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.