Текст книги "The Race"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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14

“I HEAR THE WRIGHT BROTHERS started a flying school, Mr. Bell,” Andy Moser called from the front of the Eaglewhen Isaac Bell ordered him to spin the propeller to start the sleek machine.

“I don’t have time to go to Ohio. The race starts next week. Besides, how many teachers have driven flying machines for more than a year? Most aviators pick it up on their own, just like Josephine. Spin her over.”

It was a perfect day for flying, a sunny late-spring morning at Belmont Park with a light west wind. Andy and the mechanicians who Bell had hired to assist him had rolled the Eagleto a distant stretch of grass far from the main activity of the infield. They had chocked the wheels, and when they heard Bell order Andy to start the motor, they grabbed the chocks’ ropes and prepared to steady the machine as wing runners.

Bell was seated behind the wing, with his head, shoulders, and chest exposed. The motor was ahead of him – the safest place for it, Eddison-Sydney-Martin insisted, where it wouldn’t crush the driver in a smash. Ahead of the motor gleamed a nine-foot, two-bladed propeller of polished walnut – the most expensive place for it, Joe Mudd had noted. “If you come down hard on the nose, it’ll cost you a hundred bucks for a new one.”

Bell tilted the wheel post and watched the effect on the wings. Out at the tips, eighteen feet to his right and left, the alettonihinged up and down. He looked back along the slim fuselage, whose booms and struts were covered in tightly drawn silk fabric to reduce drag, and turned the wheel. The rudder moved left and right. He pulled the wheel toward him. The elevators hinged to the horizontal tail keel tilted. In theory, when he did that in the air, the machine would go up.

“Spin her over!”

“A hundred fliers have died in accidents,” Andy reminded him for the third time that morning.

“More mountain climbers die falling off cliffs. Spin her over!”

Moser crossed his arms over his chest. He was one of the stubbornest men Bell had met. His father was a policeman, and Moser had the policeman’s wall-like resistance to anything he didn’t like. This resistance was stiffened by an unshakable belief in machinery. He knew machinery, loved it, and swore by it.

“I know the machine is ready to fly because I put it together with my own hands. I know we walked around it and tested every moving part and every brace. And I know the motor is ready to fly because I pulled the cylinder heads off to tune the timing and the pressure. The only thing I do not know is ready to fly is the driver, Mr. Bell.”

Isaac Bell fixed his overanxious mechanician with a no-nonsense eye.

“If you’re going to help me protect Josephine, you better get used to the idea that Van Dorn operators go about their business promptly. I have observed how aviators take to the air since I first arrived at Belmont Park. When I purchased my American Eagle, I questioned both Josephine Josephs and Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin on their techniques. I have also grilled Joe Mudd, whose navigation of his Liberator indicates an especially steady hand in the flying line. All agree that these Breguet controls make it a lot easier to learn. Last, but not least,” Bell smiled, “I have read every issue of both Aeronauticsand Flightsince those magazines were first published– I know what I’m doing.”

Bell’s smile vanished like a shotgunned searchlight. His eyes turned dark as December. “Spin! Her! Over!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bell opened the gasoline valve and moved the air valve to the idle setting. On the Gnome rotary engine, he had learned, the driver was the carburetor.

Andy Moser turned the propeller repeatedly, drawing fuel into the motor. Bell moved the magneto switch.

“Contact!”

Andy clutched the propeller with both hands, threw his long, lean back into a powerful tug, and jumped back before it cut him in half. The motor caught, chugged, and spewed pale blue smoke. Bell let it warm. When it sounded ready, he opened the air valve fully. The smoke thinned. The gleaming nickel-steel cylinders and the shiny propeller begin to blur as they spun toward top speed with a powerful-sounding Blat! Blat! Blat!He had never felt a motor spin so smoothly. At twelve hundred rpms, it ran slick as a turbine.

He glanced down at Andy.

“Ready!”

Andy nodded agreement and signaled the mechanicians to pull the chocks and run alongside to steady the wings in case of a crosswind. The Eaglebegan to roll, bouncing on pneumatic tires that were connected to the chassis’s skids with springy bands of rubber, and swiftly picked up speed. The wing runners dropped behind. Bell felt a smooth, muscular impulse as the tail lifted from the ground.

