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

“Power. Marco didn’t care about money. He would be a prince, or a king.” She tossed her head and laughed angrily, “King of the toads.”

“What is there about Josephine’s machine that is indisputably your father’s invention and not Marco Celere’s?”

“Why do you care?”

“I am driving a machine your father invented. I have a strong sense of your father’s genius and his skills and maybe his dreams. I don’t think they should be stolen from him, particularly as he is not here to defend himself. Can you give me something I can use to defend him?”

Danielle closed her eyes and knitted her brow. “I understand,” she said. “Let me think . . . You see, your monoplano, she was made later. After Marco made his copy. Marco is like a sponge. He remembers everything he ever sees but never has his own idea. So Marco’s monoplano has no improvements that my father made in yours.”

“Like what? What did he improve? What did he change?”

“Alettoni.”

“But they look exactly the same. I compared them.”

“Look again,” she said. “Closer.”

“At what?”

“Cardine. How do you say? Pivot. Hinge! Look how the alettoni hinge to your aeroplane. Then look at Josephine’s.”

Bell saw the startled expression on Andy Moser’s face. “What is it, Andy?”

“The boys were saying her flaps were lightly seated. The pintles were too small. That’s why the flap fell off.”

Bell nodded, thinking hard. “Thank you, Danielle,” he said. It had been a productive visit. “We have to go. Are they treating you well?”

“Better, grazie. And I have lawyer.” She turned to Andy and gave the mechanician a dazzling smile. “Thank you for visiting me, Andy.” She extended her hand. Andy grabbed it and shook it hard. Danielle rolled her eyes at Bell and said, “Andy, when a lady gives you her hand, it is sometimes better to kiss it than shake it.”

Bell said, “Andy, get the machine ready to start. I’ll be there in a minute.” He waited until Andy was out of earshot. “There is one other thing I must ask you, Danielle.”

“What is it?”

“Were you ever in love with Marco Celere?”

“Marco?” she laughed. “Mr. Bell, you can’t be serious.”

“I have never met the man.”

“I would love a sea urchin before I would love Marco Celere. A poisonous sea urchin. You have no idea how treacherous he is. He breathes lies as another man breathes air. He schemes, he pretends, he steals. He is truffatore.”

“What is truffatore?”

“Imbroglione.”

“What is imbroglione?”

“Impostore! Defraudatore!”

“A con man,” said Bell.

“What is con man?” she asked.

“A confidence trickster. A thief who pretends to be your friend.”

“Yes! That is Marco Celere. A thief who pretends to be your friend.”

Isaac Bell’s quick mind raced into high gear. A murdered thief whose body was never found was one sort of mystery. A murdered confidence man whose body disappeared was quite another. Particularly when Harry Frost had cried in bewildered anguish, “You don’t know what they were up to.”

Nor did you, Harry Frost, thought Bell. Not until after you tried to kill Marco Celere. That’s why you didn’t kill Josephine first. You didn’t intend to kill her at all. That twisted desire came later, only after you learned something about them that you thought was even worse than seduction.

Bell was elated. It had been a most productive visit indeed. Although he still did not know what Marco and Josephine had been up to, he was sure now that Harry Frost was not merely raving.

He said, “Josephine told me that you wept that Marco stole your heart.”

He was not surprised when Danielle answered, “Marco must have told her that lie. I’ve never met the girl.”

Danielle helped Bell and Andy roll the Eagle to the far end of the asylum lawn and turned it into the wind. She gripped the cane tail skid, as Andy spun the propeller, and held fast, retarding its forward motion while he struggled to hold it back and scramble aboard at the same time. She was strong, Bell noticed, and when it came to flying machines she knew her business.

Bell cleared the asylum wall and followed the rail line to its connector to the New York Central line and followed the tracks to the Castleton-on-Hudson railroad station. Passing high over the main street, he saw white horses pulling fire engines and a close formation of brass horns and tubas gleaming in the sunlight.

A fire department marching band was heading up the street, leading a horde of people, in the direction of the hayfield where Josephine’s machine was being repaired. They passed a brick schoolhouse, and the doors flew open and hundreds of children streamed out to join the parade. The word had gotten around, Bell realized. The whole town was coming to welcome her, and there were more people in the parade than would fit on the field.

Bell raced the mile to the hayfield, put down on it, and ran to warn his detectives. “The whole town’s coming to greet Josephine. They let the kids out of school. We’ll be stuck here all night if we don’t go now.”

23

JOSEPHINE WAS FRANTIC, “Hurry it up!” she cried to the mechanicians.

“I’ll drive you down the road,” said Bell. “Give them a speech. Let them see you so they won’t mob the field.”

“No,” she said. “They don’t want to see me, they want to touch the machine. I saw it happen in California last year. They wrote their names on the wings and poked pencils in the fabric.”

“Their parents are coming, too.”

“The parents were worse. They were tearing off parts for souvenirs.”

“I’ll block,” said Bell.

He sent the Rolls-Royce roadster and the Thomas to try to intercept the parade on the road, a temporary solution, at best, as the excited townspeople would simply stream around the autos. He ran his Eagle on the ground to the head of the field to further distract them.

Small boys, who had run ahead of the parade, jumped the ditch that separated the road from the hayfield. Bell saw there would be no stopping the children, who