encountered some Chicago men at your camp yesterday. I had the impression they were living there.”

“They’re just bodyguards. Harry kept them around for protection, but he never had anything to do with them.”

“Protection from what?”

She made a face. “His ‘enemies.’”

“Who were they?”

“I asked him. Once. He started screaming and hollering. I thought he would kill me. I never asked again. They’re in his head, I think. I mean, he was in the nuthouse once.”

Bell gently changed the subject. “Did he ever take friends when he went big-game hunting? Did he shoot with a party?”

“He hired guides and bearers. But otherwise he was alone.”

“Did you go with him?”

“I was busy flying.”

“Did that disappoint him?”

“No. He knew I was flying before we married.” Her eyes tracked a Blériot swooping past at sixty miles an hour.

“Before? May I ask how you got started in flying?”

A high-spirited grin lighted her open face. “I ran away from home – stuffed my hair under a cap and pretended to be a boy.” It wouldn’t be hard, thought Bell. She didn’t look like she weighed over a hundred pounds.

“I found a job in a bicycle factory in Schenectady. The owner was building flying machines on the weekend, and I helped him with the motors. I knew all about them from fixing my dad’s farm machinery. One Monday, instead of going to work, I snuck out to the field and flew the machine.”

“Without lessons?”

“Who was there to teach me? There weren’t any schools back then. Most of us learned on our own.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“And you just climbed on the machine and flew it?”

“Why not? I could see how it worked. I mean, all it is, really, is the aeroplane goes up by pushing the air down.”

“So with no formal training,” Bell smiled, “you proved both Bernoulli’s theorem and the existence of the Venturi effect.”

“What?”

“I only mean that you taught yourself how to shape the wings to create the vacuum over the wing which makes it rise.”

“No,” she laughed. “No, Mr. Bell. Venturi and all that is too complicated. My friend Marco Celere was always rattling on about Bernoulli. But the fact of the matter is, the flying machine goes up by pushing the air down. Warping the wings is just a way to deflect the air away from where you want to go – up, down, around. Air is wonderful, Mr. Bell. Air is strong, much stronger than you think. A good flying machine like this one-” She laid an affectionate hand on its fabric flank. “Marco’s best – makes the air hold you up.”

Bell absorbed this with a certain amount of amazement. He liked young people and routinely took apprentice detectives under his wing, but he could not recall speaking with any twenty-year-old who sounded more clear and more certain than did this dairy farmer’s daughter from the wilds of the North Country.

“I’ve never heard it put so simply.”

But she had shed no light so far on her husband’s habits. When he queried her further, he developed the impression that she had known little about Harry Frost before she married him, and all she had learned since was to fear him. He noticed that her eyes kept darting to the other airships rolling about the infield and climbing into the sky. Whatever confusion or youthful ignorance had led Josephine into marriage with a man like Harry Frost, the vulnerable, naive girl on the ground became a confident woman in the air.

“Having taught yourself, did you then learn a lot more from your friend Marco?”

Josephine sighed. “I could not understand his Italian, and he spoke very little English and was always working on the machines.” She brightened. “But he did teach me one thing. It took me quite a while to understand what he was trying to say in English. But I finally pried it out of him. He said, ‘A good flying machine has to fly – it wants to fly.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Is it true?” asked Isaac Bell.

“Absolutely.” She laid a firm hand on the machine again. “So if you will excuse me, Mr. Bell, if you have no more questions, I hope that this one wants to fly. But it is going to take a while to find out for sure.”

“Do you miss Marco Celere?”

Her eyes did not fill, as Archie had reported, but Josephine did admit that she missed the inventor very much. “He was kind and gentle. Not at all like my husband. I miss him very much.”

“Then it must be a comfort to be flying his latest machine.”

“Thanks to Mr. Whiteway’s kindness and generosity. He bought it from Marco’s creditors, you know.” She glanced sidelong at Bell. “It puts me deep in his debt.”

“I imagine you’ll more than pay it back by making a strong pull for the Whiteway Cup.”

“I have to make more than a strong pull. I have to win the Whiteway Cup. I have no money of my own. I was completely dependent on Harry, and now I’m dependent on Mr. Whiteway.”

“I’m sure he will be grateful if you win the race.”

“Not if, Mr. Bell.” Her gaze fixed on the sky where a parchment-colored Blériot was rising, and when she looked back at Bell her eyes had turned opaque. “I will win, Mr. Bell. But not to make him grateful. I will win because I will do my best, and because Marco built the best flying machine in the race.”