He had a hundred yards of open space ahead of him before the grass ended at the rail that separated the infield from the racetrack. He could blip the magneto button to slow the motor so he could practice rolling on the ground. Or he could pull back on the wheel and try the air.

Isaac Bell pulled back on the wheel and tried the air.

In a heartbeat, the Eaglestopped bouncing. The grass was five feet under him. Unlike trains and autos that shook as they went faster, when the machine left the ground Bell felt like it was floating on glassy water. But he was not floating. He was hurtling straight at the white wooden rail that separated the field from the racetrack.

He was barely off the ground. His wheels would not clear it. He tugged a little harder on the wheel to go higher. Too hard. He felt the machine tip upward sharply. In the next instant, he felt a sudden void open up under him, and the Eaglestarted to fall.

He had been in comparable fixes in autos and motorcycles, and even on boats and horseback.

The solution was always the same.

Stop thinking.

He allowed his hands to ease the wheel forward a hair. He felt a shove from below. The propeller bit the air. Suddenly the railing was safely below his wheels, and the sky looked immense.

A pylon was suddenly standing in front of him, one of the hundred-foot-tall racecourse markers around which they timed the speed trials. Just as Andy and Josephine had warned him, the gyroscopic force exerted by the spinning weight of the rotary engine had dragged him to the right. Bell turned the wheel to the left. The Eaglerolled sideways and drifted left. He straightened up, banked too far right, compensated again, compensated repeatedly, and gradually worked her onto an even keel.

It was like sailing, he realized in a flash of insight that made everything clearer. Even though he had to counteract the engine pull, the Eaglewould point where he wanted it to as long as he knew where the wind was coming from. The wind – the air – was his to use, keeping in mind that, with his propeller pulling him through the air, most of the wind he encountered he was producing himself.

He drew back on the wheel to climb. The same principle seemed to hold. He climbed in stages, stepping into the sky as if going up stairs, leveling off when it felt too slow, angling up when he picked up speed. Speed made air stronger, Josephine had told him.

Belmont Park grew small beneath him, as if he were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. Farms and villages spread below. To his left he saw the deep dark blue of the Atlantic Ocean. Smoke ahead and scores and scores of converging rail and trolley tracks pointed toward New York City.

A rational thought rambled through his mind, surprising him. He let go of the wheel with one hand to pull his watch chain. He tugged his gold watch from its pocket and deftly thumbed it open. It had occurred to him that this was so much fun that he had better check the time. Andy Moser had poured enough gas and castor oil into the tanks to run the motor for an hour. All by himself, in the middle of the sky, Isaac Bell laughed out loud. He had a strong feeling that he had changed his life forever and might never return to earth.

“A BANDAGE,” said Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin, applying one to Isaac Bell’s forehead, “tends to unsettle my wife less than an open wound. I imagine you’ll find the same holds true with your fiancée.”

“It’s just a scratch,” said Bell. “My poor flying machine suffered a lot worse.”

“Only your wheels and skids,” said the baronet. “Your chassis seems intact, although I must say your mechanician appears put out.”

Bell glanced at Andy Moser, who was stalking circles around the machine and shouting at his helper. Eddison-Sydney-Martin stepped back to survey his handiwork.

“All done, and the bleeding has stopped. In fact, by the look of you, I expect you’re more in need of courage for reporting to your fiancée than when you took to the air. Be brave, old chap. I’m told Miss Morgan is a remarkable woman.”

Bell drove to the Garden City Hotel to meet Marion, who was arriving from San Francisco that afternoon. The instant he walked into the hotel he knew that Marion was there ahead of him. Gentlemen seated in the lobby were staring over the tops of unread newspapers, bellboys eager to be summoned were lined up like tin soldiers, and the Palm Court maître d’ was personally pouring Marion’s tea.

Bell paused a moment to gaze upon the tall, willowy blond beauty of thirty who had taken his heart. She was still in her traveling clothes, an ankle-length pleated mauve skirt with a matching vest and high-collared blouse cinched at her narrow waist and a stylish hat with a high crown and down-swept brim. Her coral-sea green eyes outshone the emerald engagement ring on her finger.

Bell swept her into his arms and kissed her. “I have never seen you looking lovelier.”

