The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  “I am Isaac Bell. I have an appointment with Dr. Ryder.”

  “You can’t bring that in here,” he said, pointing at the car.

  Bell parked the Ford on the side of the driveway. The guard let him through the gate. “I ain’t responsible for what happens to that auto out there,” he smirked. “All the loonies ain’t inside.”

  Bell stepped closer and gave him a cold smile. “Consider that auto your primary responsibility until I return.”

  “What did you say?”

  “If anything happens to that auto, I will take it out of your hide. Do you believe me? Good. Now, take me to Dr. Ryder.”

  The owner of the asylum was a trim, precise, exquisitely dressed man in his forties. He looked, Bell thought, like a fussy sort, overly pleased with a situation that gave him total control over the lives of hundreds of patients. He was glad he had heeded Joe Van Dorn’s warning about little Napoleons.

  “I don’t know that it will be convenient for you to visit Miss Di Vecchio this afternoon,” said Dr. Ryder.

  “You and I spoke by long-distance telephone this morning,” Bell reminded him. “You agreed to a meeting with Miss Di Vecchio.”

  “The lunatic patient’s state of mind does not always concur with an outsider’s convenience. An untimely encounter could be distressing for both of you.”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” said Bell.

  “Ah, but what of the patient?”

  Isaac Bell looked Dr. Ryder in the eye. “Does the name Andrew Rubenoff ring a bell?”

  “Sounds like a Jew.”

  “In fact, he is a Jew,” Bell answered with a dangerous flash in his eye. He would never abide bigotry, which was going to make taking Ryder down a peg even more satisfying. “And a fine Jew he is. Heck of a piano player, too.”

  “I am afraid I have not met the, ah, gentleman.”

  “Mr. Rubenoff is a banker. He’s an old friend of my father’s. Practically an uncle to me.”

  “I have no banker named Rubenoff. And now if you’ll excuse-”

  “I am not surprised that you don’t know Mr. Rubenoff. His clients tend toward up-and-coming lines like automobile manufacture and moving pictures. But, out of sentiment, he allows his holding companies to retain their grip on some smaller, more conventional banks, and even buy another now and then. In fact, ‘Uncle Andrew’ asked me would I pay a visit on his behalf to one nearby while I was in your neighborhood. I believe it’s called the First Farmers Bank of Pittsfield.”

  Dr. Ryder turned white.

  Bell said, “The Van Dorn Detective Agency’s Research boys root up the darnedest information. First Farmers of Pittsfield holds your mortgage, Dr. Ryder, the terms of which allow the bank to call in your loan if the value of the collateral plummets – as it has for most private asylums, including the Ryder Private Asylum for the Insane, as the new state-run institutions siphon off patients. I will meet with Miss Di Vecchio in a clean, pleasant, well-lighted room. Your personal quarters, which I understand are on the top floor of the turret, will be ideal.”

  DANIELLE DI VECCHIO took Bell’s breath away. She entered Ryder’s cozy apartment tentatively, a little fearful – understandably, Bell thought – but also curious, a tall, well-built, very beautiful woman in a shabby white dress. She had long black hair and enormous dark eyes.

  Bell removed his hat and gestured for the matron to leave them and close the door. He offered his hand. “Miss Di Vecchio. Thank you for coming to see me. I am Isaac Bell.”

  He spoke softly and gently, mindful that she had been incarcerated under court order for slashing a man with a knife. Her eyes, which were darting around the room, drinking in furniture, carpets, paintings, and books, settled on him.

  “Who are you?” Her accent was Italian, her English pronunciation clear.

  “I am a private detective. I am investigating the shooting of Marco Celere.”

  “Ladro!”

  “Yes. Why do you call him a thief?”

  “He stole,” she answered simply. Her eyes roamed to the window, and the way her face lit up told Isaac Bell that she had not been out of doors for a long time and probably not seen green trees and grass and blue sky even from a distance.

  “Why don’t we sit in this window seat?” Bell asked, moving slowly toward it. She followed him carefully, warily as a cat yet aching to be caressed by the breeze that stirred the curtains. Bell positioned himself so he could stop her if she tried to jump out the window.

