Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

“I could not have anticipated this,” Erdmann said, eyes glazed. “There were no crew members on Knoecher’s subject list at all.”

“Mr. Charteris,” Captain Pruss said, exasperation coloring his voice, “we have sixty-one crewmen on this ship. How do you suggest, in the short time left on this voyage, we narrow that number to one?”

Charteris sipped his coffee. “Oh, I already have a suspect for you-that is, if you’re interested, gentlemen.”

“Don’t be coy,” Erdmann growled.

“You have a rigger named Eric Spehl.”

Everyone frowned, but particularly Captain Pruss, who said, “Why, yes-how is it that you know one of our crewmen, Mr. Charteris?”

“He went out of his way to come meet me on A deck-broke a regulation doing so, for all I know.”

Lehmann looked up from his coffee cup to say, “He did. Crew members are strictly segregated from passengers.”

Charteris shrugged. “In any event, he sought me out, said he was a fan-even had a book for me to autograph.”

Colonel Erdmann shrugged, too. “Why take that at anything but face value? You’re a famous man, Mr. Charteris. Is it surprising you have a reader among our crew?”

“Something about his manner seemed… off-kilter. His words were admiring, but now, upon reflection, his manner seemed something else again. I believe I was being sized up.”

Eyes narrowing, Lehmann leaned forward. “For a midnight beating, you mean?”

“Yes. I’m somewhat bigger than he is, and he might have wanted a look at me. He’s rather slight, young Spehl, but he has powerful hands.”

And Charteris touched his throat, twitching a smile as he recalled the stranglehold.

Erdmann shifted on the bunk, saying, “And his purpose was to warn you off your investigation?”

“The voice in the dark said I was to stop what I was doing, that’s right.”

Lehmann was shaking his head, chewing on the pipe stem. “Just because this boy asked you for an autograph… that isn’t very much to base a case on, Leslie.”

“We have much more than that. It, uh, may not seem very sporting to you, gentlemen, but I took a bite out of this particular assailant.”

Erdmann blinked. “A bite?”

“Not having a guard dog handy, or Spah’s bitch Ulla, I had to do it myself. I bit him on the ankle-good and deep. I drew blood.” He sipped his coffee, as if to banish the taste.

Lehmann’s eyes were wide. “So if Eric Spehl has a human bite mark on his ankle…”

“More or less human,” Charteris said. “Why don’t you fetch the lad?”

The two captains and the Luftwaffe colonel all exchanged glances, as if waiting for someone to make a decision.

Oddly enough, considering the influence of the Reederei director and the Luftwaffe undercover agent, it was Captain Pruss who stepped forward.

“I’ll have him summoned. I believe the boy is on duty right now.”

Pruss stepped out, and Charteris said, “I think it was his right ankle, but I can’t be sure. It was, after all, pitch-black in there.”

Pruss, having dispatched an underling to bring the rigger, stepped back inside the cabin.

“What do you suggest we do,” Erdmann said, “if the boy does have the impression of your teeth on his ankle?”

Charteris grinned. “Well, hell, Fritz-you’ve been dying to pinch somebody. Here’s your chance. Put him under house arrest and haul his Aryan behind back home and turn him over to one of your goon squads. Put all that nasty gestapo energy to some proper use, for a change.”

Half of Erdmann’s face smiled but there was no mirth in it. “Sometimes you test my patience, Mr. Charteris.”

“My apologies. I get cranky when I’m attacked in the night.”

Before long, a steward delivered the seemingly bewildered, baby-faced Spehl to the cabin. Holding his cap in his hands, the tall, slender rigger-in his gray uniform and matching slippers-already looked like a prisoner.

“Mr. Spehl,” Captain Pruss said in German, “lift your trouser leg.”

“The right one,” Charteris said, also in German.

The pale, blue-eyed boy frowned in blinking confusion, turning to Pruss. “Sir?”

“Just obey the order, Rigger.”

“Yes, sir.”

And the wide-eyed, apparently perplexed young crew member tugged up his gray pant leg.

No bite mark was readily apparent.

Charteris knelt before the lad, and had a closer look: nothing. Just pale flesh, and an innocent blond down, as if Eric Spehl had barely entered puberty.

Irritated, Charteris lifted the rigger’s left pant leg himself-and the result was the same.

Nothing. No bite mark. Pink downy flesh.

The author pulled the boy’s right sock down, yanked the trouser leg higher, thinking perhaps his bite had been higher or lower than his memory, and his perception in the darkened cabin, had led him to believe.

“Captain Pruss,” Spehl said, voice cracking with embarrassment, “with all due respect, sir, what is he doing?”

“Just stand fast, Rigger.”

Charteris did the same with left sock and pant leg.

Nothing.

Chagrined, his head still pounding, Charteris rose, and found himself staring into the blank face of Eric Spehl, and the clear blue eyes of Eric Spehl-eyes that somehow, somewhere, conveyed to Charteris laughter.

This boy was guilty-in one fashion, one way, or another. But Charteris could not prove it-nor could he even say, at this moment, why he was so convinced.

“That will be all, Rigger,” Pruss said.

“Yes, sir,” Spehl said, with a respectful nod to his captain, and darted out.

Charteris sat back down on the bunk, heavily. “Could I possibly have a goddamn cigarette?”

Lehmann nodded, and took a book of matches from a desk drawer. Charteris fired up a Gauloise, and provided the Luftwaffe colonel with one, as well.

Getting his pipe going, Lehmann said, “So much for your suspect.”

“He’s the one,” Charteris said.

“How do you know?” Pruss asked.

“I know.” His eyes were laughing at me, he thought, but didn’t say it.

Wreathed by his own sweet-smelling tobacco smoke, Lehmann said, “Perhaps you didn’t bite as hard as you thought….”

“I drew blood. I broke skin.”

Erdmann said, “Then that young man has remarkable recuperative powers.”

Charteris snapped his fingers. “Damn! That’s it.”

“What is ‘it’?” Erdmann asked, sighing smoke.

“He sent the message, but he didn’t deliver it.”

“What?”

“He sent some crony of his, some other crew member to thrash me.”

Lehmann was shaking his head. “Now, please, there’s simply no basis to this…. You’re just being stubborn, Leslie.”

“Oh, I’m stubborn all right, but there’s a basis, too. Spehl had another crew member with him-who accompanied Spehl when he came to see me, to have his book autographed.”

Now Lehmann leaned forward, keenly interested. “ What other crew member?”

“I didn’t get much of a look at him. Just a burly bloke, huskier than Spehl. He didn’t approach me, this other fellow. Sat on a window bench while Spehl talked to me. He got a good look at me -I barely noticed him.”

Erdmann laughed hollowly. “That’s not much of an identification.”

“One of your crew members has a bite mark on his leg. Find him and you’ve found our man.”

Pruss stepped forward, shaking his head. “If you’re suggesting we repeat this farce, sixty more times-”

“You have a murderer on this airship,” Charteris said. “Or perhaps two murderers-accomplices. If you don’t care to pursue it, so be it. I, however, will be talking to the New York police and the American press, to everyone who will listen in fact, who might be interested in hearing of my delightful voyage on the Hindenburg .”