Later, when Isaac spoke with Archie, he told his friend, “If I were a betting man, I’d lay money on her.”

“You are a betting man!” Archie reminded him.

“So I am.”

“Belmont Park is swarming with unemployed gamblers who would be delighted to relieve you of your money. The New York reformers just passed a law banning horse-race betting. The Atlantic – Pacific race is the bookies’ godsend.”

“What odds are they offering on Josephine?”

“Twenty-to-one.”

“Twenty? You’re joking. There’s a fortune to be won.”

“The bookies reckon she’s up against the top birdmen in America. And they’re betting we’ll get our pants beat off by the Europeans, who hold all the records in cross-country flying.”

Isaac Bell went looking for a bookmaker who could handle a thousand-dollar bet on Josephine. Only one accepted bets that large, he was told, and was directed to Johnny Musto, a short, wide middle-aged fellow in a checkerboard suit who reeked of an expensive cologne Bell had last smelled in the Plaza Hotel barbershop. The old betting ring under the stands had been replaced, since the Legislature banned horse gambling, with an exhibit hall, showing motors and accessories for aircraft, race cars, and motorboats. Musto was lurking just outside it in the forest of steel pillars that supported the grandstand. He had as thick a Brooklyn accent as Bell had ever heard outside a vaudeville theater.

“Youse sure youse wanna do dis?” asked the bookie, who knew a private detective when he saw one.

“I am absolutely positive,” said Isaac Bell. “In fact, now that you ask, let’s make it two thousand.”

“It’s your funeral, mister. But would it be O.K. if I ask youse a little somethin’ first?”

“What?”

“Is de fix in?”

“Fix? It’s not a horse race.”

“I know it ain’t no horse race. But it’s still a race. Is de fix in?”

“Absolutely not. There’s no fix,” said Isaac Bell. “The race is sanctioned by the American Aeronautical Society. It’s honest as the day is long.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, only dis girl is Harry Frost’s wife.”

“She has nothing to do with Harry Frost anymore.”

“Oh yeah?”

Bell caught a mocking note in the man’s voice. A suggestion that Musto was in on a joke that Bell hadn’t heard yet. “What do you mean by that, Johnny?”

“She ain’t with Harry no more? Den why’s he hangin’ ’round?”

“What?” Bell gripped Musto’s arm so hard, the bookie winced.

“I saw dis fellow yesterday looked just like him.”

Bell loosened his grip but fixed him just as sternly with his eye. “How well do you know Frost?” All the evidence he’d gathered thus far pointed to a man who’d not been seen in public in years.

Johnny Musto puffed up proudly. “The biggest sportin’ men come to Johnny Musto. I took Mr. Frost’s bets when he used to visit Belmont Park.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I dunno. Four years, I guess.”

“You mean the year the track first opened?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Seems longer.”

“What did he look like, Johnny?”

“Big fella, shoulders like a bull. Grew himself a beard. Like’s drawn on dat poster dere.” He nodded at a Van Dorn wanted poster glued to a pillar that depicted Frost with a beard.

“He looks like that picture?”

“’Ceptin’ his grew in all gray. Makes him look a lot older than he used to.”

“A lot older? Then what makes you so sure it’s him?”

“He was mutterin’ to himself just like he used to. Shovin’ past folks like they weren’t dere. Turnin’ red in de face for no reason. Red as a beefsteak. Just like he used to before they locked him in de bughouse.”

“If you were so sure it was Frost, Johnny, why didn’t you turn him in for the reward? Five thousand dollars is a lot of money even for a bookmaker who handles the biggest sportsmen.”

The Belmont Park bookie looked at the tall detective with an expression of disbelief. “You ever go to da circus, mister?”

“Circus? What are you talking about?”

“I’m askin’, do ya go to da circus?”

Bell decided to humor him. “Often. In fact, when I was a youngster, I ran away from home to join a circus.”

“Did ya ever stick your head in de lion’s mouth?”

“Come on, Johnny. You’ve been around. You know that Van Dorns protect people who help them.”

“From Harry Frost? Don’t make me laugh.”

8

WHEN NIGHT FELL ON BELMONT PARK, the aviators and mechanicians pulled canvas shrouds over their airships to protect their fabric wings from dampness. They anchored the machines to tent pegs driven deep in the ground in case a wind sprang up. Then they trooped off to the rail yard to sleep on their support trains. Somewhere in the distance a bell clock chimed eleven.

