“It isn’t. But the Royal Navy has scooped up many of our best crew, for the war effort. Finding able-bodied seamen for this trip was a chore, I must admit.”
“You don’t seem entirely satisfied with the result.”
“I’m not. There are crew members aboard who’ve never sailed other than as a passenger.”
This was the staff captain’s only negative remark of the tour, and I must say the meticulous craftsmanship of the ship’s construction carried over into the second and third classes. The public rooms of second class-from dining saloon to smoking room-could have been taken for those of the first class of almost any other ship sailing the North Atlantic. Plainer in style (white remained, gold did not), the public rooms were large and well-appointed; the example of a stateroom-a four-berth-that Anderson saw fit to show me was only a small step down from my own.
If the Second Cabin staircase may not have been as grand as the one in Saloon, the structure could only be deemed impressively handsome, on its own terms.
Third Class was no dark, cramped hold stuffed with human bilge, rather a functional if austere succession of bare-bones public rooms-the dining room was like a gymnasium with tables-that made no attempt to fool passengers into thinking they were in a fine hotel or country home. Massive painted expanses of steel bared the ship’s every rivet, every bolt; but the spartan cabins were both spotless and spacious, and on the bunks were bedspreads bearing the distinctive Cunard crest-a lion rampant with a globe.
“That’s a handsome touch,” I said.
Anderson grinned and shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not intended to dress up the cabin, Mr. Van Dine. . We mean to discourage passengers from helping themselves to the bedding, when they head to shore.”
The passengers I saw in Third Class, however, were not of the stereotypical sort one might expect in steerage-no tired, poor, huddling masses. No, these travellers seemed to be an Anglo-Saxon lot, Britons mostly, but a good share of Germans, too, skilled or semiskilled workmen. These were practical men, with limited funds, interested not in Grand Staircases and electric elevators and smoking rooms, but clean quarters and edible food and cheap passage.
The degree to which all of this had been thought through by the ship’s designers could be seen in the very columns throughout the ship-in Saloon, they were (as has been noted) Corinthian; in Second Cabin, an elegant Doric; and in Third Class, the cleanly simple Ionian.
Though I could hardly be shown every nook and cranny, Anderson’s tour of the Big
Anderson pointed out the engineers and firemen and stokers and trimmers-the “dirty gang,” he dubbed them-and over the satanic roar he explained the jobs of each; but I couldn’t make sense of it, just as I couldn’t understand how any man could consign himself to such a hell, in trade for mere existence. It took only moments for the scorching heat and the sticky coal dust to compel me to request that we end this portion of the tour.
Part of me knew I should have pressed for a view of the cargo holds down here-this was where, my employer Rumely had speculated, any contraband would be kept-but I preferred to allow Anderson to escort me out of this hades, with the goal of eventually returning to the heaven that was Saloon Class.
Before completing our tour, Staff Captain Anderson-having shown me around the various classes of the ship- suggested we conclude on Deck C, the Shelter Deck, where many of the services and facilities of the ship were located.
“A liner is like a city,” Anderson said, “and we have the same sort of needs as any modern metropolis.”
I was rather tired of this process by now, but not wanting to be rude-and cognizant of the need to stay in the captain’s good graces-I put up with a mundane survey of various offices, the seldom-used brig, the hospitals (male and female) and of course the dreaded nursery.
The latter included a children’s dining saloon, and we had moved thankfully through that madness of magpies and were heading down a short corridor that opened onto the Grand Entrance and the elevators, when voices behind a door marked STEWARD’S PANTRY caught my attention.
The voices were speaking in German (one of my several languages), and-though the closed door muffled it, somewhat-I distinctly heard: “We should hide the camera.”
As I paused, touching his sleeve, Anderson turned to me quizzically, and I whispered, “Do you employ Germans on your staff?”
Several voices behind that door were audible now, speaking in German, but too soft to make out the words.
Anderson gave me a sharp look, and motioned for me to stand to one side, which I did.
Then the staff captain opened the door on three men in stewards’ whites, huddled within the small pantry, surrounded by shelved canned goods and other foodstuffs. They were young men-a skinny tallish brown-haired one, a shorter broad-shouldered very blonde fellow and a rather average one, whose hair shade was somewhere between that of his companions-and two of them froze, chatter ceasing. The shorter one had his back to Anderson, and as he turned, he began, in German, “About time-”
But Anderson was clearly not who these fellows were expecting.
And the wide-eyed fellow who had just swivelled indeed held in his hands a camera.
Before Anderson could pose a question, the man with the camera barrelled at him, thrusting him out of the doorway and against the corridor wall, staggering the staff captain with both surprise and power.
The brawny blonde fellow, clutching his camera, moved right past me-or tried to: I stuck my foot out, and he tripped, diving gracelessly into the linoleum, his precious cargo flying. I fell upon him, inserting a knee in his back and looping an arm around his neck, incapacitating him.
From the corner of my eye I witnessed Anderson deliver a fist to the chin of the skinny one, who’d come scrambling out after his compatriot’s break for it, knocking him back into the pantry, presumably into the other fellow (this I adjudged from sounds, as I could not see that action from my vantage point).
Reinforcements seemed to appear immediately, including the master-at-arms, whose name was Williams, and a steward named Leach-the pantry was his province, and the young man was shocked to find it crawling with German stowaways.
For that, apparently, was what the trio was-and spies to boot, if the camera meant what it seemed to.
The master-at-arms took my prisoner off my hands, and hauled him back to the pantry, where soon all three were locked inside, awaiting further decisions.
The first one came from Anderson, who said to Williams, “Fetch the ship’s detective.”
Breathing hard, I said, “I wasn’t aware the ship had a detective.”
Anderson explained that no detective was on staff; Cunard hired Pinkertons and sometimes made arrangements with travelling Scotland Yard or New York Police Department men. On this trip, however, it was a Pink.
“You’ve already met her,” Anderson said, eyes atwinkle.
And I didn’t need the deductive powers of Philomina Vance to figure out whom he meant.
FIVE
Within five minutes, Miss Vance had arrived, still fetchingly hatless and attired in tan cotton pongee. Her first request was to gain access to the pantry, behind the closed door of which the three stowaways were at the moment stowed.
“Did you search the pantry,” she asked Anderson rather sternly, “before confining them?”
“No,” he said, taken aback by the query. “Should I have?”
“There is no telling,” she said, her manner as coolly professional as a doctor examining a patient whose symptoms were troubling, “how long this trio had been left to their own devices in there.”