“Fisticuffs?” she inquired of the bandage.

“My first flying lesson. I discovered an aeronautical phenomenon called ground effect, which made bringing the Eagleback down to earth something of a challenge. Andy and his helper will be up half the night fixing the wheels.”

“Was your instructor put out?”

Bell squared his broad shoulders. “Actually,” he admitted, “I taught myself.”

Marion raised one exquisite eyebrow and regarded him with the collected gaze of a woman who had graduated with the first class at Stanford Law School and worked in banking before flourishing in the new trade of moving pictures. She said, “I understand that Orville and Wilbur Wright learned the same way. Of course, they were busy inventing the aeroplane.”

“I had the advantage of advice from seasoned aviators. . You are regarding me with a strange look.”

“Your eyes are as bright as I’ve ever seen them, and you’re grinning ear to ear. You look like you’re still flying.”

Isaac Bell laughed. “I suppose I am. I suppose I always will be. Though what you’re seeing at the moment is also the effect of being so very happy to see you.”

“I am overjoyed to see you, too, my dear, and glad of a ‘love effect.’ It’s been too long.” She stood up from her chair.

“What are you doing?”

“I am standing up to kiss you again.”

Bell kissed her back until she said, “The house detective will be coming over to ask what we’re doing in public.”

“No worry there,” said Bell. “The Garden City Hotel just signed a contract with Van Dorn Protective Services. Our man took over house detective duties this very morning.”

“So,” she said, sitting back down, “tell me about the bump on your noggin. And this ‘ground effect.’”

“Ground effect prevents you from alighting when a cushion of air develops between your wings and the ground. Air turns out to be strong – stronger than you’d imagine. Essentially, the machine does not want to stop flying, and you have to somehow persuade it – like when a horse takes the bit in its teeth.”

“A flying horse,” Marion remarked.

“Apparently the effect is strongest on a monoplane because-”

“You must tell me,” Marion interrupted, “what did you seewhen you were up there?”

“Speed looks different in the air. The land didn’t appear to blur as it does beside a train or my Locomobile. It seemed to flow under me, more slowly the higher I went.”

“How high did you go?”

“High enough to see the Hudson River. When I saw it, I knew I had to fly to it.”

Marion’s beautiful eyes widened. “You flew all the way to the Hudson River?”

Bell laughed. “It seemed safer than flying over the ocean – I could see that, too.”

Marion marveled, “At the same time you saw the Hudson River, you saw the Atlantic Ocean? Then surely you saw the skyscrapers of New York.”

“Like spikes in the smoke.”

“You must take me up to shoot moving pictures.”

“You will love it,” Bell answered. “I saw a giant sturgeon swimming on the bottom of the river.”

“When are we going?” she asked as excitement rose in her voice.

“Well, umm, flying is perfectly safe, of course. But not yet safe with me.”

Isaac Bell was reminded that his beloved could be as single-minded as Josephine when she asked with a challenging smile, “I wonder if Preston Whiteway would hire an aviator to take me up?”

“Let me practice first. By the end of the race I’ll have the hang of it.”

“Wonderful! We’ll do it over San Francisco. I can’t wait! But you will be careful while you learn?”

“Promise,” said Bell.

“I refuse to worry about gun battles and knife fights. But flying? You’re out of your element.”

“Not for long. Next time I see the wind has shifted, I’ll land accordingly.”

“How could you tell the direction of the wind when you yourself were in it? Did you see a flag blowing?”

“I watched the cows.”

“Cows?”

“There are dairy farms around the park, and Josephine taught me that cows always graze facing upwind. They point true as a weather vane and are easier to see from above.”

“What else has America’s Sweetheart of the Air taught you?”

“Keep an eye peeled for emergency landing spaces. But steer clear of bright green fields. They’re too wet to land on.” Bell left out Josephine’s warning to avoid extreme movements that would cause his wings to collapse. Neither would he repeat Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s dry “I’d avoid blundering into flat spins if I were you, old chap,” or Joe Mudd’s blunt “Don’t get fancy before you know your business.”

Marion said, “By all accounts, including Preston’s fulsome praise of her, Josephine sounds like an interesting character.”

