The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  The saloonkeeper picked up the blackjack and dangled the heavy end so that it swung side to side like a pendulum. “Or do you want to come home from the air race to find her face beaten to a pulp?”

  In his first flush of panic, Eustace figured it was mistaken identity. They were thinking he owed gambling debts, which of course he didn’t because he never gambled except when shooting pool, and he was too good at it to call it gambling. Then he realized it wasn’t mistaken identity. They knew he was working on the air race. Which meant they also knew that he was working on the flying machine owned by the chief investigator of the Van Dorn Detective Agency. And they knew about Daisy.

  Eustace started to ask, “Why-” He was thinking this had to do with Harry Frost, the madman trying to kill Josephine.

  Before he could finish his question, the saloonkeeper interrupted in a silky voice. He had eyes that reflected the light as if they were as hard and polished as ball bearings. “Why are we threatening you? Because you’re going to do something for us. If you do it, you will come home to Chicago and find your girl Daisy just like you left her. You got my promise, the word goes out tonight: anybody so much as whistles at her, he’s dragged in here to answer to me. If you don’t do what we ask, well. . I’ll let you guess. Actually, you don’t have to guess. I’ve already told you. Understand?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me that you understand before we go on to what we want.”

  Eustace saw no way out of this mess other than to say, “I understand.”

  “Do you understand that if you go to the cops, you’ll never know which cops are our cops.”

  Eustace had grown up in Chicago. He knew about cops and gangsters, and he’d heard the old stories about Harry Frost. He nodded that he understood. The saloonkeeper raised an inquiring eyebrow and waited until Eustace repeated out loud, “I understand.”

  “Good. Then you and Daisy will live happily ever after.”

  “When will you tell me what you want?”

  “Right now. Do you see this here pot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see what’s in there boiling?”

  “It smells like paraffin.”

  “That’s what it is. It’s paraffin wax. Do you see this?” he held up the three-inch length of three-quarter-inch copper tubing.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “It’s a length of copper pipe.”

  “Blow out the candle.”

  Eustace looked puzzled.

  The saloonkeeper said, “Lean down here and blow out the candle so the paraffin wax stops boiling.”

  Eustace leaned down, wondering if it was a trick, and they were going hit him or throw the boiling wax in his face. The back of his neck tingled as he blew out the candle. No one hit him. No one threw hot wax in his face.

  “Good. Now we’ll wait a moment for it to cool.”

  The saloonkeeper sat in complete silence. The toughs at the door shifted on their feet. Eustace heard a murmur of conversation from the saloon and a bark of laughter.

  “Pick up the copper tube.”

  Eustace picked it up, more curious now than afraid.

  “Dip one end in the paraffin. Careful, don’t burn your fingers on the pot. Still hot.”

  Eustace dipped the tube in the paraffin, which was congealing and growing solid as it cooled.

  “Hold it there. .” After sixty seconds the saloonkeeper said, “Take it out. Good. Dip it in that water pitcher to cool it. . Hold it there. All right, now you gotta move quick. Turn it over so the wax plug is down. . That’s a plug you made, you see, the wax plugs that end of the tube. Do you see?”

  “The bottom is plugged.”

  “Now take the pitcher and pour the water into the tube. Careful, it doesn’t take much. What would you say that is, two tablespoons?”

  “Just about,” Eustace agreed.

  “Now, holding it upright, not spilling it, take your finger of your other hand and dip it in the wax. . Don’t worry, it won’t burn you. . Still warm, might sting a little, is all.”

  Eustace dipped his index finger into the warm, pliable wax.

  “Almost done,” said the saloonkeeper. “Scoop up some wax on your finger and use it to plug the other end of the tube.”

  Eustace did as he was told, working the wax into the opening and smoothing the edges.

  “Do it again, work it in a little more, make sure it is sealed watertight-absolutely watertight. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “O.K., turn it over. Let’s see if no water drips out.”

  Eustace turned it over tentatively and held it out the way he used to present A+ projects in shop class.

