“Bloody little that didn’t break,” Ruggs retorted. “She hit so hard, she’s mostly splinters.”
“I mean, the wire that broke that caused the accident. The baronet said he heard one let loose.”
“I’ve laid them all over there.” He pointed at a row of wires. “So far, I find none broken. It’s Roebling wire. Same as was spun into the cables that hold up the Brooklyn Bridge. Virtually indestructible.”
Bell went to look for himself. A helper, a boy no more than fourteen, came and went with more wire. He was puzzling over one end of a strand when Bell asked, “What do you have there, sonny?”
“Nothing.”
Bell took a shiny silver dollar from his pocket. “But you’re staring like something struck you – here.”
The boy grabbed the coin. “Thank you, sir.”
“Why don’t you show this to your boss?”
The boy dragged the wire to the chief mechanician. “Look at this, Mr. Ruggs.”
“Lay it out with the rest, laddie.”
“But, sir. Look at this, sir.”
Lionel Ruggs put on reading spectacles and held it to the light. “Bloody hell. . Bloody, bloody hell!”
Just then, Dmitri Platov came running up. He shook his head at the remains of the Farman. Then he looked at Eddison-Sydney-Martin, who was lighting a fresh smoke. “Is surviving? Is lucky.”
Bell asked, “What do you make of this, Mr. Platov?”
Platov took the fitting in his fingers and studied it, puzzlement growing on his face. “Is strange. Is very strange.”
Bell asked, “Why is it strange?”
“Is aluminum.”
Chief Mechanician Ruggs exploded, “What the bloody hell was it doing on our machine?”
“What do you mean?” asked Isaac Bell.
Platov said, “Is something should not be. Is – how you say – link-ed weak.”
“This anchor at the end of the wire is made of cast aluminum,” Ruggs seethed. “It should be steel. There’s tons of tension on those wires, tons more when the machine moves sharply. The anchor bolt should be as least as strong as the wire. Otherwise, like Mr. Platov says, it’s a weak link.”
“Where did it come from?” asked Bell.
“I’ve seen it used. But not on our machines, thank you very much.”
Bell turned to the Russian. “Have you seen aluminum used this way?”
“Aluminum lightweight. Aluminum on struts, aluminum on crossing members, aluminum on framing. But counterbracing anchor? Only fools.” He handed it back to Lionel Ruggs, his ordinarily cheery face stern. “Is person doing should being shot.”
“I’ll pull the trigger myself if I find the bloody bastard,” said the mechanician.
11
ISAAC BELL RAN TO THE RAIL YARD, where Archie had set up a field office in a corner of Josephine’s hangar car. He scanned the reports that were coming in by telegraph, telephone, and Van Dorn messenger. Harry Frost was still on the run despite his wounds.
Or to put it more accurately, Bell had to admit, Harry Frost had vanished.
All hospitals had been alerted to look out for the wounded man. None had responded. Frost could be dying in a ditch or dead already. He could be hiding in the farmland around the racetrack. Or he could have made his way to Brooklyn, where gangsters would take him in, for a price, and provide midwives and crooked pharmacists to treat his wounds. He could have run east into rural Nassau and Suffolk counties. Or north to the vast, thinly populated Long Island hunt country, where the owners of great American fortunes rode to the hounds.
Bell telephoned the New York office. He ordered more agents sent out from Manhattan, and others to double the watch on the railroad and subway stations and the ferries. And he dispatched apprentices to hospitals with stern instructions not to engage but to call for help. When he had done all he could to encourage the manhunt, Bell left a dozen detectives with orders to stick close to Josephine and raced his borrowed Pierce to the Nassau Hospital in Mineola, where they had taken Archie.
Archie’s beautiful wife, Lillian, a young blond-haired woman of nineteen, was standing outside the operating room in a long duster, having driven from New York. Her astonishingly pale blue eyes were dry and alert, but her face was a mask of dread.
Bell took her in his arms. He had introduced her to Archie, sensing that the high-spirited only child of a widowed “shirtsleeve” railroad tycoon would bring particular joy to his friend’s life. He had been more than right. They adored each other. He had persuaded her crusty father to see Archie for the man he was and not a fortune hunter. You changed my life, Archie had thanked him simply at the wedding where Bell was best man. Ironically, years earlier, he had already changed Archie’s life when he proposed that Archie become a Van Dorn detective. If only he hadn’t.
Bell watched over the top of her head as a surgeon came out of the operating room, his expression grave. When he saw Bell holding Lillian, relief flickered in his eyes as if the fact that a friend was comforting her would make it easier to tell her that her husband had died.
“The doctor is here,” Bell whispered.
She turned to the doctor. “Tell me.”
The doctor hesitated. To Isaac Bell, Lillian Osgood Abbott was the little sister he had never had. He could forget that she was so exquisitely beautiful that most men found it very difficult to speak to her on first meeting. In this awful instance, Bell guessed that the doctor could not bear to utter any word that would cause tears to track her cheeks or her brave mouth to crumble.
“Tell me,” she repeated, and took the doctor’s hand. Her firm touch gave the man courage.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Abbott. The bullet did much damage, barely missed the heart and shattered two ribs.”
Bell felt a cavern open in his own heart. “Is he dead?”
“No!. . Not yet.”
“Is it hopeless?” Lillian asked.
“I wish I could. .”
Bell held tighter as she sagged in his arms.
He said, “Is there nothing that can be done?”
“I. . nothing I can do.”
“Is there anyone who can save him?” Isaac Bell demanded.
The doctor gave a deep sigh and stared sightlessly back at him. “There is only one man who could even attempt to operate. The surgeon S. D. Nuland-Novicki. In the Boer War, he developed new procedures for treating gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Nuland-Novicki-”
“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 connection was made to Osgood Hennessy’s limestone mansion on Park Avenue. The butler summoned Hennessy to the telephone.
“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?”