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“Never thought I’d see the day, but you damned Van Dorns ran him out of town.”
ISAAC BELL LED JAMES DASHWOOD into a chophouse to feed him supper while the kid reported what he had discovered in San Francisco.
“Last you wired me, Dash, you found that Celere and Di Vecchio were both in San Francisco last summer. Celere had arrived earlier, working as a translator, then built a biplane he subsequently sold to Harry Frost, who shipped it back to the Adirondacks and hired Celere to work on Josephine’s flying machines at their camp. Both Celere and Di Vecchio had fled Italy one step ahead of their creditors. Di Vecchio killed himself. What new do we know?”
“They got in a fight.”
Two immigrant Italian fishermen, Dashwood explained, had overheard a long and angry shouting match in the street outside their boardinghouse. Di Vecchio accused Marco Celere of stealing his wing-strengthening design.
“I already know that,” said Bell. “Celere would claim it was the other way
around. What else?”
“Di Vecchio started it, shouting that Celere copied his entire machine. Celere shouted back that if that was true, why had the Italian Army bought his machines and not Di Vecchio’s?”
“What did Di Vecchio answer?”
“He said that Celere had poisoned the market.”
Bell nodded impatiently. This, too, he had already heard from Danielle. “Then what?”
“Then he started yelling that Celere better keep his hands off his daughter. Her name is-”
“Danielle!” said Bell. “What did keeping his hands off his daughter have to do with the Italian Army buying his aeroplane design?”
“Di Vecchio shouted, ‘Find another woman to do your dirty work.’”
“What dirty work?”
“He used a word that my translators found very hard to repeat.”
“A technical word. Alettone?”
“Not technical. The girl knew what it meant, but she was afraid to say it in front of Mother Superior.”
“Mother Superior?” Bell echoed, fixing his protégé with a wintery eye. “Dash, what have you been up to?”
“They were nuns.”
“Nuns?”
“You always told me people want to talk. But you have to make them comfortable. The girl was the only Italian translator I could get the fishermen to talk to. Once they started telling the story, they wouldn’t shut up. I think because the nun was so beautiful.”
Isaac Bell reached across the tablecloth to slap Dashwood on the shoulder. “Well done!”
“But finding her was what took me so long. Anyway, she was translating great guns until that word stopped her dead. I pleaded with them. I even offered to pray with them, and she finally whispered, ‘Gigolo.’”
“Di Vecchio accused Marco Celere of being a gigolo?”
Bell was hardly surprised, recalling that soon after Josephine and Harry Frost appeared in San Francisco the young bride had persuaded her husband to buy Celere’s biplane. “Did he mention any specifics?”
“Di Vecchio said that Celere persuaded an Italian Army general’s daughter to get him to buy his machine. From what they heard, the fisherman thought it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten women to make deals for him.”
“Did he accuse Celere of taking money from women?”
“There was some sort of engine he bought at a Paris air meet. It sounded like a woman put up the money. But in San Francisco, he was broke again. I think the Army deal fell through.”
“The machine smashed with the general on it.”
