The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  “If you didn’t have the belly to take another punch, you sure as hell don’t have the nerve to shoot me in the back.”

  Bell aimed for Harry Frost’s legs, intending to slow the man, climb out of the water, and get him. But he was numb with cold. His head was reeling from the punch. It took an act of will to steady the barrel, another to force his finger to curl smoothly around the trigger so he wouldn’t miss.

  The gun felt heavy.

  “You don’t have the guts to pull the trigger,” Frost flung over his shoulder.

  Strangely heavy. Was he losing consciousness? No. It was too heavy. Why did Frost throw it instead of simply shooting him? Why was he daring him to shoot? Bell let go the trigger, engaged the safety, turned the weapon around, and looked at the muzzle. It was cram-packed with mud.

  Frost had jammed it into the river mud when he picked it up, deliberately tamping it into the barrel so it would blow up in Bell’s hand. Characteristic Harry Frost. Like the bent horseshoes thrown through victims’ windows to terrorize them, the chief investigator’s maimed hand would warn every Van Dorn detective: Don’t mess with Harry Frost.

  Bell dunked the gun in the water and slammed it back and forth, sluicing out the mud. With any luck, it would fire a shot or two. But when he looked for his target, Harry Frost had melted into the shadows. Bell called, “Frost!” All he heard in response was laughter echoing under a distant pier.

  “WHERE IS JOSEPHINE?” Isaac Bell shouted into the stockyard office telephone.

  “Are you O.K., Isaac?” asked Joseph Van Dorn.

  “Where is Josephine?”

  “Camped out on Bedloe’s Island, fixing her flying machine. Where are you?”

  “Who’s watching her?”

  “Six of my best detectives and twenty-seven newspaper reporters. Not to mention Mr. Preston Whiteway, circling on a steam yacht, beaming searchlights for your fiancée to shoot moving pictures by. Are you O.K.?”

  “Tip-top, soon as I get a propeller, a new wing stay, and a Remington autoload.”

  “I’ll send word to Marion you’re O.K. Where are you, Isaac?”

  “Weehawken stockyards. Frost got away.”

  “Seems to be making a habit of that,” the boss observed coolly. “Did you wing him at least?”

  “I took off one of his ears.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “But it didn’t stop him.”

  “Where’s he headed?”

  “I don’t know,” Bell admitted. His head ached, and his jaw felt like he’d been chewing thornbushes.

  “Do you think he’ll try again?”

  “He assured me he will not stop trying until he kills her.”

  “You spoke?” The tone of Van Dorn’s voice suggested that if Bell could somehow see through telephone wire, he would be facing sharply raised eyebrows.

  “Briefly.”

  “What’s his state of mind?”

  Isaac Bell had thought of little else since he swam ashore.

  “Harry Frost is not insane,” he said. “In fact, in a strange way he’s enjoying himself. As I warned Whiteway in San Francisco, Frost knows he’s been dealt his last hand. He’s not going to fold his cards until he sets the casino on fire.”

  Joseph Van Dorn said, “Nonetheless, the lengths he’s going to to avenge his wife’s supposed seduction would fit most folks’ definition of insane.”

  “Let me ask you something, Joe. Why do you suppose Frost didn’t kill Josephine when they were still together?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did Frost shoot Marco instead?”

  “Put an end to the affair, hoping she’d come back.”

  “Yes. Except for one thing. Having killed Marco – assuming he is dead-”

  “He is,” Van Dorn interrupted. “We’ve been down that road.”

  “Having killed, or tried to kill, Marco,” Bell replied evenly, “why is Frost now trying to kill Josephine?”

  “He either is insane or just plain old-fashioned crazed with jealousy. The man was known for his temper.”

  “Why didn’t he kill Josephine first?”

  “You’re asking me to explain the order of a madman’s killings?”

  “Do you know what he said to me?”

  “I wasn’t there when he escaped, Isaac,” Van Dorn said pointedly.

  Isaac Bell was too involved in his line of inquiry to countenance Van Dorn’s jibe. “Harry Frost said to me, ‘You don’t know what they were up to.’”