  “Can you tell me what Marco Celere stole?”

  “Is he dead from this shooting?”

  “Probably,” answered Bell.

  “Good,” she said, then crossed herself.

  “Why did you make the sign of the cross?”

  “I’m glad he’s dead. But I’m glad it wasn’t me who took life. That is God’s work.”

  Doubting that God had deputized Harry Frost, Isaac Bell took a chance on Di Vecchio’s mental state. “But you tried to kill him, didn’t you?”

  “And failed,” she answered. She looked Bell in the face. “I have had months to think about it. I believe that a part of my soul held back. I don’t remember everything that happened that day, but I do recall that when the knife missed his neck it carved a long cut in his arm. Here. .” She ran her fingers in an electric glide down the inside of Bell’s forearm.

  “I was glad. But I can’t remember whether I was glad because I drew blood or glad because I didn’t kill.”

  “What did Marco steal?”

  “My father’s work.”

  “What work was that?”

  “My father was aeroplano cervellone-how do you say? – brain. Genius!”

  “Your father invented flying machines?”

  “Yes! Bella monoplano. He named it Aquila. Aquila means ‘eagle’ in American. When he brought his Aquila to America, he was so proud to immigrate to your country that he named her American Eagle.”

  She began talking a mile a minute. Marco Celere had worked for her father in Italy as a mechanician, helping him build the aeroplanes he invented. “Back in Italy. Before he made his name short.”

  “Marco changed his name? What was it?”

  “Prestogiacomo.”

  “Prestogiacomo,” Bell imitated the sound that rolled off her tongue. He asked her to spell it and wrote it in his notebook.

  “When Marco came here, he said it was too long for Americans. But that was a lie. Everyone knew Prestogiacomo was ladro. Here, his new name, Celere, only means ‘quick.’ No one knew the kind of man he really was.”

  “What did he steal from your father?”

  What Marco Celere had stolen, Di Vecchio claimed, were new methods of wing strengthening and roll control.

  “Can you explain what you mean by roll control?” Bell asked, still testing her lucidity.

  She gestured, using her long graceful arms like wings. “When the aeroplano tilts this way, the conduttore – pilota-changes the shape of wing to make it tilt that way so to be straight.”

  Recalling his first conversation with Josephine, Bell asked, “Did your father happen to invent alettoni?”

  “Yes! Si! Si! That’s what I am telling you. Alettoni.”

  “Little wings.”

  “My father,” she said, tapping her chest proudly, “my wonderful babbo. Instead of warping the whole wing, he moved only small parts of it. Much better.”

  Bell passed his notepad to her and handed over his Waterman fountain pen. “Can you show me?”

  She sketched a monoplane, and depicted the movable hinged parts at the back of the outer edges of the wings. It looked very much like the yellow machine that Josephine was flying.

  “Alettoni-hinged little wings – is what Marco stole from your father?”

  “Not only. He stole strength, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My father learned how wings act to make them strong.”

  In a fresh torrent of English peppered with Italian and illustrated with another sket
ch, Danielle explained that monoplanes had a habit of crashing when their wings suddenly collapsed in flight, unlike biplanes, whose double wings were structurally more sound. Bell nodded his understanding. He had heard this repeatedly in the Belmont Park infield. Monoplanes were slightly faster than biplanes because they presented less wind resistance and weighed less. Biplanes were stronger – one of the reasons they were all surprised when Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s Farman had broken up. According to Danielle Di Vecchio, Marco Celere had proposed that the monoplane’s weakness came not from the “flying wire” stays underneath the wings but the “landing wires” above them.

  “Marco tested his monoplano with sandbags to make like the strain of flying – what is your word?”

  “Simulate?” “Si. Simulate the strain of flying. My father said a static test was too simplistic. Marco was pretending the wings do not move. He pretended that forces on them do not change. But wings do move in flight! Don’t you see, Mr. Bell? Forces of wind gusts and strains of the machine’s maneuvers-carico dinamico-attack its wings from many directions and not only push but twist the wings. Marco’s silly tests took no account of these,” she said scornfully. “He made his wings too stiff. He is meccanico, not artista!”

