The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

“Do you think Musto will show up again?” Dash asked.

“He’s not stupid. Unfortunately, the damage is done.”

“How do you mean, Mr. Bell?”

“The reporters he bribed have already wired their stories. If, as I suspect, there’s a saboteur trying to derail the front-runners, then bookie Musto has put Eddison-Sydney-Martin in his crosshairs.”

29

ILLINOIS THUNDERSTORMS STRUCK AGAIN, cutting the race in half. The trailing fliers, those who had gotten a late start from Peoria due to mechanic failures and mistakes made by tiring birdmen, put down in Springfield. But the leaders, Steve Stevens and Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin, defied the black clouds towering in the west and forged on, hoping to reach the racetrack at Columbia before the storms blew them out of the sky.

Josephine, midway between the leaders and the trailers, pushed ahead. Isaac Bell stuck with her, eyes raking the ground for Harry Frost.

The leaders’ support trains steamed along with them, then shoveled on the coal to race ahead to greet them at the track with canvas shrouds to protect the aeroplanes from the rain and tent stakes and ropes to anchor them against the wind.

Marco Celere played his kind and helpful Dmitri Platov role to the hilt, directing Steve Stevens’s huge retinue of mechanicians, assistants, and servants in the securing of the big white biplane. Then he scooped up three oilskin slickers and ran to help tie down Josephine’s and Bell’s machines as they dropped from a sky suddenly seared by bolts of lightning.

The twin yellow monoplanes bounced to a stop seconds ahead of a downpour.

Celere tossed a slicker to Josephine and another to Bell, who said, “Thanks, Platov,” then shouted, “Come on, Josephine. The boys’ll tie it down.” He threw a long arm over her shoulder and dragged her away, saying to Platov, “Imagine reporting to Mr. Van Dorn that America’s Sweetheart of the Air got struck by lightning.”

“Here helping, not worrying.” Platov pulled on his own slicker. Enormous raindrops started kicking up dust. For a moment they sizzled in the blazing heat. Then the sky turned black as night, and an icy wind blasted rain across the infield. The last of the spectators ran to the hotel attached to the grandstand.

Bell’s men – Andy Moser and his helpers – dragged canvas over the Eagle.

Eustace Weed, the new mechanician Bell had hired in Buffalo, said, “That’s O.K., Mr. Platov. We’ve got it.”

Celere ran to help Josephine’s ham-handed detective-mechanicians tie down hers and he was reminded how frustrating it was not to be able to work on Josephine’s aeroplane – his aeroplane – to keep it flying at its best. Josephine was good, but not that good. He may be a truffatore confidence man, but if there was one skill he truly possessed, he was a fine mechanician.

Celere waited until the machines were covered and tied down and he was sure that Isaac Bell was not coming back from escorting Josephine to her private car. Then he ran through the pouring rain to where Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s headless pusher was tied down. He made a show of checking the ropes, though it was not likely anyone could see him through the dark and watery haze. The baronet and his mechanicians had fled to their train. It was an opportunity to do mischief. But he had to work fast and do something unexpected.

Thunder pealed. Lightning struck the grandstand roof, and green Saint Elmo’s fire trickled along the gutters and down the leaders. The next bolt struck in the center of the infield, and Marco Celere began to see the wisdom of Bell’s retreat from Mother Nature. He ran for the nearest cover, a temporary wooden shed erected to supply the flying machines with gasoline, oil, and water.

Someone was sheltering in it ahead of him. Too late to turn away, he saw that it was the Englishman Lionel Ruggs, the baronet’s chief mechanician and the chief reason why he had steered clear of the headless pusher, other than surreptitiously drilling a hole in its wing strut back at Belmont Park.

“Whatcha doin’ to the guv’s machine?”

“Just checking its ropes.”

“Spent a long time checkin’ ropes.”

Celere ducked his head as if he were embarrassed. “O.K., you are catching me. I was looking at competition.”

“Lookin’ or doin’?” Ruggs asked coldly.

“Doing? What would I be doing?”

Lionel Ruggs stepped very close to him. He was taller than Celere, and bigger in the chest. He stared inquiringly into Celere’s eyes. Then he cracked a mirthless smile.

“Jimmy Quick. I thought that was you hidin’ in those curls.”

Marco Celere knew there was no denying it. Ruggs had him dead to rights. It had been fifteen years, but they’d worked side by side in the same machine shop from ages fourteen to eighteen and shared a room under the eaves of the

owner’s house. Celere had always feared that he would bump into his past sooner or later. How many flying-machine mechanicians were there in the small, tight-knit new world of flying machines?

Jimmy Quick had been his English nickname, a good-natured play on Prestogiacomo that the English found so hard to pronounce. He had recognized Ruggs from a distance and stayed out of his way. Now he had stumbled, face-to-face, into him in a thunderstorm.

“What’s this Russian getup?” Ruggs demanded. “I bet you been caught stealin’ somethin’, like you was in Birmingham. Doin’ the old man’s daughter was one thing – more power to you – but stealin’ his machine tool design he worked on his whole life, that was low. That old man treated us good.”