The Race ib-4

by Clive Cussler

  “All right, all right. Can’t hurt to have a look.”

  Josephine pedaled back toward the rail yard.

  “Hop on,” Bell told Stevens, and pumped the handcar after her. Stevens was silent until after they passed the slaughterhouse and the factories. Then he said, “’Preciate yer tryin’ to help, Bell.”

  “Appreciate Josephine.”

  “She took me by surprise.”

  “I think it’s dawning on both of you that you’re all in this together.”

  “Now you sound like that fool Red.”

  “Mudd is in with you, too,” said Bell.

  “Damned unionist.”

  But the best intentions could not overcome the stress of running rough for three thousand miles. Josephine and Andy tried their wizardry on Stevens’s two motors all afternoon before they admitted defeat.

  Josephine took Bell aside and spoke urgently: “I doubt Stevens will listen to me, but maybe if he hears it from Andy he might listen.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “That machine will never make it to San Francisco. If he tries to force it, it’ll kill him.”

  Bell beckoned Andy. Andy said, “Best I could do was synchronize’em for a few minutes before they started running haywire again. But even if we could keep ’em synchronized, the motors are shot. He won’t make it over the mountains.”

  “Tell him.”

  “Would you come with me, Mr. Bell? In case he gets mad.”

  Bell stood by as Andy explained the situation to Steve Stevens.

  Stevens planted his hands on his hips and turned red in the face.

  Andy said, “I’m real sorry, Mr. Stevens. But I’m just telling you what’s true. Those motors will kill you.”

  Stevens said, “Boy, there is no way Ah’m goin’ home to Mississippi with my tail between my legs. Ah’m goin’ home with the Whiteway Cup or Ah ain’t goin’.” He looked at Bell. “Go ahead, speak your piece. You think Ah’m crazy.”

  “I think,” said Bell, “there’s a difference between bravery and foolishness.”

  “And now you’re goin’ to tell me what that difference is?”

  “I won’t do that for another man,” said Bell.

  Stevens stared at his big white biplane.

  “Was you ever fat, Bell, when you was a little boy?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “You would,” Stevens chuckled bleakly. “It’s not somethin’ you’d ever forget. . Ah been a fat man my whole life. And a fat boy before that.”

  He walked in front of the biplane, trailed a plump hand over the taut fabric and stroked one of the big propellers.

  “My daddy used to tell me no one will ever love a fat man. Turned out, he was right as rain. .” Stevens swallowed hard. “Ah know damned well when Ah go home, they still won’t love me. But they’re sure as hell goin’ to respect me.”

  36

  JOSEPHINE WAS SPOOKED BY THE MOUNTAIN AIR. It felt thin, particularly in the hottest part of the day, and not as strong as she was used to even at speed. She watched her barometer, hardly believing her eyes, as she circled in the bluest sky she had ever seen, trying to work on altitude above the railroad city of Deming, New Mexico Territory. The makeshift altimeter seemed stuck. She tapped it hard with her finger, but the needle didn’t move. When she looked down, the Union Depot and its Harvey’s Restaurant, which sat between the parallel Atchison, Topeka amp; Santa Fe and Southern Pacific tracks, appeared no smaller, and she realized that her machine was climbing as slowly as the instrument indicated.

  Steve Stevens and Joe Mudd were far below her, and she could only wonder how they were faring. She at least had mountain experience, flying in the Adirondacks. Though, to tell the truth, it wasn’t much help when Wild West crosscurrents grabbed her wings, updrafts kicked like a mule, and the same air that knocked her down seemed unwilling to pick her up again. She looked over her shoulder. Isaac’s Eagle, on faithful station above and behind her, was bouncing up and down like it was on an elastic string.

  At last she worked up to three thousand feet, gave up on any more, and headed for Lordsburg, hoping to keep climbing high enough to clear the mountains. She followed the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks and soon overtook an express train that had left Deming thirty minutes ahead of her. The locomotive was spewing smoke straight up, slowly climbing a heavy grade, clear warning that the land was still rising, and she had to climb with it.

