“Very fast. Father believed that only speed would overcome winds. The more speedy the aeroplano, the safer in bad weather, Father said.”

“Faster than sixty miles per hour?”

“Father hoped for seventy.”

“Miss Di Vecchio, I have a proposition for you.”

Chapter 13

13

“MR. MOSER, YOUR SITUATION is about to improve vastly,” Isaac Bell said to the sad-faced mechanician who was grilling a frankfurter on a fire he had built a safe distance from the crated American Eagle monoplane.

“How do you know my name?”

“Read this!”

Bell thrust a fine parchment-paper envelope he had lifted from Dr. Ryder’s writing desk into Moser’s grease-stained hand.

“Open it.”

Andy Moser slid a finger under the seal, unfolded a sheet of writing paper covered in an elegant Florentine cursive script, and read slowly, moving his lips.

Isaac Bell had seized an opportunity to help the beautiful Italian woman while helping himself solve the vexing problem he had warned Archie about. The field of competitors vying for the Whiteway Cup was growing so large that too many support trains would be jockeying for the same railroad tracks. Keeping up with Josephine’s flying machine to guard her life would be a nightmare even with the help of the auto patrols that Archie had envisioned.

But what, Bell had asked himself, if he took “the high ground”? With his own airship, he could ride herd on the race. He could watch Josephine in the air while he stationed men ahead at the racetracks and fairgrounds that would provide infields to alight on.

Danielle Di Vecchio needed money to plead her case to get out of Ryder’s asylum.

Isaac Bell needed a speedy airship. He bought hers.

“Danielle says I’m supposed to go with you, Mr. Bell.”

“And bring my flying machine,” said Bell, grinning at the wagon. Disassembled and folded up for travel, it looked like a dragonfly in a cage.

“And teach you how to drive it?”

“As soon as I set you up in a first-class hangar car.”

“But I don’t know how to fly it. I’m only a mechanician.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just get her running, and show me the controls. How long will it take to put it back together?”

“A day, with a good helper. Have you ever driven a flying machine?”

“I drive a one-hundred-mile-an-hour Locomobile. I have driven a V-Twin Indian racer motorcycle, a 4-6-2 Pacific locomotive, and a fifty-knot steel-hulled turbine yacht built by Sir Charles Algernon Parsons himself. I imagine I’ll pick it up.”

“Locomotives and steel yachts don’t leave the ground, Mr. Bell.”

“That’s why I’m so fired up! Finish your lunch and wave good-bye to Danielle. She’s watching from the fourteenth window from the left, second from the bottom. She can’t wave through the bars, but she can see you.”