The Race

the dead man wasn’t Italian but American? And pretended he wasn’t poor but earning three thousand dollars a year, and had a house and maids and a cook? What questions would I ask when that fellow got gassed in a hotel room?”

Bell concealed a proud smile, and asked sternly, “What do you conclude?”

“Gas is a heck of a way to get away with killing someone.”

“Did you turn up any clues that would support such speculation?”

“Di Vecchio had a big bump on his head, the night clerk told me, like he fell out of bed when he passed out. Could have woke up groggy, tried to get up, and fell. Or he could have been conked on the head by the same fellow who turned on the gas. Trouble is, we’ll never know.”

“Probably not,” Bell agreed.

“Could I ask you something, Mr. Bell?”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you ask me to investigate his suicide?”

“I’m driving the last flying machine Di Vecchio built. It does not operate like a machine made by a man who would kill himself. It is unusually sturdy, and it flies like a machine made by a man who loved making machines and was looking forward to making many more. But that is merely an odd feeling, not evidence.”

“But if you add your odd feeling to the odd bump on Di Vecchio’s head, together they’re sort of like a coincidence, aren’t they?”

“In an odd way,” Bell smiled.

“But like you say, Mr. Bell, we’ll never know. Di Vecchio’s dead, and so’s the fellow who might have conked him.”

“Maybe. .” said Isaac Bell, thinking hard. “Dash? This engine in the Paris air meet that Di Vecchio said Celere bought with a woman’s money. You said some sort of engine. What did you mean by ‘some sort of engine’?”

Dashwood grinned. “That confused the heck out of the poor nuns. Threw them for a loop.”

“Why?”

“The fishermen called it polpo. Polpo means ‘octopus.’”

“What kind of engine is like an octopus?” asked Bell. “Eight-cylinder Antoinette, maybe.”

“Well, they also call the octopus a devilfish. Only that doesn’t make sense when it comes to engines.”

Bell asked, “What happened when the nuns got confused?”

“The fishermen tried another word. Calamaro.”

“What is that? Squid?”

“That’s what Maria said it meant. Maria was the pretty nun.”

“An engine like a squid or an octopus? They’re quite different, actually: squid long and narrow with tentacles in back, octopus round and squat with eight arms. Dash, I want you to go to the library. Find out what Mr. Squid and Mr. Octopus have in common.”

EUSTACE WEED, Andy Moser’s Chicago-born helper who Isaac Bell had hired so Andy could spend time investigating the mechanical causes of the racers’ smashes, asked for the evening off to say good-bye to his girl, who lived on the South Side.

“Just get back before sunrise,” Andy told him. “If the weather holds, they’ll be starting out for Peoria.”

Eustace promised he’d be back in plenty of time – a promise he knew he would keep if only because Daisy’s mother would be sitting on the other side of the parlor door. His worst fears proved true. At nine p.m., Mrs. Ramsey called from the other room, “Daisy? Say good night to Mr. Weed. It’s time for bed.”

Eustace and the beautiful red-haired Daisy locked eyes, each certain it would be a better time for bed if Mother weren’t there. But Mother was, so Eustace called, politely, “Good night, Mrs. Ramsey,” and received a firm “Good night” through the closed door. In an unexpected flash of insight, Eustace realized that Mrs. Ramsey was not as coldheartedly unromantic as he had assumed. He took Daisy in his arms for a proper good-bye kiss.

“How long before you’re back?’ she whispered when they came up for air.

“We’ll be racing three more weeks, if all goes well, maybe four. I hope I’ll be home in a month.”

“That’s so long,” Daisy groaned. Then out of nowhere she asked, “Is Josephine pretty?”

In his second wise flash of insight that evening, Eustace answered, “I didn’t notice.”

Daisy kissed him hard on the mouth and pressed her body against his until her mother called through the door, “Good night!”

Eustace Weed stumbled down the stairs, his head reeling and his heart full.

Two toughs were blocking the sidewalk, West Side boys.

It looked to Eustace like he had a fight on his hands, and one he wasn’t likely to win. Running for it seemed the better idea. He was tall and thin and could probably leave them in the dust. But before he could move, they spread out and, to his astonishment and sudden fear, flashed open flick-knives.

“The boss wants to see you,” one said. “You gonna come quiet?”

Eustace looked at the knives and nodded his head. “What’s this about?”

“You’ll find out.”

They fell in on either side and walked him a couple of blocks to a street of saloons, where they entered a dimly lighted establishment and led him through the smoky barroom to a back-room office. The saloonkeeper, a barrel-bellied man in a bowler hat, vest, and necktie, sat behind a desk. On it, heated by a candle, bubbled a little cast-iron pot of boiling paraffin. It gave off a smell similar to the burnt castor scent of Gnome engine exhaust. Beside the pot was a short length of copper pipe, a water pitcher with a narrow spout, a leather sack a little longer than the pipe, and a vicious-looking blackjack with a flexible handle and a thick head.

“Shut the door.”

The toughs did and stood by it. The saloonkeeper beckoned Eustace to approach his desk. “Your name is Eustace Weed. Your girl is Daisy Ramsey. She’s a looker. Do you want to keep her that way?”

“What do you-”

The saloonkeeper picked up the blackjack and dangled the heavy end so that it swung side to side like a pendulum. “Or do you want to come home from the air race to find her face beaten to a pulp?”

In his first flush of panic, Eustace figured it was mistaken identity. They were thinking he owed gambling debts, which of course he didn’t because he never gambled except when shooting pool, and he was too good at it to call it gambling. Then he realized it wasn’t mistaken identity. They knew he was working on the air race. Which meant they also knew that he was working on the flying machine owned by the chief investigator of the Van Dorn Detective Agency. And they knew about Daisy.

Eustace started to ask, “Why-” He was thinking this had to do with Harry Frost, the madman trying to kill Josephine.

Before he could finish his question, the saloonkeeper interrupted in a silky voice. He had eyes that reflected the light as if they were as hard and polished as ball bearings. “Why are we threatening you? Because you’re going to do something for us. If you do it, you will come home to Chicago and find your girl Daisy just like you left her. You got my promise, the word goes out tonight: anybody so much as whistles at her, he’s dragged in here to answer to me. If you don’t do what we ask, well. . I’ll let you guess. Actually, you don’t have to guess. I’ve already told you. Understand?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me that you understand before we go on to what we want.”

Eustace saw no way out of this mess other than to say, “I understand.”

“Do you understand that if you go to the cops, you’ll never know which cops are our cops.”

Eustace had grown up in Chicago. He knew about cops and gangsters, and he’d heard the old stories about Harry Frost. He nodded that he understood. The saloonkeeper raised an inquiring eyebrow and waited until Eustace repeated out loud, “I understand.”

“Good. Then you and Daisy will live happily ever after.”

“When will you tell me what you want?”

“Right now. Do you see this here pot?”

“Yes.”