The Hindenburg Murders

THIRTEEN


HOW THE HINDENBURG TOURED NEW YORK CITY, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SPENT HIS MARKS





THE MISSING CREWMAN WAS A mechanic, Willy Scheef. Lehmann explained that a mechanic on a zeppelin faced one of the ship’s hardest, most demanding jobs—and by all accounts the noisiest, stuck inside a cramped engine gondola (there were four), keeping an eye on oil pressure, water temperature, and engine revolutions. And the diesel din (“the hammers of hell!” Gertrude Adelt had called it) was rivaled by intense engine heat.

“But mechanics also work the shortest hours,” Lehmann said in English. “Rotating shifts of two hours in the day, and three at night.”

“Plenty of time,” Charteris said, “to work a midnight visit in.”

“We can’t be certain it was Scheef who attacked you,” Erdmann put in sharply.

The four men were seated now, Lehmann on the edge of his desk, Pruss in the desk chair swiveled to face Charteris and Erdmann on the bunk. The foggy forenoon was filtering its way through the cabin’s small sloping window.

“It’s a simple process of elimination,” Charteris said. “If none of the sixty men you inspected has a bite on his ankle, Colonel, then the missing crew member is the man I bit.”

The Germans took a few moments to digest that tongue twister, then Captain Pruss said, somberly, “So we do have a murderer aboard.” His face was the color of pie dough.

“Perhaps not,” Lehmann said, wincing in thought. “Perhaps Mechanic Scheef had an accident and fell from his post; it’s happened before. The guardrail is rather insubstantial, and no doubt slippery in the rain.”

Hands on his knees, Charteris laughed, once. “Now that stretches coincidence and convenience a little far, doesn’t it?”

“Or,” Lehmann continued, as if the author hadn’t spoken, “Scheef may have panicked when he realized a Luftwaffe inquiry had been launched, and hastily committed suicide, rather than face Nazi justice.”

“It’s even possible,” Pruss said, “he might have parachuted. We’re close enough to shore.”

Charteris’s eyes widened, his monocle popping out; he caught it and said, “And no one saw?”

Pruss winced, as if embarrassed by his own argument. “He would not necessarily be noticed, if he jumped far enough aft.”

Erdmann was shaking his head. “If this Willy Scheef is our guilty party, he didn’t know my inquiry had to do with him. My two assistants and I went through the ship inspecting footwear, making sure the new regulation canvas-topped crepe-soled shoes were in proper use. It seemed the easiest way to check ankles for Mr. Charteris’s tooth marks.”

His unlit pipe in hand, Lehmann smirked humorlessly, saying, “A spy might easily have seen through such a simple ruse.”

“And I thought I wrote fantastic plots,” Charteris said, shaking his head, monocle back in place. “Gentlemen—a few hours ago, in this very cabin, we confronted the man who sent Willy Scheef to scare me off—one Rigger Eric Spehl—after which the man who sent the message scurried to push his messenger overboard.”

“Incredible,” Lehmann huffed.

“Well, it’s not as entertaining as slippery catwalks and suicidal murderers and parachuting spies. In a mystery novel, we call it ‘tying off loose ends.’ Something we picked up from real-life experts in murder… like Eric Spehl.”

“What evidence do you have that Spehl did this?” Lehmann almost demanded. “Even circumstantial—please share it with us.”

Charteris waved dismissively. “What more do you need? After we accused Spehl, he rushed to remove his accomplice!”

“We didn’t accuse him—we looked at his ankles.”

“Doing that may have been enough to inspire Spehl to confront Scheef, and then Spehl would have seen the bite, and, as the Americans say, push would have come to shove.”

“You’re spinning fiction again, Leslie,” Lehmann said, eyelids at half-mast, prop pipe in his teeth.

“I don’t understand you, Ernst. You have a murderer aboard. What are you going to do about it?”

Lehmann gestured with the pipe. “You haven’t answered my question, yet: what evidence, even circumstantial evidence, have you against Spehl?”

That stopped him. Charteris drew in a breath, held it, released it. “Nothing, really. Just what you already know.”

“That he sought you out for an autograph.”

Charteris’s forehead tensed. “I have the unsettling feeling you’re about to tell me that you intend doing nothing.”

“We will be landing this afternoon,” Lehmann said.

“Approximately four o’clock,” Pruss put in.

“It is my feeling,” the Reederei director continued, “that our best course of action is to land, allow our passengers to debark, bring new passengers aboard, and head home. Once home, a few days from now, the matter will be turned over to the S.D., and if Eric Spehl or any other crew member is guilty of murder, the S.D. will find it out, and prosecute and punish. We will not deal with this matter in the air, or on American soil.”

“Good Lord, man, he’s killed twice!”

Lehmann shrugged grandly. “Who has killed twice? We have gone over that. We don’t know what in fact happened to our missing passenger and our missing crew member. We will turn it over to the proper German authorities for investigation—in Germany.”

“Ernst, this is madness—”

Erdmann, who’d been strangely silent, said, “Mr. Charteris, while I am more in your camp in this matter than Captain Lehmann’s, I would have to agree with him that it is unlikely Spehl—or whoever our assailant might be—would kill again.”

“Fritz! What is your reasoning?”

