Bell said, “Faced with the choice between the asylum or the hangman, Frost has nothing to lose, which makes him even more lethal. Don’t think for a moment he’ll be content harming Josephine. Now that you’ve made her your champion in the race, he will attack your entire enterprise.”

“One man? What can one man do? Particularly a man on the run.”

“Frost organized gangs of outlaws in every city in the country to build his empire—thieves, arsonists, strikebreaker thugs, and murderers.”

“I have no objection to strikebreakers,” Whiteway said staunchly. “Someone’s got to keep labor in line.”

“You’ll object to them beating up your fliers’ mechanicians,” Isaac Bell shot back coldly. “The infields of racetracks and fairgrounds where your racers will land their machines at night are a favored habitat of gamblers. The gamblers will make book on your race. Gambling draws criminals. Frost knows where to find them, and they’ll be glad to see him.”

“Which is why,” said Van Dorn, “you must prepare to battle Frost at every stop on the route.”

“This sounds expensive,” Whiteway said. “Appallingly expensive.”

Bell and Van Dorn still had their hats on. Bell reached for the door.

“Wait—How many men will it take to cover the entire route?”

Isaac Bell said, “I traced it on my way west this past week. It’s fully four thousand miles.”

“How could you trace my route?” Whiteway demanded. “I haven’t published it yet.”

The detectives exchanged another invisible smile. No Van Dorn worth his salt arrived at a meeting ignorant of a potential client’s needs. That went double for the founder of the agency and his chief investigator.

Bell said, “There is a necessary logic to your route: Flying machines can’t cross high mountains like the Appalachians and the Rockies, the competitors’ support trains will have to follow the railroad lines, and your newspapers will want the greatest number of spectators to take notice. Consequently, I rode the Twentieth Century Limited from New York City to Chicago on the Water Level Route up the Hudson River and along the Erie Canal and Lake Erie. At Chicago I transferred to the Golden State Limited through Kansas City, south to Texas, and crossed the Rockies at the lowest point in the Continental Divide through the New Mexico and Arizona territories and across California to Los Angeles and up the Central Valley to San Francisco.”

Bell had traveled on the excess-fare express trains under the guise of an insurance executive. Local Van Dorns, alerted by telegraph, had reported at the station stops about the fairgrounds and racetracks where the fliers were likely to land each night. Their dossiers on gamblers, criminals, informants, and law officers had made compelling reading, and by the time his train eased alongside the ferry on Oakland Mole, Isaac Bell’s encyclopedic knowledge of American crime had been brought thoroughly up to date.

Weiner spoke suddenly from his chair in the corner.