  She handed Bell the drawings.

  Bell saw a strong similarity to the machine that Josephine had persuaded Preston Whiteway to buy back from Marco Celere’s creditors. “Is Marco’s monoplane dangerous?” he asked.

  “The one he made in San Francisco? It would be dangerous if he had not stolen my father’s design.”

  Bell said, “I heard a rumor that a monoplane Marco sold to the Italian Army broke a wing.”

  “Si!” she said angrily. “That’s the one that made all the trouble. His too-stiff monoplano-the one he tested with sandbags back in Italy – smashed.”

  “But why couldn’t your father sell his Eagle monoplano to the Italian Army if it was better than Marco’s?”

  “Marco ruined the market. He poisoned the generals’ minds against all monoplano. My father’s monoplano factory went bankrupt.”

  “Interesting,” said Bell, watching her reaction. “Both your father and Marco had to leave Italy.”

  “Marco fled!” she answered defiantly. “He took my father’s drawing to San Francisco, where he sold machines to that rich woman Josephine. My father emigrated to New York. He had high hopes of selling his Aquila monoplano in New York. Wall Street bankers would invest in a new factory. Before he could interest them, creditors seized everything in Italy. He was ruined. So ruined that he killed himself. With gas, in a cheap San Francisco hotel room.”

  “San Francisco? You said he came to New York.”

  “Marco lured him there, promising money for his inventions. But all he wanted was my father to fix his machines. He died all alone. Not even a priest. That is why I tried to kill Marco Celere.”

  She crossed her shapely arms and looked Bell in the eye. “I am angry. Not insane.”

  “I can see that,” said Isaac Bell.

  “But I am locked with insane.”

  “Are you treated well?”

  She shrugged. Her long graceful fingers picked at her dress, which a hundred launderings had turned gray. “When I am angry, they lock me alone.”

  “I will take Dr. Ryder aside and have a word with him.” Firmly aside, by the scruff of his neck, with his face jammed against a wall.

  “I have no money for lawyers. No money for ‘medical experts’ to tell the court I am not lunatic.”

  “May I ask why your father could not find other buyers for his Eagle flying machine?”

  “My father’s monoplano is so much better, so fresh and new, that some of it is still – how do you say? – innato. Tempestuous.”

  “Temperamental?”

  “Yes. She is not yet tamed.”

  “Is your father’s flying machine dangerous?”

  “Shall we say ‘interesting’?” Danielle Di Vecchio replied with an elegant smile. And at that moment, thought the tall detective, they could be thousands of miles from Massachusetts, flirting in a Roman salon.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  The Italian woman’s dark-eyed gaze drifted past Bell, out the window, and locked on the hilltop. Her face lighted in a broad smile. “There,” she said.

  Bell looked out the window. What on earth was she imagining?

  The truck with the flat tire had towed its wagon to the crest of the hill. “A boy,” she explained. “A nice boy. He loves me.”

  “But what is he doing with your father’s machine?”

  “My father took it with him from Italy. His creditors can’t touch it here. It is his legacy. My inheritance. That boy helped my father in America. He is eccellente meccanico!”

  “Not artista?” Bell asked, testing her reaction with a smile. He could not be sure, but she seemed as sane as he was.

  “Artists are rare, Mr. Bell. I’m sure you know that. He wrote that he was coming. I thought he was dreaming.” She jumped up and waved out the window, but it was unlikely that he could see her. Bell passed her the hem of the white curtain. “Wave this. Maybe he’ll see it.” She did. But he did not respond, his gaze likely on the myriad barred windows.

  She slumped down on the window seat. “He’s still dreaming. Does he imagine I can just walk out of here?”

  “What is his name?” Bell asked.

  “Andy. Andy Moser. My father liked him very much.”

  Isaac Bell was struck by a wonderful possibility. He asked, “How fast is your father’s monoplane?”

