The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,11

storming out of the car, leaving a smoldering stogie and a chagrined Crafton behind.

“Fella seems to make friends everywhere he goes,” Futrelle said to Henry.

“Maybe I should follow him around with a motion-picture camera,” the producer said.

Soon they were back in the compartment with their wives. The train had begun its long downhill ride to Eastleigh, doing better than sixty miles per hour, shooting like a bullet through the hill tunnels of Hampshire Downs, past Winchester, into Southampton, sailing like a ship through Terminus Station and across Canute Road.

Finally, just before 11:30 A.M., the boat train moved down the side of Central Road and took a slow turn to the right onto the track flanking the platform built on the White Star Line’s ocean dock. Nearby loomed the massive pair of long, narrow sheds, their corrugated steel painted green, where Second- and Third-Class passengers and cargo were processed.

But the boat train delivered its First-Class passengers dockside; they stepped out into the crisp sea air, where the port side of the giant ship towered before them, filling their sight like a vast cliff of steel.

May squeezed her husband’s hand, craning her neck back, still not able to see the sky: just the freshly painted black hull and, straining, the gold-trimmed white band above. To left and right, the Titanic filled their eyes. Around them fellow passengers were swarming about the pier, parents struggling to keep track of children, porters and deckhands lugging luggage. But May seemed oblivious to this chaos, her attention seized by the Promethean vessel that was making scurrying ants of them all.

“Jack—it’s endless….”

“Four blocks wide, dear. Eleven stories tall—not counting the four funnels. The literature says you could drive twin locomotives through one of those glorified smokestacks… but who’d want to?”

“I can’t even see the funnels….”

“Step back, just a little.”

“There! There they are—they’re golden, Jack! Oh, and there’s the sky, at last.”

Futrelle, overwhelmed by its looming enormity, was nonetheless impressed by the vessel’s racing-craft-like sleekness.

“I think that’s the way!” Henry Harris, a giddy René on his arm, was pointing to the gentle slope of a gangway that led to the main entrance on B deck. They trundled that direction.

“Shall we go aboard, dear?” May asked.

“Why not?” Futrelle responded.

TWO

A CLOSE CALL

INTO THE ENTRYWAY OF B deck, with its gleaming white walls and gleaming white linoleum, trooped the elegant army of First-Class passengers. They were met by a gaggle of ship’s staff—the chief steward and his assorted minions, and the purser’s clerk, who saw to it that tickets were quickly processed, names jotted in a ledger book, keys dispensed, directions to staterooms given, with smiles and courtesy and efficiency that boded well for a pleasant voyage to come.

In the entrance hall beyond, the opulence of the ship first made itself known to the Americans: gold-plated crystal teardrop light fixtures, polished oak paneling, gilt-framed landscapes in oil, Oriental carpet, horsehair sofas, silk lampshades, caneback chairs with red velvet cushions….

The abundance of it all assaulted their senses, stopping them in their tracks. May gasped, René began to laugh, and both women did pirouettes, looking all about with the wide, innocently greedy eyes of children in a lavishly stocked toy store.

To the right rose a magnificent marble staircase enclosed by a grand framework of wood sculpture, its carved walnut flowers running floor to ceiling, with exquisitely sculpted oak balustrades bearing wrought-iron and gilt-bronze scrollwork.

Henry put his hands on his hips and laughed. “And I thought I was a producer! This makes the Lusitania look like a garbage scow.”

Futrelle was admiring a beautiful bronze cherub perched on a pedestal at the center of the foot of the flight of stairs. “Well, I heard White Star planned to leave speed to Cunard, and concentrate on luxury—apparently it wasn’t just the bunkum.”

Only the relative lowness of the ceilings in this reception area provided a hint that this was anything but the finest land-based hotel. Behind them, the next group of First-Class passengers was traipsing in, to be similarly bowled over by this opulence.

The two couples made their way around and down the staircase to C deck, and were soon padding along a wide, blue-carpeted, brass-railed white corridor on the port side of the ship, where other First-Class passengers were following the path to their staterooms, as well. Up ahead was that family from the boat train, the handsome couple with the lovely little golden-haired girl, shapely blunt-nosed nanny with babe in arms and plump maid. They had paused and the young husband was speaking to someone.

John