“Let’s assume you’re right about Spehl—or substitute any other crew member, for that matter, including Scheef himself. Obviously, Eric Knoecher had something on whoever murdered him. So Knoecher was disposed of. Then Spehl… or whoever… became aware of the story you were spreading that Knoecher was still alive and unwell in your mutual cabin. This told him you were up to something, that you knew something. And of course you were asking questions, around the ship—discreetly investigating… but investigating.”

“Yes.”

“So you were ‘warned.’ By an accomplice, apparently. And now that accomplice has been removed. This is all according to your own version of the events, Mr. Charteris.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, if no further investigation takes place, and you debark this afternoon—why would Spehl… or whoever… kill again?”

“And if Scheef alone was the murderer,” Lehmann said, “he’s either dead, by his own hand or God’s, or has escaped.”

“In either event,” Erdmann said, “the safety of the passengers and the rest of the crew would seem assured.”

Charteris threw up his hands. “By Nazi standards, maybe. But by any other, this is insanity.” He looked to Lehmann. “How far will you go to protect yourself from damaging publicity in America, Ernst?”

“This far.”

“I am still capable of blowing the whistle to the police and the press, you know.”

“We do know.” Lehmann’s voice was at its gentlest, its most fatherly. “I would ask you, Leslie, as a friend, to allow us to handle this ourselves. In a few hours, this voyage will be over. You’ll be off the ship. What is it to you what a bunch of Nazis do to each other?”

Charteris laughed humorlessly. “That’s the best argument you’ve come up with, I’ll give you that. But you’ll have to do better.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Put Eric Spehl into custody.”

Erdmann frowned. “On what charge?”

“Jesus Christ, man! You’re a Nazi! Who cares what charge?” Then he again turned to Lehmann. “Ernst, if we are friends, at all, to the slightest degree, for God’s sake listen to me: that boy is guilty. I saw it in his eyes.”

“His eyes,” Lehmann said quietly.

“Put that boy in custody and keep him there at least until you lift back off from Lakehurst. And I would suggest keeping him in custody until you turn this business over to your authorities in the fatherland.”

Lehmann’s eyes narrowed. “And that will buy your cooperation?”

“Yes.”

The Reederei director looked to Erdmann. “Colonel?”

Erdmann was already nodding. “I agree with Mr. Charteris. And I will take Rigger Spehl into custody myself, and keep him in my cabin.”

Lehmann glanced to Captain Pruss. “Is that acceptable, Captain?”

“Yes. We can cover for Rigger Spehl’s duties. Perhaps this is the prudent thing, at that.”

“My only other concern,” Charteris said, “is Spehl’s access until this very moment to every nook and cranny of this ship. If he is, in addition to a murderer, a saboteur…”

Captain Pruss held up a hand, palm out. “The ship has been thoroughly checked. Our chief rigger has inspected gas cells and shafts, every bracing wire, every catwalk. And I will instruct him to do so once again, after Colonel Lehmann has secured Spehl in custody.”

Relieved, heaving a huge sigh, Charteris stood. “Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate this.”

They shook hands all around. Comrades again. The author was thanked for his cooperation and his investigative efforts. Lehmann assured him the promise of unlimited future passage on the Reederei line would be kept.

“You must be relieved,” Lehmann said, as Charteris was leaving the cabin, “to have your amateur-detective duties behind you.”

But as he walked the plank once more, moving through the sliding door into B deck, sauntering down the keel corridor, Charteris was nagged by feelings, by thoughts, that he simply could neither shake nor fully identify. Even with Spehl in Erdmann’s custody, the mystery writer in him—the amateur detective he’d become—felt something remained to be done. This first case of his, minus the Saint, seemed unfinished, somehow.

The trip was certainly coming to a close. Coming up the stairs to A deck, he found Kubis and other stewards piling baggage under the bust of Marshal von Hindenburg. Down the corridor, other stewards could be glimpsed with armloads of dirty bedclothes, making a pile at the far end.

Charteris called out to the chief steward. “Heinrich!”

The chief steward looked up from his work; Charteris’s own suitcase was in the pile Kubis was erecting. “Yes, sir?”

“A word?”

If Kubis was impatient with yet another demand from the author, it did not show in the man’s bright-eyed, cheerful countenance.

Apologizing for taking the steward away from his work, Charteris walked him around to the dining room, which was otherwise empty at the moment.

“Do you know Eric Spehl?” Charteris asked him.

“Yes. He seems a nice boy. Farm stock.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Just to drink with.”

“What about Willy Scheef?”

“He’s a mechanic on the ship. I know him, too.”

“To drink with.”

“Yes. We all drank together in Frankfurt, the night before we sailed, just about the whole crew. Where we always go—to the Heldenkeller.”

“What’s that, a weinstube? A rathskeller?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Charteris put a hand on the steward’s shoulder. “Heinrich, if I wanted to talk to a mutual friend of theirs, could you arrange that?”

“What mutual friend?”

“I don’t know. That’s part of your role—to suggest someone who I could talk to, who I could… question about Spehl and Scheef.”

“What questions about them? And why?”

Charteris waggled a finger. “Now, that’s not part of your role. What would be part of it, however, would be keeping this between us…. Heinrich, you know how they have passengers pay thirty reich marks a day in advance, into an account, to cover daily shipboard expenses?”

The bright blue eyes blinked. “Yes, certainly.”

“Well, since tips and full board are included in the cost of my ticket, I must have sixty or seventy marks left in that silly account. What good are marks to me, Heinrich? You wouldn’t know a good German I could bequeath them to?”

