The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  “One of Marco’s? What do you mean?”

  “It’s a biplane he invented for heavy lifting, to carry a bunch of passengers.”

  Bell said, “I wasn’t aware that Marco had another machine in the race.”

  “Steve Stevens bought it from his creditors. Lucky him. It’s the only machine in the world that will lift him. He paid twenty cents on the dollar. Poor Marco got nothing.”

  Bell escorted her to her monoplane. Van Dorn mechanicians spun her propeller, and when the blue smoke of her motor turned white, she tore down the field and took to the sky for yet another of her long-distance practice runs.

  Bell watched her dwindle to a yellow dot, secure in the thought that soon he would be flying beside her. The Eagle had arrived late last night on a four-car special train that Bell had chartered for the duration. Andy Moser and a Van Dorn crew were already trundling the pieces from the rail yard to the infield.

  Then, thought Bell, all he had to do was learn to drive the thing before the race started. Or at least well enough to keep learning on the job, as he tracked Josephine across the country. By the time the race ended in San Francisco, he’d have gotten pretty good at it, and the first thing he would do was take Marion Morgan for a ride. The Eagle’s motor had plenty of extra power, Andy had told him, to carry a passenger. Marion could even bring a moving-picture camera. And wouldn’t that adventure be a wedding gift?

  He watched Josephine disappear in the east. “All right, boys,” he told the Van Dorns, “stay here and wait for Josephine to come back. Stick close to her. If you need me, I’ll be over at the thermo engine.”

  “Do you think Frost will attack here like he did before? He knows we’re primed.”

  “He’s surprised us before. Stick close. I’ll come back before she lands.”

  Bell walked across the infield to the three-hundred-foot-long steel rail on which Platov had promised his engine would race in a final experiment before they installed it in Steve Stevens’s biplane.

  The enormously fat Stevens, bulging in a white planter’s suit and glowering impatiently, sat at a breakfast table that his elderly servants had set with linen and silver. Platov and Stevens’s chief mechanician were tinkering with the still-silent jet motor, the mechanician setting valves and switches while Platov consulted his slide rule. Stevens was venting his restlessness by upbraiding his servants. His coffee was cold, he was complaining. His sweet rolls were stale, and there weren’t enough of them. The docile old men attending the cotton planter looked terrified.

  Stevens’s arrogant gaze fell on Bell’s white suit.

  “Surely Southern blood courses in your veins, suh,” he drawled in dulcet Southern tones. “Ah have never laid eyes on a Yankee who could do justice to the pure white duds of the Old South.”

  “My father spent time in the Old South.”

  “And taught you to dress like a gentleman. Do Ah presume correctly that he was buyin’ cotton for New England mills?”

  “He was a Union Army intelligence officer, carrying out President Lincoln’s order to free the slaves.”

  “Ready, sirs,” Dmitri Platov called out.

  The Russian inventor’s springy mutton-chop whiskers were quivering with excitement and his dark eyes were flashing.

  “Thermo engine ready.”

  Stevens glared at his chief mechanician. “Is it, Judd?”

  Judd muttered, “Ready as it ever will be, Mr. Stevens.”

  “About time. Ah’ve had just about enough sittin’ and waitin’. . Now, where you goin’?”

  Judd had picked up a baseball bat and started walking along the rail. “I gotta whack the stop switch as she’s nearing the end to shut the motor off.”

  “Is that how you’re goin’ to stop the motor on my flyin’ machine? Are you-all fixin’ to stand in front of me with a baseball bat?”

  “No worry!” cried Platov. “Automatic switch in machine. This only test. See?” He pointed at the thermo engine, resting on the rail. “Big switch. Just touch with bat as engine go by.”

  “All right, get on with it, for God’s sake. The rest of the race’ll be across the Mississippi before Ah take to the sky.”

  Judd ran two hundred feet down the rail and positioned himself. Bell thought he looked as unhappy as a long-ball hitter ordered to bunt.

  “Is action!” cried Platov.

  The thermo engine ignited with a low whine that soared to an earsplitting shriek. Bell covered his ears to protect his acute hearing and watched the motor begin to shake with awesome power. No wonder the mechanicians all respected Platov. That steel box he had invented was smaller than a steamer trunk, but it seemed to contain the amazing energy of a modern locomotive.