  The saloonkeeper took it from his hand and shook it hard. The plugs held. No water escaped. He dropped it in the leather sack, tugged the drawstrings tight, and returned it to Eustace Weed. “Don’t let it get so warm it melts the wax.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Keep it out of sight ’til somebody tells you where to put it. Then put it where he tells you.”

  Utterly mystified, Eustace Weed weighed the sack in his hand and asked, “Is that all?”

  “All? Your girl’s name is Daisy Ramsey.” The short, round saloonkeeper picked up the sap and slammed it on his desk so hard the pot jumped. “That is all.”

  “I understand.” Eustace blurted quickly, though he understood very little, starting with why the saloonkeeper went through the whole rigmarole with the wax pot. Why didn’t he just hand him the wax-sealed tube in the sack?

  The man looked hard at him, then he smiled. “You wonder why all this?” He indicated the pot.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So if you lose that which I gave you, you got no excuse. You know how to make another. You’re a flying-machine mechanician, top of the trade. You can make anything. So when someone tells you where to put it, you’ll be ready to put it where he tells you when he tells you. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “O.K., get outta here!”

  He signaled the toughs.

  “They’ll see you safe out of the neighborhood. You’re a valuable man now, we don’t want folks wondering why you got bruises. But don’t forget, don’t let nobody see that there tube of water. Anybody starts asking questions, and the city of Chicago loses a pretty face.”

  They started him out the door. The saloonkeeper called, “By the way, if you’re wondering what it is and how it’ll work, don’t. And if you happen to figure it out and you don’t like it, remember Daisy’s pretty little nose. And her eyes.”

  ISAAC BELL DROPPED DASHWOOD around the corner from the Palmer House at a small hotel that gave out-of-town Van Dorns a discount. Then he drove to the Levee District and parked on a street that hadn’t changed much in a decade. Motortrucks lined up at the newspaper depot instead of wagons, but the gutter was still paved with greasy cobbles, and the ramshackle buildings still housed saloons, brothels, lodging houses, and pawnshops.

  By the dim light of widely scattered streetlamps, he could make out the intersection of old and new brick where Harry Frost’s dynamite had demolished the depot walls. A man was sleeping in the doorway the frightened newsboys had huddled in. A streetwalker emerged from the narrow alley. She spotted the Packard and approached with a hopeful smile.

  Bell smiled back, looked her in the eye, and pressed a ten-dollar gold piece into her hand. “Go home. Take the night off.”

  He did not believe for one minute that the Van Dorn Detective Agency had run Harry Frost out of Chicago. The criminal mastermind had left town under his own steam for his own reasons. For it was chillingly clear to Bell that Harry Frost was as adaptable as he was unpredictable. Roving in that Thomas Flyer, the city gangster would take deadly, free-ranging command of the Midwest’s prairies and the vast plain beyond the Mississippi while the politicians and bankers and crooks in his Chicago organization covered his back, wired m
oney, and executed his orders.

  Bringing a telegrapher in the Thomas was a stroke of warped genius. Harry Frost could send Dave Mayhew climbing up railroad telegraph poles to tap into the wires, eavesdrop on the Morse alphabet, and tell him what the stationmasters were reporting about the progress of the race. Diabolical, thought Bell. Frost had drafted hundreds of dedicated assistants to track Josephine for him.

  A drunk rounded the corner, smashed his bottle in the gutter, and burst into song.

  “Come Josephine, in my flying machine. .

  “Up, up, a little bit higher

  “Oh! My! The moon is on fire. .”

  28

  JAMES DASHWOOD CAUGHT UP with Isaac Bell one hundred and seventy miles west of Chicago in a rail yard near the Peoria Fairgrounds on the bank of the Illinois River. It was a sweltering, humid evening – typical of the Midwestern states, Bell informed the young Californian – and the smell of coal smoke and steam, creosote ties, and the mechanicians’ suppers frying, hung heavy in the air.

