The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

were alighting. Joe Mudd’s sturdy red tractor biplane had taken to the sky while Bell was listening to Platov and was approaching to land ahead of the yellow monoplane. While Josephine circled around to let it go first, the red biplane floated to the grass and rolled along for a hundred yards to a stop.

Josephine’s machine came down to earth at a steeper angle and a much higher rate of speed. It was traveling so swiftly that it seemed that she had somehow lost control of it and was falling out of the sky.

7

CONVERSATIONS CEASED.

Men put down tools and stared.

The yellow aeroplane was mere yards from smashing into the grass when Josephine hauled back on a lever that raised small flaps on the back of her wings and the elevator on her tailpiece. The airship leveled out, slowed, bounced on the grass, and rolled to a gentle stop.

There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then, from one end of the infield to the other, mechanicians and airmen whistled, clapped, and cheered her stunt, for it was clear that she had come down exactly as she had intended, relying on her skill to thumb her nose at gravity.

And when a slight figure dressed head to toe in white climbed out of her compartment behind the wing, a roar of approval thundered from spectators in the grandstand. She waved to the crowd and flashed a gleaming smile.

“Well done!” said Isaac Bell. “Preston Whiteway may be an idiot in his personal affairs, but he can spot a winner.”

He strode to the yellow machine, pulling ahead of the long-legged Archie. A burly detective dressed as a mechanician blocked his way. “Where you going, mister?”

“I am Van Dorn Chief Investigator Isaac Bell.”

The man stepped back, though he still eyed him carefully. “Sorry, I didn’t know you, Mr. Bell. Tom LaGuardia, Saint Louis office. I just got shifted here. I saw you talking to Mr. Abbott. I should have assumed you were on the level.”

“You did the right thing. Never assume when your client’s life is at risk. If you stop the wrong person, you can always apologize. If you don’t stop the right person, you can’t apologize to a dead client.”

Archie caught up. “Good job, Tom. I’ll vouch for him.”

Bell was already heading for Josephine. She had climbed onto a crosspiece that connected the landing wheels to lean into her motor and was adjusting the carburetor with a screwdriver.

Bell said, “Those hinged appendages on the back of your wings appear to give you extraordinary control.”

She looked down at him with lively eyes. Hazel, Bell noticed, a warm green color in the sunlight, edging toward a cooler gray. “They’re called alettoni. That’s Italian. It means ‘little wings.’”

“Did they slow your airship’s descent by enlarging the wing’s surface?”

Returning her attention to the carburetor, she answered, “They deflect more air.”

“Do alettoni work better than warping?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “They don’t always do what I want them to. Sometimes they act as a brake and slow me down instead of keeping me level.”

“Can they be adjusted?”

“The man who invented them is dead. So now we have to figure it out without his help.” She made a final adjustment, sheathed her screwdriver in a back pocket, jumped to the ground, and offered her gloved hand. “I’m Josephine, by the way. Who are you?”

“Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Isaac Bell. I’m Van Dorn’s chief investigator.”

“My brave protectors,” she said with a frank and open smile.

She was tiny, Bell thought. Barely an inch over five feet tall, with a pretty upturned nose. Her direct gaze was older than her years, though she had a young woman’s voice, thin and girlish. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell. I hope ‘chief investigator’ doesn’t mean Archie’s been fired?”

“Not at all. Archie is in charge of your personal safety. My job is to intercept your husband before he gets close enough to harm you.”

Her eyes darkened, and she looked fearful. “You’ll never catch him, you know.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too sly. He thinks like a wild animal.”

Bell smiled to put her at ease, for he saw that she was really afraid of Frost. “We’ll do what we have to to deal with him. I wonder whether you might give me any clues to his behavior. Anything that would help me run him to ground.”

“I can only tell you things about him that won’t help. I’m afraid I don’t know anything that will.”

“Then tell me what won’t help.”

“Harry is completely unpredictable. I never knew what to expect. He’ll change his mind in a flash.” As she spoke her eyes glinted toward the field where Joe Mudd’s red tractor biplane was taking to the air again, and Bell realized that she was assessing the competition as coolly as he would an outlaw in a knife fight.

“Can you tell me about friends he would call on?”

“I never saw him with a friend. I don’t know if he ever had any. He kept to himself. Completely to himself.”

“I encountered some Chicago men at your camp yesterday. I had the impression they were living there.”

“They’re just bodyguards. Harry kept them around for protection, but he never had anything to do with them.”

“Protection from what?”

She made a face. “His ‘enemies.’”

“Who were they?”

“I asked him. Once. He started screaming and hollering. I thought he would kill me. I never asked again. They’re in his head, I think. I mean, he was in the nuthouse once.”

Bell gently changed the subject. “Did he ever take friends when he went big-game hunting? Did he shoot with a party?”

“He hired guides and bearers. But otherwise he was alone.”

“Did you go with him?”

“I was busy flying.”

“Did that disappoint him?”

“No. He knew I was flying before we married.” Her eyes tracked a Blériot swooping past at sixty miles an hour.

“Before? May I ask how you got started in flying?”

A high-spirited grin lighted her open face. “I ran away from home—stuffed my hair under a cap and pretended to be a boy.” It wouldn’t