Fifteen minutes later, Kubis delivered a stocky gray-jumpsuited crewman named Walter Barnholzer—dark blond, chipmunk-cheeked, in his late twenties—to the author’s cabin, which looked sparse indeed, stripped of its bedclothes, and no fresh flower in the wall vase.

Kubis, who made a quick discreet departure, had also delivered (as Charteris had further directed) a bottle of bourbon and two water glasses.

“It’s all right if I have a little,” Barnholzer said in German, and licked his lips. “I’ve served my last rotation in the gondola—I’m in number four.”

Barnholzer, like the (apparently) late Willy Scheef, was a mechanic.

Gesturing for his guest to have a seat on the lower bunk, Charteris poured Barnholzer some bourbon, added some tap water, and did the same for himself (if less generously, where the liquor was concerned).

“I know that you are a famous writer,” Barnholzer said, after a long satisfying sip from the water glass. He had an earnest smile highlighted by crooked front teeth. “Heinrich said you were writing an article.”

“Yes,” Charteris said, leaning against the wall by the little sink, “talking to passengers, to crew members. Getting the human side of the Hindenburg. Tell me about yourself, Walter.”

The crooked-tooth smile flashed. “Well, I am a proud party member. I think I believed in the party from the very beginning, though I didn’t join till thirty-two.”

“Ah.”

Barnholzer frowned a little. “Are you going to take notes, Mr. Charters?”

“Chart-er-is. No. I have a photographic memory, Walter. Do go on.”

“You see, we’ve had to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps from the poverty the Jews and the socialists plunged us into. And the Führer’s plan is working—there are jobs now for everyone, and Germany has taken its rightful place among the nations of the world.” He gestured expansively with his free hand. “Look at this great airship—it tells you what Germany can do… could I have another?”

“My pleasure, Walter.” And Charteris made the friendly Nazi an even stronger mix of bourbon and water, having barely touched his own first drink. “Tell me something about your background, why don’t you?”

“Well, I was born in Tettnang, near the Bodensee. My father was a foreman in the Daimler works and that’s where I first went to work….”

Charteris stopped listening, though the pudgy-cheeked mechanic could never have guessed. Barnholzer’s was a story the author didn’t feel the need to hear—after all, he knew it already.

This was a man, like so many of his countrymen, who had been born at exactly the right moment to receive the worst education possible, to endure postwar Soviet government, inflation, and depression. To men like Barnholzer—who didn’t seem such a bad sort—the National German Socialist Workers Party must have seemed like the greatest thing since sliced bread. After the perfidy of Versailles, the perceived greed of Jewish bankers, the ineptitude and anarchy of Catholic and Communist “democracy,” a weak boy like this could only inevitably embrace the strength of Hitler.

It was already an old story, and it sickened Charteris, whose smile did not betray that fact.

“I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, for your article, Mr. Chartreuse.”

“Oh yes, very interesting, very interesting indeed… can I freshen that for you?”

“Please.”

Charteris did so, then said, “Tell me about some of your friends. Steward Kubis mentioned one of the riggers—Eric Spehl?”

“Yes. Yes, Eric is a friend. Maybe not a close friend. Kind of odd, Eric—quiet, reserved. He even likes to read books.”

“Imagine. Is he in the party?”

Barnholzer laughed. “Eric? No, no… You understand I am not S.S., I don’t feel the need to inform. If it were my duty, of course, I would….”

“Of course.”

“But Eric, he’s a Catholic, you know. Very religious. Wears a blessed Virgin Mary medal on a chain on his neck. He’s been complaining about the arrests of these perverted priests, and sex-crazed nuns.”

“Oh, they’re the worst kind. So he has some controversial ideas, this Eric Spehl?”

“He walks a dangerous path. The woman he lives with, Beatrice Schmidt, is on the dangerous citizens’ list. Older woman, dark-haired, a tramp, and a leftist. He frequents coffeehouses, cafés, bars, where these black-shirted Communists talk against the state.”

“Do you think Spehl could be aligned with the resistance?”

Three glasses of bourbon or not, Barnholzer saw the danger in that question. The plump crewman’s eyes raced with the knowledge that he’d been too free with his words.

“There is no resistance in Germany,” he said softly.

“Oh. I forgot. Is your fellow engineer, Willy Scheef, also a friend of Eric’s?”

Barnholzer nodded, grinning crookedly, glad to be back on safer ground. “Willy’s a good man. Everybody’s pal. Fun. Do anything for a friend. Maybe drinks too much.”

“Not in Communist bars, I hope.”

“Willy! No. No, no. He’s not a party member but he is loyal…. I may have misspoken about Eric. I didn’t say he was disloyal. Sometimes a man will do foolish things to get into a woman’s… well, into a woman.”

“Walter,” Charteris said, taking the empty water glass from the mechanic, “you’ve been most helpful to me.”

Barnholzer looked like he was trying to decide whether to frown or cry. “Please don’t put my name in your article.”

“Oh, wouldn’t it be all right to write up your fervent views about the party you love?”

And the crooked-tooth smile blossomed. “That, yes… please don’t say I told you what I did, about Eric Spehl.”

“You will remain an unnamed, reliable source, Walter…. Here—take the bottle with you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chartiss.”