  The support trains were parked cheek by jowl on parallel sidings reserved for the race. Bell’s was nearest the main line but for one other, a four-car special, varnished green and trimmed with gold, owned by a timber magnate who had invested in the Vanderbilt syndicate and had announced that he saw no reason not to ride along with the rolling party just because his entry smashed into a signal tower. After all, Billy Thomas was recuperating nicely, and was a true sportsman who would insist the show go on without him.

  Whiteway’s yellow six-car Josephine Special was on the other side of the Eagle Special, and Bell had had his engineer stop his train so that the two flying-machine support cars stood next to each other. Both had their auto ramps down for their roadsters, which were off foraging for parts in Peoria hardware stores or scouting the route ahead. Laughter and the ring of crystal could be heard from a dinner party that Preston Whiteway was hosting.

  Dashwood found Bell poring over large-scale topographic maps of the terrain across Illinois and Missouri to Kansas City, which he had rolled down from his hangar-car ceiling.

  “What have you got, Dash?”

  “I found a marine zoology book called Report on the Cephalopods. Squid and octopuses are cephalopods.”

  “So I recall,” said Bell. “What do they have in common?”

  “Propulsion.”

  Bell whirled from the map. “Of course. They both move by spurting water in the opposite direction.”

  “Squid more than octopus, who tend more toward walking and oozing.”

  “They jet along.”

  “But what sort of motor would my fishermen be comparing them to?”

  “Platov’s thermo engine. He used the word ‘jet.’” Bell thought on that. “So your fishermen overheard Di Vecchio accuse Celere of a being a gigolo because he took money from a woman to buy some sort of engine at a Paris air meet. A jet motor. Sounds like Platov’s thermo engine.”

  A heavy hand knocked on the side of the hangar car, and a man stood perspiring copiously at the top of the ramp. “Chief Investigator Bell? I’m Asbury, Central Illinois contract man.”

  “Yes, of course. Come on in, Asbury.” The contractor was a retired peace officer who covered the Peoria region on a part-time basis, usually for bank robbery cases. Bell offered his hand, introduced “Detective Dashwood from San Francisco,” then asked Asbury, “What have you got?”

  “Well. .” Asbury mopped his dripping face with a red handkerchief as he composed his answer. “The race has brought a slew of strangers into town. But I’ve seen none the size of Harry Frost.”

  “Did any pique your interest?” Bell asked patiently. As he moved west with the race, he expected to encounter private detectives and law officers so laconic that they would judge the closemouthed Constable Hodge of North River to be recklessly loquacious.

  “There’s a big-shot gambler from New York. Has a couple of toughs with him. Made me out to be the Law right off.”

  “Broad-in-the-beam middle-aged fellow in a checkerboard suit? Smells like a barbershop?”

  “I’ll say. Flies were swarming his perfume like bats at sunset.”

  “Johnny Musto, out of Brooklyn.”

  “What’s he doing all the way to Peoria?”

  “I doubt he came for the waters. Thank you, Asbury. If you go to the galley car on Mr. Whiteway’s train, tell them I said to rustle up some supper for you. . Dash, go size up Musto. Any luck, he won’t make you for a Van Dorn. You not being from New York,” Bell added, although in fact Dashwood’s best disguise was his altar boy innocence. “Give me your revolver. He’ll spot the bulge in your coat.”

  Bell shoved the long-barreled Colt in his desk drawer. His hand flickered to his hat and descended holding his two-shot derringer. “Stick this in your pocket.”

  “That’s O.K., Mr. Bell,” Dashwood grinned. He flexed his wrist in a jerky motion that caused a shiny new derringer to spit from his sleeve into his fingers.

  Isaac Bell was impressed. “Pretty slick, Dash. Nice little gun, too.”

  “Birthday present.”

  “From your mother, I presume?”

  “No, I met a girl who plays cards. Picked up the habit from her father. He plays cards, too.”

  Bell nodded, glad the altar boy was stepping out. “Meet me back here when you’re done with Musto,” he said, and went looking for Dmitri Platov.

  He found the Russian strolling down the ramp from Joe Mudd’s hangar car, wiping grease from his fingers with a gasoline-soaked rag.

  “Good evening, Mr. Platov.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Bell. Is hot in Peoria.”

