The support trains were parked cheek by jowl on parallel sidings reserved for the race. Bell’s was nearest the main line but for one other, a four-car special, varnished green and trimmed with gold, owned by a timber magnate who had invested in the Vanderbilt syndicate and had announced that he saw no reason not to ride along with the rolling party just because his entry smashed into a signal tower. After all, Billy Thomas was recuperating nicely, and was a true sportsman who would insist the show go on without him.

Whiteway’s yellow six-car Josephine Special was on the other side of the Eagle Special, and Bell had had his engineer stop his train so that the two flying-machine support cars stood next to each other. Both had their auto ramps down for their roadsters, which were off foraging for parts in Peoria hardware stores or scouting the route ahead. Laughter and the ring of crystal could be heard from a dinner party that Preston Whiteway was hosting.

Dashwood found Bell poring over large-scale topographic maps of the terrain across Illinois and Missouri to Kansas City, which he had rolled down from his hangar-car ceiling.

“What have you got, Dash?”

“I found a marine zoology book called Report on the Cephalopods. Squid and octopuses are cephalopods.”

“So I recall,” said Bell. “What do they have in common?”

“Propulsion.”

Bell whirled from the map. “Of course. They both move by spurting water in the opposite direction.”

“Squid more than octopus, who tend more toward walking and oozing.”

“They jet along.”

“But what sort of motor would my fishermen be comparing them to?”

“Platov’s thermo engine. He used the word ‘jet.’” Bell thought on that. “So your fishermen overheard Di Vecchio accuse Celere of a being a gigolo because he took money from a woman to buy some sort of engine at a Paris air meet. A jet motor. Sounds like Platov’s thermo engine.”

A heavy hand knocked on the side of the hangar car, and a man stood perspiring copiously at the top of the ramp. “Chief Investigator Bell? I’m Asbury, Central Illinois contract man.”

“Yes, of course. Come on in, Asbury.” The contractor was a retired peace officer who covered the Peoria region on a part-time basis, usually for bank robbery cases. Bell offered his hand, introduced “Detective Dashwood from San Francisco,” then asked Asbury, “What have you got?”

“Well . . .” Asbury mopped his dripping face with a red handkerchief as he composed his answer. “The race has brought a slew of strangers into town. But I’ve seen none the size of Harry Frost.”

“Did any pique your interest?” Bell asked patiently. As he moved west with the race, he expected to encounter private detectives and law officers so laconic that they would judge the closemouthed Constable Hodge of North River to be recklessly loquacious.

“There’s a big-shot gambler from New York. Has a couple of toughs with him. Made me out to be the Law right off.”

“Broad-in-the-beam middle-aged fellow in a checkerboard suit? Smells like a barbershop?”

“I’ll say. Flies were swarming his perfume like bats at sunset.”

“Johnny Musto, out of Brooklyn.”

“What’s he doing all the way to Peoria?”

“I doubt he came for the waters. Thank you, Asbury. If you go to the galley car on Mr. Whiteway’s train, tell them I said to rustle up some supper for you . . . Dash, go size up Musto. Any luck, he won’t make you for a Van Dorn. You not being from New York,” Bell added, although in fact Dashwood’s best disguise was his altar boy innocence. “Give me your revolver. He’ll spot the bulge in your coat.”

Bell shoved the long-barreled Colt in his desk drawer. His hand flickered to his hat and descended holding his two-shot derringer. “Stick this in your pocket.”

“That’s O.K., Mr. Bell,” Dashwood grinned. He flexed his wrist in a jerky motion that caused a shiny new derringer to spit from his sleeve into his fingers.

Isaac Bell was impressed. “Pretty slick, Dash. Nice little gun, too.”

“Birthday present.”

“From your mother, I presume?”

“No, I met a girl who plays cards. Picked up the habit from her father. He plays cards, too.”

Bell nodded, glad the altar boy was stepping out. “Meet me back here when you’re done with Musto,” he said, and went looking for Dmitri Platov.

He found the Russian strolling down the ramp from Joe Mudd’s hangar car, wiping grease from his fingers with a gasoline-soaked rag.

“Good evening, Mr. Platov.”

“Good evening, Mr. Bell. Is hot in Peoria.”

“May I ask, sir, did you sell a thermo engine in Paris?”

Platov smiled. “May I asking why you asking?”

“I understand that an Italian flying-machine inventor named Prestogiacomo may have bought some sort of a ‘jet’ engine at the Paris air meet.”

“Not from me.”

“He might have been using a different name. He might have called himself Celere.”

“Again, not buying from me.”

“Did you ever meet Prestogiacomo?”

“No. In fact, I am never hearing of Prestogiacomo.”

“He must have made something of a splash. He sold a monoplane to the Italian Army.”

“I am not knowing Italians. Except one.”

“Marco Celere?”

“I am not knowing Celere.”

“But you know who I mean?”

“Of course, the Italian making Josephine’s machine and the big one I am working for Steve Stevens.”

Bell shifted gears deliberately. “What do you think of the Stevens machine?”

“It would not be fair for me discussing it.”

“Why not?”

“As you working for Josephine.”

“I protect Josephine. I don’t work for her. I only ask if you can tell me anything that might help me protect her.”

“I am not seeing what Stevens’s machine is doing with that.”

Bell changed tactics again, asking, “Did you ever encounter a Russian in Paris named Sikorsky?”

A huge smile separated Platov’s mutton-chop whiskers. “Countryman genius.”

“I understand vibration is a serious problem with more than one motor. Might Sikorsky want your thermo engine for his machines?”

