As for Harry Frost’s activities since he retired, Research reported that he traveled around the world on big-game hunts. In which case, why had Frost missed such an easy shot at Celere? The hunter fired five shots. The last three at Josephine’s flying machine, two of which hit, she had reported to Constable Hodge. If the scope was improperly sighted, and he missed the first shot, an experienced rifleman would have noticed and compensated, even if he had to rely on the rifle’s iron sight. It seems highly unlikely he missed twice, Bell reasoned. The bullet in the tree could have been the first shot, the one that Josephine had seen wing Celere but not kill him. So the second killed him. Frost missed the third when he shot at her aeroplane—understandable, as big-game hunters had little experience shooting at flying machines. But he had corrected again, and the fourth and fifth nearly killed her.

TWO DAYS LATER, the Chicago laboratory reported that, under a microscope, the bullet Bell had test-fired had revealed rifling marks that might resemble those on the bullet in the tree, but the bullet in the tree was too battered for the laboratory to be positive. The Van Dorn gunsmith did agree with Bell’s speculation that the bullet in the tree could have passed through the body of the man it killed. Or only creased him, he suggested. Or missed him completely. Which was a reason, other than the river, to explain the lack of a corpse.

Chapter 5

5

“GOOD THING THE HORSES AREN’T RUNNING,” Harry Frost muttered aloud. “They’d choke on the smoke.”

Frost had never seen so many trains crowding the Belmont Park Terminal.

Back in the old days, when he was one of the regular sporting men arriving at the brand-new track in their private cars, it would get pretty crowded on race day, with thirty ten-car electrics delivering spectators from the city. But nothing like this. It looked to him like every birdman in the country was steaming in, with support trains of hangar cars and Pullmans and diners and dormitories for their mechanicians—every car painted with the hero’s name like a rolling billboard. Locomotives belched about the rail yard, switch engines shuttled express and freight cars onto extra sidings. When the electric train he had ridden out from Long Island City let him off, it was on the last open platform.

He spotted Josephine’s train first off.

All six cars, even her hangar car, were painted yellow—the color that that San Francisco snake Whiteway painted everything he owned. All six cars shouted “Josephine” from their sides in a bold red headline font, outlined and drop-shadowed like the cover of the sheet music for that damned song.