my papers for passport examination.”
“If I haven’t stopped by for you within an hour, my dear, I’ll meet you as soon as I can here at the promenade.”
“Fine.”
He took a moment to watch her walk away—that was always worth finding time to do—and then he fell in with Kubis, who ushered Charteris down to B deck, forward through the keel corridor, back to Lehmann’s cabin.
Erdmann, Pruss, and Lehmann were all waiting; and no one was seated—they were standing in the relatively small space like men at a graveside.
“What the hell is it?” Charteris asked.
“Our inquiry into your midnight caller,” Erdmann said, “has turned something up—something very disturbing.”
Lehmann looked gray and stricken.
“You found him?” Charteris asked, brightening. “The man with my bite marks on his leg?”
“All of the crewmen have been checked,” Erdmann said, “and none have such a wound.”
Frowning, Charteris demanded, “What in God’s name is it, then?”
“One of our crew members is missing,” Pruss said.
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,”