The Lusitania Murders

“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 Van Dine, I am trusting your discretion-what I am about to reveal is not for publication, you understand.”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?”

“He asks that I not forget him, down here in the brig. . should a U-boat try to sink us.”

Her frown tightened. “He could mean, if a bomb goes off.”

“Yes, he could. . Captain Anderson, I would suggest you redouble your efforts to search the ship for such a device.”

Glumly, Anderson nodded. “That’s good advice. . and we’ll take it. But a vessel this size has many a nook and many a cranny.”

Miss Vance was shaking her head. “He must be bluffing,” she said. “He must be. . ”

“I’m sure he is,” I said.

Neither of us, however, seemed terribly swayed by our own argument.

By mid-morning, the fog had burned off and the weather turned clear and warm, revealing a flat lake of a sea, disturbed only by the lazy roll of a ground swell from where the shore should be. Land took its time revealing itself, the direction of the coastline offering nothing but a gathering flock of filthy gray seagulls flapping alongship the ship, heads turning greedily from side to side.

Then just before noon, the murky shadow of land teasingly materialized off the port beam. From the rail where the lovely Pinkerton agent shared her binoculars with me, we watched it grow, becoming more distinct, revealing itself as a rocky bluff. Around one-thirty, the coast took on a more definite configuration-trees, rooftops, church steeples, sweeping by. Miss Vance and I exchanged relieved expressions that the crossing had been safely made. What if a saboteur’s bomb were to explode? The shore was so near.

Oddly, the flat, blue-green waters seemed to belong to the Lucy alone-no other vessels, commercial ones or warships either, presented themselves. Where was the Irish Coast Patrol, for one? Hadn’t we been promised protection from the British Admiralty?

We returned to the Verandah Cafe for a rather late and light luncheon-both Miss Vance and I had decided the dining saloon with its endless food and mawkish orchestra could wait till this evening-and, by two o’clock, had finished our little crustless sandwiches and a dessert of assorted petits fours.