Free Trophy for Eagles by Walter J. Boyne Page B

brought him into the library. Bandfield was amazed to see the walls lined with a complete series of Jane's All the World's Aircraft, as well as hundreds of books on flying. Winter wouldn't let him browse, however, and instead pumped him for all the aeronautical engineering knowledge he could. He was particularly in terested in the streamlined cowling and wheel covers on the Rocket.
    Winter wasn't an engineer, but the conversation confirmed his first impression that Bandfield knew what he was talking about. The two of them hit it off, and within two hours were planning to form a company to build the Roget Rocket in volume as soon as he got back from Paris. Lindbergh had said earlier that Winter was a good amateur pilot who had made enough money in the stock market to risk it in aviation.
    The fact that Winter was buying the first Lockheed Vega showed his good judgment. It was being finished for him on the Coast. In the meantime, he wanted to buy a Loening amphibian to round out his private fleet of aircraft, and he asked Bandfield to help him learn to fly it.
    "I'll put you on the payroll today, a hundred dollars a week, plus twenty dollars an hour for every hour we fly together."
    Bandfield could only nod in agreement; most doctors didn't make a hundred a week. He was afraid that if he spoke he would break the magic spell.
    Two days before, Bandfield wouldn't have accepted a free cigar, but that was before he realized that Millie was the most important thing in his life. He realized that he was going to need clothes and money to be with her, and Winter was the only source for either. Despite Winter's wealth—or, Bandfield grudgingly conceded, per haps because of it—he was extremely easy to talk to, and very anxious to learn.
    The plaid shirt and black pants were long gone. Jack had set up an appointment with Grover Loening to talk about buying an airplane, and without any embarrassment at all told Bandy, "You're going to need some new clothes."
    They were almost the same size, and Bandy had been taken by Winter's valet to a dressing room the size of his house back in Salinas. George, the genial English valet, kept calling Bandfield "sir" as he laid out suits, shoes, sweaters, and all the accessories from the inexhaustible closets.
    George was carefully folding the clothes into a trunk when Win ter interrupted them. He led Bandfield out the French doors of the house and down a flagstone walk bordered by beds of roses picked out in early-blooming alyssum and pansies, until they reached the garage, a converted carriage house that sparkled like a hospital. They walked past the convertible Rolls, a Duesenberg, a Cadillac phaeton that Bandy would have killed for, and a series of stiffly formal older foreign cars. Winter was impressed that Bandy could identify the Minerva, and promised to let him drive the Isotta-Fraschini and the Hispano-Suiza.
    Bandy's voice was tinged with lust. "Do you drive all these?"
    "Once in a while. Mostly I use the new Buick to go back and forth to town. It's a darb, got a radio, you can listen to music all the way into town, can you beat that? I'm having them put in all the cars. Bruno Hafner is letting his man Murray do the work."
    He stopped and rubbed his hands together. "This is what I wanted to show you. It's my favorite. Grab that side of the cover, and lift it off carefully, so we don't scratch the finish."
    They uncovered a glittering 1926 Stutz Vertical Eight, a five- passenger speedster that gave Bandfield an auto-erection. The bright yellow body had horizontal stripes along the cowl that made it look as if it were going ninety sitting still.
    "It's my favorite, but I can't drive it anymore—I kept speeding in it, and a motorcycle cop used to lay for me. You and Millie can use it while you're here. Go out on some country road and drive it fast enough to blow the carbon out of it."
    The next afternoon Bandfield didn't blow much carbon out, for the twisting Long Island back roads didn't lend