Then all was quiet in the infield.

Two shadows materialized from beneath the grandstand.

The Jonas brothers had driven out from Brooklyn in an ice truck, arriving in daylight to get the lay of the land. Now, with the moon and stars hidden by clouds, they walked boldly in the dark, crossing the racetrack and scrambling over the inside rail into the infield. They headed for Joe Mudd’s aeroplane, choosing it because it was off to one side and easy to find. But as they approached they heard snoring. They slowed and crept closer. Two mechanicians, built like hod carriers, were sleeping under the wings. The Jonases slithered off to the far side of the infield, steering clear of Josephine Joseph’s Celere monoplane, which they had seen earlier, before night fell, was surrounded by humorless Van Dorn detectives armed with shotguns. Far across the field, they chose a different victim, not knowing it was the French-built Farman biplane owned by the Channel-crossing English baronet Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin.

They confirmed that no one was sleeping nearby, removed the canvas shroud from one double wing, which was faintly silhouetted against the dark sky, and studied its construction. They did not know a lot about flying machines, but they recognized a truss when they saw one. The only difference between this double wing and a railroad bridge was that instead of the truss being constructed of steel uprights and diagonals, the two planes of the wing were supported by wood uprights counterbraced by diagonal wire stays.

Having figured out what made the Farman’s wing strong, the Jonas brothers set about weakening it. They felt in the dark for the turnbuckle used to tighten the strong multistranded stay that angled from the top plane to the bottom plane.

“Roebling wire,” George whispered. “Good thing Frost said no hacksaw. It would take all night to cut this.”

Shielding a flashlight in their hands, they inspected the turnbuckle. A strand of safety wire had been wrapped around it to prevent it from loosening from vibration. They carefully unwound the safety wire, unscrewed the turnbuckle to slacken the Roebling wire stay until they could remove the end from its connection to the wing, and replaced the steel anchor in that connection with a fragile one made of aluminum.

They tightened the turnbuckle until the stay hummed again, carefully rewound the safety wire exactly as they’d found it, and draped the shroud back over the wing. They took care to note which aeroplane they had sabotaged – Harry Frost had made it clear he had to know – checked the color of the wing fabric with their flashlight, left the infield and the track, found their truck, and drove to a nearby farm, where they parked and fell asleep. An hour after dawn they met Harry Frost in Hempstead where he had told them to and reported which machine they had sabotaged.

“Describe it!”

“Biplane. One propeller.”

“Front or back?”

“Back.”

“What color?”

“Blue.”

Frost paid them one hundred dollars each – more than a month’s salary for a skilled mechanician even if he had a generous boss.

“Not bad for one night,” Georgie Jonas said to Peter Jonas on the long drive home to Brooklyn. But first they had to fill the ice truck as payment to their brother-in-law, who owned it. They weighed out a load at a waterfront “bridge” controlled by the American Ice Company trust. Four dollars a ton.

George asked, “How about the fifty-cent rebate?”

“Independent dealers don’t get rebates.”

Peter said, “There’s supposed to be two thousand pounds in a ton. How come the ton you charged us for only weighs eighteen hundred pounds?”

“It’s ice. It melted.”

“But you’re supposed to slip in a couple of hundred extra pounds to cover melting.”

“Not for independents,” said the trust man. “Move your truck, you’re blocking the bridge.”

“This isn’t fair.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

They rode the trolley home to their favorite saloon, laughing how they should persuade Harry Frost to reform the ice business. What a racket. Add it all up, the trust controlled ice harvesting, shipping it, storing it, distributing it, and selling it. Had to be ten million bucks a year. The Jonas boys laughed louder. Harry Frost would reform it, all right. Harry Frost would take it over.

It was a beautiful morning. With several beers and a couple of hard-boiled eggs under their belts, they decided to ride the electric train back to Belmont Park to watch the blue biplane fall out of the sky.

9

ISAAC BELL EYED A MOB OF REPORTERS. They were descending on the English contender Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin as he waited for his mechanicians to pour oil and gasoline into his Farman. The fact that the journalists moved about the infield as a group made him extra alert. It would be so easy for a killer to hide among them.

Archie was nearby, keeping a close eye on Josephine, who for once had not vanished into the blue sky but was waiting her turn in the exhibition speed race. The infield was unusually crowded with visitors – it seemed everyone and his brother had procured a pass somewhere, so Archie had doubled the guard. At the moment, ten Van Dorns, four disguised as mechanicians, were within easy reach of Josephine.

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.