The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

TWO HARD-FACED MEN with hooded eyes were waiting for Isaac Bell outside the Eagle Special’s hangar car. They were dressed in slouch hats, shirts with dirty collars, four-in-hand ties loose at the neck, and dark sack suits bulging with sidearms. One man had his arm in a sling that was noticeably fresher and whiter than his shirt, as was the bandage on his companion’s forehead. Josephine’s detective-mechanicians were eyeing them closely, scrutiny the two men returned with sullen bravado.

“Remember us, Mr. Bell?”

“Griggs and Bottomley. You look like you tangled with a locomotive.”

“Feel that way, too,” Griggs admitted.

Bell shook their hands, taking Bottomley’s left in deference to his sling, and told the detective-mechanicians, “They’re O.K., boys, Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley, Southern Pacific rail dicks.”

The Van Dorns looked down their noses at the railroad police, who commonly represented the bottom of the private detective heap, until Bell added, “If you remember the Glendale wreck, Griggs and Bottomley were instrumental in getting to the bottom of it. What’s up, boys?”

“We had a hunch you’d be the Van Dorn ramrodding the Josephine case.”

Bell nodded. “Not something I want to read in the newspaper, but I am. And I have a funny feeling, based on the evidence of recent ministrations by the medicos, that you’re going to tell me you ran into Harry Frost.”

“Ed plugged him dead center,” said Griggs. “Gut-shot him. Didn’t even slow him down.”

“He wears a ‘bulletproof ’ vest.”

“Heard of them,” said Griggs. “I didn’t know they worked.”

“We do now,” observed Bottomley.

“Where did this happen?”

“Burbank. Dispatcher wired us someone was busting into a maintenance shop. Thieving louse was just piling into a motortruck when we got there. Louse opened fire. We shot back. He walked straight at us, walloped me in the head, and shot Tom in the arm.”

“By the time we could see straight,” said Bottomley, “he was gone. Found the motortruck in the morning. Empty.”

“What did he steal?”

“Five fifty-pound crates of dynamite, some blasting caps, and a coil of fuse,” answered Griggs.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Bell. “He loves his dynamite.”

“Sure, Mr. Bell. But what has Tom and me racking our brains is how’s he’s fixing to blow up a flying machine.”

/> “The race is headed to Fresno in the morning,” answered Bell. “I’ll telephone Superintendent Watt, tell him what you boys turned up, and ask him to set the entire California division of the Southern Pacific Railroad Police to inspecting main-line bridges and trestles for sabotage.”

“But flying machines don’t use bridges.”

“Their support trains do,” Bell explained. “And just between us, at this point in the race, after four thousand miles, the mechanicians and spare parts in their hangar cars are all that’s keeping them in the air. By any chance did you wound him at all?”

“I think I creased his leg when I went down. Wouldn’t be surprised if he limps a mite.”

“Well done,” said Isaac Bell.

EUSTACE WEED DECIDED that since he had no other choice than to do this terrible thing to Isaac Bell, he would at least do it right so nothing bad happened to Daisy by mistake. That would be the worst, to get caught doing the terrible thing but also have Daisy hurt.

To steady his nerves, he pretended that he was back in Tucson, hustling hick-town pool players in their hick-town parlor. One thing he knew for sure: if you wanted to win at pool, you had to trust yourself. At the end of the game, the dough was won by the guy who didn’t lose his nerve.

He snugged the copper tube inside his left hand and kept it hidden while he poured the strained gasoline – and – castor oil mix into the American Eagle’s tank right under Isaac Bell’s nose. That way, he wouldn’t look suspicious pulling it from a pocket. Andy came over to report that the machine was ready. Bell turned away to speak to Andy. Eustace reached for the gas cap to screw it on with his right hand.

Bell said, “Andy, let’s check the control post again.”

Eustace passed his left hand over the open mouth of the tank.

Isaac Bell’s thumb and forefinger closed around his wrist, hard as a steel shackle.