“Josephine’s a character, all right, and I could use your help reading her. In the meantime, I would not mind another kiss. Shall I instruct the house detective to erect a barricade of Chinese screens and potted palms?”

“I have a better idea. By now, the maids have unpacked my bags. Let me get out of my traveling things and into a bath. And perhaps you’ll come up and join me for supper, or something.”

“Shall I order champagne?”

“I already have.”

“SERIOUSLY, DARLING, why did you decide not to take flying lessons?” Marion asked later upstairs. Bathed, perfumed, and arrayed in a long emerald green peignoir, she patted the chaise longue. Bell brought their glasses and sat beside her.

“No time. The race starts next week, and I’ve got my hands full, with Harry Frost trying to murder Josephine and a saboteur wrecking flying machines.”

“I thought Archie shot Frost.”

“Three times, with that little German pistol he insisted on carrying.” Bell shook his head in dismay. “I thought I shot Frost, too. He’s wounded but definitely not out of action. A Cincinnati banker reported that Frost’s jaw was swollen and that he was slurring his speech, but otherwise he was healthy, which hardly sounds like a man carrying a bunch of lead in him.”

“Maybe you missed?”

“Not with my Browning. It doesn’t miss. And I knowI saw Archie pepper him point-blank. He couldn’t have missed. But Frost is a big man. If the slugs missed his vitals, who knows? Still, it’s something of a mystery.”

It was Isaac Bell’s habit to discuss his cases with Marion. She was an educated woman, with a quick and insightful mind, and always brought a new perspective to a problem. He said, “Speaking of mysterious misses, Frost himself apparently missed one of his shots at Marco Celere. An easy shot no hunter would fluff. I discovered that the rifle he probably used had a damaged telescopic sight. Yet another reason why I want to see Celere’s remains.”

“Could Harry Frost have worn some sort of armorwhen he attacked?”

“Armor won’t deflect bullets. That’s why gunpowder put the knights out of business.”

“Chain mail?”

“That’s an interesting thought because with modern alloy steel perhaps you could manufacture chain mail strong enough to stop a bullet. Lord knows what it would weigh. Some years ago the Army was testing so-called bulletproof vests. But they were too hot and heavy to be practical. . Interesting thought, my dear. I’ll have Grady Forrer sic his Research boys on it first thing in the morning.”

Marion stretched luxuriously. “Are there any other mysteries I can solve for you?”

“Several.”

“Starting with?”

“Where is Marco Celere’s body?”

“Any others?”

“Why does the Italian lady I bought my aeroplane from insist that Marco Celere stole her father’s secrets while Josephine insists that Miss Di Vecchio’s father worked for Celere and therefore had no secrets to steal?”

“What is Miss Di Vecchio like?”

“Startlingly attractive.”

“Really?”

“In fact, so attractive that it is hard to believe that Marco Celere, or any man, would turn his back on her.”

“How did you escape?”

Bell touched his glass to hers. “I’m immune.”

“Blind to beauty?” she teased.

“I am in love with Marion Morgan, and she has spoken for my heart.”

Marion returned his smile. “Maybe Marco had his eye on Josephine.”

“Josephine is cute as a button but hardly in Miss Di Vecchio’s class. She’s a pretty little thing, pert and flirtatious, but more farm girl than femme fatale.

“But ambitious? At least about flying,” Bell said, “and very skilled navigating flying machines. There are men who are drawn to accomplished women.”

“Well, love is strange, isn’t it?”

“If Marco and Josephine were lovers at all. Archie thinks she was in love with Marco’s flying machines. And as you know Archie has a pretty good eye for that sort of thing.”

Marion asked, “What does youreye tell you?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. Except she vehemently defends Marco on the question of who stole whose invention.”

“Could it be that Josephine is defending her flying machine more than she’s defending her lover?”

“That is very possible,” said Bell. “While Marco, I suspect, was in love with a girl who could afford to buyhis flying machines.”

“Then everyone got what they wanted.”

“Except Harry Frost.” Bell’s eyes grew bleak, then hot with anger. “Poor Archie. Frost did such a terrible thing. How a man would load such monstrous ammunition into a weapon is beyond me.”

Marion took his hand. “I spoke with Lillian on the telephone. I’ll see her at the hospital tomorrow.”

“How did she sound?”

