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“You were spending his money tonight in the most expensive sporting house in Chicago. Money he paid you this afternoon to cash a five-thousand-dollar check at the First Trust and Savings Bank. Where is he?”
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Too bad for you.”
“What are you going to do, turn me in to the sheriff? Who happens to be my wife’s uncle.”
“You’re running for reelection on the reform ticket. Our client publishes a newspaper in this town that you would not want as your enemy.”
“I’m not afraid of Whiteway’s papers,” Foley sneered. “Nobody in Chicago gives a hang for that California pup who-”
Bell cut him off. “The people of Chicago may continue to put up with your bribery and corruption a bit longer, but they will draw the line at even a hint that Alderman William T. Foley would endanger the life of Miss Josephine Josephs, America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”
Foley wet his lips.
“Where,” Bell repeated, “is Harry Frost?”
“Left town.”
“Alderman Foley, do not try my patience.”
“No, I ain’t kidding. He left. I saw him leave.”
“On what train?”
“In an auto.”
“What kind?”
“Thomas Flyer.”
Bell exchanged a glance with James Dashwood. The Thomas was a rugged cross-country auto, which was why Bell had chosen them for his support train. Such a vehicle – capable of traversing bad roads and open prairie, and even straddling railroad tracks when washouts and broken ground made all else impassable – would make Frost dangerously mobile.
“Which way did he go?”
“West.”
“Saint Louis?”
Alderman Foley shrugged. “I got the impression more like Kansas City – where your air race is going, if I can believe what I read in the newspapers.”
“Is he alone?”
“He had a mechanician and a driver.”
Bell exchanged another look with Dash. There was five hundred miles of increasingly open country between Chicago and Kansas City, and Frost was prepared for the long haul.
“Both are gunmen,” Foley added.
“Names?”
“Mike Stotts and Dave Mayhew. Stotts’s the driver. Mayhew’s the mechanician. Used to be a telegrapher ’til they caught him selling horse-race results to the bookies. Telegraphers are sworn to secrecy, you know.”
“What I don’t know,” said Bell, frowning curiously at Foley, “is why you’ve turned unusually talkative all of a sudden, Alderman. Are you making this up as we go along?”
“Nope. I just know Harry ain’t coming back. I done him his last favor.”
“How do you know Frost isn’t coming back?”
