Again, he didn’t seem to hear her question, saying, “And you have a suitor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every one at Belmont Park said that Preston Whiteway has fallen in love with you.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s just a crush.”
“He had your marriage annulled.”
“I didn’t ask him to. He just went ahead and did it.”
“You were supposed to charm him into buying you an aeroplane. But when you ask, ‘What about you, Marco?’ you seem to have already answered your own question.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t sound like there is anyplace in your scheme for Marco.”
“It’s not my scheme. I just wanted your aeroplane. Like we planned.”
“You got more than we originally planned.”
Josephine felt hot tears spring to her eyes. “Marco, you can’t believe that I would prefer Whiteway to you.”
“How can I blame you? You thought I was dead. He is rich. I am a poor aeroplane inventor.”
“He could never replace you,” she protested. “And now that you’re back, we can-”
“What?” Marco asked bleakly. “Be together? How long would Whiteway let you fly my monoplano if he saw you with me?”
“Is that why you pretended you were dead?”
“I pretended I was dead for several important reasons. One, I was badly injured. If I stayed in North River, Harry would have killed me in my hospital bed.”
“But how-”
“I rode a freight train to Canada. A kind farm family took me in and nursed me all winter. When I learned that you were with Whiteway and in the race and that Harry was still free, I decided to tag along, in disguise, keeping an eye on things, before miraculously walking out of the woods as Marco, as we planned.”
“When will you?”
“After you win.”
“Why wait so long?”
“I just told you, Whiteway would be as jealous of me as Harry. Maybe not as violent, but angry enough to cut you off and take his aeroplane. He does own it, doesn’t he? Or did he give you the title?”
“No. He owns it.”
“Too bad you didn’t ask for the title.”
She hung her head. “I didn’t know how I could. He’s paying for everything. Even my clothes.”
“The rich are often kind, never generous.”
“I don’t know how long I can bear looking at you and pretending you’re not you.”
“Concentrate on my hairy disguise.”
“But your eyes, your lips. .” She pictured him as he had looked, his sleek black hair, noble forehead, elegant mustache, deep-set dark eyes.
“Lips do not bear thinking about until you win the race,” he said. “Drive my airplane. Win the race. And don’t forget, when you win the race, Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air will be a made woman with heaps of money. And Marco, the inventor of the winning Celere Monoplano, will be a made man, with Italian Army contracts to build hundreds of aeroplanes.”
“What has it been like for you to look at me all this time?”
“What is it like? Like it has always been from the first day I set eyes on you. Like an ocean of joy that fills my heart. Now, let’s get your machine fixed.”
ISAAC BELL TRIED TO SLEEP in a blanket roll under the monoplane, but his mind kept seizing on Harry Frost’s strange statement. Suddenly he sat up, galvanized by an entirely different and even stranger thought. He had been struck by his aeroplane’s resilience – and grateful for it saving his life – even before Andy Moser’s admiring remark that Di Vecchio “built ’em to last.”
Bell pulled on his boots and ran to the rail-yard dispatch shack, where they had a telegraph. The peculiar strength of the American Eagle stemmed from multiple braces and redundant control links. Not only had its inventor used all the best materials, he had anticipated structural failure and designed to prevent catastrophe.
Such an inventor who built to last did not seem to be the sort of man to kill himself over a bankruptcy. Such a man, Bell thought, would rise above failure, seeing a bankruptcy as nothing worse than a temporary setback.
“Van Dorn,” he told the New York Central Railroad dispatcher. He had a letter of introduction signed by the president of the line. But the dispatcher was delighted to help anyone in the air race.
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“I want to send a telegraph.”
The dispatcher’s hand poised over the brass key. “To whom?”
“James Dashwood. Van Dorn Agency. San Francisco.”
“Message?”
Bell listened to the dispatcher tap the letters of his message into the Morse alphabet.
INVESTIGATE DI VECCHIO SUICIDE.
SPEED CELERE INVESTIGATION.
ON THE JUMP!
22
“LOOK AT HER GO!”
Throttle full, Antoinette engine discharging a high-pitched snarl that sounded like ripping canvas, Josephine’s yellow monoplane streaked past Weehawken, New Jersey, at first light.
“Spin her over!”
Isaac Bell was already at the Eagle’s controls, having learned by telephone that Dmitri Platov and the Van Dorn mechanicians had worked all night to replace Josephine’s alettone and its wind-mangled mounts. The aviatrix had just taken off from Bedloe’s Island. Bell had his Eagle positioned at the head of the pier he had landed on the day before to take off over the river. His Gnome rotary was already warm and ready to fly. It blatted to life on one pull of the propeller.
“Chocks!”
They yanked the chocks from the wheels, and the monoplane started rolling. Andy and his helper ran beside the wings, steadying them, as Bell raced across the smooth boards between the railroad tracks and soared after Josephine.
He stayed close behind her as they flew up the middle of the Hudson River, eyeing the ships and boats for signs of Harry Frost, rehearsing flying with one hand and swiveling the rifle with the other. After fifteen miles, the two yellow aeroplanes veered toward the New York side, where the city of Yonkers stained the sky with smoke.
Although Bell was following Josephine’s aeroplane, he practiced navigating by a race map sketched with pertinent landmarks. With the stiff paper strapped to his leg, he traced the oval Empire City Race Track, which grew visible a couple of miles inland beside a huge pit of mud where steam shovels were digging a new reservoir for New York City.
Bell saw Thoroughbreds cantering around the track on their morning workouts, but the racetrack’s infield was deserted of flying machines, and the only hangar train in the rail yard was the long yellow Josephine Special. He learned upon alighting behind Josephine that every other flying machine still in the race had already taken off for Albany.
While the mechanicians poured gasoline, oil, and water in Josephine’s tanks, and gasoline and castor oil in Bell’s, they reported that even though Steve Stevens’s double Antoinette twin-propellered tractor biplane had turned in the best time from Belmont Park to Yonkers, the cotton planter was mad as hell at Dmitri Platov for helping Josephine fix her plane at the Statue of Liberty.
“De idea is dat,” they mimicked Platov affectionately, “every peoples racing together.”
“So Mr. Stevens yelled at poor Dmitri,” the mimics went on, switching to a Southern drawl, “Y’all is a socialist.”
Bell noticed that Josephine did not join in the laughter. Her face was tight with tension. He assumed that she was deeply upset to be so far behind this early in the race. Ordinarily polite and pleasant to everyone, she was railing at her mechanicians to “Hurry it up!” as they made further repairs to her whirlwind-damaged wing.