Before long, feeling every bit the proficient amateur detective, Charteris was heading to the portside promenade, thinking how right he’d been about Spehl. So Willy Scheef was the kind of fellow who’d do anything for a friend? Well that would seem to include attacking someone in the night.

Most troubling were the indications that Spehl was a leftist zealot, an active member of that supposedly nonexistent resistance. Much as he might sympathize with Spehl’s anti-Nazi sentiments, much as he tended to agree that Eric Knoecher had made a prime candidate for casting overboard, Charteris could only wonder if somewhere, tucked in the folds of fabric holding together this ship, a bomb ticked away, waiting to make a great big point about the fallibility of Hitler’s Germany.

He found Hilda saving a seat for him in the dining room at a table for four, shared with the Adelts. The handsome middle-aged journalist wore the same dark suit he’d come aboard in, and his blonde young wife looked typically pretty in a yellow-and-white frock.

“Luncheon’s a bit premature, isn’t it?” Charteris said, pulling up a chair, joining them.

“They’re serving it early,” Gertrude said, “so we’ll all be able to take in the view.”

“We will pass over New York shortly,” Hilda said.

“Ah,” Charteris said.

“Yes,” Leonard said, “and we’ll be flying low enough to get a nice close look. I think after this long, dull crossing, the captain wants to finally give us our money’s worth.”

“I trust that isn’t a sentiment expressed in that article of yours,” Charteris said, pouring Hilda and then himself a glass of Liebfrauenmilch.

“Oh, no,” Leonard said. “I assure you I’ve lied so thoroughly and convincingly that even the Ministry of Propaganda would approve.”

“So you’ve finished it, then? Your article?”

“All but the ending. This brush with the roofs of skyscrapers should provide it.”

The view of New York from the promenade’s slanting windows proved no disappointment. With his arm around Hilda’s shoulder, Charteris stared down as the towers of Manhattan revealed themselves magically, poking up through the mist.

“We’re flying quite high,” Leonhard said, at Charteris’s left. “The skyline looks like a board of nails….”

“We’ll get a closer look. Patience. It’ll be worth the wait.”

“There’s the Statue of Liberty!” Gertrude said.

“Small as a porcelain figure,” her husband muttered, as if writing his article aloud.

Hilda said, “So then you like New York, Leslie?”

“It was love at first sight,” he said.

As the airship dipped lower, and the skyscrapers seemed to reach for them, he thought of how when he had first arrived in America, on that small steamer, with twenty-five bucks in his pocket, he’d found the buildings of Manhattan even taller and shinier than he’d imagined. He remembered sitting in that cheap hotel room on Lexington Avenue, looking across at the soaring white towers of the Waldorf—so clean and graceful compared with the stodgy, smoke-grimy architecture of home, rising sheer and white against a spotless blue sky the likes of which London seldom saw.

When was that? Thirty-two?

And now, after this very gray trip, the sky was that spotless blue again. The sun was out, and the ship was loping low across Times Square, sightseers pointing to the sky, standing frozen on the west side of Broadway. How he loved the electric nervous urgency down there, scurrying crowds on sidewalks, the press of honking traffic in packed streets. The elemental force of it had spurred him to try to match that pace, dazzling him with the prospect of infinite horizons.

But the Hindenburg had the power to bring this frantic city to a standstill, stopping traffic, and that was a delight, as well. On rooftops and firescapes, from windows and sidewalks, thousands of sophisticated New Yorkers gaped like farmers, craning their necks for a look at the vast airship draping its blue shadow over their city.

Despite the bright sunshine, lurking behind the tall buildings, thick black clouds billowed, like foul factory smoke.

“More rain coming,” Charteris said softly.

“Oh dear,” Hilda said. “Will our landing be delayed?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it.”

The sunshine carried them over Brooklyn, where the Dodgers were playing some team or other (the prevailing opinion on the promenade was the Pittsburgh Pirates), a game that halted temporarily as the fans stared upward, cheering and waving. The ship—which had acquired an escort of small planes of press photographers—swung north, crossing crowds on Wall Street.

The ship swooped so low over the Empire State Building, the shouted greetings of sightseers and photographers on the observation platform were easily heard; a passenger could have readily recognized a familiar face in the crowd.

“That was originally designed to be this ship’s mooring mast,” Charteris said to Hilda, pointing out the Art Moderne structure’s tapering silver peak.

“It would be more glamorous than Lakehurst, New Jersey,” Leonhard said. “But also less practical.”

The good weather lasted as the airship flew over the Hudson River, and as it turned south to the lower bay, toward New Jersey, the boats in the harbor tooting hello as the ship glided over. But to the west, black clouds were conspiring to conjure up a summer thunderstorm.

Charteris felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Lehmann, his expression genial.

“I thought you would like to know,” the Reederei director whispered, “Mr. Spehl is safely in Colonel Erdmann’s custody.”

“Were there any problems?”

“None.”

Then Lehmann began circulating among the passengers, many of whom stood expectantly, small luggage in hand, as he bid them, “Auf wiedersehen.” This seemed to be the former captain’s way of reassuring them the landing would come off without further delay—original arrival time was to have been six A.M., but the rain and head winds of the voyage had long since changed that.

By the time the airfield at Lakehurst came into view, the storm clouds were closing in, snapping with electricity, though there was no thunder, at least not that could be heard about the ship.

“We will land?” Hilda asked, clutching his arm.

