The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  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 inf
ield 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.”

&n
bsp; “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.