The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

Discussion that night at the Cleveland Fairgrounds shifted toward the concept of elastic belts. Mechanicians got busy tinkering with the thick rubber bands already on hand to spring the aeroplanes’ wheels.

The Austrian aristocrat still scoffed. The next day, a gust heeled his Pischof sharply, and he fell off the monoplane a thousand feet over Toledo, Ohio.

At the funeral, Eddison-Sydney-Martin announced that his wife insisted “vehemently” that he be strapped onto his aeroplane, wearing a broad belt fashioned from a horse sling.

Josephine’s and Isaac Bell’s similar craft had them seated deeper within the fuselage, making falling off slightly less likely. Josephine ignored Preston Whiteway’s pleas that she wear a belt. Having survived a smash in a burning biplane, she explained, she was afraid of being trapped.

Isaac Bell, at Marion Morgan’s suggestion, instructed Andy to anchor a wide motorcyclist’s belt to the Eagle with rubber bands. Sheathed next to one of the bands was a razor-sharp hunting knife.

NOTHING WAS HEARD NOR SEEN of Harry Frost since he escaped from Isaac Bell under the Weehawken piers. Bell suspected that Frost was waiting for the race to reach Chicago. Chicago was where he had begun his meteoric rise to the criminal pinnacle from which he had launched his legitimate fortune. In no other city on the continent was Frost better established with gang associates and corrupt politicians. In no other city had he so deeply infiltrated the police.

Try it, Bell thought grimly. The Van Dorn Detective Agency had started in Chicago, too. They, too, knew the city cold. When the race was stopped in Gary, Indiana, by lakeshore storms that the Weather Bureau predicted would last for days, he went ahead by train to scout the city.

“We’ll beat him if he tries it here,” Bell vowed to Joseph Van Dorn while conferring by long-distance telephone from the agency’s Palmer House Chicago headquarters.

Van Dorn, who was in Washington, r

eminded Bell that he had promised to keep a clear head.

Bell changed the subject to sabotage. Van Dorn listened closely, then observed, “The weakness of that line of inquiry is that flying machines are perfectly capable of smashing without help from miscreants.”

“Except,” Bell retorted, “in the cases of Eddison-Sydney-Martin and Renee Chevalier, and even Chet Bass, it’s the frontrunners who are smashing. Soon as a fellow pulls ahead of the pack, something goes wrong.”

“Steve Stevens hasn’t smashed yet. I read here in the Washington Post that Stevens holds the lead.”

“Josephine is catching up.”

“How much have you bet on her?”

“Enough to buy my own detective agency if I win,” Bell answered darkly.

In fact, the newspapers were starting to take notice that a birdman heavier than the rotund President Taft was flying faster than five men who tipped the scales at half his weight and a woman who barely weighed a third.

“According to the Post,” Van Dorn chuckled, “the dark horse is the heaviest horse.”

Bell had seen similar headlines in Cleveland.

SEVEN DAYS FROM NEW YORK TO CHICAGO?

the Plain Dealer speculated breathlessly, before the weather gods put the brakes on overoptimism.

MIRACLE FLIGHT. HEAVYWEIGHT COTTON FARMER STILL IN LEAD.

“You’ve got to hand it to Whiteway,” Van Dorn said. “He’s pulling a regular P. T. Barnum. The whole country’s talking about the race. Now that the other papers have no choice but to cover it, they’re backing favorites and smearing rivals. And everyone’s got an opinion. The sportswriters say that Josephine couldn’t possibly win because women have no endurance.”

“The bookmakers agree with them.”

“Republican papers say that labor should not rise above its station, much less fly. Socialist papers demand aristocrats stay on the ground, as the air belongs to all. They’re all calling your friend Eddison-Sydney-Martin the ‘lucky British cat’ for his nine-lives habit of surviving smashes.”

“As Whiteway told us, they love the underdog.”

“I’ll grab a train,” said Van Dorn. “I’ll catch up in Chicago. Meantime, Isaac, keep in mind, sabotage or no, our first job is protecting Josephine.”

“I’m going back to Gary. The weather ought to break soon.”

Bell rang off with much to ponder. While keeping the clear head he promised, he could not ignore the evidence that more was afoot than Harry Frost’s murderous attacks on Josephine. Something else was going on, something perhaps bigger, more complicated, than one angry man trying to kill his wife. There was a second job to do, another crime to solve, before it wrecked the race. Not only did he have to stop Harry Frost, he had to solve a crime that he did not yet know what it was, or would be.

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