  Platov jerked the release lever, and the latches holding it back opened.

  The thermo engine shot down the rail.

  Bell could scarcely believe his eyes. In one instant, it was throbbing next to him. In the next, it reached the man with the bat. It really worked, and the speed was phenomenal. Then all hell broke loose. Just as Judd was about to bunt the bat against the stop switch, the thermo engine jumped the rail.

  It smashed through the chief mechanician as if he were a paper target, knocked what little remained of his body to the ground, and flew a hundred yards, crashing through Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s brand-new New Haven Curtiss parked on the grass and tearing the tail off a Blériot, before it came to rest inside a truck owned by the Vanderbilt syndicate, where it burst into flames.

  Isaac Bell ran to the fallen Judd and saw immediately that there was nothing to be done for the man. Then while others ran to the destroyed New Haven and the burning truck, Bell inspected the rail where the engine had escaped.

  Dmitri Platov was wringing his hands. “Was so good, ’til then. So good. Oh, that poor man. Look at that poor man.”

  Steve Stevens waddled up. “If this don’t beat all! My head mechanician’s been killed, and Ah got no jet engine for my machine. How in hell am Ah supposed to run a race?”

  Platov wept. He tore at his thick black hair and beat his hands on his chest. “What terrible thing I have done. Did he have wife?”

  “Who the hell would marry Judd?”

  “Is terrible, is terrible.”

  Isaac Bell stood up from where he was crouching beneath the rail, brushed Stevens out of his way, and placed a firm hand on Platov’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t blame myself, if I were you, Mr. Platov.”

  “Is me. Is captain of ship. Is my machine. Is my error. I have killed a man.”

  “But you didn’t intend to. Nor did your amazing machine. It had some help.”

  “What the devil are you talkin’ about?” said Stevens.

  “The rail broke. That’s what made the machine jump it.”

  “That’s Platov’s rail,” shouted Stevens. “That’s his responsibility. He’s the one who put it there. He’s the one responsible for it breakin’. Ah’m callin’ my lawyers. We’re goin’ to sue.”

  “Look at this joint,” said Bell. He led Platov to the point where two lengths of rail had parted. Platov crouched beside him, lips pursed tighter and tighter. “Is bolts loosen-ed,” he said angrily.

  “Loose?” howled Stevens. “’Cause you-all didn’t make it tight. . What are you doin’, sir?” he said, recoiling, as Bell shoved his fingers under his nose.

  “Smell that and shut up.”

  “I smell oil. So what?”

  “Penetrating oil, to make it easier to unscrew the bolts.”

  “No squeak,” Platov said miserably. “No noise.”

  “The rail was sabotaged,” said Isaac Bell. “The fishtail bolts were loosened just enough to let the rail slip under pressure.”

  “No!” said Platov. “I check rail every test. I check this morning.”

  “Ah,” said Bell, “that’s what those are.” He knelt down and picked up some oil-soaked matchsticks. “That’s how he did it,” he mused. “Jammed these into the crack to damp the motion when you tested it. But they would have
fallen out when the rail started vibrating as the thermo engine approached. Diabolical.”

  “Rail move,” said Platov. “Thermo engine fly away. . But why!”

  “Do you have enemies, Mr. Platov?”

  “Platov likes. Platov like-ed.”

  “Perhaps back in Russia?” asked Bell, aware that Russian immigrants of every political stripe from radical to reactionary had fled their restive land.

  “No. I leave friends, family. I send money home.”

  “Then who’d do such a thing?” demanded Steve Stevens.

  Isaac Bell said, “Could it be that someone didn’t want you to win the race with Mr. Platov’s amazing motor?”

  “Ah’ll show ’em! Platov, make me a new motor!”

  “Not possible. Take time. I am being sorry. You need to find ordinary gasoline motor. In fact, you need two motors, mounted on lower wings.”

  “Two! What for?”

  Platov spread his arms wide as if measuring Stevens’s girth. “For lifting heaviness. Powering equal to thermo engine. Two motors, mounted on lower wing.”