“I don’t think so,” Charteris said.

No land crew stood assembled on the tarmac. Around the edges of the field, autos were parked and a modest crowd stood, waving. The vast, arched, hungry hangar awaited.

But no crew.

As if on cue, the rain began, pelting the ship, sounding gentle but in the context of the swarming black clouds, alive with lightning, disturbing indeed. Hilda clutched his arm, trembling, as the ship moved on, crossing over the pinewoods, making for the coast, to ride out the storm.





FOURTEEN


HOW THE HINDENBURG MADE A DETOUR, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS PLAYED A HUNCH





FOR OVER THREE HOURS THE passengers of the Hindenburg waited for the storm to clear, many of them shuffling from the starboard promenade adjacent the lounge to the portside windows by the dining room, taking in alternating vistas of seacoast and forest. Some had their cameras out (no flashbulbs, of course) while others just sat with hand luggage in their laps, and the slightly dazed expressions of the delayed traveler. Others expressed pleasure at having their cruise expanded at no extra cost, while the two Doehner boys seemed fairly glazed over with boredom, perfect little bookends in their Buster Brown suits as they sat on either side of their mother on an upholstered window bench, clutching their teddy bears like life preservers.

The view was pleasant enough, as the ship swung southeastward, over Toms River, down the narrow, sandy peninsula that paralleled the coastline, the all-but-deserted beaches of resorts blindingly white in the streaming sunshine. At times they flew over the scrub oak and pine of the coastal plains. Miss Mather pointed out poetically, to anyone who might be interested (or not), pairs and trios of startled deer scurrying through the sparse woods, fleeing the ship’s shadow.

To the west, however, the sky looked ugly, boiling with black storm clouds, through which spears of lightning thrust themselves.

Leonhard Adelt, narrowed eyes slowly scanning the dark-cloud-infested sky, said, “They’re like a pack of angry wolves.”

“It’ll let up,” Charteris said, not convincing himself let alone Leonhard. Charteris and Hilda were standing with the Adelts at the slanting windows, cool air easing in.

Kubis and other stewards had begun to circulate with silver trays, serving tea and biscuits.

The author nodded toward the lounge. “Why don’t we all sit down? It would appear to be teatime, and I for one have had my fill of sand and scrubby trees and storm clouds.”

“Hell,” Leonhard said, and heaved a sigh. “What a bitter damn disappointment…”

Hand in hand with Hilda, Charteris arched an eyebrow in the journalist’s direction. “What’s your rush anyway?”

Gertrude said, “We’re being met by Leonhard’s two brothers, who my poor husband hasn’t seen in thirty years. Apparently an extra hour or two is simply too much to bear.”

“All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” Leonard said, laughing gently, slipping his arm around his pretty wife’s waist as the two couples made their way into the lounge and found a table.

Thunder rumbled; the first they’d heard.

“Not at all dangerous,” Steward Kubis said, as he served the two couples tea.

“What time will we land?” Hilda asked, her voice cool but anxiety tensing her brow. She had taken off the rose-colored straw hat, which was fine with Charteris, who felt that any woman beautiful enough to wear a fashionable hat without appearing foolish would look more beautiful bareheaded.

“You need not worry, madam,” Kubis said, with his practiced charming smile, “a zeppelin can cruise about indefinitely above storms. It is not like a plane that has to come down for fuel.”

Charteris nodded. “I understand the Graf Zeppelin arrived over some South American country or other, during a revolution, and had to circle around for days.”

“I heard that, too,” Leonhard said, a biscuit poised for a bite. “They waited until the fighting was over, and then landed!”

With a chuckle, Kubis confirmed this tale, and went on to serve tea, and reassure other passengers.

But Hilda still seemed distressed. He patted her hand. “What’s wrong, dear? Are you so anxious to leave my side?”

“I should have wired my sister about the delay. I waited too long.”

“And I, as well,” Leonhard said. “I’m sure my brothers were standing in that crowd at Lakehurst.”

“I’m sure they’ll understand,” Charteris said, then turning to Hilda, added, “Which reminds me—do you have a number where I can reach you in Trenton?”

“Why don’t you call me where I’m staying,” she said, “at the Sterling? I don’t know the phone number, but it is a well-known hotel.”

“All right. Let me give you my number in Florida.”

Leonhard loaned Charteris a fountain pen and the author jotted down his number on a napkin and gave it to Hilda. Then, in the time-honored tradition of travelers at the end of their journey, he traded similar information with the Adelts, who would still be in New York on business when Charteris returned to talk to publishers, everybody passing around scribbled-on napkins like business cards.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Leonhard said, half a wry smile tugging his face. “You know what today is, don’t you?”

Charteris sipped his tea. “No, what?”

Hilda said, “Ascension Day.”

“Is it forty days after Easter already?” Charteris toasted with his teacup. “Ah, yes, another holy day of obligation. Well, we’ve ascended, all right.”

“Are you Catholic too, Leslie?” Gertrude asked.

“Nominally. This is the day we celebrate Jesus telling the disciples to get off their duffs and spread the Good News.”

Hilda blinked twice and smiled at him.

“I’m impressed,” Leonhard said.

“Well, don’t be,” Charteris said, buttering a biscuit. “You see, my brother is a priest. Which, considering the sort of life I lead, would seem to indicate some incredible form of family compensation.”

That amused everyone, but soon Hilda was frowning again, drumming her fingers.

