The Race Clive Cussler (new books to read txt) đ
- Author: Clive Cussler
Book online «The Race Clive Cussler (new books to read txt) đ». Author Clive Cussler
âNot âpalsâ youâd call friends. But guys he helped so theyâd help him back. How do you think I got here after Joliet? Harry looked out for people who could help when he needed it. Always. From the first newsie I beatâfrom the first time I worked in his sales departmentâHarry Frost was always there for me.â
âIf he knows youâll help him, he must have told you where he was headed. Where is he?â
âDaddy donât know, mister,â chorused Sammyâs sons.
âMr. Frost was scared theyâd throw him back in the bughouse.â
âHe wouldnât tell nobody.â
Isaac Bell saw that this was going nowhere. âHow did Frost make his getaway?â
âHopped a freight.â
The railroad tracks through the village of North River ran north and south. North to Canada. South to Saratoga and Albany, and from there Boston, Chicago, or New York Any direction he chose. âNorthbound freight?â Bell asked. âOr southbound?â
âNorth.â
South, thought Bell. And with Whitewayâs publicists âboomingâ Josephineâs participation in the race, locating the aviatrix would be as simple as buying a newspaper.
âI have one more question,â said Isaac Bell. âIf you lie again, Iâll put all three of you back in prison. Where is Marco Celere?â
Sammy Spillane and his sons exchanged baffled glances.
âThe Italian? What do you mean, where?â
âWhere is he?â
âDead.â
âAre you sure?â
âWhat the hell do you think Harryâs running from?â
BELL GOT BUSY ON THE QUESTIONS he had to answer to capture Harry Frost before he hurt Josephine. Waiting for the train to Albany, he wired Grady Forrer, Van Dornâs research man in New York, for a report on what Harry Frost had been up to since he retired at the young age of thirty-five and asked him to scour the newspapers for a wedding announcement that might shed light on how Frost had met and married Josephine.
As his train was approaching, he fired off a telegram to Archie Abbott at Belmont Park, where the competitors were gathering in the mile-and-a-half racetrackâs infield, instructing him to ask Josephine when and how she first met Marco Celere.
Archieâs reply was waiting at the Albany station.
Josephine met Celere last year in San Francisco, when she and her husband went to California for an aviation meet. Marco Celere had recently immigrated there from Italy.
Who, exactly, was the flying-machine inventor?
Bell wired James Dashwood, a hardworking young Van Dorn detective in the San Francisco office, to investigate Marco Celereâs activities there.
Were the aviatrix and her instructor lovers? Or was Frost jealous for no reason? It was a difficult question. Constable Hodge had reported that Frost and his wife did not socialize in North River. No one in the town knew them as a couple. And Marco Celere was an outsider who lived at the Frostsâ secluded camp while working on his aeroplane. Bell would have to pose the delicate question to Josephine himself.
The Interboro Rapid Transit subway whisked Bell from Grand Central Terminal to the basement entrance of the Hotel Knickerbocker, where the Van Dorn Detective Agency maintained New York offices. He found Grady Forrer in the subterranean bar off the downstairs lobby. Research had failed to find any newspaper announcement about Frostâs wedding, but Forrer had managed to turn up some gossip. Josephine was an Adirondack dairy farmerâs daughterâa local North River girl who had grown up a few short miles from Frostâs lavish campâinformation that the closemouthed Constable Hodge had not volunteered.
Bell went upstairs to the office and telephoned him long-distance.
âJoe Josephsâs girl,â John Hodge answered. âHeck of a tomboy, but pretty as a pictureâand about as independent as Iâve ever seen. A good kid, though. Sweet-natured.â
âDo you know how she and Frost met?â
âNot the sort of thing Iâd busy my head about.â
As for Harry Frostâs activities since he retired, Research reported that he traveled around the world on big-game hunts. In which case, why had Frost missed such an easy shot at Celere? The hunter fired five shots. The last three at Josephineâs flying machine, two of which hit, she had reported to Constable Hodge. If the scope was improperly sighted, and he missed the first shot, an experienced rifleman would have noticed and compensated, even if he had to rely on the rifleâs iron sight. It seems highly unlikely he missed twice, Bell reasoned. The bullet in the tree could have been the first shot, the one that Josephine had seen wing Celere but not kill him. So the second killed him. Frost missed the third when he shot at her aeroplaneâunderstandable, as big-game hunters had little experience shooting at flying machines. But he had corrected again, and the fourth and fifth nearly killed her.
TWO DAYS LATER, the Chicago laboratory reported that, under a microscope, the bullet Bell had test-fired had revealed rifling marks that might resemble those on the bullet in the tree, but the bullet in the tree was too battered for the laboratory to be positive. The Van Dorn gunsmith did agree with Bellâs speculation that the bullet in the tree could have passed through the body of the man it killed. Or only creased him, he suggested. Or missed him completely. Which was a reason, other than the river, to explain the lack of a corpse.
5
âGOOD THING THE HORSES ARENâT RUNNING,â Harry Frost muttered aloud. âTheyâd choke on the smoke.â
Frost had never seen so many trains crowding the Belmont Park Terminal.
Back in the old days, when he was one of the regular sporting men arriving at the brand-new track in their private cars, it would get pretty crowded on race day, with thirty ten-car electrics delivering spectators from the city. But nothing like this. It looked to him like every birdman in the country was steaming in, with support trains of hangar cars and Pullmans and diners and dormitories for their mechaniciansâevery car painted with the heroâs name like a rolling billboard. Locomotives belched about the rail yard, switch engines shuttled express and freight cars onto extra sidings. When the electric train he had ridden out from Long Island City let him
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