The Race (Isaac Bell 4)
Thugs from the circulation department escorted the unfortunate to the stairs. Whiteway crumpled the clipping in his plump fist and glowered at his terrified employees.
“The Inquirer speaks to the average man, not the technical man. Write these words down: In the pages of the Inquirer, ‘flying machines’ and ‘aeroplanes’ are ‘driven’ or ‘navigated’ or ‘flown’ by ‘drivers,’ ‘birdmen,’ ‘aviators,’ and ‘aviatrixes.’ Not ‘pilots,’ who dock the Lusitania, nor ‘aeronauts,’ who sound like Greeks. You and I may know that ‘planes’ are components of wings and that ‘horizontal rudders’ are elevators. The average man wants his wings to be wings, his rudders to turn, and his elevators to ascend. He wants his airscrews to be ‘propellers.’ He is well aware that if flying machines are not heavier than air, they are balloons. And soon he will want that back East and European affectation ‘aeroplane’ to be an ‘airplane.’ Get to work!”
Isaac Bell reckoned that Whiteway’s private office made Joseph Van Dorn’s mighty “throne room” in Washington, D.C., look modest.
The publisher sat behind his desk and announced, “Gentlemen, you are the first to know that I have decided to sponsor my own personal entry in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and the fifty-thousand-dollar prize.”
He paused dramatically.
“Her name – yes, you heard me right, gentlemen-her name is Josephine Josephs.”
Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn exchanged a glance that Whiteway misinterpreted as astonished rather than confirmation of a foregone conclusion.
“I know what you’re thinking, gentlemen: I’m either a brave man backing a girl or I’m a fool. Neither! I say. There is no reason why a girl can’t win the cross-country aerial race. It takes more nerve than brawn to drive a flying machine, and this little girl has nerve enough for a regiment.”
Isaac Bell asked, “Are you referring to Josephine Josephs Frost?”
“We will not be using her husband’s name,” Whiteway replied curtly. “The reason for this will shock you to the core.”
“Josephine Josephs Frost?” asked Van Dorn. “The young bride whose husband took potshots at her flying machine last fall in upper New York State?”
“Where did you hear that?” Whiteway bristled. “I kept it out of the papers.”
“In our business,” Van Dorn replied mildly, “we tend to hear before you do.”
Bell asked, “Why did you keep it out of the papers?”
“Because my publicists are booming Josephine to build interest in the race. They are promoting her with a new song that I commissioned entitled ‘Come, Josephine in My Flying Machine.’ They’ll plaster her picture on sheet music, Edison cylinders, piano rolls, magazines, and posters to keep people excited about the outcome.”
“I’d have thought they’d be excited anyway.”
“If you don’t lead the public, they get bored,” Whiteway replied scornfully. “In fact, the best thing that could happen to keep people excited about the race will be if half the male contestants smash to the ground before Chicago
.”
Bell and Van Dorn exchanged another look, and Van Dorn said, disapprovingly, “We presume that you utter that statement in confidence.”
“A natural winnowing of the field will turn it into a contest that pits only the best airmen against plucky tomboy Josephine,” Whiteway explained without apology. “Newspaper readers root for the underdog. Come with me! You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
Trailed by an ever-expanding entourage of editors, writers, lawyers, and managers, Preston Whiteway led the detectives down two floors to the art department, a lofty room lit by north windows and crammed with artists hunched over drawing boards, illustrating the day’s events.
Bell counted twenty men crowding in after the publisher, some with pencils and pens in hand, all with panic in their eyes. The artists ducked their heads and drew faster. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two ran to him, bearing mock-ups of sheet music covers.
“What have you got?”
They held up a sketch of a girl on a flying machine soaring over a field of cows. “‘The Flying Farm Girl.’”
“No!”
Abashed, they held up a second drawing. This depicted a girl in overalls with her hair stuffed under what looked to Bell like a taxi driver’s cap. “‘The Aerial Tomboy.’”
“No! God in Heaven, no. What do you men do down here for your salaries?”
“But Mr. Whiteway, you said readers like farm girls and tomboys.”
“I said, ‘She’s a girl!’ Newspaper readers like girls. Draw her prettier! Josephine is beautiful.”
Isaac Bell took pity on the artists, who looked ready to jump out the window, and interjected, “Why don’t you make her look like a fellow’s sweetheart?”