“It’ll be fine, dear,” Charteris told her. “We’ve swung northward again. Look—they’re preparing the table for the customs and immigration men.”

Which Kubis and another steward were in the process of doing, where the promenade emptied into the stairway.

“Have you noticed that sad colonel anywhere?” Gertrude asked them.

“Erdmann?” Charteris said, innocently, “No.”

“It’s funny he’s nowhere to be seen.” The pretty blonde shook her head, her cap of curls shimmering, her big blue eyes wide with thought. “You’d think he’d be sitting here, waiting to be first off the ship.”

“Why do you say that, darling?” her husband asked.

“Well, when we… ascended, to use the word of the day, he seemed so reluctant to be leaving. Remember him sitting just over there, so melancholy? And his wife coming aboard to embrace him so warmly? You’d think they were never going to see each other again.”

Before long the stewards were passing among them again, with sandwiches of cold cuts and cheeses piled on their silver trays. Carafes of Liebfrauenmilch were distributed, as well.

A muffled sound—a steam whistle—caused everyone to turn and look.

Leonhard Adelt said, “We will be landing soon—that was the call for the ship’s crew to landing stations.”

Hilda sighed and smiled, relief dancing in her dark blue eyes.

Charteris touched a napkin to his lips. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“What is it, Leslie?” Hilda asked, reaching out for him, fingertips brushing his hand.

“Little boys’ room. I’ll be back before too long. They won’t let any of us off without going through customs.”

He went up to Kubis, who was supervising the other stewards in their sandwich-serving. “Can you get away for just a few moments?”

“Well, sir, I…”

“Can’t I wring one last imposition out of those marks I bequeathed you?”

Kubis smiled a little. “Certainly, sir. Anything for the man who wrote Saint in New York.”

“Take me to Colonel Erdmann’s quarters.”

Now the steward frowned; he had been made aware of Erdmann’s house arrest of Spehl. “But, sir…”

“No questions, Heinrich. This is an imposition, remember?”

“Yes, sir.”

As he followed Kubis out of the lounge and along the starboard promenade, the slanting rain-flecked windows—cool air rushing in—revealed an early twilight had settled in, though as overcast as it now was, the difference between day and dusk was minimal. They’d be over Lakehurst again, shortly—he wondered if they would land or swing around for another sightseeing jaunt.

As Kubis began down the stairs, Charteris—somewhat surprised by the chief steward’s route—asked, “Does Colonel Erdmann have one of the new rooms down on B deck?”

“Yes—they’re larger, you know. With windows.”

Though the bulk of the Hindenburg’s cabins were on A deck, where Charteris had been, a handful had been added to B deck since the ship’s successful first season, to increase passenger space. These cabins were aft, taking up space that had originally been tentlike crew quarters.

At the bottom of the stairs, Kubis turned sharply to the left, where the floor itself was the retracted gangway, moving through a newly punched door giving access to the keel corridor. On the Hindenburg’s previous season of flights, the keel corridor was closed to passengers; but with the addition of this new wing of cabins, that was no longer the case.

The steward turned to the right, down the narrow corridor, and stopped at a door marked B-1, looking to Charteris with a hesitant expression. “Should I knock, sir?” he whispered.

“Please,” Charteris said.

Kubis rapped his knuckles tentatively on the door.

Nothing.

The steward glanced at Charteris, who nodded, saying, “Again.”

Kubis knocked again, louder. Then said, “Colonel Erdmann! Sorry to disturb you, sir! It’s Chief Steward Kubis, sir!”

Nothing.

“Use your passkey,” Charteris said.

“But, sir… !”

“Use it, Heinrich.”

“Yes, sir.”

And the steward did, but the cabin—which was in fact half again as large as the A-deck cabins, with a sloping window like the one in Lehmann’s quarters—was empty, stripped not only of bedclothes, but of Erdmann and Spehl.

“Where are they, sir?” Kubis asked, looking all around, as if the two men might be stuffed under a bunk.

“That would seem to be the question,” Charteris said. “Heinrich, one last imposition—that door at the end of the hall leads into the belly of the ship, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does, sir.”

“Unlock that for me.”

“Sir, I can’t….”

“You can. And when you have, I want you to go to Captain Pruss and tell him that Colonel Erdmann and Spehl are missing.”

Kubis seemed astounded by this proposition. “Captain Pruss is in the process of landing the airship, sir—he can’t be disturbed….”

“There may be a bomb on this ship, Heinrich. Do you understand? This ship might not land at all.”

Frowning, Kubis somehow managed to digest this notion quickly—but then the steward had been around the periphery of the various disappearances and inquiries afoot over the course of this trip; perhaps Charteris’s statement made it all make sense.

At any rate, there was no further discussion: the steward used his passkey on the door at the end of the keel corridor, opening it for Charteris, nodding to the author in a fashion that said the message would be delivered to the captain, come hell or high water.

Then Kubis was gone and Charteris, the door closing behind him, was like a small child in a vast, otherwise unattended and quite bizarre amusement park. He moved gingerly along the rubber-carpeted keel catwalk (no slippers this time, rather his Italian loafers), the diesel drone much louder back here, building to a roar as he approached one of the precarious, skimpily handrailed access gangways out to an engine gondola. The roar settled back to a drone as he moved aft, walking uphill, slightly, the ship heavy aft, the bow high, as he gazed up and around at the complex array of framework and rigging and netting and other catwalks, crisscrossing girders, struts, and rings, towering gas shafts and—nestled on either side, here and there—gas and water and fuel tanks, amid arches and ladders and wires, and yet most of all so much empty space.