  Grim thoughts of Marco suddenly wrenched at her concentration.

  She did not fear that he had actually died in Platov guise. He had warned her in Fort Worth that he would “disappear.” But when he reappeared in whatever form he conjured next time, the first question she had to ask was, who had died in the fire in his place? It was a terrible question. She could not think of an answer she could accept. Thank goodness, she had her hands full for now, trying to get over the Continental Divide, and she had to shove all of that out of her mind.

  Ahead she saw the rails enter a pass between two mountain peaks. Despite the pure blue sky everywhere else, a thick cloud bank hung over the pass. It looked like someone had stuffed cotton between the mountains and railroad-tunneled through it. She had to climb even higher to stay above the clouds. If she got inside them, she would get lost and have no clue where the peaks were until she ran into one.

  But hard as she tried manipulating her elevator and alettoni, and coaxing effort out of her straining Antoinette, she found herself enveloped by cold mist. Sometimes it was so thick that she couldn’t see the propeller. Then, for a moment, it thinned. She spotted the peaks, corrected her course, and braced for the next blinding. All the way, she had to coax the monoplane to climb. Again the mist thinned. She saw that she had steered to the right, not even realizing it. She corrected hastily. The cloud closed around her. She was blind again. But, at the same time, she felt something in the cloud that made the air stronger.

  Suddenly she was above it all, higher than the pass, higher than the cloud, even higher than the peaks, and the sky was as blue as she had ever seen in her whole life in every direction.

  “Good girl, Elsie!”

  For a crazy moment, she thought she could see the Pacific Ocean. But that was still seven hundred miles ahead. She looked back. Isaac Bell was above her, and she swore that when she won the race the first dollar she would spend of the prize money would be to buy a Gnome rotary.

  Farther back, Joe Mudd’s sturdy red tractor biplane was flying in circles as he patiently fought for altitude before tackling the pass. Steve Stevens soared under Mudd, passed him, and shot for the pass, using the power of his two engines to force his machine higher. It dove into the cloud bank straight in line with the railroad tracks. Josephine looked back repeatedly to see him emerge.

  But instead of the white biplane suddenly boring out of the cloud, a bright red flower of fire suddenly erupted from the bank. She heard no explosion over the roar of her engine, and it took her a moment to realize what had happened. Josephine’s breath caught in her throat. Steve Stevens had smashed into the mountain. His biplane was burning, and he was dead.

  Two terrible thoughts pierced her heart.

  Stevens’s twin-motor speedster – Marco’s amazing big and fast heavy-lifting machine – was out of the race, leaving Joe Mudd’s slow Liberator her only competition. She hated herself for thinking that way; not only was it uncharitable and unworthy but she realized that even though she disliked Stevens, he had been part of her tiny band of cross-country aviators.

  Her second terrible thought was harder to bear. Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin would probably have won if Marco hadn’t caused damage to his Curtiss Pusher.

  That night in Willcox, Arizona Territory, having stopped in Lordsburg only long enough for gas and oil, Josephine overheard Marion tell Isaac Bell, “Whiteway is pleased as punch.”

  “He’s gotten what he wanted,” Isaac replied. “A neck and neck flying race between America’s plucky Sweetheart of the Air and a union man on a slow machine.”
>
  EUSTACE WEED’S WORST NIGHTMARE came true in Tucson. The race was held up by a ferocious sandstorm that half buried the machines. After they got them dug out and cleaned up, Andy Moser gave him the afternoon off to shoot pool downtown. There, Eustace encountered a Yaqui Indian, who tried to take his money shooting eight-ball. The Indian was good, very good indeed, and it took Eustace Weed most of the afternoon to take the Yaqui’s money and that of his friends, who were laying side bets that the Tucson Indian would beat the kid from Chicago. When Eustace left the pool hall at suppertime, the Yaqui named him “the Chicago Kid,” and he felt like he was on top of the world until a fellow waiting on the sidewalk said, “You’re on, kid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Still got what we gave you in Chicago?”

  “What?”