“Maybe one day. Are excusing me, please? Duty calling.”

“Of course. Sorry to take so much of your time . . . Oh, Mr. Platov? May I ask one other question?”

“Yes?”

“Who was the one Italian you did know in Paris?”

“The professor. Di Vecchio. Great man. Not practical man, but great ideas. Couldn’t make real, but great ideas.”

“My Di Vecchio monoplane is a highflier,” said Bell, wondering why Danielle said she didn’t know of Platov. “I would call it an idea made real.”

Platov shrugged enigmatically.

“Did you know Di Vecchio well?”

“Not at all. Only listening to lecture.” Suddenly he looked around, as if confirming they were alone, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial mutter. “About Stevens’s two-motor biplane? You are correct. Two-motor vibrations very rattling. Shaking to pieces. Excusing now, please.”

Isaac Bell watched the Russian parade across the infield, bowing to the ladies and kissing their hands. Platov, the tall detective thought, you are smoother than your thermo engine.

And he found it impossible to believe that the ladies’ man never introduced himself to Professor Di Vecchio’s beautiful daughter.

“No law against that,” Bell observed. “Bookies live on information. Like detectives.”

“Yes, Mr. Bell. But I followed him back to the rail yard and saw him slipping the same reporters rolls of cash.”

“What do you make of it?”

“If he’s bribing them, what I can’t figure out is what they would do for him in return for the money.”

“I doubt he wants his name in the papers,” said Bell.

“Then what does he want?”

“Show me where he is.”

Dash pointed the way, saying, “There’s a boxcar over by the river where the fellows are shooting dice. Musto’s taking bets.”

“Stick close enough to hear, but don’t let him see you with me.”

Bell smelled the Brooklyn gambler before he heard him when a powerful scent of gardenia penetrated the thicker odors of railroad ties and locomotive smoke. Then he heard his hoarsely whispered “Bets, gentlemen. Place your bets.”

Bell rounded the solitary boxcar in a dark corner of the yard.

A marble-eyed thug nudged Musto.

“Why, if it ain’t one of my best customers. Never too late to increase your investment, sir. How much shall we add to yer three thousand on Miss Josephine? Gotta warn youse, though, de odds is shifting. The goil commands fifteen-to-one, since some bettors are notin’ that she’s pullin’ up on Stevens.”

Bell’s smile was more affable than his voice. “I’m a bettor who’s wondering if gamblers are conspiring to throw the race.”

“Me?”

“We’re a long way from Brooklyn, Johnny. What are you doing here?”

Musto objected mightily. “I don’t have to throw no race. Win, lose, draw, all de same to me. Youse a bettin’ man, Mr. Bell. And a man of the woild, if I don’t mistake youse. Youse know the bookie never loses.”

“Not so,” said Bell. “Sometimes bookies do lose.”

Musto exchanged astonished glances with his bodyguards. “Yeah? When?”

“When they get greedy.”

“What do youse mean by dat? Who’s greedy?”

“You’re bribing newspaper reporters.”

“Dat’s ridiculous. What could dos poor hack writers do for me?”

“Tout one flying machine over another to millions of readers placing bets,” said Isaac Bell. “In other words, skew the odds.”

“Oh yeah? And what machine would I happen to be toutin’?”

“Same one you’ve been touting all along: Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s headless pusher.”

“The Coitus is a flying machine of real class,” Musto protested. “It don’t need no help from Johnny Musto.”

“But it’s getting a lot of help from Johnny Musto regardless.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m fixin’ the race. I’m passin’ out information. A public service, youse might call it.”

“I would call that a confession.”

“You can’t prove nothin’.”

Isaac Bell’s smile had vanished. He fixed the gambler with a cold eye. “I believe you know Harry Warren?”

“Harry Warren?” Johnny Musto stroked his double chin. “Harry Warren? Harry Warren? Lemme think. Oh yeah! Ain’t he de New York Van Dorn who spies on the gangs?”

“Harry Warren is going to wire me in two days that you reported to him at Van Dorn headquarters at the Knickerbocker Hotel at Forty-second Street and Broadway in New York City. If he doesn’t, I’m coming after you—personally—with all four feet.”

Musto’s bodyguards glowered.

Bell ignored them. “Johnny, I want you to pass the word: betting fair and square on the race is fine with me, throwing it is not.”

“Not my fault what other gamblers do.”

“Pass the word.”

“What good’ll that do youse?”

“They can’t say they weren’t warned. Have a pleasant journey home.”

Musto looked sad. “How’m I goin’ ta get back ta New York in two days?”

Isaac tugged his heavy gold watch chain from his vest pocket, opened the lid, and showed Musto the time. “Run quick and you can catch the milk train to Chicago.”

“Johnny Musto don’t ride no milk train.”

“When you get to Chicago, treat yourself to the Twentieth Century Limited.”

“What about da race?”

“Two days. New York.”

The gambler and his bodyguards hurried off, muttering indignantly.

James Dashwood climbed down from his listening post on the roof of the boxcar.

Bell winked. “There’s one out of the way. But he’s not the only high-rolling tinhorn following the race, so I want you to keep an eye on the others. You’re authorized to place just enough bets to make your presence welcome.”

“Do you think Musto will show up again?” Dash asked.

“He’s not stupid. Unfortunately, the damage is done.”

“How do you mean, Mr. Bell?”

“The reporters he bribed have already wired their stories. If, as I suspect, there’s a saboteur trying to derail the front-runners, then bookie Musto has put Eddison-Sydney-Martin in his crosshairs.”