“I’d sooner admire a rabid wolf,” Isaac Bell countered grimly. “Harry Frost is a brutal mastermind. He ‘forged his continental chain,’ as you put it, by slaughtering every rival in his path.”
“I still say he was a fine businessman before he became a lunatic,” Whiteway objected. “Instead of living on the interest of his wealth when he retired, he invested it in steel, railroads, and Postum Cereals. He possesses a fortune that would do J. P. Morgan proud.”
Joseph Van Dorn’s cheeks flamed with such fury that they were suddenly redder than his whiskers. He retorted sharply, the normally faint Irish lilt in his voice thickening into a brogue as heavy as a Dublin ferry captain’s.
“J. P. Morgan has been accused of many things, sir, but even if they were all true, he would not be proud of such a fortune. Harry Frost possesses the managemental skills of General Grant, the strength of a grizzly, and the scruples of Satan.”
Isaac Bell put it plainly: “We know how Frost operates. The Van Dorn Detective Agency tangled with him ten years ago.”
Whiteway snickered. “Isaac, ten years ago you were in prep school.”
“Not so,” Van Dorn interrupted. “Isaac had just signed on as an apprentice and the god-awful truth is Harry Frost got the best of both of us. When the dust had settled, he controlled every railroad newsstand within five hundred miles of Chicago, and those of our clients who were not bankrupted were dead. Having established that blood-soaked foundation right under our noses, he expanded east and west. He’s as slippery as they come. We could never build a case that would stand up in court.”
Whiteway saw an opportunity to negotiate a low fee for the Van Dorn services.
“Have I put too much faith in the famous Van Dorn motto, ‘We Never Give Up. Never’? Ought I shop around for better detectives?”
Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn stood up and put on their hats.
“Good day, sir,” said Van Dorn. “As your cross-country race will span the continent, I recommend you ‘shop around’ for an investigative outfit with a national reach equal to mine.”
“Hold on! Hold on! Don’t go off half-cocked. I was merely-”
“We admitted the drubbing Frost dealt us in order to warn you not to underestimate him. Harry Frost is mad as a hatter and violent as a longhorn, but, unlike most madmen, he is coldly efficient.”
Bell said, “Faced with the choice between the asylum or the hangman, Frost has nothing to lose, which makes him even more lethal. Don’t think for a moment he’ll be content harming Josephine. Now that you’ve made her your champion in the race, he will attack your entire enterprise.”
“One man? What can one man do? Particularly a man on the run.”
“Frost organized gangs of outlaws in every city in the country to build his empire – thieves, arsonists, strikebreaker thugs, and murderers.”
“I have no objection to strikebreakers,” Whiteway said staunchly. “Someone’s got to keep labor in line.”
“You’ll object to them beating up your fliers’ mechanicians,” Isaac Bell shot back coldly. “The infields of racetracks and fairgrounds where your racers will land their machines at night are a favored habitat of gamblers. The gamblers will make book on your race. Gambling draws criminals. Frost knows where to find them, and they’ll be glad to see him.”
“Which is why,” said Van Dorn, “you must prepare to battle Frost at every stop on the route.”
“This sounds expensive,” Whiteway said. “Appallingly expensive.”
Bell and Van Dorn still had their hats on. Bell reached for the door.
“Wait – How many men will it take to cover the entire route?”
Isaac Bell said, “I traced it on my way west this past week. It’s fully four thousand miles.”
“How could you trace my route?” Whiteway demanded. “I haven’t published it yet.”
The detectives exchanged another invisible smile. No Van Dorn worth his salt arrived at a meeting ignorant of a potential client’s needs. That went double for the founder of the agency and his chief investigator.
Bell said, “There is a necessary logic to your route: Flying machines can’t cross high mountains like the Appalachians and the Rockies, the competitors’ support trains will have to follow the railroad lines, and your newspapers will want the greatest number of spectators to take notice. Consequently, I rode the Twentieth Century Limited from New York City to Chicago on the Water Level Route up the Hudson River and along the Erie Canal and Lake Erie. At Chicago I transferred to the Golden State Limited through Kansas City, south to Texas, and crossed the Rockies at the lowest point in the Continental Divide through the New Mexico and Arizona territories and across California to Los Angeles and up the Central Valley to San Francisco.”
Bell had traveled on the excess-fare express trains under the guise of an insurance executive. Local Van Dorns, alerted by telegraph, had reported at the station stops about the fairgrounds and racetracks where the fliers were likely to land each night. Their dossiers on gamblers, criminals, informants, and law officers had made compelling reading, and by the time his train eased alongside the ferry on Oakland Mole, Isaac Bell’s encyclopedic knowledge of American crime had been brought thoroughly up to date.
Weiner spoke suddenly from his chair in the corner.
“The rules stipulate that to conclude the final leg of the race the winner must first fly a circle completely around this building – the San Francisco Inquirer Building – before he alights on the Army Signal Corps’s grounds at the Presidio.”
“Protecting such an ambitious route will be an enormous job,” Van Dorn said with a stern smile. “As I advised earlier, you need a detective agency with field offices that span the nation.”
Isaac Bell removed his hat and spoke earnestly. “We believe that your cross-country race is important, Preston. The United States lags far behind France and Italy in feats of distance flying.”
Whiteway agreed. “Excitable foreigners like the French and Italians have a flair for flying.”
“Phlegmatic Germans and Britons are making a go of it, too,” Bell observed drily.
“With war brewing in Europe,” Van Dorn chimed in, “their armies offer enormous prizes for feats of aviation to be employed on the battlefield.”
Whiteway intoned solemnly, “A terrible gulf yawns between warlike kings and autocrats and us overly peaceable Americans.”
“All the more reason,” said Isaac Bell, “for ‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air’ to vault our nation to a new level above the heroic exploits of the Wright brothers and aerial daredevils circling crowds of spectators on sunny days. And as Josephine advances the United States, she will also advance the brand-new field of aviation.”
Bell’s words pleased Whiteway, and Van Dorn looked at his chief investigator admiringly for deftly flattering a potential client. But Isaac Bell meant what he said. To make aeroplanes a fast, reliable mode of modern transportation, their drivers had to tackle wind and weather across the vast and lonely American landscape.
“Harry Frost must not be allowed to derail this great race.”
“The future of air flight is at stake. And, of course, the life of your young aviatrix.”
“All right!” said Whiteway. “Blanket the nation from coast to coast. And to hell with what it costs.”
Van Dorn offered his hand to shake on the deal. “We will get on it straightaway.”
“There is one other thing,” Whiteway said.
“Yes?”
“The squad of detectives who protect Josephine?”
“Handpicked, I assure you.”
“They must all be married men.”
“Of course,” said Van Dorn. “That goes without saying.”
BACK IN BELL’S AUTO, roaring down Market Street, a beaming Van Dorn chuckled, “Married detectives?”