Sun filtered through the translucent linen skin as he moved along, hazy illumination that gave the interior of the leviathan airship a warm yellowish cast, very different from the tour he’d taken Tuesday, when the day was overcast and the world back here was a grayish blue. That the western sky glowered black with the threat of a thunderstorm could not be discerned back here in this unreal mechanical wonderland. There was a strange stillness that might have been reassuring, even soothing, if the huge tan bladderlike gas cells looming left and right hadn’t been fluttering, quavering like flabby cheeks, as if the ship itself were nervous.

That was definitely not reassuring.

He saw no crewmen—all of them were at their crew stations, many of them way in the stern of the ship, where yaw lines would be dropped and mooring cable let down, or up at the bow, working the main winch line and nose-cone connections. This was a cavernous world of his own, though he felt dwarfed rather than powerful, and he was just starting to wonder if he knew what he was doing when he saw them.

They climbed down a ladder and onto the narrow rubber-matted keel catwalk—a nondescript figure in a brown suit and a crew member in the standard gray jumpsuit: Colonel Erdmann, followed by Eric Spehl.

Who for a man in custody seemed pretty much on his own. No handcuffs or leg irons, and the colonel seemed confident enough in his charge to keep his back to his captive.

“Hello, boys,” Charteris said, working his voice up above the diesel drone. He was perhaps twenty feet from them.

“Charteris,” Erdmann said, frowning, halting. “What are you doing back here? It’s dangerous—we’re about to land!”

They could feel the ship slowing, even turning.

Charteris strolled toward them. “I’d ask you and your, uh, prisoner the same thing, Fritz… if I didn’t already know the answer.”

Behind Erdmann, who remained calm and collected in the face of this intrusion, Spehl was openly distressed, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, arms extended, hands splayed, as if caught in the lights of an oncoming truck.

“Know what answer?” Erdmann asked calmly. But he did run a hand over his slicked-back blond hair, a nervous gesture of sorts.

“Well, perhaps ‘know’ is a bit strong.” Charteris was facing the Luftwaffe colonel now, Spehl moving in closer behind Erdmann, peeking up over his shoulder, making a two-headed man of him. “My surmise is that you and young Eric are on your way back after tucking your bomb into place.”

Neither man, crosshatched by the shadow of ladders and struts, found a response to this.

So Charteris continued, casually: “If it had already been planted, you would need to reset the timer, because of the weather delays. Or, if you were planting it for the first time, now is of course the ideal time to do it… minutes before mooring, with the crew occupied and at their landing stations.”

“This is quite the most absurd thing I ever heard,” Erdmann said, managing to put some quiet indignation into it.

Behind him, Spehl was sweating, trembling, his face drained of blood.

“I am assuming, of course,” Charteris said, “that you don’t wish to blow yourselves or for that matter any of the passengers to kingdom come. You’d like this great symbol of Nazi power to blow itself up when it’s at the mooring mast, and no one is aboard, and no one, or hardly anyone, is standing near enough to be harmed. Very humane, Fritz. Commendable thinking, for a saboteur.”

Erdmann sighed. “All right. You are partially correct. Rigger Spehl is a member of the resistance—”

“Ah, so there is a resistance. That’s nice to know.”

“He admitted to me that he had planted a bomb, and we went to retrieve it.”

“Well, let’s see it, then.”

“All right,” Erdmann said, and reached in his pocket and withdrew a small black automatic, a Luger.

“Fritz, Fritz… do you really want to fire that thing and blow all of us up?”

“No. But I am hoping you will listen to reason.”

“Ah! An offer to join the resistance? And I’m not even German! What an honor.”

Erdmann chuckled dryly at that; the little black automatic in his fist was like a toy—reminding Charteris of the chief steward taking the Doehner boys’ tin toy into custody, for making sparks.

“How in hell did you know?” Erdmann asked.

“Well, I should have known much earlier. But all these delays gave me so much time to ponder. And another passenger made a stray remark about you, just now—Gertrude Adelt—reminding me of that touching scene the first night, when your wife bid you good-bye. You knew better than anyone that this ship had been thoroughly searched, and that every last stitch of baggage would be exhaustively inspected. But in your capacity, you could allow your wife to come aboard for a last-minute good-bye—she had to stand for no security procedure, at all, did she? And I’m sure she wasn’t pretending, when she embraced you on deck, I’m sure the tears were very real, because she knew the dangerous journey you were about to begin—that if things went awry, she might never see you again…. She passed it to you, didn’t she, Fritz? Your wife handed you the bomb, didn’t she?”

Erdmann’s haggard smile and faint sigh said yes.

“It must be a fairly small and simple device,” Charteris said.

The colonel nodded. “Yes. You may have learned in your own… investigation… that Eric here, is something of a photography buff.”

“Actually, it didn’t come up.”

“I forgot—you’re not much of a detective.”

“Enough for us to be standing here like this, Fritz. So Eric’s an amateur photographer—so what?”

Erdmann shrugged. “One flashbulb added to a small dry-cell battery, with a pocket watch attached.”

