Max Collins - The Titanic Murders

“I wanted to find out what makes you so popular,” Futrelle said, settling into his chair.

Crafton’s smiled lifted a corner of his waxy mustache. “Your sarcasm is not lost on me, sir.”

“Why should it be? It’s about as subtle as your approach.”

Crafton shrugged, began removing his gray gloves, finger at a time; he had set his fedora upside down on the table and filled it with the gloves. “I understand that the service I provide is an… unsavory one… destined to make me less than anyone’s favorite among their acquaintances.”

“Well, don’t be proud of it.”

His smile lifted both sides of the mustache. “Why not? I have a job to do, a service to perform shall we say, and I do it well. The patient never likes hearing bad news from the physician… but without knowledge, what are we?”

“Ignorant.”

“Precisely. A doctor properly diagnoses a patient, and a favorable prognosis is then possible- treatment of the problem…. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”

“Why do I think it unlikely you’re a doctor, Mr. Crafton? Unless you perform certain back-alley operations that polite society frowns upon while still finding necessary.”

One eyebrow arched. “You mean to insult me-though why you should feel any enmity toward me is a mystery…”

“That’s my line of work-mysteries.”

“… I admit there’s some truth in what you say. Without the abortionist-let us not mince words, sir, you and I-how many lives, prominent young lives, might be ruined?”

“Well,” Futrelle said, patting his stomach, “I may look like I’m in need of an abortion, but I assure you I don’t. I’m merely well fed.”

Crafton chuckled. “You are a successful man-a noted author….”

“That’s perhaps too generous, sir. I’m a newspaperman who writes popular fiction. Fortunately for me, there’s an audience for my foolish tales.”

“And we both want that audience to remain steadfastly in your camp, don’t you agree?”

“It’s blackmail, isn’t it?”

The dark eyes flared; the ratlike nostrils, too. “What? Sir-please, I beg you not make rash accusa-”

“Shut up. It’s a dangerous game, Mr. Crafton, in company like this. There are powerful men, on this boat-the likes of Major Butt can snap his fingers and you would be nothing more than just an oily little memory… a memory no one will care to cling to, either.”

The ferrety face seemed to lengthen into a sinister blankness. “You leave me no choice, but to be blunt.”

Futrelle leaned back with a grin, arms casually folded. “What the hell do you think you have on me? I love my wife dearly and would sooner cut off my manhood than philander. My business dealings are aboveboard, and all of my children legitimate.”

Crafton’s mustache twitched. “I represent a group of investigators.”

“What, Pinkertons?”

“Not precisely, Mr. Futrelle. What this group does-both in England and America-is provide a valuable service.”

“Valuable.”

“Very. They thoroughly investigate the background of a prominent individual like yourself, and in order to prevent blackmail, do their best to discover whatever might be… worth discovering.”

“We’re back to doctors again. Preventative medicine.”

Crafton nodded curtly. “Only by finding out for you, our client, what skeletons in the closet might exist, of a sort that could be discovered by less scrupulous individuals than ourselves, can we protect you-our client.”

“Only you do that investigating beforehand-before someone like me is officially a ‘client’… just as a time-saving measure?”

“That’s well said… but then, words are your business.”

“What happens if a client isn’t interested?”

Crafton’s expression darkened. “Then we can’t protect you. The… sensitive information might fall into the hands of the sensationalist press, or be placed before business associates, or business rivals, or in some instances law-enforcement authorities…. The consequences could be serious, and unfortunate… even grave.”

“That would make a bully idea for you, Crafton-a grave.”

He shrugged. “I’m quite immune to threats, Mr. Futrelle… though I suppose coming from a man like you, I should take them seriously.”

“A man like me?”

“A man with your… mental aberrations.”

Futrelle laughed and it echoed across the balcony and down the marble-and-oak staircase. “Is that what you think you have?”

Crafton leaned forward, his walking stick between his legs, his hands resting on its gold crown. “Mr. Futrelle, in 1899, you suffered a complete mental breakdown. You were unable to continue in your position at the New York Herald and were hospitalized. Shortly thereafter you sent your children away, to their grandmother, and your wife and various doctors attended to your needs, in private….”

Very quietly, as if he were speaking to a small child, Futrelle said, “I was the telegraph editor at the Herald during the Spanish-American War… from Manila Bay to San Juan Hill, the news flowed in constantly. I was working twenty-four hours a day, and like many newspapermen, I was a burned-out case, after a time. I spent several months away from the pressures of that job, in a little cottage that belongs to my wife’s sister. When I felt up to it, I took a job offer from Mr. Hearst with his new Boston American, where I started publishing my ‘Thinking Machine’ stories and made lots of money… none of which you and your fellow extortionists will ever see. Not one red cent, sir.”

Crafton shrugged slowly, his tiny dark eyes widened. “If you don’t feel that your public, your publishers, will be put off by your mental aberrations, sir, your, your… dementia, then-”

“Listen, you damned little weasel-my public and my publishers care nothing about me except that I keep coming up with good stories. If my screws are loose, well then I’m colorful and more interesting-do you know the slightest thing about Edgar Allan Poe? Please, do me a favor, publicize away… my sales will go up.”

“We’re not bluffing, sir.”

“Neither am I. How can I best make my point? I know… Please, just for a moment, sir, come with me.” Futrelle rose. He curled a finger. “Come along, man-I won’t bite. I’m not really a lunatic.”

Crafton rose, suspiciously, gathering up his gloves and hat and walking stick.

Futrelle slipped an arm around the much smaller man’s shoulders and walked slowly with him toward the balustrade of the balcony. “I think you’ve misjudged people like myself, and have attracted more trouble than you know.”

“Are you threatening me again, sir?”

“No, no! Just giving you some advice. Are you aware that you’re being followed?”

“Followed?”

“And by a very unsavory character, at that.”

“I’ve seen no one.”

Futrelle moved closer to the railing of the balcony. “He’s lurking in the shadows of the reception area, below there….”

Crafton leaned forward, and Futrelle shoved him over, and Crafton’s hat and gloves and cane fell from his grasp, gloves spilling and landing in gray handprints on the marble stairs, hat and cane clattering onto the linoleum floor below, pocket change raining, even as Futrelle grasped onto the man’s ankles, just above his spats, letting him dangle there like a ripe fruit from a branch.

“Put me down, sir! Put me down!”

Several startled passengers below noticed this bizarre sight, and scurried away.

“Are you sure, Mr. Crafton, that that is what you desire of me? To put you down?”

“I mean, pull me up, at once, at once!”

Futrelle, however, let the man swing there, over the marble staircase and the floor just to the side of it, like a big pendulum. “Of course, sir, you could be right about me… I could be quite mad indeed.”