The Race Clive Cussler (new books to read txt) 📖

and stronger aeroplanes: the Wright Flyer III, the June Bug, the bamboo-framed Silver Dart, the enormous French Voisins and Antoinettes powered by V-8 racing-boat engines, Santos Dumont’s petite Demoiselle, the cross–English Channel Blériot, the rugged Curtiss Pusher, the Wright Signal Corps machine, the Farman III, and the Celere wire-braced monoplane.

If anyone could actually navigate a flying machine all the way across the United States of America—a very big if—the Whiteway Cup would be won in equal parts by the nerve and skill of the airmen and by how ingeniously the inventors increased the power of their engines and improved systems of shaping their wings to make the airships turn more agilely and climb faster. The winner would have to average eighty miles a day, nearly two hours in the air, every day. Each day lost to wind, storm, fog, accidents, and repairs would increase dramatically those hours aloft.

“Whiteway’s newspapers claim that the cup is made of solid gold,” Van Dorn laughed. “Say,” he joked, “maybe that’s what he wants to see us about—afraid some crook will steal it.”

“Last year his papers claimed that Japan would sink the Great White Fleet,” Bell said drily. “Somehow they made it home safe to Hampton Roads. There’s Whiteway now!”

The fair-haired publisher was steering a yellow Rolls-Royce roadster toward the only parking space left in front of his building.

“Looks like Whiteway has it,” said Van Dorn.

Bell pressed hard on his accelerator. The big red Locomobile surged ahead of the yellow Rolls-Royce. Bell stomped the anemic brakes, shifted down, and swerved on smoking tires into the parking space.

“Hey!” Whiteway shook a fist. “That’s my space.” He was a big man, a former college football star running to fat. An arrogant cock to his head boasted that he was still handsome, deserved whatever he wanted, and was strong enough to insist on it.

Isaac Bell bounded from his auto to extend a powerful hand with a friendly smile.

“Oh, it’s you, Bell. That’s my space!”

“Hello, Preston, it’s been a while. When I told Marion we’d be calling on you, she asked me to send her regards.”

Whiteway’s scowl faded at the mention of Isaac Bell’s fiancée, Marion Morgan, a beautiful woman in the moving-picture line. Marion had worked with Whiteway, directing his Picture World scheme, which was enjoying great success exhibiting films of news events in vaudeville theaters and nickelodeons.

“Tell Marion that I’m counting on her to shoot great movies of my air race.”

“I’m sure she can’t wait. This is Joseph Van Dorn.”

The newspaper magnate and the founder of the nation’s premier detective agency sized each other up while shaking hands. Van Dorn pointed skyward. “We were just admiring your banner. Ought to be quite an affair.”

“That’s why I called for you. Come up to my office.”

A detail of uniformed doormen were saluting as if an admiral had arrived in a dreadnought. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two men ran to park the yellow Rolls-Royce.

Whiteway received more salutes in the lobby.

A gilded elevator cage carried them to the top floor, where a mob of editors and secretaries were gathered in the foyer with pencils and notepads at the ready. Whiteway barked orders, scattering some on urgent missions. Others raced after him, scribbling rapidly, as the publisher dictated the end of the afternoon edition’s editorial that he had started before lunch.

“‘The Inquirer decries the deplorable state of American aviation. Europeans have staked a claim in the sky while we molder on the earth, left behind in the dust of innovation. But the Inquirer never merely decries, the Inquirer acts! We invite every red-blooded American aviator and aviatrix to carry our banner skyward in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race to fly across America in fifty days!’ Print it!

“And now . . .” He whipped a newspaper clipping from his coat and read aloud, “‘The brave pilot dipped his planes to salute the spectators before his horizontal rudder and spinning airscrew lofted the aeronaut’s heavier-than-air flying machine to the heavens.’ Who wrote this?”

“I did, sir.”

“You’re fired!”

Thugs from the circulation department escorted the unfortunate to the stairs. Whiteway crumpled the clipping in his plump fist and glowered at his terrified employees.

“The Inquirer speaks to the average man, not the technical man. Write these words down: In the pages of the Inquirer, ‘flying machines’ and ‘aeroplanes’ are ‘driven’ or ‘navigated’ or ‘flown’ by ‘drivers,’ ‘birdmen,’ ‘aviators,’ and ‘aviatrixes.’ Not ‘pilots,’ who dock the Lusitania, nor ‘aeronauts,’ who sound like Greeks. You and I may know that ‘planes’ are components of wings and that ‘horizontal rudders’ are elevators. The average man wants his wings to be wings, his rudders to turn, and his elevators to ascend. He wants his airscrews to be ‘propellers.’ He is well aware that if flying machines are not heavier than air, they are balloons. And soon he will want that back East and European affectation ‘aeroplane’ to be an ‘airplane.’ Get to work!”

Isaac Bell reckoned that Whiteway’s private office made Joseph Van Dorn’s mighty “throne room” in Washington, D.C., look modest.

The publisher sat behind his desk and announced, “Gentlemen, you are the first to know that I have decided to sponsor my own personal entry in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and the fifty-thousand-dollar prize.”

He paused dramatically.

“Her name—yes, you heard me right, gentlemen—her name is Josephine Josephs.”

Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn exchanged a glance that Whiteway misinterpreted as astonished rather than confirmation of a foregone conclusion.

“I know what you’re thinking, gentlemen: I’m either a brave man backing a girl or I’m a fool. Neither! I say. There is no reason why a girl can’t win the cross-country aerial race. It takes more nerve than brawn to drive a flying machine, and this little girl has nerve enough for a regiment.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Are you referring to Josephine Josephs Frost ?”

“We will not be using her husband’s name,” Whiteway replied curtly. “The reason for this will shock you to the core.”

“Josephine Josephs Frost?” asked Van Dorn. “The young bride whose husband took potshots at