The Race - Страница 4

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Isaac Bell bounded from his auto to extend a powerful hand with a friendly smile.

“Oh, it’s you, Bell. That’s my space!”

“Hello, Preston, it’s been a while. When I told Marion we’d be calling on you, she asked me to send her regards.”

Whiteway’s scowl faded at the mention of Isaac Bell’s fiancée, Marion Morgan, a beautiful woman in the moving-picture line. Marion had worked with Whiteway, directing his Picture World scheme, which was enjoying great success exhibiting films of news events in vaudeville theaters and nickelodeons.

“Tell Marion that I’m counting on her to shoot great movies of my air race.”

“I’m sure she can’t wait. This is Joseph Van Dorn.”

The newspaper magnate and the founder of the nation’s premier detective agency sized each other up while shaking hands. Van Dorn pointed skyward. “We were just admiring your banner. Ought to be quite an affair.”

“That’s why I called for you. Come up to my office.”

A detail of uniformed doormen were saluting as if an admiral had arrived in a dreadnought. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two men ran to park the yellow Rolls-Royce.

Whiteway received more salutes in the lobby.

A gilded elevator cage carried them to the top floor, where a mob of editors and secretaries were gathered in the foyer with pencils and notepads at the ready. Whiteway barked orders, scattering some on urgent missions. Others raced after him, scribbling rapidly, as the publisher dictated the end of the afternoon edition’s editorial that he had started before lunch.

“‘The Inquirer decries the deplorable state of American aviation. Europeans have staked a claim in the sky while we molder on the earth, left behind in the dust of innovation. But the Inquirer never merely decries, the Inquirer acts! We invite every red-blooded American aviator and aviatrix to carry our banner skyward in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race to fly across America in fifty days!’ Print it!

“And now. .” He whipped a newspaper clipping from his coat and read aloud, “‘The brave pilot dipped his planes to salute the spectators before his horizontal rudder and spinning airscrew lofted the aeronaut’s heavier-than-air flying machine to the heavens.’ Who wrote this?”

“I did, sir.”

“You’re fired!”

Thugs from the circulation department escorted the unfortunate to the stairs. Whiteway crumpled the clipping in his plump fist and glowered at his terrified employees.

“The Inquirer speaks to the average man, not the technical man. Write these words down: In the pages of the Inquirer, ‘flying machines’ and ‘aeroplanes’ are ‘driven’ or ‘navigated’ or ‘flown’ by ‘drivers,’ ‘birdmen,’ ‘aviators,’ and ‘aviatrixes.’ Not ‘pilots,’ who dock the Lusitania, nor ‘aeronauts,’ who sound like Greeks. You and I may know that ‘planes’ are components of wings and that ‘horizontal rudders’ are elevators. The average man wants his wings to be wings, his rudders to turn, and his elevators to ascend. He wants his airscrews to be ‘propellers.’ He is well aware that if flying machines are not heavier than air, they are balloons. And soon he will want that back East and European affectation ‘aeroplane’ to be an ‘airplane.’ Get to work!”

Isaac Bell reckoned that Whiteway’s private office made Joseph Van Dorn’s mighty “throne room” in Washington, D.C., look modest.

The publisher sat behind his desk and announced, “Gentlemen, you are the first to know that I have decided to sponsor my own personal entry in the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and the fifty-thousand-dollar prize.”

He paused dramatically.

“Her name – yes, you heard me right, gentlemen-her name is Josephine Josephs.”

Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn exchanged a glance that Whiteway misinterpreted as astonished rather than confirmation of a foregone conclusion.

“I know what you’re thinking, gentlemen: I’m either a brave man backing a girl or I’m a fool. Neither! I say. There is no reason why a girl can’t win the cross-country aerial race. It takes more nerve than brawn to drive a flying machine, and this little girl has nerve enough for a regiment.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Are you referring to Josephine Josephs Frost?”

“We will not be using her husband’s name,” Whiteway replied curtly. “The reason for this will shock you to the core.”

“Josephine Josephs Frost?” asked Van Dorn. “The young bride whose husband took potshots at her flying machine last fall in upper New York State?”

“Where did you hear that?” Whiteway bristled. “I kept it out of the papers.”