  “Up to? Marco and Josephine were running off together, that’s what they were up to – or so Frost suspected.”

  “No. He didn’t sound like he meant only a love affair. He indicated they were scheming. It was as if he had discovered that they had perpetuated some sort of betrayal worse than seduction.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m beginning to suspect that we are fighting something more complicated than we took on.”

  “We took on protecting Josephine from getting killed,” Van Dorn retorted firmly. “So far, that’s been complicated enough for two detective agencies. If what you’re suggesting now has any bottom to it, we should call in a third.”

  “Send me that Remington autoload.”

  VAN DORN DISPATCHED an apprentice across on the Weehawken Ferry with the rifle and dry clothes from Bell’s room at the Yale Club. Andy Moser arrived in one of the roadsters an hour later, with tools, stay wires, and a shiny new nine-foot propeller strapped to the fenders.

  “Good thing you’re rich, Mr. Bell. This baby cost a hundred bucks.”

  “Let’s get to work. I want this machine flying by dawn. I already removed this broken stay.”

  Andy Moser whistled. “Wow! I’ve never seen Roebling wire snap.”

  “It had help from Harry Frost.”

  “It’s amazing the wing didn’t fall off.”

  Bell said, “The machine is resilient. These other stays, here and here, took up the slack.”

  “I always say, Mr. Di Vecchio built ’em to last.”

  They replaced the propeller and the broken stay and patched the holes Frost had shot in the wing fabric. Then Bell sawed twelve inches off the wooden stock of the Remington autoloading rifle, and Andy jury-rigged a swivel mount, promising to construct a more permanent installation “with a stop so you don’t shoot your own propeller” when he got back to his shop in the hangar car. Next time Harry Frost fired at him he would discover that the Eagle had grown teeth.

  21

  FOUR MILES DOWNRIVER, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, Josephine was trying to fix her flying machine. Blinded by the searchlights glaring from Preston Whiteway’s steam yacht, choking on its coal smoke, and harried by reporters shouting puddingheaded questions, she and her Van Dorn detective-mechanicians, who had finally come over on a boat, addressed the mangled wing. But the damage was beyond their skills and the few tools they had with them, and the young aviatrix had begun to lose hope when help suddenly appeared in the last person she would have expected.

  Dmitri Platov hopped off a Harbor Patrol launch from Manhattan Island, shook hands with the policemen who had given him a ride, and saluted her with a jaunty wave of his slide rule. Everyone said that the handsome Russian was the best mechanician in the race, but he had never come near her machine or offered his services. She was pretty sure she knew why.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  He tipped his straw boater. “Platov come helping.”

  “Isn’t Steve Stevens afraid I’ll beat him if you help me?”

  “Steve Stevens eating victory meal in Yonkers,” Platov answered, flashing white teeth in his whiskers. “Platov own man.”

  “I need a savior, Mr. Platov. The damage is much worse than I thought.”

  “We are fixing, no fearing,” said Platov.

  “I don’t know. You see, this sleeve – here, bring those lights!”

  The Van Dorns hopped to obey, angling electric lights they had hooked u
p to the Statue of Liberty’s dynamo.

  “You see? The sleeve that holds the pintle for the alettone is not strong enough. Nor is it solidly seated in the frame. It’s even worse on the other wing. Dumb luck that that one didn’t fall off, too.”

  Platov felt the sleeve with his fingers, like a vet examining a calf. He turned to the nearest mechanician. “Please, you are bringing second tool bag from boat?”

  The Van Dorn hurried to the dock.

  Platov addressed the other detective. “Please, you bringing more lights.”

  Josephine said, “I can’t believe my eyes. It’s an amateurish design. The man who built the machine didn’t seem to understand the stress on this part.”

  Dmitri Platov looked Josephine full in the face and stepped very close to her.

  She was taken aback. Having never stood within twenty yards of him until this moment, she had never noticed how thoroughly his dark springy hair and mutton chops covered his brow, cheeks, chin, and lips, nor how brightly his eyes burned within that curly nest. She felt herself drawn to his eyes. There was something strangely familiar about them.

