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and he believed it would make him rich. The Pinkertons had accused Billy of underbidding, but he simply dismissed their complaints with a coy rejoinder: He promised to be too busy guarding banks to go after their racetrack business.
    Billy booked his own train ticket. He needed to be in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, October 1, 1910, and he wanted to be certain there were no mistakes. He was to be the keynote speaker at the Bankers Association’s annual convention luncheon.
    Before leaving, he put his son Raymond in charge of the investigation of the explosion at the Peoria train yard. He was confident that a destroyed girder was not a major act of sabotage, certainly not the sort of case that needed his personal attention.

SIX
    ______________________

    C LARENCE DARROW DETESTED automobiles. He had returned to Chicago to begin what he hoped would be a new, lucrative phase in his legal career and was both surprised and annoyed by what he encountered. A parade of Model T’s was motoring down Michigan Avenue. At the sight of all the noisy machines, all the backfiring traffic, the attorney’s populist instincts failed him, and a curmudgeon’s anger flared.
    “No one can even guess at the cost of this new invention to the country or the change that it brings to life,” he complained with the mixture of outrage and cynicism that was typical of how he increasingly looked at the world around him. “New roads have been built at great expense so men may ride quickly to some point so they can ride back more quickly if possible. Finance companies have helped the poor to get further into debt; an automobile complex demanding haste, change, and going and coming, has taken possession of mankind. With all the rest, it has furnished an extra harvest of unfortunates for our prisons.”

    But Darrow’s was a singular crotchety voice. And as he conceded, it was too late to be a corrective. America’s fascination with the automobile had taken firm hold. The Vanderbilt Cup auto race, in fact, had quickly become the country’s largest spectator event.
    Willie K. Vanderbilt, heir to his family’s industrial fortune, had established the race in 1904 to encourage the country’s emerging automobile industry. It was his hope that America would produce cars capable of competing with the sleek, fast European vehicles. In 1909 an American, Henry Grant, driving a big-wheeled Alco, won for the first time. The following year a half-million people would crowd the forty-eight-mile Long Island Motor Parkway to see if Grant would win the silver Tiffany trophy for a second time. Hoping to get a spot near the starting line, spectators on Saturday, October 1, 1910, began arriving in the chilly predawn mist, hours before the cars were in position.

    The Edison Studios had filmed the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup race. Cameras had been set up along the route to maximize the opportunities for good shots, but the film was surprisingly dull. It did not capture the speed, the danger, or the excitement of the contest. It also didn’t help that much of the footage was out of focus.
    Willie Vanderbilt was very disappointed, but he still believed that a well-made film could help create even greater enthusiasm for his competition. He met with Henry Marvin, the former college teacher who was president of the Biograph Studio, and tried to persuade him to produce a movie about the 1910 race.
    Marvin was intrigued with the idea, and he knew D.W. had a fondness for cars. The studio had bought a convertible for the director to drive to location shoots in upstate New York, and the filmmaker was so delighted that he had his initials painted in a discreet yet proprietary script on its door. Marvin did not wait long to tell D.W. about his conversation with the young heir.
    D.W. mulled it over. A car race in a film was one thing. A film consisting of only a car race was decidedly another. D.W. wanted his movies to tell stories. The narrative could be suspenseful, heartwrenching,