Isaac Bell reminded her that she was not the only competitor running into difficulty. Three aeroplanes were already out of the race. A big Voisin tangled terminally with a pasture fence, a fast Ambroise Goupy biplane broke apart when a down current dropped it into a stand of trees short of the field where it was attempting to alight, and the formidable Renee Chevalier splashed into the Erie Canal, reducing his Blériot to matchwood, and nearly drowned in the shallow water, unable to stand or swim having broken both legs.

Josephine, whom Bell had noticed had become rather standoffish ever since they left Belmont, surprised him with one of her exuberant grins that made her look much more herself. “Thanks for the thought, Isaac. I guess I should be grateful I haven’t broken any bones yet.”

Bell hired a third mechanician—a skillful Chicago boy named Eustace Weed, who had lost his job on the ruined Voisin—to keep his Eagle running. That gave Andy spare time to investigate the mechanical cause of each of the smashes, with an eye to pinning down evidence of sabotage. The meticulous policeman’s son gathered evidence carefully, and reported that since Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s smash into New York Harbor most accidents had a legitimate mechanical explanation for what went wrong. The possible exception was Chevalier’s, but key parts of his machine were on the bottom of the Erie Canal.

Bell followed up by questioning the mechanicians. Who was near the machine? Who was in your hangar car? Any strangers? None they remembered. Sometimes the mechanicians found evidence to show the Van Dorns—a broken strut, a crushed fuel line, a kinked stay wire—sometimes there was none.

Preston Whiteway kept railing at Bell that there was “a murderer among us.” Bell kept his counsel, knowing that Whiteway could be him—not a murderer in the strictest sense but a cold-blooded saboteur with little regard for the fate of the drivers when they smashed.

As the racers struggled west, smashes grew increasingly common. Machines faltered, winds sprang up with no warning, and birdmen made mistakes. Others suffered breakdowns that added hours to their time. Joe Mudd’s sturdy red Liberator was leaking so much oil that the entire front of the machine turned black. Then it nearly killed him when the oil caught fire over Buffalo. Mudd was luckier than Chet Bass. Bass’s Army Signal Corps Wright Flyer skidded sideways on landing at Erie, Pennsylvania, throwing him thirty feet across the grass.