The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

“NEED CELERE AND PRESTOGIACOMO INFORMATION SOONEST.”

Bell paused. The widely divergent opinions of Marco Celere held by Danielle Di Vecchio and Josephine Josephs Frost would raise interesting questions about any murder victim, but they were particularly interesting when the victim had disappeared.

“Is that it, sir? Shall I send it?”

“Continue: ‘PARTIAL STORY BETTER THAN NONE.’

“And then add: ‘ON THE JUMP.’

“In fact, add ‘ON THE JUMP’ twice.”

“There it is, sir. Shall I send it?”

Bell considered. If only it were possible to telephone long-distance all the way to San Francisco, he could query the usually reliable Dashwood as to what was taking him so long and impress upon him the urgency he felt.

“Add another ‘ON THE JUMP’!”

14

“I HEAR THE WRIGHT BROTHERS started a flying school, Mr. Bell,” Andy Moser called from the front of the Eagle when Isaac Bell ordered him to spin the propeller to start the sleek machine.

“I don’t have time to go to Ohio. The race starts next week. Besides, how many teachers have driven flying machines for more than a year? Most aviators pick it up on their own, just like Josephine. Spin her over.”

It was a perfect day for flying, a sunny late-spring morning at Belmont Park with a light west wind. Andy and the mechanicians who Bell had hired to assist him had rolled the Eagle to a distant stretch of grass far from the main activity of the infield. They had chocked the wheels, and when they heard Bell order Andy to start the motor, they grabbed the chocks’ ropes and prepared to steady the machine as wing runners.

Bell was seated behind the wing, with his head, shoulders, and chest exposed. The motor was ahead of him – the safest place for it, Eddison-Sydney-Martin insisted, where it wouldn’t crush the driver in a smash. Ahead of the motor gleamed a nine-foot, two-bladed propeller of polished walnut – the most expensive place for it, Joe Mudd had noted. “If you come down hard on the nose, it’ll cost you a hundred bucks for a new one.”

Bell tilted the wheel post and watched the effect on the wings. Out at the tips, eighteen feet to his right and left, the alettoni hinged up and down. He looked back along the slim fuselage, whose booms and struts were covered in tightly drawn silk fabric to reduce drag, and turned the wheel. The rudder moved left and right. He pulled the wheel toward him. The elevators hinged to the horizontal tail keel tilted. In theory, when he did that in the air, the machine would go up.

“Spin her over!”

“A hundred fliers have died in accidents,” Andy reminded him for the third time that morning.

“More mountain climbers die falling off cliffs. Spin her over!”

Moser crossed his arms over his chest. He was one of the stubbornest men Bell had met. His father was a policeman, and Moser had the policeman’s wall-like resistance to anything he didn’t like. This resistance was stiffened by an unshakable belief in machinery. He knew machinery, loved it, and swore by it.

“I know the machine is ready to fly because I put it together with my own hands. I know we walked around it and tested every moving part and every brace. And I know the motor is ready to fly because I pulled the cylinder heads off to tune the timing and the pressure. The only thing I do not know is ready to fly is the driver, Mr. Bell.”

Isaac Bell fixed his overanxious mechanician with a no-nonsense eye.

“If you’re going to help me protect Josephine, you better get used to the idea that Van Dorn operators go about their business promptly. I have observed how aviators take to the air since I first arrived at Belmont Park. When I purchased my American Eagle, I questioned both Josephine Josephs and Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin on their techniques. I have also grilled Joe Mudd, whose navigation of his Liberator indicates an especially steady hand in the flying line. All agree that these Breguet controls make it a lot easier to learn. Last, but not least,” Bell smiled, “I have read every issue of both Aeronautics and Flight since those magazines were first published-I know what I’m doing.”

Bell’s smile vanished like a shotgunned searchlight. His eyes turned dark as December. “Spin! Her! Over!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bell opened the gasoline valve and moved the air valve to the idle setting. On the Gnome rotary engine, he had learned, the driver was the carburetor.

Andy Moser turned the propeller repeatedly, drawing fuel into the motor. Bell moved the magneto switch.

“Contact!”

Andy clutched the propeller with both hands, threw his long, lean back into a powerful tug, and jumped back before it cut him in half. The motor caught, chugged, and spewed pale blue smoke. Bell let it warm. When it sounded ready, he opened the air valve fully. The smoke thinned. The gleaming nickel-steel cylinders and the shiny propeller begin to blur as they spun toward top speed with a powerful-sounding Blat! Blat! Blat! He had never felt a motor spin so smoothly. At twelve hundred rpms, it ran slick as a turbine.

He glanced down at Andy.

“Ready!”