Bell cut him off. “The people of Chicago may continue to put up with your bribery and corruption a bit longer, but they will draw the line at even a hint that Alderman William T. Foley would endanger the life of Miss Josephine Josephs, America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”

Foley wet his lips.

“Where,” Bell repeated, “is Harry Frost?”

“Left town.”

“Alderman Foley, do not try my patience.”

“No, I ain’t kidding. He left. I saw him leave.”

“On what train?”

“In an auto.”

“What kind?”

“Thomas Flyer.”

Bell exchanged a glance with James Dashwood. The Thomas was a rugged cross-country auto, which was why Bell had chosen them for his support train. Such a vehicle—capable of traversing bad roads and open prairie, and even straddling railroad tracks when washouts and broken ground made all else impassable—would make Frost dangerously mobile.

“Which way did he go?”

“West.”

“Saint Louis?”

Alderman Foley shrugged. “I got the impression more like Kansas City—where your air race is going, if I can believe what I read in the newspapers.”

“Is he alone?”

“He had a mechanician and a driver.”

Bell exchanged another look with Dash. There was five hundred miles of increasingly open country between Chicago and Kansas City, and Frost was prepared for the long haul.

“Both are gunmen,” Foley added.

“Names?”

“Mike Stotts and Dave Mayhew. Stotts’s the driver. Mayhew’s the mechanician. Used to be a telegrapher ’til they caught him selling horse-race results to the bookies. Telegraphers are sworn to secrecy, you know.”

“What I don’t know,” said Bell, frowning curiously at Foley, “is why you’ve turned unusually talkative all of a sudden, Alderman. Are you making this up as we go along?”

“Nope. I just know Harry ain’t coming back. I done him his last favor.”

“How do you know Frost isn’t coming back?”

“Never thought I’d see the day, but you damned Van Dorns ran him out of town.”

ISAAC BELL LED JAMES DASHWOOD into a chophouse to feed him supper while the kid reported what he had discovered in San Francisco.

“Last you wired me, Dash, you found that Celere and Di Vecchio were both in San Francisco last summer. Celere had arrived earlier, working as a translator, then built a biplane he subsequently sold to Harry Frost, who shipped it back to the Adirondacks and hired Celere to work on Josephine’s flying machines at their camp. Both Celere and Di Vecchio had fled Italy one step ahead of their creditors. Di Vecchio killed himself. What new do we know?”

“They got in a fight.”

Two immigrant Italian fishermen, Dashwood explained, had overheard a long and angry shouting match in the street outside their boardinghouse. Di Vecchio accused Marco Celere of stealing his wing-strengthening design.

“I already know that,” said Bell. “Celere would claim it was the other way around. What else?”