“In our business,” Van Dorn replied mildly, “we tend to hear before you do.”

Bell asked, “Why did you keep it out of the papers?”

“Because my publicists are booming Josephine to build interest in the race. They are promoting her with a new song that I commissioned entitled ‘Come, Josephine in My Flying Machine.’ They’ll plaster her picture on sheet music, Edison cylinders, piano rolls, magazines, and posters to keep people excited about the outcome.”

“I’d have thought they’d be excited anyway.”

“If you don’t lead the public, they get bored,” Whiteway replied scornfully. “In fact, the best thing that could happen to keep people excited about the race will be if half the male contestants smash to the ground before Chicago.”

Bell and Van Dorn exchanged another look, and Van Dorn said, disapprovingly, “We presume that you utter that statement in confidence.”

“A natural winnowing of the field will turn it into a contest that pits only the best airmen against plucky tomboy Josephine,” Whiteway explained without apology. “Newspaper readers root for the underdog. Come with me! You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Trailed by an ever-expanding entourage of editors, writers, lawyers, and managers, Preston Whiteway led the detectives down two floors to the art department, a lofty room lit by north windows and crammed with artists hunched over drawing boards, illustrating the day’s events.

Bell counted twenty men crowding in after the publisher, some with pencils and pens in hand, all with panic in their eyes. The artists ducked their heads and drew faster. Whiteway snapped his fingers. Two ran to him, bearing mock-ups of sheet music covers.

“What have you got?”

They held up a sketch of a girl on a flying machine soaring over a field of cows. “‘The Flying Farm Girl.’”

“No!”

Abashed, they held up a second drawing. This depicted a girl in overalls with her hair stuffed under what looked to Bell like a taxi driver’s cap. “‘The Aerial Tomboy.’”

“No! God in Heaven, no. What do you men do down here for your salaries?”

“But Mr. Whiteway, you said readers like farm girls and tomboys.”

“I said, ‘She’s a girl!’ Newspaper readers like girls. Draw her prettier! Josephine is beautiful.”

Isaac Bell took pity on the artists, who looked ready to jump out the window, and interjected, “Why don’t you make her look like a fellow’s sweetheart?”

“I’ve got it!” yelled Whiteway. He spread his arms and stared bug-eyed at the ceiling, as if he could see through it all the way to the sun.

“‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air.’”

The artists’ eyes widened. They looked carefully at the writers and editors and managers, who looked carefully at Whiteway.

“What do you think of that?” Whiteway demanded.

Isaac Bell observed quietly to Van Dorn, “I’ve seen men more at ease in gun battles.”

Van Dorn said, “Rest assured the agency will bill Whiteway for your idea.”

A brave old senior editor not far from retirement spoke up at last: “Very good, sir. Very, very good.”

Whiteway beamed.

“ ‘America’s Sweetheart of the Air’!” cried the managing editor, and the others took up the chant.

“Draw that! Put her on a flying machine. Make her pretty – no, make her beautiful.”

Invisible smiles passed between the detectives. Sounded to Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn like Preston Whiteway had fallen for his personal entry.

Back in Whiteway’s private office, the publisher turned grave. “I imagine you can guess what I want from you.”

“We can,” Joseph Van Dorn answered. “But perhaps it would be better to hear it in your own words.”

“Before we start,” Bell interrupted, turning to the only member of the entourage who had followed them back into Whiteway’s office and taken a faraway chair in the corner, “may I ask who you are, sir?”

He was dressed in a brown suit and vest, celluloid stand-up collar, and bow tie. His hair was brilliantined to his skull like a shiny helmet. He blinked at Bell’s question. Whiteway answered for him.

“Weiner from Accounting. I had him deputized by the American Aeronautical Society, which will officially sanction the race, to preside as Chief Rule Keeper. You’ll be seeing a lot him. Weiner will keep a record of every contestant’s time and settle disputes. His word is final. Even I can’t overrule him.”

“And he enjoys your confidence in this meeting?”

“I pay his salary and own the property he rents to house his family.”

“Then we will speak openly,” said Van Dorn. “Welcome, Mr. Weiner. We are about to hear why Mr. Whiteway wants to engage my detective agency.”