The Race

Texas Walt grinned, a blaze of startling white teeth in a stern countenance as sun-browned as a saddle. “’Cause he had every reason to. Isaac, old son, wait ’til you clap eyes on who I brung with me.”

“There’s only two men I want to clap eyes on: Harry Frost. Or Marco Celere, back from the dead.”

“Damn! You are always one step ahead. How in heck did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I brung Marco Celere.”

“Alive?”

“Darned tootin’, alive. Got him from some Southern Pacific rail dicks I’m acquainted with. They caught a hobo hopping off a freight who swore up, down, and sideways that he’s part of the air race. Claimed to know Josephine personally and demanded to see the Van Dorn detectives guarding her. As that information is not printed in the newspapers, the boys believed him enough to wire me.”

“Where is he?”

“Got him right in the cookhouse. The man’s starving.”

Isaac Bell charged into the galley car and saw a ragged stranger, forking eggs and bacon off a plate with one hand and stuffing bread in his mouth with the other. He had greasy black hair, parted by a red scar that traveled from his brow across the crown of his skull, another red scar on his forearm, and intensely bright eyes.

“Are you Marco Celere?”

“That is my name, sir,” he replied, speaking with an Italian accent somewhat heavier than Danielle Di Vecchio’s though not as difficult to understand as Josephine had led Bell to believe. “Where is Josephine?”

“Where have you been?”

Celere smiled. “I wish I could answer that.”

“You’re going to have to answer that before I let you within a mile of Josephine. Who are you?”

“I am Marco Celere. I came awake two weeks ago in Canada. I had no idea who I was or how I got there. Then, gradually, my memory returned. In tiny bits. A trickle to start, then a flood. I remember my aeroplanes first. Then I saw a newspaper account about the Whiteway Cup Air Race. In it, I read, I have not only one but two machines, my heavy biplane and my swift monoplano, and suddenly it all came back.”

“Where in Canada?”

“A farm. To the south of Montreal.”

“Any idea how you got there?”

“I do not honestly know. The people who saved me found me by the train tracks. They assumed that I rode on a freight train.”

“What people?”

“A kindly farm family. They nursed me through winter into spring before I began to remember.”

Challenging the man who Danielle had called a thief and a confidence man, who had changed his name from Prestogiacomo to Celere while fleeing his past, and who James Dashwood suspected might have murdered Danielle’s father in San Francisco and disguised the crime as a suicide, Bell kept peppering him with questions.

“Any idea how you happened to get amnesia?”

“I know precisely how.” Celere ran his fingers along the scar on his scalp. “I was hunting with Harry Frost. He shot me.”

“What brings you to the Arizona Territory?”

“I have come to help Josephine win the race in my flying machine. May I see her, please?”

Bell asked, “When did you last read a newspaper?”

“I saw a scrap of one last week in the Kansas City yards.”

“Are you aware that your heavy biplane smashed?”

“No! Can it be fixed?”

“It ran into a mountain.”

“That is most disturbing. What of the driver?”

“What you would expect.”

Celere put down his fork. “That is terrible. I am so sorry. I hope it was not the fault of the machine.”

“The machine was as worn out as the rest of them. It’s a long race.”

“But a magnificent challenge,” said Celere.

“I should also warn you,” said Bell, watching his eyes closely, “that Josephine has remarried.”

Celere surprised him. He would have thought Celere would be troubled to learn that his girlfriend had married. Instead, he said, “Wonderful! I am so happy for her! But what of her marriage to Frost?”

“Annulled.”

“Good. That is only right. He was a terrible husband to her. To whom has she been married?”

“Preston Whiteway.”

Celere clapped his hands in delight. “Ah! Perfect!”

“Why is that perfect?”

“She is a racer. He is a race promoter. A marriage made in Heaven. I can’t wait to congratulate him and wish her happiness.”

Bell glanced at Texas Walt, who was listening at the door, then asked the Italian inventor, “Would you care to get cleaned up first? I’ll find you a razor and some fresh clothes. There’s a washroom in the back of the hangar car.”

“Grazie! Thank you. I really must look a sight.”

Bell exchanged glances with Texas Walt again and answered with a smile that didn’t light his eyes. “You look pretty much like a fellow who crossed the continent in a freight car.”

Bell and Hatfield led him to the washroom and gave him a towel and razor.

“Thank you, thank you. Could I ask one more favor?”

“What would you like?”

“Would there be some brilliantine?” He ran his fingers through his dirty hair. “That I might smooth my hair?”

“I’ll rustle some up,” said Texas Walt.

“Thank you, sir. And some mustache wax? It will be wonderful to be myself again.”

“LIKE A FELLOW WHO CROSSED the continent in a freight car?” Texas Walt echoed Isaac Bell’s assessment with a dubious grin.

Bell grinned back. “What do you think?”

“Looked more to me like the man rode the cushions,” said Hatfield, using the hobo expression for buying a ticket for a parlor car. “Doubt he hit the rails ’til the last hundred miles.”

“Exactly,” said Bell, who had ridden many a freight train while investigating in disguise. “He’s not dirty enough.”

“Ah suppose some lonely ranch wife might have sluiced him off in her horse trough.”

“Might have.”

Texas Walt rolled a cigarette, exhaled blue smoke, and remarked, “Can’t help wonderin’ what Miss Josephine is gonna think. Suppose she’d have agreed to marry Whiteway if she had known Celere was alive?”

“I guess that depends on what they meant to each other,” answered Bell.

“What do we do with him, boss?”

“Let’s see what he’s up to,” answered Bell, wondering whether in Marco Celere’s miraculous return lay the explanation for Harry Frost’s angry You don’t know what they were up to.

MARCO CELERE EMERGED from Bell’s hangar car bathed, shaved, and brilliantined. His black hair gleamed, his cheeks were smooth, his mustache curled at the tips. Bell’s own mustache twitched in the thinnest of smiles when Texas Walt glanced his way. The sharp-eyed Texan had noticed, as had he, that Celere’s clean-shaven cheeks were slightly paler in color than his nose and chin. The difference was almost imperceptible, but they were