“Ingenious,” Charteris said, rather impressed. “A flashbulb is perfect—a tiny glass sphere filled with pure, dry oxygen, exploding into dazzling light by a split-second combustion of aluminum foil.”

Another nod from Erdmann. “Enough to melt steel, let alone ignite hydrogen.”

“A simple device, a modest investment, to destroy the Nazis’ greatest propaganda weapon.”

“Will you join us?”

“Why don’t you put that pistol away, Fritz, and we’ll talk about it.”

With Kubis reporting to the captain, all Charteris had to do was stall—of course, if the captain was too busy, landing this beast, then…

Erdmann said, “No. I’ll keep my weapon, thank you.”

“You’re not reckless, Fritz. You won’t shoot.”

“Don’t be too sure. A gunshot wouldn’t necessarily ignite the ship’s hydrogen, not unless there’s a leak we don’t know about.”

The diesels were grinding as the airship slowed.

“You see, Fritz, that’s my problem with you and your young protégé, here. You say you’re against the Nazis, but you kill just as ruthlessly as they do…. By the way, which of you threw Eric Knoecher overboard? I’m just curious.”

“I did,” Erdmann said, unhesitatingly.

“Funny, isn’t it? I took your word for it that there were no crew members on Knoecher’s list. It was you, Fritz, who gave us the names of his ‘subjects,’ our ‘suspects.’ You sent silly-ass me off on a half-dozen wild-goose chases, while withholding the one name on his list that mattered: Eric Spehl. The young crewman with Communist leanings and leftist associates. Was your name on his list, too, Fritz?”

Erdmann said nothing.

“Oh well, what does it matter?” Charteris said, stalling. “Eric Knoecher doesn’t bother me so much… the world will survive without his putrid presence. But what does bother me is poor Willy Scheef. He wasn’t part of your plot, was he?”

Erdmann’s eyes narrowed and a weariness in the man’s expression told Charteris he was on the right track.

Edging his voice up above the engine noise, Charteris said, “Poor Willy was what they call in the movies a day player. Eric here recruited him to deliver me that warning by way of a beating… but Willy was just doing Eric a favor. He wasn’t part of the resistance, just a thickheaded, good-hearted drinking crony who would do anything for a friend.”

Erdmann said, “Give me your decision, Mr. Charteris, or I’m afraid—”

“You should be afraid. You have a partner, Fritz, who is very unreliable. Very emotional. Why don’t you tell him, Eric, why you really involved poor Willy? And why you killed Willy, to cover your tracks?”

The wild-eyed Spehl spoke for the first time, and his voice was shrill. “I did not kill Willy! And neither did Colonel Erdmann. It was an accident.”

“An accident,” Charteris said, almost tasting the word. “I believe I heard this song-and-dance before….”

Insistently Spehl went on: “Willy was angry with me, for getting him in trouble, when he found out the Luftwaffe agents were investigating; he knew the wound on his leg would give him away. He was going to give himself up and tell them what I’d asked him to do and…”

“You killed him.”

“No! We… we did struggle. We were talking in his gondola, screaming at each other over the engine, and when he went out to that little gangway between the gondola and the ship, to go tell on me, we struggled and… he just slipped. I swear to God and all that’s holy, he slipped!”

“I’m sorry, boys,” Charteris said, shaking his head. “I can’t come over to your side. You’re just too… untidy a bunch, much as I might sympathize with your goals. That jerry-rigged bomb of yours could go off while people are still on this ship, and you’re endangering untold numbers of American military and civilians at Lakehurst.”

Spehl shook his head, violently. “No! It’s set for eight o’clock. Everyone will be off the ship. Casualties will be minimal.”

“Don’t you think it’s rather bad taste,” Charteris said pointedly, “to fight a war on another country’s soil? German casualties are one thing: Americans are another.”

“Then you’ve made your decision?” Erdmann asked, raising the Luger so that it was trained upon the author’s heart.

“So what’s the plan, boys? Disappear into America? Wait… Eric, that’s your plan. But, you, Colonel, you want to go back to your pretty wife, in Germany, and continue fighting from within, don’t you? A noble enough goal… but Eric, here, kind of made a mess of it, with his extra killing, didn’t he?”

“Be quiet,” Erdmann said. “This is your last chance.”

“Eric,” Charteris said, “what do you want to bet that that automatic in the colonel’s pocket wasn’t meant for me? After all, Fritz didn’t know I was going to show up, did he?”

“Quiet,” Erdmann said, teeth clenched.

“Why was he packing the rod, do you suppose? Hmmm, Eric? Do you think he was planning to shoot up random crew members—or maybe he had just one in mind… maybe a prisoner who had fled his custody, who could die and with his death seem to answer many, many questions… allowing the good colonel to go back to the fatherland, to his wife and his mission.”

Spehl’s hand clasped onto Erdmann’s shoulder. “What were you doing with that Luger in your pocket?”

Erdmann’s eyes and nostrils flared as the boy reached around. “Eric!”

“Give it here!”

And Spehl spun Erdmann to him, grabbing for the gun, trying to wrest it from the colonel’s fingers, the two men tottering on the narrow catwalk. The automatic in hand was high over Erdmann’s head now, as if he were trying to keep a toy from a child; and as Spehl wrestled Erdmann for it, Charteris made a hasty exit, running down the rubberized gangway toward the passenger quarters.

He was halfway to the doorway when he heard the gunshot.