example, at that…. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Certainly, Lester. Pleasure meeting you, nice chatting with you.”
“Likewise, Moritz. Can I post those for you?”
“Please!” Feibusch handed a batch of cards to Charteris, who dropped them down the pneumatic tube to the ship’s post office, while the seller of fancy goods returned his full attention to his stamping and signing.
TEN
HOW THE HINDENBURG SHADOWED THE TITANIC, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS MET A FAN
SUMMONED BY THE SHIP’S GONG, Charteris and Hilda had a delicious if uneventful lunch with the Adelts. Several casual mentions of his bedridden cabin mate created no reaction whatever from either husband or wife, though Gertrude made an interesting observation about the undercover Luftwaffe colonel.
“That man whose wife came aboard to see him off,” she said, “Colonel Erdmann… what do you suppose he’s a colonel of?”
“Beats me,” Charteris said.
“Military of some kind,” her husband said dismissively, dipping a spoon into his soup.
“He has such a sad face.” Gertrude’s pretty face was sad, itself. “So often he just sits near one of the observation windows, staring out at nothing with such a… profound look of sadness. Have you noticed, Leslie?”
“No,” he lied.
“It all but makes me cry.”
Her husband patted Gertrude’s hand. “You’re just tired. There’s nothing like boredom to wear a person out.”
Gertrude could only agree, and, after dessert, the man and wife disappeared for a postluncheon nap—such snoozes having become de rigueur on this voyage, which—though so much quicker than travel by steamer—seemed every bit as leisurely.
“You wouldn’t like to go to your cabin for a nap, dear, would you?” Charteris asked Hilda, as they strolled over toward the starboard lounge.
She almost smiled, her eyes wide and amused. “Alone or together?”
“I was thinking, together.” He yawned, not very convincingly.
“Do you think the Adelts are… napping?”
“If I had a wife that beautiful, I wouldn’t be.”
She nudged him with an elbow, but the faint amusement on her lips had fully blossomed into that wonderful kiss of a smile.
At the starboard promenade, he and Hilda saw more evidence of passengers lost in ocean-liner mode—an old couple sat in the lounge, blankets covering their legs, staring out at the grayness, as if on a steamer deck. (It was chilly today, and the stewards were rushing around closing the fresh-air vents.) Those two little boys were on the floor of the lounge, playing dominoes while at the adjacent table their mother wrote a letter and their father read a book—reading and letter writing not being restricted to the library. Around the lounge, and on the upholstered benches by the windows, other passengers were similarly occupied, jotting messages to friends or engrossed in some novel, unfortunately none of them having the courtesy of being wrapped up in anything of Charteris’s.
Margaret Mather, in a powder-blue frock with lacy collar and cuffs, appropriate for a woman perhaps half her age, sat alone on one of the padded benches, looking rather expectantly out the slanting windows. In her lap, a hand clutching it, was a spiral pad.
“Hello, Miss Mather,” he said. “May we join you?”
The sparrowlike spinster beamed at him, smiled rather coolly at Hilda, and said, “Oh most certainly,” patting the bench next to her, her eyes locked on his.
The three of them squeezed onto the banquette.
“Do you know something we don’t know?” Charteris asked Miss Mather, as she continued to watch the gray overcast sky, an endless blue-gray sea below, about as boring a tonal study as he could imagine.
“Chief Steward Kubis came by a few moments ago,” Miss Mather said brightly, “and said we’d be coming to Newfoundland, shortly.”
Hilda rose and leaned against the shelflike sill. “I do not see land yet, Miss Mather.”
“Patience, dear.” Miss Mather smiled over at the author, perhaps pleased that he had not moved away, even though now there was more room on the bench. She almost whispered, “Your friend must not be an experienced traveler.”
“How often do you get to America, Miss Mather?”
“I try to get home at least once a year, to visit my brother—he teaches art and architecture at Princeton University. Or did I mention that already?”
“Is your brother as political as many professors are, these days?”
“I suppose so.” Again, she spoke sotto voce: “He’s certainly unhappy with the Germans for stifling the arts.”
“Well, it’s mostly the Jewish artists they’re stifling.”
“I hope that’s not all right with you, Mr. Charteris!”
He gave her an easy smile. “No. No, it isn’t. But what can one do?”
“One must try. What would you say if… I shouldn’t say.”
But she wanted him to ask, so he