  “Well, how the hell am Ah goin’ to find two motors, and who the hell is goin’ to install ’em, with Judd dead?”

  “Judd’s assistants.”

  “Farm boys, tractor hands. Fine doin’ what Judd told them to do, but they’re not real mechanicians.” Stevens jammed plump fists on his broad hips and glared around the infield. “If this don’t beat all. Here, Ah got my machine. Ah got money to buy new motors, but no hands to install ’em. Say, how ’bout you, Platov? Want a job?”

  “No thank you. I am having new thermo engine to manufacture.”

  “But Ah seen you runnin’ around takin’ jobs for money. Ah’ll pay top dollar.”

  “My thermo engine come first.”

  “Tell you what. When you’re not workin’ on my flyin’ machine, you can work on your thermo engine.”

  “Could your train tow my shop car?”

  “Sure thing. Glad to have your tools along.”

  “And can I still being freelance machinist to make money for new thermo engine?”

  “Just as long as my machine comes first.” Stevens beckoned his servants. “Tom! You, there, Tom. Fetch Mr. Platov some breakfast. Can’t expect a top hand to work hard on an empty stomach.”

  Platov looked at Isaac Bell as if to ask what he should do.

  Bell said, “It looks like you’re back in the race.”

  He saw Josephine returning and hurried toward the open stretch where she would come down. His brow was furrowed. He was thinking hard about coincidences. The Englishman’s accident occurring simultaneously with Frost’s attack was no coincidence. It had been deliberate sabotage to create a distraction to support the attack.

  But what was the distraction, this time? There had been no attack. Josephine was high in the sky, and Bell had seen nothing amiss on the ground. When last heard of, Harry Frost was in Cincinnati. It was possible he could have returned to New York. But it seemed unlikely that he would attack again at Belmont Park in broad daylight, particularly since Bell had assigned Van Dorns, backed up by local police, to check the loads inside every closed van and wagon that entered the infield. It was logical to assume that Frost reckoned he would do better to lie in wait and spring from ambush.

  Bell found Josephine’s Van Dorn mechanicians watching her yellow monoplane spiral-dipping down toward the infield in a series of steep dives and sharp turns. “Have you boys seen anything out of order?”

  “Not a thing, Mr. Bell. Except that thermo engine running wild.”

  Was this sabotage a genuine coincidence? Had Platov’s engine been destroyed by a saboteur not employed by Frost? Not by the saboteur who caused the Farman to lose a wing but by another, operating on his own? For what purpose? To eliminate a potentially strong competitor, seemed the only answer.

  “Did you say something, Mr. Bell?”

  Isaac Bell repeated through gritted teeth what he had just growled under his breath. “I hate coincidences.”

  “Yes, sir! First thing they taught me when I joined the Van Dorns.”

  “YOUR FLYING MACHINE IS BEAUTIFUL!” Josephine exclaimed delightedly. “And look at you, Mr. Bell! You look happy as a jaybird in a cherry tree.”

  Bell was grinning. Andy Moser and the mechanicians Bell had hired to help him were tightening the flying and landing wires that braced the wing. They still had work to do on the tail and the control links, and the motor was scattered in small pieces in their spick-and-span hangar car, but with the wing spreading across the fuselage, it was beginning to look like something that would fly.

  “I must say, I’ve never in my life bought anything I’ve liked as much.”

  Josephine kept striding around it, eyeing it professionally.

  Bell watched for her reaction as he said, “Andy Moser tells me that Di Vecchio licensed the controlling system from Breguet.”

  “So I see.”

  “That wheel turns it like an automobile. Turn left to make the rudder turn you left. Tilt the wheel post left, and it warps the wings by moving the alettoni to bank left into the turn. Push the wheel post, and she’ll go down. Pull it, and the elevators make her go up.”

  “You can drive it with only one hand, when you get good at it,” said Josephine.

  Leaving a hand free for a pistol, which meant that Bell could counterpunch if someone attacked Josephine in her flying machine. He said, “It works just like yours.”

  “It’s the up-to-date thing.”

  “It ought to make it easier to learn to fly,” said Bell.