“Tired and hopeful. Poor thing. It’s a nightmare – both of our nightmares – only I’m older and have loved you longer, and I don’t worry in that same way. Lillian admitted to me that since Archie returned to work after their honeymoon, she was afraid every day until he came home safe. Darling, are you taking such chances learning to fly because you’re worried about Archie? Or trying to make up for what happened to him?”

“I’ve always been keen to fly.”

“But are you keen to fly for the wrong reasons? Isaac, you know I never trouble you with worrying about your safety. But this seems unusually risky. What can you possibly do up in the air if Frost shoots at her?”

“Shoot back, and finish Harry Frost once and for all.”

“Who will fly the aeroplane while you’re busy shooting?”

“I can drive it with one hand. . Well, actually, to be perfectly honest,” he admitted with a rueful smile, “I willbe able to drive with one hand soon. Today, I was hanging on tight with both.”

Marion extended her arms. “Can you demonstrate that?”

15

“WOULD YOU GIVE ME SOME ADVICE on that straightening-up-fast stunt just before you touch the ground?” Isaac Bell asked Josephine. The race was starting in three days, and he had scheduled a certification test to get an official pilot’s license from the Aero Club.

“Don’t!”Josephine grinned, “is the best advice I can give you. Practice blipping your magneto instead, and don’t try stunts your machine isn’t up to.”

“My alettoniare the same as yours.”

“No, they’re not,” she retorted, her grin fading.

“The wing bracing is the same.”

“Similar.”

“Just as strong.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” she said seriously.

The subject always turned her prickly, but Bell noticed that she no longer repeated her earlier assertion that Danielle’s father had worked for Marco Celere. It was almost as if she suspected that the opposite was true.

Gently he said, “Maybe you mean I’mnot up to it.”

She smiled, as if grateful Bell had let her off the hook. “You will be. I’ve been watching you. You have the touch – that’s the important thing.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Bell. “I can’t fall too far behind you if I’m going to protect you.”

In fact, Bell had devised a defense in which he was only one element. Van Dorn riflemen would spell one another on the roof of the support car, easily climbing to their gun perch through a hatch in the roof. Two roadsters in a boxcar with a ramp would be ready to light out after her if for any reason Josephine strayed from the railroad tracks. And every day detectives would take their places in advance at the next scheduled stop.

A commotion broke out at the hangar door.

Bell glided in front of Josephine as he drew the Browning from his coat.

“Josephine! Josephine! Where is that woman?”

“Oh my God,” said Josephine. “It’s Preston Whiteway.”

“Josephine! Josephine!” Whiteway barreled in. “There you are! I bring good news! Great news!”

Bell holstered his weapon. The best news he could think of was that Van Dorns had arrested Harry Frost.

“My lawyers,” shouted Whiteway, “have persuaded the court to annul your marriage to Harry Frost on the grounds that the madman tried to kill you!”

“Annulled?”

“You are free. . Free!”

Isaac Bell observed the meeting between Josephine and Whiteway long enough to form an opinion of its nature, then slipped out the door.

“Cut!” he heard Marion Morgan order sharply. Her camera operator – hunched over a large machine on a strong tripod – stopped cranking as if a hawk had swooped down and seized his arm. It was well known among Miss Morgan’s operators that Mr. Bell did notwant his picture taken.

“My darling, how wonderful to see you.” He thought she looked lovely in her working outfit, a shirtwaist and long skirt, with her hair gathered high to be out of her way when she looked through the camera lens.

She explained that she and her crew had been trailing Preston Whiteway all morning to shoot scenes for the title card that would read

The Race Sponsor’s Arrival!!!!

Bell took her into his arms. “What a treat. Can we have lunch?”

“No, I’ve got to shoot all of this.” She lowered her voice. “How did Josephine take the news?”

“I got the impression she was trying to dampen Whiteway’s excitement over the prospect of her being ‘Free! Free!’”

“I imagine that Preston’s working around to asking her to marry him.”

“The signs are all there,” Bell agreed. “He’s beaming like bonfire. He’s wearing a fine new suit of clothes. And he shines like he’s been barbered within an inch of his life.”

