The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  “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?”