  “Did you lose it?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Reluctantly, Eustace Weed produced the little leather sack. The guy shook out the copper tube, inspected that the seals were intact, and handed it back. “We’ll be touch. . soon.”

  Eustace Weed said, “Do you understand what this will do to a flying machine?”

  “You tell me.”

  “It’s not like your motor quitting in your auto. He’s up in the sky.”

  “That makes sense, it being a flying machine.”

  “Water in the gas will stop a motor dead. If that happens when he’s way high up, the driver might be able to volplane down safely. Might. But if his motor stops dead when he’s lower down, his machine will smash, and he will die.”

  “Do you understand what will happen to Daisy Ramsey if you don’t do what you’re told?”

  Eustace Weed could not meet the guy’s eye. He looked down. “Yes.”

  “Enough said.”

  Eustace Weed said nothing.

  “Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  37

  “TEXAS” WALT HATFIELD showed up suddenly on a thundery morning in Yuma, Arizona Territory. The town sat on the banks of the recently dammed Colorado River. Across the wide water lay California. The racers were itching to make Palm Springs by nightfall. But it was thunderstorm season in California, and the locals advised waiting a few hours for the risk of lightning strikes and torrential rains to diminish. The machines were tied down under canvas, and the support trains were still in the rail yard.

  “Does Mr. Van Dorn know you’re here?” Bell asked, knowing the Texan’s penchant for bulling off on his own.

  “The range boss ordered me to hightail it here and report in person.”

  “You have something on Frost?”

  Texas Walt shoved his J.B. back on this head. “Ran down his Thomas Flyer outside of Tuscon. How the heck he drove it that far, I don’t know. But neither hide nor hair of him or his boys. I had a strong inkling they caught a train. Found out yesterday they rode out in style, having reserved a stateroom on the Limited.”

  “Which way?”

  “California.”

  “So why did Mr. Van Dorn send you here?”

  Texas Walt grinned, a blaze of startling white teeth in a stern countenance as sun-browned as a saddle. “’Cause he had every reason to. Isaac, old son, wait ’til you clap eyes on who I brung with me.”

  “There’s only two men I want to clap eyes on: Harry Frost. Or Marco Celere, back from the dead.”

  “Damn! You are always one step ahead. How in heck did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “I brung Marco Celere.”

  “Alive?”

  “Darned tootin’, alive. Got him from some Southern Pacific rail dicks I’m acquainted with. They caught a hobo hopping off a freight who swore up, down, and sideways that he’s part of the air race. Claimed to know Josephine personally and demanded to see the Van Dorn detectives guarding her. As that information is not printed in the newspapers, the boys believed him enough to wire me.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Got him right in the cookhouse. The man’s starving.”

  Isaac Bell charged into the galley car and saw a ragged stranger, forking eggs and bacon off a plate with one hand and stuffing bread in his mouth with the other. He had greasy black hair, parted by a red scar that traveled from his brow across the crown of his skull, another red scar on his forearm, and intensely bright eyes.

  “Are you Marco Celere?”

  “That is my name, sir,” he replied, speaking with an Italian accent somewhat heavier than Danielle Di Vecchio’s though not as difficult to understand as Josephine had led Bell to believe. “Where is Josephine?”

  “Where have you been?”

  Celere smiled. “I wish I could answer that.”

  “You’re going to have to answer that before I let you within a mile of Josephine. Who are you?”

  “I am Marco Celere. I came awake two weeks ago in Canada. I had no idea who I was or how I got there. Then, gradually, my memory returned. In tiny bits. A trickle to start, then a flood. I remember my aeroplanes first. Then I saw a newspaper account about the Whiteway Cup Air Race. In it, I read, I have not only one but two machines, my heavy biplane and my swift monoplano, and suddenly it all came back.”

  “Where in Canada?”

  “A farm. To the south of Montreal.”

  “Any idea how you got there?”

  “I do not honestly know. The people who saved me found me by the train tracks. They assumed that I rode on a freight train.”

  “What people?”

  “A kindly farm family. They nursed me through winter into spring before I began to remember.”

