“I found a job in a bicycle factory in Schenectady. The owner was building flying machines on the weekend, and I helped him with the motors. I knew all about them from fixing my dad’s farm machinery. One Monday, instead of going to work, I snuck out to the field and flew the machine.”
“Without lessons?”
“Who was there to teach me? There weren’t any schools back then. Most of us learned on our own.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“And you just climbed on the machine and flew it?”
“Why not? I could see how it worked. I mean, all it is, really, is the aeroplane goes up by pushing the air down.”
“So with no formal training,” Bell smiled, “you proved both Bernoulli’s theorem and the existence of the Venturi effect.”
“What?”
“I only mean that you taught yourself how to shape the wings to create the vacuum over the wing which makes it rise.”
“No,” she laughed. “No, Mr. Bell. Venturi and all that is too complicated. My friend Marco Celere was always rattling on about Bernoulli. But the fact of the matter is, the flying machine goes up by pushing the air down. Warping the wings is just a way to deflect the air away from where you want to go—up, down, around. Air is wonderful, Mr. Bell. Air is strong, much stronger than you think. A good flying machine like this one—” She laid an affectionate hand on its fabric flank. “Marco’s best—makes the air hold you up.”
Bell absorbed this with a certain amount of amazement. He liked young people and routinely took apprentice detectives under his wing, but he could not recall speaking with any twenty-year-old who sounded more clear and more certain than did this dairy farmer’s daughter from the wilds of the North Country.
“I’ve never heard it put so simply.”
But she had shed no light so far on her husband’s habits. When he queried her further, he developed the impression that she had known little about Harry Frost before she married him, and all she had learned since was to fear him. He noticed that her eyes kept darting to the other airships rolling about the infield and climbing into the sky. Whatever confusion or youthful ignorance had led Josephine into marriage with a man like Harry Frost, the vulnerable, naive girl on the ground became a confident woman in the air.
“Having taught yourself, did you then learn a lot more from your friend Marco?”
Josephine sighed. “I could not understand his Italian, and he spoke very little English and was always working on the machines.” She brightened. “But he did teach me one thing. It took me quite a while to understand what he was trying to say in English. But I finally pried it out of him. He said, ‘A good flying machine has to fly—it wants to fly.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Is it true?” asked Isaac Bell.
“Absolutely.” She laid a firm hand on the machine again. “So if you will excuse me, Mr. Bell, if you have no more questions, I hope that this one wants to fly. But it is going to take a while to find out for sure.”
“Do you miss Marco Celere?”
Her eyes did not fill, as Archie had reported, but Josephine did admit that she missed the inventor very much. “He was kind and gentle. Not at all like my husband. I miss him very much.”
“Then it must be a comfort to be flying his latest machine.”
“Thanks to Mr. Whiteway’s kindness and generosity. He bought it from Marco’s creditors, you know.” She glanced sidelong at Bell. “It puts me deep in his debt.”
“I imagine you’ll more than pay it back by making a strong pull for the Whiteway Cup.”
“I have to make more than a strong pull. I have to win the Whiteway Cup. I have no money of my own. I was completely dependent on Harry, and now I’m dependent on Mr. Whiteway.”
“I’m sure he will be grateful if you win the race.”
“Not if, Mr. Bell.” Her gaze fixed on the sky where a parchment-colored Blériot was rising, and when she looked back at Bell her eyes had turned opaque. “I will win, Mr. Bell. But not to make him grateful. I will win because I will do my best, and because Marco built the best flying machine in the race.”
Later, when Isaac spoke with Archie, he told his friend, “If I were a betting man, I’d lay money on her.”
“You are a betting man!” Archie reminded him.
“So I am.”
“Belmont Park is swarming with unemployed gamblers who would be delighted to relieve you of your money. The New York reformers just passed a law banning horse-race betting. The Atlantic–Pacific race is the bookies’ godsend.”
“What odds are they offering on Josephine?”
“Twenty-to-one.”
“Twenty? You’re joking. There’s a fortune to be won.”
“The bookies reckon she’s up against the top birdmen in America. And they’re betting we’ll get our pants beat off by the Europeans, who hold all the records in cross-country flying.”
Isaac Bell went looking for a bookmaker who could handle a thousand-dollar bet on Josephine. Only one accepted bets that large, he was told, and was directed to Johnny Musto, a short, wide middle-aged fellow in a checkerboard suit who reeked of an expensive cologne Bell had last smelled in the Plaza Hotel barbershop. The old betting ring under the stands had been replaced, since the Legislature banned horse gambling, with an exhibit hall, showing motors and accessories for aircraft, race cars, and motorboats. Musto was lurking just outside it in the forest of steel pillars that supported the grandstand. He had as thick a Brooklyn accent as Bell had ever heard outside a vaudeville theater.
“Youse sure youse wanna do dis?” asked the bookie, who knew a private detective when he saw one.
“I am absolutely positive,” said Isaac Bell. “In fact, now that you ask, let’s make it two thousand.”
“It’s your funeral, mister. But would it be O.K. if I ask youse a little somethin’ first?”
“What?”
“Is
