“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.
“Lips do not bear thinking about until you win the race,” he said. “Drive my airplane. Win the race. And don’t forget, when you win the race, Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air will be a made woman with heaps of money. And Marco, the inventor of the winning Celere Monoplano, will be a made man, with Italian Army contracts to build hundreds of aeroplanes.”
“What has it been like for you to look at me all this time?”
“What is it like? Like it has always been from the first day I set eyes on you. Like an ocean of joy that fills my heart. Now, let’s get your machine fixed.”
ISAAC BELL TRIED TO SLEEP in a blanket roll under the monoplane, but his mind kept seizing on Harry Frost’s strange statement. Suddenly he sat up, galvanized by an entirely different and even stranger thought. He had been struck by his aeroplane’s resilience – and grateful for it saving his life – even before Andy Moser’s admiring remark that Di Vecchio “built ’em to last.”
Bell pulled on his boots and ran to the rail-yard dispatch shack, where they had a telegraph. The peculiar strength of the American Eagle stemmed from multiple braces and redundant control links. Not only had its inventor used all the best materials, he had anticipated structural failure and designed to prevent catastrophe.
Such an inventor who built to last did not seem to be the sort of man to kill himself over a bankruptcy. Such a man, Bell thought, would rise above failure, seeing a bankruptcy as nothing worse than a temporary setback.
“Van Dorn,” he told the New York Central Railroad dispatcher. He had a letter of introduction signed by the president of the line. But the dispatcher was delighted to help anyone in the air race.
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“I want to send a telegraph.”
The dispatcher’s hand poised over the brass key. “To whom?”
“James Dashwood. Van Dorn Agency. San Francisco.”
“Message?”
Bell listened to the dispatcher tap the letters of his message into the Morse alphabet.