MARION HAD HER CREW IN PLACE, cranking their camera, when Preston Whiteway lured the New York press to Josephine’s big yellow tent in the infield with the promise of an important change in the race. Bell kept a close eye on the gathering, accompanied by Harry Warren, Van Dorn’s New York gang expert, who Bell had asked to take over the Belmont Park squad for the wounded Archie.

Bell saw that Whiteway had gotten his fondest wish: other newspapers could no longer ignore the Whiteway Cup. The aerial race was the biggest story in the country. But his rivals did not love him for it, and the questioning, two days before the race was to start, was openly hostile. Forty newspapermen were shouting questions, egged on by Van Dorn detective Scudder Smith, who had once been an actual newspaper reporter, or so he said.

“If that detective has imbibed as excessively as it appears,” Isaac Bell told Harry Warren, “suspend him for a week, and dock his pay for a month.”

“Scudder’s O.K.,” Harry assured him. “That’s just part of his disguise.”

“Disguised as what?”

“A drunken newspaper reporter.”

“He’s fooling me.”

“Can you deny, Mr. Whiteway,” a reporter from the Telegramhowled aggrievedly, “that the extremely short hop from Belmont Park to Empire City Race Track in Yonkers is a ploy to charge more paying spectators from New York City?”

“Is it not true that you could fly from Belmont Park to Yonkers in a glider?” shouted the man from the Tribune.

“Ten miles, Mr. Whiteway?” asked the Times. “Could not the aviators simply walk?”

“Or ride bicycles?” chimed in Detective Smith.

Bell had to admire how cleverly Whiteway let his rivals’ reporters have their fun before he fired back with both barrels. In fact, he suspected Whiteway had probably planned the change all along to draw the other papers into his trap.

“It is my pleasure to fulfill your expectation of some new sensation by announcing a last-minute change in the course. The first leg to Empire City Race Track in Yonkers will entail the competitors flying a full eighteen miles west from Belmont Park to the Statue of Liberty. Upon arriving at America’s symbol of freedom, the aviators competing for the gold Whiteway Cup will circle the statue, for hundreds of thousands to see from riverbanks and spectator vessels, and then steer their machines another twenty-two miles north to Yonkers, for a grand total the first day of forty miles. These brave fliers will use the opportunity to ‘work the kinks out’ while crossing two bodies of water – the treacherous East River and the broad Upper Bay – then fly up the middle of the wide Hudson River to alight safely, God willing, in the infield of the Empire City Race Track, where an excellent aviation field is offered by the racing course. . Thank you, gentlemen. I am sure that your editors anxiously await your stories to put extras on the street ahead of the competition.”

He might have added that the Whiteway papers’ “EXTRA”s were already in the hands of every newsboy in the city. But he didn’t have to. The reporters were stampeding to the racetrack telephones, cursing that they had been hoodwinked and that the editors would take it out of their hides.

“I HATE THAT DAMNED STATUE,” Harry Frost told Gene Weeks.

Weeks, a grizzled Staten Island waterman, was leaning on the tiller of his oyster scow, which was tied to a muddy bank of the Kill Van Kull. The boat, twenty-three feet long and nearly ten wide, looked like many of its type, but its peeling paint and faded decks concealed the existence of an oversize gasoline engine that made it go much faster than oyster scows engaged in legitimate trade.

“Why’s that, mister?”

“Damned statue attracts foreigners. We got too many immigrants, we don’t need no more mongrel blood.”

Gene Weeks, whose family had emigrated from England before Frost’s had stepped off the Mayflower, let the lunatic rant. Frost was flashing money for a ride on Weeks’s boat. A lot of money. In his younger days, Weeks would have taken it away from him and tossed him overboard. Or tried, he admitted on second thought. The lunatic was a big fellow, and the bulges in his coat were probably not a flask and lunch. So if he wanted the lunatic’s dough, he would have to earn it.

“Where’d you say you want me to take you, mister?”

Frost unfolded a newspaper, an EXTRA edition, and spread it on the salt-crusted bench beside Weeks’s tiller. Mumbling cusswords at the harbor breeze that plucked at it, he showed Weeks a map of the first leg of the Whiteway Cup Cross-Country Air Race. “See how they’re going to circle that damned statue and head up the river?”

“Yup.”

The big fellow had penciled an X on the map.

“I want to be here, with the sun behind me.”