Max Collins - The Lusitania Murders

The starboard list was unmistakable but not extreme, and, other than pushing through the crowd, I had no trouble making my way to the forward portside corridor. While many were heading for the deck, a few other self-composed first-class passengers were doing as I was, seeking their valuables and life jackets in their cabins.

The torpedo’s impact must have affected the structure of the ship more than was readily apparent, for I discovered my cabin door was badly jammed, and it took three swift kicks to rudely open it.

With the ship’s electricity gone, and no porthole, my cabin was as dark as a cave. I lighted a match, and quickly found my life jacket on its shelf in the wardrobe, and from the nightstand gathered the leather pouch with my passport, various other papers and folding money. The list of the ship had increased, in this short time, rather alarmingly.

It was necessary to kick open Miss Vance’s bedroom door, as well-it occurred to me a great deal of money was somewhere in this bedroom, but I did not know where. . nor had she requested it. Perhaps Madame DePage and her friend Houghton had already retrieved the funds-or abandoned them, if the bulk made such impractical. Using another match, I recovered Miss Vance’s passport from the bureau and her life jacket from its wardrobe shelf.

As I exited, the ship lurched further starboard, a severe tilt now, and the sounds of chaos on the decks above, trampling feet, excited voices, betrayed an absence of discipline, to say the least. The passage was now empty, and dim-the only light filtering in from way down the corridor, at the Grand Entrance area, adjacent to the portside and starboard promenades. The starboard list was so extreme, in fact, that I as walked toward the entry light, I had one foot on the floor and the other on the wall.

Moving along the dark passageway, clutching close to me the pair of bulky, fiber-filled life jackets, I noted that-down some of the cross passages, leading to staterooms-the portholes were gaping open. . and the water was eagerly lapping at those portals, like the tongues of hungry beasts. Soon the sea would come rushing in, in all its inexorable coldness. The ineptitude of Turner and, yes, Anderson was outrageous-that these had not been closed and sealed, as we steamed through the war zone. .

When I reached the Grand Entrance, the wicker furniture overturned, crushed, discarded, potted plants spilling their soil on the linoleum, the mounting horror unequivocal. Passengers down in those stalled elevators were shrieking, beating desperately on the grille gates; the water would have them soon. Panic-stricken, white-faced third-class passengers were streaming up the companionways, scrambling up the stairs, climbing over one another with no compunction.

A well-dressed woman and her daughter were standing to one side of the wide but human-clogged stairway, tucked against the slanting wall, the child saucer-eyed and clinging to the dark-haired, blue-eyed mother, whose chin was high.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked the woman.

“No, thank you,” she said proudly. “There is nothing you can do. . We will wait for these. . people . . to pass, before taking our turn.”

“That’s probably wise,” I said, with a movement of my eyes that was meant to convey to the mother that her child would not fare well in that struggling mob.

“The captain says the ship cannot sink,” she said, like a Christian convinced of Heaven. “We have no intention of becoming alarmed.”

I was standing there-the incline so steep now that I had to work to regain my balance, especially amid all the jostling-like a boy waiting for the right moment to hop a carousel. Only a few seconds had gone by when a bloody-faced figure in stewards’ whites stumbled into me, coming up from the shelter deck, and I grabbed on to him, because he seemed barely conscious, and would otherwise have fallen and been trampled.

It was Williams, the master-at-arms!

I dragged the sturdy fellow from the crowd, and positioned myself against the wall, supporting him. He’d suffered a terrible blow or had taken a fall, his forehead bloody, one of those thick black eyebrows badly cut, and streaming blood.

“Get your breath,” I said, “and we’ll get you up to the Boat Deck.”

“Mr. . Mr. Van Dine. .” he said, eyes wide with recognition and. . what else? Humiliation? “I was a fool, a damned fool!”

“Williams, what-”

“I tried to do the right thing, sir, the humane thing. . but the bastard took advantage! Jumped me, goddamn him!”

I asked, but I already knew. “Who did this?”

“That bastard Williamson-he was my responsibility, and I couldn’t leave him to drown, could I?”

“Of course not,” I said, though I could have, easily.

“That’s not the worst of it, sir! He. . he’s got my revolver!”

Time was too precious for recriminations, so I merely hauled the bloody fool up the companionway; he seemed to have regained a clear enough head, and his balance, and he disappeared off toward the deck, muttering that he would find “the blighter.”

The Boat Deck’s Grand Entrance area, like the one below, had its furniture and potted plants upended; but the passengers were no longer thronging the area, having found their way to the decks.

And then my heart sank, because there was no sign of Miss Vance-I had been gone too long, apparently, or she had been swept up in the melodrama.

As I looked around, I saw something that at first struck me as quite absurd: Alfred Vanderbilt and Charles Frohman were seated side by side in wicker chairs, and they were surrounded by a pile of life jackets and five wicker baskets filled with slumbering babies! They were tying the life jackets to the baskets, and Frohman was bending to do so, and his discomfort must have been considerable.

I was not surprised to find Frohman staying aloof from the mass of hysteria-with his severe rheumatism, how could he hope to survive? But what in the hell were they up to? As I went over to them, Vanderbilt’s imperious valet, still in full livery, materialized with a basket in either hand, a slumbering infant in both.

“This is the last of them, sir,” the valet said.

“Good-now see what other kiddies you can round up, and we’ll help them into the lifeboats.”

“Very good, sir,” and the valet again disappeared.

I stood before this preposterous tableau-amazingly, not a child was awake and squalling! — and asked, “What in God’s name are you up to, Vanderbilt?”

“Ah,” Vanderbilt said, as casual as if he were attending a race at Ascot, “Mr. Van Dine-I’ve had my man Ronald raid the nursery. Moses’ baskets-they should float nicely.”

“Gentlemen, I don’t believe this steamer could be far from her final plunge-”

The millionaire stayed at his work, tying a life jacket to a basket. “Mr. Van Dine, it’s a wonderful irony, isn’t it? I have a white marble swimming pool at my farm, but I’ve never been in for a dip. All my time’s gone to my horses, and of course the ladies. . Never did learn to swim.”

“Let me help you get these out kids out on deck, and we’ll get you into a lifeboat, then.”

“No, Charles, Ronald and I can manage-we need to keep this precious cargo away from that rattled rabble out there. . when the water comes up, we’ll drop the wee ones in.”

I turned to Frohman. “C.F.-can I help you onto deck?”

“No, I prefer to stay with my friend Albert,” he said, grunting as he worked. “This will be a close call-we’ll have a better chance here than by rushing to the lifeboats.”

I had no time to argue; such choices were for each man to make for himself. “Have you seen Miss Vance?”

“Why, yes,” Vanderbilt said. “A lot of these fools had their lifebelts on incorrectly-heads through armholes. upside down around their waist and the like. Last I saw her. .” He pointed toward the starboard exit onto the deck. “. . she was helping as many of them as she could, in putting them on correctly.”