  “Very fast. Father believed that only speed would overcome winds. The more speedy the aeroplano, the safer in bad weather, Father said.”

  “Faster than sixty miles per hour?”

  “Father hoped for seventy.”

  “Miss Di Vecchio, I have a proposition for you.”

  13

  “MR. MOSER, YOUR SITUATION is about to improve vastly,” Isaac Bell said to the sad-faced mechanician who was grilling a frankfurter on a fire he had built a safe distance from the crated American Eagle monoplane.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Read this!”

  Bell thrust a fine parchment-paper envelope he had lifted from Dr. Ryder’s writing desk into Moser’s grease-stained hand.

  “Open it.”

  Andy Moser slid a finger under the seal, unfolded a sheet of writing paper covered in an elegant Florentine cursive script, and read slowly, moving his lips.

  Isaac Bell had seized an opportunity to help the beautiful Italian woman while helping himself solve the vexing problem he had warned Archie about. The field of competitors vying for the Whiteway Cup was growing so large that too many support trains would be jockeying for the same railroad tracks. Keeping up with Josephine’s flying machine to guard her life would be a nightmare even with the help of the auto patrols that Archie had envisioned.

  But what, Bell had asked himself, if he took “the high ground”? With his own airship, he could ride herd on the race. He could watch Josephine in the air while he stationed men ahead at the racetracks and fairgrounds that would provide infields to alight on.

  Danielle Di Vecchio needed money to plead her case to get out of Ryder’s asylum.

  Isaac Bell needed a speedy airship. He bought hers.

  “Danielle says I’m supposed to go with you, Mr. Bell.”

  “And bring my flying machine,” said Bell, grinning at the wagon. Disassembled and folded up for travel, it looked like a dragonfly in a cage.

  “And teach you how to drive it?”

  “As soon as I set you up in a first-class hangar car.”

  “But I don’t know how to fly it. I’m only a mechanician.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just get her running, and show me the controls. How long will it take to put it back together?”

  “A day, with a good helper. Have you ever driven a flying machine?”

  “I drive a one-hundred-mile-an-hour Locomobile. I have driven a V-T
win Indian racer motorcycle, a 4-6-2 Pacific locomotive, and a fifty-knot steel-hulled turbine yacht built by Sir Charles Algernon Parsons himself. I imagine I’ll pick it up.”

  “Locomotives and steel yachts don’t leave the ground, Mr. Bell.”

  “That’s why I’m so fired up! Finish your lunch and wave good-bye to Danielle. She’s watching from the fourteenth window from the left, second from the bottom. She can’t wave through the bars, but she can see you.”

  Moser gazed sadly down the hill. “I hate leaving her behind, but she says you’re going to help get her out.”

  “Don’t you worry, we’ll get her out. And in the meantime, Dr. Ryder has promised that her treatment will improve, dramatically. Will your truck make it to Albany?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll go ahead and charter a train. It will be waiting in the Albany yards, steam up for Belmont Park. Mechanicians will be standing by to help you reassemble the American Eagle the second you arrive.”

  “Belmont Park? Are you intending to enter the American Eagle in the cross-country race?”

  “No,” Bell laughed. “But it’s going to help me keep an eye on Josephine Josephs.”

  Andy Moser looked incredulous. Of all he had read and heard since Isaac raced up in his Model K Ford, this took the cake. “You know the Sweetheart of the Air?”

  “I am a private detective. Josephine’s husband is trying to kill her. The American Eagle is going to help me save her life.”

  After Bell chartered his support train in Albany, he wired San Francisco to alert Dashwood to the fact that Marco Celere’s original name was Marco Prestogiacomo. He might well have still been Prestogiacomo when he landed in San Francisco, and Bell hoped that this new information would speed up Dashwood’s unusually slow progress.

  “I’M NOT GOING TO WASTE flying time watching Dmitri Platov demonstrate his thermo engine,” Josephine told Isaac Bell a day later. “I doubt it will work. And even if it does, that horrible Steve Stevens is too fat to drive a flying machine, even one of Marco’s.”