  Challenging the man who Danielle had called a thief and a confidence man, who had changed his name from Prestogiacomo to Celere while fleeing his past, and who James Dashwood suspected might have murdered Danielle’s father in San Francisco and disguised the crime as a suicide, Bell kept peppering him with questions.

  “Any idea how you happened to get amnesia?”

  “I know precisely how.” Celere ran his fingers along the scar on his scalp. “I was hunting with Harry Frost. He shot me.”

  “What brings you to the Arizona Territory?”

  “I have come to help Josephine win the race in my flying machine. May I see her, please?”

  Bell asked, “When did you last read a newspaper?”

  “I saw a scrap of one last week in the Kansas City yards.”

  “Are you aware that your heavy biplane smashed?”

  “No! Can it be fixed?”

  “It ran into a mountain.”

  “That is most disturbing. What of the driver?”

  “What you would expect.”

  Celere put down his fork. “That is terrible. I am so sorry. I hope it was not the fault of the machine.”

  “The machine was as worn out as the rest of them. It’s a long race.”

  “But a magnificent challenge,” said Celere.

  “I should also warn you,” said Bell, watching his eyes closely, “that Josephine has remarried.”

  Celere surprised him. He would have thought Celere would be troubled to learn that his girlfriend had married. Instead, he said, “Wonderful! I am so happy for her! But what of her marriage to Frost?”

  “Annulled.”

  “Good. That is only right. He was a terrible husband to her. To whom has she been married?”

  “Preston Whiteway.”

  Celere clapped his hands in delight. “Ah! Perfect!”

  “Why is that perfect?”

  “She is a racer. He is a race promoter. A marriage made in Heaven. I can’t wait to congratulate him and wish her happiness.”

  Bell glanced at Texas Walt, who was listening at the door, then asked the Italian inventor, “Would you care to get cleaned up first? I’ll find you a razor and some fresh clothes. There’s a washroom in the back of the hangar car.”

  “Grazie! Thank you. I really must look a sight.”

  Bell exchanged glances with Texas Walt again and answered with a smile t
hat didn’t light his eyes. “You look pretty much like a fellow who crossed the continent in a freight car.”

  Bell and Hatfield led him to the washroom and gave him a towel and razor.

  “Thank you, thank you. Could I ask one more favor?”

  “What would you like?”

  “Would there be some brilliantine?” He ran his fingers through his dirty hair. “That I might smooth my hair?”

  “I’ll rustle some up,” said Texas Walt.

  “Thank you, sir. And some mustache wax? It will be wonderful to be myself again.”

  “LIKE A FELLOW WHO CROSSED the continent in a freight car?” Texas Walt echoed Isaac Bell’s assessment with a dubious grin.

  Bell grinned back. “What do you think?”

  “Looked more to me like the man rode the cushions,” said Hatfield, using the hobo expression for buying a ticket for a parlor car. “Doubt he hit the rails ’til the last hundred miles.”

  “Exactly,” said Bell, who had ridden many a freight train while investigating in disguise. “He’s not dirty enough.”

  “Ah suppose some lonely ranch wife might have sluiced him off in her horse trough.”

  “Might have.”

  Texas Walt rolled a cigarette, exhaled blue smoke, and remarked, “Can’t help wonderin’ what Miss Josephine is gonna think. Suppose she’d have agreed to marry Whiteway if she had known Celere was alive?”

  “I guess that depends on what they meant to each other,” answered Bell.

  “What do we do with him, boss?”

  “Let’s see what he’s up to,” answered Bell, wondering whether in Marco Celere’s miraculous return lay the explanation for Harry Frost’s angry You don’t know what they were up to.

  MARCO CELERE EMERGED from Bell’s hangar car bathed, shaved, and brilliantined. His black hair gleamed, his cheeks were smooth, his mustache curled at the tips. Bell’s own mustache twitched in the thinnest of smiles when Texas Walt glanced his way. The sharp-eyed Texan had noticed, as had he, that Celere’s clean-shaven cheeks were slightly paler in color than his nose and chin. The difference was almost imperceptible, but they were looking for false notes, and there it was, an indication that he had until recently worn a beard.