Clive Cussler: The Race

Bell shook his head. “All she wants is to fly.”

“I gave her the chance, she turned it against me. She deserves to be killed,” Frost whispered.

“You’re dying with hatred on your lips.”

ISAAC BELL WAS DEEPLY RELIEVED to find Texas Walt, sitting in the rain, holding his head.

“Feels like John Philip Sousa’s playing a steam calliope where my brain used to be.”

Bell walked him to the Rolls-Royce and drove it to the trestle, Walt cussing a blue streak at every bump. The mechanicians had repaired the Eagle ’s undercarriage. Bell made Walt comfortable on the train. Then he took to the air and headed for Fresno, the last overnight stop before San Francisco. Josephine’s yellow machine and Joe Mudd’s red tractor biplane were tied down fifty yards apart on a muddy fairground. Joe Mudd leaned on crutches, joking with the mechanicians working on his undercarriage.

“Hard landing?” Bell asked.

Mudd shrugged. “Just a busted leg. Machine’s O.K. Mostly.”

“Where’s Josephine?”

“She and Whiteway are at the fairground hotel. I’d steer clear, if I were you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Stormy weather.”

Bell beckoned Josephine’s detective-mechanicians, who were ferrying tools and parts for Marco Celere, who was shaking his head over her motor. “Keep a sharp eye on Celere. Do not let him near Joe Mudd’s machine.”

“What if he makes a run for it?” asked Dashwood.

“He won’t. Celere’s not going anywhere as long as there’s any chance Josephine will win the race.”

He went to the fairground hotel. Preston Whiteway had rented the top floor of the two-story structure. Bell quickened his pace up the stairs when he heard the publisher shouting at the top of his lungs. He knocked loudly and entered. Whiteway was standing over Josephine, who was curled in a tight ball in a parlor chair, staring at the carpet.

Whiteway saw Bell, and instead of asking what had happened with Harry Frost he shouted, “You talk sense to her! Maybe she’ll listen to you!”

“What’s the matter?”

“My wife refuses to finish the race.”

“Why?”

“She won’t tell me. Maybe she’ll tell you. Where the hell’s my train?”

“Just pulled in.”

“I’ll be in San Francisco for the end of the race.”

“Where is Marion?”

“Gone ahead with her cameras,” Whiteway answered. He lowered his voice to a hoarse stage whisper that Josephine could have heard in the next county and pleaded, “See if you can talk sense into her – she’s throwing away the chance of a lifetime.”

Bell replied with a silent nod.

As Whiteway backed out of the room, he appeared to see Bell for the first time. “You look like you’ve been wrestling grizzly bears.”

“You should have seen the other guy.”

“Help yourself to the whiskey.”

“I intend to,” said Isaac Bell.

“WANT SOME?” Bell asked Josephine.

“No.”

Bell filled a short glass, tossed it back neat, filled it again, and sipped. “Josephine, what did you say when Marco asked you to come with him to North Africa?”

She looked up from the carpet, eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

“He made Harry Frost the same offer.”

“ Harry? Why?”

“Marco wanted Frost to kill your new husband.”

Josephine’s eyes went dead. “Marco’s worse than Harry,” she whispered.

“I’d say they were neck and neck. What was your answer, Josephine?”

“I told him no.”

Bell watched her closely as he said, “I’ll bet Marco thinks you’ll change your mind when you’re a rich widow.”

“Never. . Is Preston in danger?”

“Harry Frost is dead.”

“Thank God. . Do you think Marco has the guts to kill Preston without Harry’s help?”

Instead of answering that question, Isaac Bell said, “I know why you’re quitting the race.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re quitting because Marco Celere, disguised as Dmitri Platov, sabotaged the best of the other machines.”

She looked away. “I wondered,” she whispered. “I didn’t just wonder, I suspected. But I didn’t stop him. Losing the race will be my punishment. I have been terrible.”

“Because you didn’t stop him or because you went along with Marco’s plan to frame Harry for murder?”

“Did Harry tell you that, too?”

Bell smiled. “No, I stumbled on that on my own.”

“Looking back, I know it was an evil plan. I knew it then but Harry deserved to be locked up again.”

“Why did you let Marco talk you into marrying Whiteway?”

“I was too tired to argue. I just wanted to win the race-”

“Perhaps you thought that if one marriage could be annulled, so could another?”

“Sure, if we had no honeymoon. And I swear, Isaac, I had no idea Marco planned to kill Preston. Poor Preston, he’s just so. . Poor Preston, he is such a fool, Isaac, he really loves me.”

Bell gave her a gently teasing smile. “Maybe Preston thinks that when you fall in with the wrong men and don’t see what they’re doing, that you’re not so terrible – just single-mindedly myopic in your determination to fly? Maybe that’s why he can’t believe you won’t finish the race.”

“I do not deserve to win. . Are you going to arrest Marco?”

“I can’t, yet. I don’t have enough proof to make a case in court. Besides, I want him free to work on your machine in case you change your mind.”

“I won’t. The winner should win fair and square.”

“You and Joe Mudd are neck and neck. It would be good for the winner, and good for aviation, if you raced right down to the wire. Whatever you’ve done wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve driven a flying machine across the continent. Why don’t you sleep on it? Meantime, I’ll let Marco work on the machine overnight.”

MARCO CELERE SAW a way out of his predicament. Rather than wait helplessly for Josephine to change her mind, and fearing she would not, he placed a long-distance call from the hotel telephone. Preston Whiteway snatched up his telephone like a man who had been waiting all night for news from Fresno. “Will she fly?”

“This is Marco Celere, inventor of your aeroplane and chief mechanician.”

“Oh. . Well? Will she fly?”

“I understand,” Celere answered suavely, “that Mr. Bell is discussing it with her over breakfast. There’s time still – there’s a low fog on the field the sun hasn’t burned off yet. But I have a suggestion. If Josephine cannot win the Whiteway Cup, surely her flying machine can.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If she doesn’t agree to finish the race, I will fly the last leg from Fresno and win the race for her.”

“Against the rules. One driver, one machine, all the way.”

“We are men of the world, Mr. Whiteway. They are your rules. The Whiteway Cup is your race. Surely you can change your own rules.”

“Mr. Celere you may know something about building flying machines, but you don’t know the first thing about newspaper readers. They’ll buy any lie you print – unless it’s a lie about something you’ve already convinced them to love. They love Josephine. They want her to win. They don’t give a hang about your flying machine.”