  “Poor design?” he asked in straightforward, unaccented English. “I take that as a personal insult.”

  Josephine stared back in utter amazement.

  She covered her mouth with her greasy glove, staining her cheek. Marco Celere’s voice – the voice he had used only when they were alone – the faintest Italian accent, speaking the British phrases he had learned as a teenager apprenticed to a Birmingham machinist.

  “Marco,” she whispered. “Oh, my Marco, you’re alive.”

  Marco Celere gave her the tiniest wink. “Shall I send our audience packing?” he murmured.

  She nodded, still pressing her glove to her mouth.

  Marco raised his voice and addressed the Van Dorn mechanicians in his familiar Dmitri Platov Russian accent. “Gentles-mens, de idea is dat too many cooks making cold soup. Let Platov being alone genius fixing Josephine aviatrix machine.”

  Josephine saw the detective-mechanicians exchange glances.

  “Josephine being helper,” Platov added.

  The detectives were staring uncomfortably, Josephine thought. Did they suspect? Thank God, Isaac wasn’t here. Chief Investigator Bell would question the shock on her face. These younger, less experienced operators sensed something out of kilter. But were they clever enough to challenge the mechanician-machinist who everyone in the race knew as “the crazy Russian” Platov?

  “It’s O.K.,” said Josephine. “I’ll be his helper.”

  The head Van Dorn nodded his assent. After all, she was a better mechanician than any of them. They retreated to the ropes they had strung to hold the newspaper reporters at bay. “We’ll be right over here if you need us, Josephine.”

  Marco said, “Are passing Platov monkeying wrench, Josephine.”

  She fumbled for the tool. She could barely believe her senses. And yet she felt as if she had awakened from a nightmare that had started the week she married Harry Frost when she saw him punch and kick a man nearly to death for smiling at her. Her husband had never hurt her, but she had known from that moment on that he would one day, suddenly, without warning. What a fearful price she had paid for her aeroplanes, waiting, on tenterhooks, even as Harry applauded her passion for flying and bought her machines – until last autumn, when he grew suspicious of Marco.

  He had moved like lightning. First, he cut her out of his will. Then he roared in her face that he would kill her if she ever dared ask him for a divorce. Having trapped her thoroughly, he refused to pay off Marco’s debts on the machine they needed to compete for the Whiteway Cup. When he invited Marco to go hunting, she feared the worst. It was a trick to take Marco out in the woods and kill him in a “hunting accident.”

  But Marco had a plan to save them both and enter the race – a brilliant plan to fake his own murder and frame Harry for the crime.

  He had jimmied the telescopic sight on Harry’s hunting rifle so it would shoot high. He positioned himself so he could jump to a narrow ledge right below the rim of the cliff when Harry fired. Josephine would fly over, witnessing the shooting, so that Harry Frost would run. Marco would pretend to be dead, his body swept away by the North River. Josephine’s violent, murderous husband would be permanently locked back in the insane asylum, where he belonged. And Josephine would be free to charm the wealthy San Francisco newspaper publisher Preston Whiteway into sponsoring her in the Atlantic – Pacific air race in a new Celere Monoplano. Later, after Harry was safely locked up, Marco would wander out of the Adirondack woods pretending amnesia, remembering nothing except being wounded by Harry Frost.

  But things had gone badly wrong. Harry had actually shot Marco – she had seen him blasted off the cliff with her own eyes – and Harry was never caught.

  Fearing Marco was dead, Josephine had felt punished for what was, she had to admit in retrospect, an evil plan. She had begun to wish she had not let Marco talk her into it. Just as now part of her regretted following through with their plan to make Whiteway her champion in the race. It had simply never occurred to her that the rich, handsome publisher would fall in love with a tomboy farm girl.

  Some women might rate the opportunity to become the legal wife of a newspaper magnate as better luck than she deserved, but Josephine did not want any part of it. She loved Marco and she had grieved for him. And now, suddenly, unexpectedly, he was back, alive and well, like an unexpected Christmas gift delivered late.

