“The workingman’s flying machine offers a rare opportunity to win big—three-to-one. Three hundred dollars for a hundred ventured on Joe Mudd. But if you’re looking for a sure thing, bet one hundred dollars on Sir Eddison–So-and-So–Thingamajig and win fifty bucks to take your goil to Atlantic City . . . Hold on! What’s that?” A man dressed in mechanician’s vest and flat cap was whispering in his ear. “Gents! The odds on Sir Eddison–So-and-So–Thingamajig are changing. One hundred will win you forty.”

“Why?” howled a bettor, disappointed to see his potential winnings diminish.

“His chances of beating everybody just got better. His mechanicians chopped the canard off the front of his machine. They found out they don’t need a front elevator, already got one in the back. Sir-Eddison–So-and-So–Thingamajig’s Curtiss Pusher is racing headless. Nobody can beat him now.”

THAT SAME NIGHT, the saboteur who had set the thermo engine on its murderously destructive final flight, killing Judd and laying waste to several aeroplanes, stood nervously rubbing his arm as he watched Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s mechanicians make final adjustments on the Englishman’s newly headless Curtiss. Removing the front elevator had made the pusher look very trim.

The saboteur had studied it earlier while they were flying it in the last of the evening light, and he had agreed with all in the infield who knew their business that the Curtiss was flying considerably better than before, and somewhat faster. The bookmakers, who were already enamored of the Curtiss Motor Company’s new ninety-horsepower, six-cylinder engine—a reliable “power unit,” by all accounts—led the stampede to declare that the headless Curtiss Pusher was the aeroplane to beat, particularly in the hands of a champion cross-country aviator like the English baronet.

At last the mechanicians covered the machine in canvas shrouds, turned off the generator powering their work lights, and trooped home to their bunks in the train yard. Keeping a sharp eye peeled for roving Van Dorn detectives, the saboteur took a carpenter’s brace and bit from his tool bag and went to work.

“YOUR CERTIFYING EXAMINATION was scheduled to start five minutes ago, Mr. Bell.”

The representative of the Aero Club, waiting beside Bell’s machine, gestured impatiently with his clipboard.

Bell vaulted into the American Eagle’s driving seat, tossed his hat to a wing runner, and pulled on his goggles and helmet. “All set!”

He had just finished hammering out last-minute tactics with Harry Warren. Andy and the boys had the monoplane waiting on a grass strip, with the motor warmed and chocks holding the wheels.