Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

Once inside the sealed smoking room, it was rather a bother to deal with that turnstile contraption you entered through, and of course you had to leave any burning cigar or cigarette behind upon returning for more libation.

Its air pressure regulated somewhat higher to keep out any stray wisps of hydrogen, the smoking room was a veritable chapel of combustion precaution: that single electric lighter on a cord, which smokers were clumsily sharing, the peachwood flooring in place of the more easily burning carpet found elsewhere on the ship, those automatically self-sealing ashtrays that swallowed tapped-in ashes. Charteris, resting his drinks on a table, could only grin as he matched a Gauloise, thinking of the director of the Reederei -within a few yards of this airtight chamber-puffing away at his pipe and inviting his cohorts to light up.

Douglas and his friends Morris and Dolan were seated in one corner, lost in conversation, wreathed in smoke. This was apparently a male preserve, though Charteris knew of no rule against women joining in the tobacco idolatry. The air was as filled with masculine braggadocio as it was with cigarette, cigar, and pipe fumes. English seemed to be the language of choice, as various world problems were tackled-sit-down strikes, Japan’s intrusion into Manchuria, Stalin exterminating “enemies of the working class,” the war in Ethiopia, the war in Spain.

What a relief it was to have these problems resolved.

These discussions were in part prompted by a news broadcast piped in, first in German, then in English. One of the more mundane reports had to do with the price of cotton rising both in Europe and the U.S.A., up from nine to twelve.

A tall-dark-and-handsome brute in his mid-thirties, impeccable in his gray three-piece Brooks Brothers, responded to this pedestrian report thusly: “Yippee!”

So it was that Leslie Charteris, boy detective, made his first deduction: the rangy, character who’d howled like a cowpoke was George W. Hirschfeld, cotton broker, son of a Texas mother.

As the news report concluded, Charteris ambled over to where the Hindenburg ’s answer to Gene Autry stood at the railing beyond which the floor-set windows revealed an atmosphere almost as gray and smoky as the one in here. The man Charteris took for Hirschfeld was holding a big glass of beer, a man’s man’s drink, in a well-manicured hand.

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” Charteris said in English, cigarette drooping from his lips, a Scotch in either hand, “that was an enthusiastic response to a pretty dull piece of news.”

“Depends on your point of view, son.” His mellow baritone bore a peculiar distinction: the man had, simultaneously, German and Texas accents. The author had never heard anything quite like it.

“Again, I don’t mean to stick my nose in,” Charteris said, “but exactly what point of view might that be?”

“Let’s just say a man has to have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.” He waved dismissively toward their fellow smokers with a hand bedecked by several gold-and-precious-jeweled rings. “For instance, these poor fools around us listen to war news, to politics… the Pope wants the Reich to leave the Church alone, the Reich is up in arms about being accused of that Guernica bombing…”

“Yes. Important enough topics.”

“Not in this man’s opinion. I’m more impressed with hearin’ that Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer, or that General Motors declared a dollar a share. The technicians in Hollywood are out on strike, did you know that?”

“I missed that one.”

He narrowed his eyes and shook a finger at Charteris. “Did you know there’s an effort afoot to close down the burlesque houses in New York?”

“Perish the thought.”

“Perish the goddamn thought is right.” The big man snorted, threw back some of the beer. “Now that’s important-like the Kentucky Derby’s important, or the affair between the King and Mrs. Simpson is important…. Let these other poor boobs eat up that slop about war and politics and religion. Give me show business and business business, every damn time.”

Charteris tasted his Scotch. “Are you an American?”

“Technically I’m a German. But I got a Texas momma, and I grew up in the U.S. of A., for the most part. Name’s George Hirschfeld, of Lentz amp; Hirschfeld, Bremen-hell, you can’t shake my hand with those drinks in it. You must be one two-fisted drinker!”

“Under these conditions I am.”

“Hey, a table’s opened up over there-care to join me?”

Hirschfeld settled into the booth side and Charteris took a chair with a small round table between them. They were seated near the railing and the windows. Charteris set down his drinks, and extended his hand.

The author was in the midst of a too-firm grip with the German Texan, and was starting to introduce himself, when Hirschfeld said, “I know who you are, Mr. Charteris.” He mispronounced it Char- teer -us. “You’re the mystery writer. Your detective’s the Saint, right?”

“It’s Chart -eris, actually. Are you a reader of mine?”

“No.” Hirschfeld was firing up a Pall Mall-Charteris’s favorite American brand, coincidentally. “No offense, but I gotta read too much, in my work-reports, newspapers, charts, and God knows what all. For relaxation, I’m more a movie man, myself.”

“Well, they’re probably going to make my stuff into films, pretty soon. RKO just picked up the rights.”

This seemed to impress the cotton broker. “Yeah? Who’s gonna play your detective?”

“I’m lobbying for Cary Grant. I presume I’ll get Grant Withers.”

Hirschfeld laughed at that, a deep, raspy sound. “Broadway and Hollywood-that’s what America’s really about.”

“You may have seen a picture or two I wrote.”

“Really? You wrote movies?”

“Until the producers and George Raft rewrote them. I ended up telling Hollywood where it could get off.”

“No kiddin’?”

“Yes, and Hollywood reciprocated by telling me what train I could get on.”

Hirschfeld chuckled, flicked ash into a hungry ashtray, and gulped some beer. “Yeah, but now they’ve come crawlin’ back to you. You got bestsellers to your credit, and so they wanna do business-that’s the biggest part of show business, after all, that second word.”

“Well,” Charteris said, exhaling smoke through a tight smile, “I wouldn’t say they’ve come crawling; but I am doing business with them, yes. How is it you know so much about me, if you don’t read me?”

The businessman sighed. “I asked around about you, got to admit. I was interested in who beat me to the punch.”

“Beat you to the punch?”

“There are two unattached females of the species on this big fat flying cigar, Mr. Char-teer-us… Charteris.”

“Leslie.”

“Leslie-and I’m George. Anyway, the only two girls aboard who aren’t married to some other passenger are that dried-up spinach leaf the college boys are fighting over, and that good-looking blonde you cornered the market on….” He lifted his beer glass, shook his head, smiling ruefully. “More power to you.”

“I must admit when I first saw Miss Friederich, I felt time was of the essence. You have an affinity for the well-turned ankle?”

“That’s one of the parts I’m fond of-wouldn’t say it was number one on my personal list. You see, my hobby is collecting showgirls, Mr. Charteris-Leslie. I make no apologies, and I get no complaints.”

“Now I understand your appreciation for Broadway.”

“You spend much time in America, Leslie?”

Funny thing was, “German” George Hirschfeld was the crystallization of Charteris’s cock-eyed, cliched onetime expectations about America. As a youth he’d sat in Singapore, learning of the U.S.A. from books and magazines, discovering a land largely peopled by Indians and characters in fringed buckskin jackets, a purple sage-covered landscape through which cowboys in chaps and sombreros galloped in endless chases, either part of, or one jump ahead of, a posse.