  “Marco?” she whispered. “Marco? What happened?”

  “What happened?” Marco murmured, softly as he continued to appraise the monoplane’s battered wing. “Your husband missed, but by not as much as we had hoped. That bloody.45-70 nearly blew my head off.”

  “I knew we should have used blanks. Changing the sights was too risky.”

  “Harry Frost was too smart for blanks. I told you that already. He’d have felt a lesser recoil, heard a lesser report. It had to be a real bullet. But I underestimated how canny he is. He sensed something was wrong with the sights in one shot. So bloody sharp that he compensated for the gun firing high on the second shot. Next I knew, I was flying off the cliff.”

  “I saw.”

  “Was I convincing?” Marco asked with another, almost imperceptible wink.

  “I thought you were dead – Oh, my darling.” It was all she could do to keep from hugging and kissing him.

  A smile twitched his whiskers. “So did I. I fell on the ledge, like I was supposed to, but I passed out. It was dark when I woke. I was freezing. My head was splitting. I couldn’t move my arm. All I knew was, I was still alive, and by some miracle Harry hadn’t found me for the coup de grâce.”

  “That was because he knew I saw him shoot you. He ran.”

  “Just as we planned.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to die. Or even be hurt.”

  Marco shrugged. “A minor detail. Nonetheless, the plan worked. Sort of. Harry’s on the run. Unfortunately, he’s overplaying his part – he should have been caught and locked up by now, or shot dead. But you have a wonderful aeroplano in the race, just as we planned.”

  “What about you, Marco?”

  Marco didn’t seem to hear her. He said, “You will win the greatest race in the world.”

  “Win? I’m a day behind already, and it just started.”

  “You will win. I will see that you win. Don’t you worry. No one will stay ahead of you.”

  He sounded so sure, she thought. How could he be so sure? “But what about you, Marco?”

  Again, he didn’t seem to hear her question, saying, “And you have a suitor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every one at Belmont Park said that Preston Whiteway has fallen in love with you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s just a crush.”

  “He had your marriage annulled.”

  “I didn’t ask him to. He just went ahead and did it.”

  “You were supposed
to charm him into buying you an aeroplane. But when you ask, ‘What about you, Marco?’ you seem to have already answered your own question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t sound like there is anyplace in your scheme for Marco.”

  “It’s not my scheme. I just wanted your aeroplane. Like we planned.”

  “You got more than we originally planned.”

  Josephine felt hot tears spring to her eyes. “Marco, you can’t believe that I would prefer Whiteway to you.”

  “How can I blame you? You thought I was dead. He is rich. I am a poor aeroplane inventor.”

  “He could never replace you,” she protested. “And now that you’re back, we can-”

  “What?” Marco asked bleakly. “Be together? How long would Whiteway let you fly my monoplano if he saw you with me?”

  “Is that why you pretended you were dead?”

  “I pretended I was dead for several important reasons. One, I was badly injured. If I stayed in North River, Harry would have killed me in my hospital bed.”

  “But how-”

  “I rode a freight train to Canada. A kind farm family took me in and nursed me all winter. When I learned that you were with Whiteway and in the race and that Harry was still free, I decided to tag along, in disguise, keeping an eye on things, before miraculously walking out of the woods as Marco, as we planned.”

  “When will you?”

  “After you win.”

  “Why wait so long?”

  “I just told you, Whiteway would be as jealous of me as Harry. Maybe not as violent, but angry enough to cut you off and take his aeroplane. He does own it, doesn’t he? Or did he give you the title?”

  “No. He owns it.”

  “Too bad you didn’t ask for the title.”

  She hung her head. “I didn’t know how I could. He’s paying for everything. Even my clothes.”

  “The rich are often kind, never generous.”

  “I don’t know how long I can bear looking at you and pretending you’re not you.”

  “Concentrate on my hairy disguise.”

  “But your eyes, your lips. .” She pictured him as he had looked, his sleek black hair, noble forehead, elegant mustache, deep-set dark eyes.