Max Collins - The Lusitania Murders

Again we sat in the Verandah Cafe, sipping hot tea, saying little, wrapped up in an ambience that was both eerie and strangely restful.

Out of the fog, down the deck, emerged Staff Captain Anderson. He brightened upon seeing us, and strode over.

“Just the man I was looking for,” he said to me.

“Really?” I replied, surprised. “Please join us.”

He sat, removing his cap. “I have a request. I feel somewhat abashed, asking. . since in retrospect you and Miss Vance were right about so much, and I was so wrong.”

“Nonsense. What is it?”

He shifted in the chair, still uneasy. “Well, all attempts to question Williamson have failed. He won’t give us any sort of statement, much less admission, despite being caught in the act.”

“Won’t talk,” Miss Vance said, between tea sips, “without his solicitor.”

Anderson nodded. “Nearly his very words.”

The Pinkerton operative shrugged; she wore a gray linen morning suit and, of course, no hat. “Common among criminals of all classes.”

“You see,” the staff captain continued, “we’re concerned about the sabotage aspect of this affair. . that there may still be some sort of small but deadly explosive device tucked away somewhere.”

“You’ve got him locked up,” I said. “Surely if such a device had been planted, he’d be in as much danger as the rest of us.”

Anderson sighed. “Or he might feel he could make his escape in the resulting tumult.”

“Locked away as he is?”

“He might hope for release. That would be the humane thing, in such a case.”

I decided not to offer an argument on the merits of letting the fiend drown in his cell, and instead asked, “Could a pipe bomb, such as the one you found in my quarters, really do a ship this size much damage?”

“That depends upon its placement. You see. . and Mr. Van Dine, I am trusting your discretion-what I am about to reveal is not for publication, you understand.”

“Certainly.”

He spoke softly and deliberately. “We do have a small cargo of what might be considered munitions aboard-four thousand-some cases of rifle ammunition. . some five million rounds. . and over a thousand cases of three-inch shrapnel shells, along with their fuses.”

“Might be” considered munitions?

At last I had fulfilled my mission for my employer Rumely: discovered the presence of contraband aboard the Lusitania . But somehow I felt no sense of victory.

“How much of a danger does that present?” Miss Vance inquired.

“Well, that’s fifty-one tons of shrapnel alone. I would say a bomb, even a small one, might ignite a larger explosion. We’ve searched that area of the ship, but. . I still have a certain trepidation about what Mr. Williamson and his conspirators may have done.”

“I can understand that,” I said, with a dry sarcasm that Anderson may have missed.

“In addition,” he said, “we are near the end of our voyage, and our coal bins are nearly empty. . a coal dust explosion is another possibility, should such a device be ignited.”

“You haven’t made your request as yet,” I reminded him.

With a world-weary sigh, Anderson shook his head and said, “The bastard. . excuse me, ma’am. .”

“You may call the son of a bitch a bastard if you like,” Miss Vance allowed.

“Thank you, ma’am-the bastard says he’ll talk to you, Mr. Van Dine. . and only you. And in private.”

That set me to blinking. “Why, in heaven’s name?”

“That,” Anderson said, with a puzzled shrug, “he will not reveal. Are you willing to speak to him?”

I responded with my own shrug, more resigned than puzzled. “With iron bars between us, I am willing-though Lord knows what he might want of me.”

And so it was that I came to stand in the ship’s brig, staring into the smug face, and the intelligent and dare I say evil blue eyes, of Charles Williamson. . like the late and unlamented prisoners before him, still attired in his purloined stewards’ smock.

He had been stretched out on the lower bunk, and now walked over to me, and stood-in traditional prisoner style-grasping the bars with both hands and staring at me through an opening between them. . displaying a disturbingly self-possessed smile.

“What do you want with me?” I asked, impatiently. “I have no particular interest in finally getting around to our discussion of art, if that’s what you have in mind.”

Half a smile carved a hole in his left cheek. “Are you sure, Mr. Wright?”

For a moment, it went right past me-then I realized:

He had just called me by my right. . Wright. . name!

“Of course I recognized you,” he said to me, with a haughty laugh. “We have been at several functions, though we were never introduced. But everyone in art circles in New York City knows of the astringent Willard Huntington Wright. Don’t you have a new book on art theory coming out or something?”

I said nothing-I admit I was shaken.

“Can you really be so thick?” he asked patronizingly. “Didn’t you know I was needling you, when I criticized your brother’s work? Did you really think that was a coincidence?”

“So you know my real name. So what? I’m travelling under a pseudonym, in order to interview people who might not grant me an audience, if they knew my real identity.”

“Like Hubbard-whom you have skewered in print, several times, I believe.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps. . and how does this make a private audience with me a desirable thing, for a goddamned murderer and thief like you?”

He took no offense, merely laughed, and dropped his hands from the bars. “Have you a smoke?”

I removed the cigarette case from my inside jacket pocket, handed him a Gauloises-and lighted it up with a match. He inhaled the rich tobacco greedily, waiting long moments to exhale a blue-gray cloud.

“I know your politics,” he said. “Everyone does, in our world. . You’re a prolific one, aren’t you? Two books coming out. . one of them on Nietzche, I believe.”

I said nothing to confirm the undeniable correctness of his statement.

“You’re as pro-German as I am,” he said suddenly, the smile gone, the eyes flashing.

So that was it!

“I should think you’re chiefly pro-Williamson,” I said.

His eyes tightened, and his smile was small yet satanic. “I can be a valuable ally.”

“Can you.”

“Just don’t forget about me, down here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Should anything untoward occur, in these treacherous waters. . just remember your fellow pro-German down in the brig. That’s all.”

I stepped closer, my nose near the iron bars. “Is there another bomb somewhere on this ship?”

He backed away. “I didn’t say that. I merely point out, we’re in the war zone. Should we fall prey to a U-boat, I shouldn’t like to go down with the ship, trapped behind these bars-I would find dying on a British vessel most distasteful.”

I sneered at the rogue. “Just because my tastes run to Wagner, Goethe and Schopenhauer, don’t assume I wear a photo of the Kaiser in a locket near my heart.”

He shrugged, wandered over to the bunk, stretched out on it again, arms winged behind his head, cigarette bobbling in his lips as he said, “That’s all I have to say. . Mr. Wright. I’ll keep your silly little secret, too. . as a show of good faith.”

In the corridor I was met by Miss Vance and Staff Captain Anderson.

“What did he want?” Anderson asked.

I snorted a wry laugh. “The fool thinks this Kaiser Wilhelm beard of mine suggests a pro-German heart beating in my chest.”

Miss Vance frowned. “And that’s all?”