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

in San Francisco for the end of the race.”

“Where is Marion?”

“Gone ahead with her cameras,” Whiteway answered. He lowered his voice to a hoarse stage whisper that Josephine could have heard in the next county and pleaded, “See if you can talk sense into her—she’s throwing away the chance of a lifetime.”

Bell replied with a silent nod.

As Whiteway backed out of the room, he appeared to see Bell for the first time. “You look like you’ve been wrestling grizzly bears.”

“You should have seen the other guy.”

“Help yourself to the whiskey.”

“I intend to,” said Isaac Bell.

41

“WANT SOME?” Bell asked Josephine.

“No.”

Bell filled a short glass, tossed it back neat, filled it again, and sipped. “Josephine, what did you say when Marco asked you to come with him to North Africa?”

She looked up from the carpet, eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

“He made Harry Frost the same offer.”

“Harry? Why?”

“Marco wanted Frost to kill your new husband.”

Josephine’s eyes went dead. “Marco’s worse than Harry,” she whispered.

“I’d say they were neck and neck. What was your answer, Josephine?”

“I told him no.”

Bell watched her closely as he said, “I’ll bet Marco thinks you’ll change your mind when you’re a rich widow.”

“Never . . . Is Preston in danger?”

“Harry Frost is dead.”

“Thank God . . . Do you think Marco has the guts to kill Preston without Harry’s help?”

Instead of answering that question, Isaac Bell said, “I know why you’re quitting the race.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re quitting because Marco Celere, disguised as Dmitri Platov, sabotaged the best of the other machines.”

She looked away. “I wondered,” she whispered. “I didn’t just wonder, I suspected. But I didn’t stop him. Losing the race will be my punishment. I have been terrible.”

“Because you didn’t stop him or because you went along with Marco’s plan to frame Harry for murder?”

“Did Harry tell you that, too?”

Bell smiled. “No, I stumbled on that on my own.”

“Looking back, I know it was an evil plan. I knew it then but Harry deserved to be locked up again.”

“Why did you let Marco talk you into marrying Whiteway?”

“I was too tired to argue. I just wanted to win the race—”

“Perhaps you thought that if one marriage could be annulled, so could another?”

“Sure, if we had no honeymoon. And I swear, Isaac, I had no idea Marco planned to kill Preston. Poor Preston, he’s just so . . . Poor Preston, he is such a fool, Isaac, he really loves me.”

Bell gave her a gently teasing smile. “Maybe Preston thinks that when you fall in with the wrong men and don’t see what they’re doing, that you’re not so terrible—just single-mindedly myopic in your determination to fly? Maybe that’s why he can’t believe you won’t finish the race.”

“I do not deserve to win . . . Are you going to arrest Marco?”

“I can’t, yet. I don’t have enough proof to make a case in court. Besides, I want him free to work on your machine in case you change your mind.”

“I won’t. The winner should win fair and square.”

“You and Joe Mudd are neck and neck. It would be good for the winner, and good for aviation, if you raced right down to the wire. Whatever you’ve done wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve driven a flying machine across the continent. Why don’t you sleep on it? Meantime, I’ll let Marco work on the machine overnight.”

EPILOGUE

“oh! say! let us fly, dear”

MARCO CELERE SAW a way out of his predicament. Rather than wait helplessly for Josephine to change her mind, and fearing she would not, he placed a long-distance call from the hotel telephone. Preston Whiteway snatched up his telephone like a man who had been waiting all night for news from Fresno. “Will she fly?”

“This is Marco Celere, inventor of your aeroplane and chief mechanician.”

“Oh . . . Well? Will she fly?”

“I understand,” Celere answered suavely, “that Mr. Bell is discussing it with her over breakfast. There’s time still—there’s a low fog on the field the sun hasn’t burned off yet. But I have a suggestion. If Josephine cannot win the Whiteway Cup, surely her flying machine can.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If she doesn’t agree to finish the race, I will fly the last leg from Fresno and win the race for her.”

“Against the rules. One driver, one machine, all the way.”

“We are men of the world, Mr. Whiteway. They are your rules. The Whiteway Cup is your race. Surely you can change your own rules.”

“Mr. Celere you may know something about building flying machines, but you don’t know the first thing about newspaper readers. They’ll buy any lie you print—unless it’s a lie about something you’ve already convinced them to love. They love Josephine. They want her to win. They don’t give a hang about your flying machine.”

“But it would be so good for aviation—” Celere pleaded.

“And even better for you. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

The telephone banged dead in Celere’s ear.

Celere listened outside the hotel dining room. He heard Bell speaking urgently. Then he heard Josephine say loudly and clearly, “No.”

Celere hurried out on the field to his monoplane. The fog was still heavy, and he could barely see Joe Mudd’s and Isaac Bell’s machines. Josephine’s Van Dorn mechanicians were watching him suspiciously even though he had been guiding their efforts since Yuma, Arizona.

“We should start the motor,” he said.

“Why? She’s not going anywhere.”

“Mr. Bell is very persuasive. He still may convince Josephine to change her mind. Let us fill her tanks, spin her motor, and make it warm for her.” They exchanged glances. Celere said, “I don’t see Joe’s Mudd’s mechanicians hanging about this morning. They’ll be ready to go when the fog lifts. Shouldn’t we be? Just in case?”

That got them going. It was after all a race, and though they were better detectives than mechanicians, they had been competing daily for forty-eight days and four thousand miles.

“Start fueling. I will be right back.”

He went to the tiny stateroom they had