  “You bought yourself a beauty, Mr. Bell. But I’ll warn you, she’s going to be a handful. The trouble with going fast is you land fast. And that Gnome motor makes it even worse, since you won’t have a real throttle like my Antoinette’s.”

  While the similarities were striking, Bell had to admit that, when it came to their French-made power plants, the Celere and Di Vecchio monoplanes were radically different. Josephine’s Celere was powered by a conventional water-cooled V-8 Antoinette, a strong, lightweight motor, whereas Di Vecchio had installed the new and revolutionary air-cooled rotary Gnome Omega in his. With its cylinders spinning around a central crankshaft, the Gnome offered smooth running and superior cooling at the expense of fuel consumption, ticklish maintenance, and a primitive carburetor that made it almost impossible to run the motor at any speed but wide open.

  “Can you give me some tips on slowing down to land like I’ve seen you do?”

  Josephine leveled a stern finger at the control wheel. “Before you get fancy, practice blipping your magneto on and off with that coupe button.”

  Bell shook his head. Switching the ignition on and off, interrupting electricity to the spark plug, was a means, of sorts, to slow the motor. “Andy Moser says to go easy on the coupe button or I’ll burn up the valves.”

  “Better the valves than you, Mr. Bell,” Josephine grinned. “I need my protector alive. And don’t worry about stalling the motor, it’s got plenty of inertia to keep it spinning.” Her face fell. “I’m sorry, that was really stupid of me about needing you alive. How is Archie?”

  “He’s hanging on. They let me see him this morning. His eyes were open, and I believe he recognized me. . Josephine, I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the wing stays.”

  “What about them?”

  “Do you notice how they converge at these triangular king posts, top and bottom?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you notice how the triangles form in essence single lightweight steel struts? The point thrusting above the wing is actually the top of the broad base that extends below the wing.”

  “Of course. It’s very strong, that way.”

  “And do you see how ingeniously it’s braced by the chassis?” She crouched down beside him, and they studied the strong X-braced support that connected the body of the aeroplane to its skids and wheels.

  “It’
s the same system as on your Celere, isn’t it?” Bell asked.

  “It looks similar,” she admitted.

  “I haven’t seen anything like it on any other monoplane. I have to ask you, is it possible that Marco Celere, shall we say, ‘borrowed’ his wing-strengthening innovation from Di Vecchio?”

  “Absolutely not!” Josephine said vehemently.

  Bell observed that the ordinarily exuberant aviatrix seemed troubled by his blunt accusation. She jumped to her feet. Her grin had gone out like a light, and a flush was gathering on her cheeks. Did she suspect, even fear, that it was true?

  “Or, perhaps, could Marco have unconsciously copied it?” he asked gently.

  “No.”

  “Did Marco ever tell you he worked for Di Vecchio?”

  “No.”

  Then, oddly, she was smiling again. Smugly, Bell thought. And he wondered why. The tension had left her slim frame, and she stood in her usual pert manner, as if about to spring into motion.

  “Did Marco never mention that he worked for Di Vecchio?”

  “Di Vecchio worked for Marco,” she retorted, which explained her peaceful smile. “Until Marco had to fire him.”

  “I heard it was the other way around.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  “Perhaps I misunderstood. Did Marco tell you that Di Vecchio’s daughter stabbed him last year?”

  “That crazy woman almost killed him. She left a terrible scar on his arm.”

  “Did Marco tell you why?”

  “Of course. She was jealous. She wanted to marry him. But Marco wasn’t interested. In fact, he told me that her father was pushing her into it, hoping that Marco would rehire him.”

  “Did Marco tell you that she accused him of being a thief?”

  Josephine said, “That poor lunatic. All that talk about ‘stealing her heart’? She’s insane. That’s why they locked her up. It was all in her head.”

  “I see,” said Bell.

  “Marco had no feelings for her. He never did. Never. I can guarantee you that, Mr. Bell.”

  Isaac Bell thought quickly. He did not believe her, but in order to protect her life he needed Josephine to trust him.

  “Josephine,” he smiled warmly, “you are a very polite young lady, but we’re going to be working very closely. Don’t you think it’s time you call me Isaac?”