  “May I ask, sir, did you sell a thermo engine in Paris?”

  Platov smiled. “May I asking why you asking?”

  “I understand that an Italian flying-machine inventor named Prestogiacomo may have bought some sort of a ‘jet’ engine at the Paris air meet.”

  “Not from me.”

  “He might have been using a different name. He might have called himself Celere.”

  “Again, not buying from me.”

  “Did you ever meet Prestogiacomo?”

  “No. In fact, I am never hearing of Prestogiacomo.”

  “He must have made something of a splash. He sold a monoplane to the Italian Army.”

  “I am not knowing Italians. Except one.”

  “Marco Celere?”

  “I am not knowing Celere.”

  “But you know who I mean?”

  “Of course, the Italian making Josephine’s machine and the big one I am working for Steve Stevens.”

  Bell shifted gears deliberately. “What do you think of the Stevens machine?”

  “It would not be fair for me discussing it.”

  “Why not?”

  “As you working for Josephine.”

  “I protect Josephine. I don’t work for her. I only ask if you can tell me anything that might help me protect her.”

  “I am not seeing what Stevens’s machine is doing with that.”

  Bell changed tactics again, asking, “Did you ever encounter a Russian in Paris named Sikorsky?”

  A huge smile separated Platov’s mutton-chop whiskers. “Countryman genius.”

  “I understand vibration is a serious problem with more than one motor. Might Sikorsky want your thermo engine for his machines?”

  “Maybe one day. Are excusing me, please? Duty calling.”

  “Of course. Sorry to take so much of your time. . Oh, Mr. Platov? May I ask one other question?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who was the one Italian you did know in Paris?”

  “The professor. Di Vecchio. Great man. Not practical man, but great ideas. Couldn’t make real, but great ideas.”

  “My Di Vecchio monoplane is a highflier,” said Bell, wondering why Danielle said she didn’t know of Platov. “I would call it an idea made real.”

  Platov shrugged enigmatically.

  “Did you know Di Vecchio well?”

 
“Not at all. Only listening to lecture.” Suddenly he looked around, as if confirming they were alone, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial mutter. “About Stevens’s two-motor biplane? You are correct. Two-motor vibrations very rattling. Shaking to pieces. Excusing now, please.”

  Isaac Bell watched the Russian parade across the infield, bowing to the ladies and kissing their hands. Platov, the tall detective thought, you are smoother than your thermo engine.

  And he found it impossible to believe that the ladies’ man never introduced himself to Professor Di Vecchio’s beautiful daughter.

  BELL CONTINUED STUDYING his topographic maps to pinpoint where Frost might attack. Dash returned, reporting he had spotted Johnny Musto, buying drinks for newspaper reporters.

  “No law against that,” Bell observed. “Bookies live on information. Like detectives.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bell. But I followed him back to the rail yard and saw him slipping the same reporters rolls of cash.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “If he’s bribing them, what I can’t figure out is what they would do for him in return for the money.”

  “I doubt he wants his name in the papers,” said Bell.

  “Then what does he want?”

  “Show me where he is.”

  Dash pointed the way, saying, “There’s a boxcar over by the river where the fellows are shooting dice. Musto’s taking bets.”

  “Stick close enough to hear, but don’t let him see you with me.”

  Bell smelled the Brooklyn gambler before he heard him when a powerful scent of gardenia penetrated the thicker odors of railroad ties and locomotive smoke. Then he heard his hoarsely whispered “Bets, gentlemen. Place your bets.”

  Bell rounded the solitary boxcar in a dark corner of the yard.

  A marble-eyed thug nudged Musto.

  “Why, if it ain’t one of my best customers. Never too late to increase your investment, sir. How much shall we add to yer three thousand on Miss Josephine? Gotta warn youse, though, de odds is shifting. The goil commands fifteen-to-one, since some bettors are notin’ that she’s pullin’ up on Stevens.”

  Bell’s smile was more affable than his voice. “I’m a bettor who’s wondering if gamblers are conspiring to throw the race.”