Josephine with her back to him. In front of her, the red-haired Archie Abbott was shielding her with his own body. In front of Archie, six Van Dorn detectives fought shoulder to shoulder to block a flying wedge of thugs charging with fists, clubs, and lengths of sharpened bicycle chain.
Behind the attackers stood a dark green Doubleday, Page delivery van with its back doors open wide. Harry Frost leaped through the doors with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.
A Van Dorn drew his gun. A bicycle chain snaked it out of his bloodied hand. A club to his skull sent him pinwheeling. A second detective was knocked to the trampled grass. The remaining four fought to hold the line, but they were overwhelmed by the flying wedge and flung aside, opening a clear path to Archie and Josephine. Harry Frost charged up it with the speed and power of a maddened rhino.
Isaac Bell triggered his Browning. It was a highly accurate weapon, but he was running at full speed so he aimed for the larger target of Frost’s body instead of his head. Bell’s bullet went home. He saw it pluck Frost’s coat, but it did not slow the big man’s charge. Nor did it prevent Frost from leveling his gun at Archie.
Bell was almost to them, close enough to recognize Frost’s gun as a Webley-Fosbery. Knowing Frost’s predilection for brutality, Bell feared that the weapon was loaded with the.455 “Manstopper” hollow-points.
Archie stood his ground and aimed his pistol at Frost. It was a small-scale 6.35mm Mauser pocket pistol, an experimental model that the factory owners had presented to him when his honeymoon took him through Germany. Bell had argued that it was too light to count on. But Archie had smiled, “It’s a keepsake of our honeymoon, and it doesn’t wrinkle my suit.”
Coolly, he let Frost close the range before he squeezed off three bullets.
Bell saw the bullets pierce Frost’s lapels. But Frost kept coming. Speed, weight, and momentum were stronger forces than three 6.35mm slugs. Archie’s well-aimed bullets would ultimately kill Harry Frost, but not before the charging man wreaked bloody destruction. Bell aimed for Frost’s head. Archie blocked his line of fire.
Cool as ice, the redheaded detective tipped up the barrel to place the coup de grace between Frost’s eyes. Before he could fire, another of the attackers’ sharpened chains whistled through the air like a bullwhip and slashed the Mauser out of his hand.
Isaac Bell jinked to the left and fired over Archie’s shoulder. He was sure he had hit Frost again. But the angry red-faced giant triggered his own weapon point-blank at Archie Abbott. The Webley boomed like a cannon.
Archie staggered as the hollow-point bored a tunnel through his chest. His legs crumpled under him. Frost jammed his revolver in his pocket and switched the knife to his right hand, burning eyes locking on Josephine as he brushed past Archie.
Archie hurled a mighty left hook as he fell.
Bell knew that with his body shattered, the punch was born of all that Archie had left – his courage and his skill. It caught Frost square on the side of his jaw with such force that bone cracked. Frost’s eyes widened with shock. His fist convulsed open. The knife dropped.
Bell was almost on him. He couldn’t shoot. Josephine was in his way.
Frost whirled and ran.
Bell started to chase after him. But as he leaped across his fallen friend’s body he saw bright red blood frothing from Archie’s coat. Without hesitating, he dropped to the ground beside him.
“Doctors!” he shouted. “Get doctors!”
Bell opened Archie’s coat and shirt and pulled a razor-sharp throwing knife from his own boot to cut away Archie’s undershirt. Air was bubbling from the wound. Bell looked around. People were gaping. But one set of eyes was cool and ready to help.
“Josephine!”
He handed her the knife.
“Quick. Cut me a patch of wing fabric. Like this.”
He indicated the size with his hands.
“Doctors!” Bell shouted to those watching. “Get moving, you men! Find doctors!”
Josephine was back in seconds with a neatly cut square of yellow fabric.
Isaac Bell pressed it over the wound and held three sides of the square down tight to Archie’s skin. As Archie’s chest rose and fell, Bell let air escape from the wound but allowed no more air to be sucked in.
“Josephine!”
“I’m here.”
“I need cloth to tie this down.”
Without hesitation, she removed her heavy flying tunic and then her blouse, which she sliced into long strips.
“Help me slip it under him.”
Bell rolled Archie onto the side of the wound while Josephine worked the cloth under him. Bell tied the ends.
“Grab those shrouds to keep him warm.
A doctor ran up at last. He banged his bag down, knelt beside Archie, and felt for a pulse. “Good job,” he said of the patch. “Are you a physician?”
“I’ve seen it done,” Bell answered tersely. On his own chest, he could have added, when he was twenty- two years old, by Joseph Van Dorn, calmly trying to save his apprentice’s life while tears were soaking his whiskers.
“What put the hole in him?” asked the doctor.
“Hollow-point.455.”
The doctor looked at Bell. “Is he a friend?”
“He is my best friend.”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. There’s a reason they call it a manstopper.”
“We need an ambulance.”
“One’s coming right now. The English birdman didn’t need it.”
WITHIN MINUTES ARCHIE was loaded into the ambulance and on his way to the hospital with two doctors riding with him. By then the Van Dorns had regrouped, and formed a powerful cordon around Josephine.
Harry Frost had escaped in the confusion.
Bell quickly organized a manhunt, which included alerting every hospital in the area.
“He’s carrying at least three slugs in him,” he said, “maybe four. And Archie broke his jaw.”
“We caught two of their crew, Isaac. Brooklyn toughs. I recognize one. He works for Rod Sweets, the opium king. What do we do with them?”
“See what you can get out of them before you hand them to the cops.” Bell had no doubt that Archie had romanced the local police when he first arrived at the racetrack. It was standard practice to cozy up and find who should be paid off to be friends in an emergency.
“They’re singing already. Frost paid them a hundred bucks a head. Gave them the dough up front so they could bank it with their girlfriends in case they got caught.”
“O.K. I doubt they’ll know anything useful about Frost. But see what you can learn. Then turn them in. Tell the cops Van Dorn will press charges. Give them a reason to hold them.”
Bell spoke briefly with Josephine to make sure she felt safe and to assure her that he had ordered up additional guards until they caught Frost. “Are you all right?”
“I’m going up,” she said.
“Now?”
“Flying clears my mind.”
“Don’t you have to replace the fabric you cut out of your airship?”
“I didn’t cut it from an essential surface.”
BELL HURRIED TO WHERE Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s biplane had struck the ground. It was a very odd coincidence that the Englishman’s accident had distracted everyone in Belmont Park, including his detectives, at the
