The Race

“Get him!” cried Lillian.

“He is away. He’s lecturing in Chicago.”

Isaac Bell and Lillian Osgood Abbott locked eyes in sudden hope.

The doctor said, “But even if Nuland-Novicki could board the Twentieth Century Limited in time, your husband will never last the eighteen hours it will take to get here. Nineteen, with the extra time from here to Long Island. We can’t move him to New York.”

“How long does he have?”

“Twelve or fourteen hours at most.”

“Take us to a telephone,” Bell demanded.

The doctor led them at a dead run through echoing halls to the hospital’s central telephone station. “Thank God, Father’s at home,” said Lillian. “New York,” she told the operator. “Murray Hill four-four-four.”

The co

“Father. Listen to me. Archie’s been shot. . Yes, he is desperately wounded. There is a surgeon in Chicago. I need him here in twelve hours.”

The doctor shook his head, and said to Bell, “The Twentieth Century and the Broadway Limited take eighteen hours. What train could possibly make it from Chicago to New York faster than those crack fliers?”

Isaac Bell allowed himself a hopeful smile. “A special steaming on tracks cleared by a railroad baron who loves his daughter.”

“COMMISSIONER BAKER’S ENEMIES call him a lightweight,” growled Osgood He

Six Traffic Squad touring cars and a motorcycle that the department was testing with a view to forming a motorcycle squad were racing their engines outside Grand Central Terminal, prepared to escort He

“Here they are!” cried Lillian.

Isaac Bell exploded from the railroad terminal, ru

Engines roared, sirens howled, and in seconds the limousine was tearing down Park Avenue. Lillian handed Nuland-Novicki the latest wire from the hospital. He read it, nodding his head. “The patient is a strong man,” he said reassuringly. “That always helps.”

AT BELMONT PARK that same pink hint of dawn reflected on the shiny steel rail down which Dmitri Platov’s revolutionary thermo engine was scheduled to speed on its final test run. The freshening sky gave urgency to the task of a man crouched under it. If he stayed much longer, early risers would see him loosening bolts with a monkey wrench. Already, he smelled breakfast. The breeze traveling across the infield carried whiffs of bacon frying on the support trains in the yards on the other side of the grandstand.

Mechanicians would appear any minute. But sabotage was slow work. He had to wait before he turned each nut to sluice the threads with penetrating oil to prevent the loud screech of rusty metal. Then he had to mop the drips that would be noticed by sharp eyes performing the last earthbound tests before experimenting on Steve Stevens’s biplane, which was waiting near the rail under canvas.

He would have finished by now, except that the detectives guarding Josephine Josephs’s flying machine made a habit of sweeping the infield. Silent, unpredictable, they would appear out of nowhere shining flashlights, then vanish just as suddenly, leaving him to wonder when they were coming next and from which direction. Twice he had crouched, nervously rubbing his arm, while he waited for them to move on.

His final step, when he had loosened the fishtail that held two abutting ends of rail, was to work matchsticks into the space he had opened. If anyone tested the joint, it would not feel loose. But when assaulted by the enormous forces unleashed by the thermo engine, the rails would part and the joint burst open. Its effect would be like a railroad switch opened to shunt a train from one track to another. The difference was, this was a single rail, and the “train,” Platov’s miracle engine, would have no track to shunt onto but would fly through the air like a self-propelled ca

12

“HARRY FROST IS NOT DEAD,” said Isaac Bell.

“By all accounts,” said Joseph Van Dorn, “Harry Frost was shot twice by you and three times by poor Archie. He’s got more lead in him than a tinsmith.”

“Not enough to kill him.”

“We’ve not seen hide nor hair of him. No hospital has heard of him. No doctor has reported treating a broken jaw accompanied by unexplained gunshot wounds.”

“Outlaw doctors charge extra not to report gunshot wounds.”

“Nor have we received proof of any sightings by the public.”

“We received numerous tips,” said Bell.

“None pa

“That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“At least he’s out of commission.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Isaac Bell.

Joseph Van Dorn smacked a strong hand on his desk. “Now, listen to me, Isaac. We’ve been down this road repeatedly. I would love that Harry Frost were not dead. It would be good for business. Preston Whiteway would continue paying a fortune for cross-country protection of our Sweetheart of the Air. Happily, he’s willing to pay us to find Frost’s corpse. But I ca

“There is no corpse,” Bell replied.

The boss asked, “What evidence do you have that he is not dead?”

Bell jumped up and paced long-leggedly around the Hotel Knickerbocker suite that Van Dorn commandeered for his private office on the occasions he was in New York. “Sir,” he addressed him formally, “you have been a detective longer than I.”

“A lot longer.”

“As such, you know that a so-called hunch by an experienced investigator is bedded in reality. A hunch does not come from nothing.”

“Next you’ll be defending sixth senses,” Van Dorn retorted.

“I don’t have to defend sixth senses,” Bell shot back, “because you know better than I, from your long experience, that sixth senses are the same as hunches. Both are inspired by observations of things and events that we’re not yet aware we have seen.”

“Do you have any idea what you observed that provokes your hunch?”

“Sarcasm is the boss’s privilege, sir,” Bell answered. “Perhaps I observed how agilely Frost carried himself when he ran, sir. Or that shock registered on his face only when Archie broke his jaw, sir. Not when we shot him, sir.”

“Will you please stop calling me sir?”

“Yes, sir,” Bell gri

“You’re darned chipper today.”

“I am so relieved that Archie has a fighting chance. Dr. Nuland-Novicki said the most important thing was getting through the first twenty-four hours, and he has.”

“When can I visit him?” asked Van Dorn.

“Not yet. Lillian’s the only one they’ll allow in his room. Even Archie’s mother is cooling her heels in the hallway. The other reason I’m chipper is, Marion arrives any day from San Francisco. She’s hired on with Whiteway to take moving pictures of the race.”

Van Dorn fell silent for a moment, reflecting on their exchange. When he spoke again, it was soberly. “What you say is true about hunches – or, if not entirely true, is certainly agreed upon by experienced fieldmen.”

“The unrecognized observation is a compelling phenomenon.”

“But,” said Van Dorn, raising a meaty finger for emphasis, “experienced fieldmen also agree that hunches and sixth senses have enriched bookmakers since the first horse race in human history. This morning I learned that you’ve doubled your bets, summoning to Belmont Park some of my best men who are already thinly dispersed about the continent.”