The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

The blue pusher sailed past Bell, and then Josephine, with a jaunty wave to each from the baronet. Bell saw Josephine reach up to fiddle with her gravity-feed gas tank. Her speed increased, but at the expense of gray smoke pouring from her motor. Eddison-Sydney-Martin continued to pull ahead, and was several hundred yards past her, when Bell saw something dark suddenly fly back in the Englishman’s wake.

It looked like he had hit a bird.

But when the Curtiss staggered in the air, Bell realized that the dark object falling behind Eddison-Sydney-Martin was not a bird but his propeller.

Suddenly without power, forced to volplane, Eddison-Sydney-Martin tried to dip his elevator. But before the pusher could descend in a controlled glide, a piece flew from the tail. It was followed by another, and another, and Bell saw that the departing propeller had chopped parts of the tail as it flew away, still spinning like a buzz saw.

The biplane’s elevator broke loose and trailed in blue shreds. The vertical tail with its rudder went next. A thousand feet above the ground, the baronet’s swift headless pusher fell like a stone.

31

“CAT RAN OUT OF LIVES.”

“Don’t say that!” Josephine rounded on the mechanician who had muttered what they all feared. She ran to Abby, who was weeping. But when she tried to hold her, the baronet’s wife pulled back and held herself stiff as a marble statue.

All Josephine could think of was Marco promising her, “You will win. I will see that you win. Don’t you worry. No one will stay ahead of you.”

What had he done?

They were gathered on the banks of a wide creek twenty miles southwest of Topeka, she and Isaac Bell, who had both alighted on a dirt road beside the tracks, and Abby and all the mechanicians, who had seen the smash from their support train. The blue pusher – what was left of it – was floating in the creek, caught on a snag halfway across.

Had Marco sabotaged Abby’s husband’s machine so that she could win? There he was, in his crazy Russian disguise. She was the only one who knew who he really was and the only one who suspected he had done something terrible. But she was afraid to ask.

I must, she thought. I have to ask him. And if it is true, then I have to admit everything, all the lies. She walked up to Marco. He was waving his Dmitri slide rule, and he looked as distraught as the others, but she realized with a terrible sense of lost trust that she could not be sure he wasn’t pretending. She said, in a low voice, “I have to talk to you.”

“Oh, poor Josephine!” he cried in full Platov mode. “You are seeing all happening in front of eyes.”

“I have to ask you.”

“What?”

Before she could speak, she heard a scream. Abby was screaming. Then, miraculously, a cheer from every throat. She whirled toward the creek. Everyone was looking downstream. Baronet Eddison-Sydney-Martin was limping unsteadily along the bank, soaking wet, covered in mud and fumbling with a cigarette he could not light.

BELL TOLD ANDY MOSER that he was certain that he had seen Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s propeller fall off. “Is it common?”

“It happens,” said Andy.

“What would cause it?”

“Lots of things. A crack in the hub.”

“But he inspected the machine every time he flew. He walked around it and checked mounts and stays and everything. Just like all of us do. So did his mechanicians, just like you do for me.”

“Could have hit a rock bouncing on the field.”

“He would have noticed, felt it, heard it.”

“He’d notice if it shattered the propeller,” said Andy. “But if a rock hit right on the hub at the same moment he had his hands full just getting her into the air and his motor was straining loudly, maybe he didn’t. Couple of months ago I heard about a propeller getting unstable because it was stored standing up. Moisture sunk into the bottom blade.”

“His was brand-new and used nearly every day since he got it.”

“Yeah, but you get these cracks.”

“That’s why it was painted silver,” countered Bell, “so little cracks would show.” That was standard procedure on pushers. His own propeller was not because a silver propeller spinning in front of the driver would dazzle him.

“I know, Mr. Bell. And obviously it wasn’t around long enough to rot, either.” Moser looked up at the tall detective. “If you’re asking me was it sabotage, I’d say it sure as heck could have been.”

“How? If you wanted a fellow’s propeller to fly off, what would you do?”