The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,49

of wealth, and even John Astor and his child bride would eventually be accepted by the nobs.

“Have you talked to Crafton since, Ben? Seen him around the ship?”

“No.” He exhaled more smoke into the night. “Not that I was looking for him. There was a time…”

“Yes?”

“A time I might have shot him.”

“Really?”

A faint smile touched the sensual lips. “Happiest time, best days of my life.”

“When was that?”

“Leadville, Colorado,” he said fondly. “Ten acres of land, three shafts and one hundred men… Sitting with a revolver strapped to my belt, by the shack near number-three mine. Keeping track of income and expenses, making out the payroll myself. Going down to Tiger Alley in the Row, dancing with the fancy girls for fifty cents a dance, three-card monte with the mule skinners and miners at Crazy Jim’s… corn whiskey at the Comique Saloon—twenty cents a glass. You know, I’ve made love to some of the most beautiful women in Manhattan, the loveliest ladies in Europe… and I’d give it all up for one night with any one of those saucy belles at Peppersauce Bottoms.”

Then Guggenheim sighed, pitched his cigar over the side, and said, “Shall we go back down to civilization, Jack?”

“If we must,” Futrelle said, tossing his spent Fatima overboard.

When they returned to the concert (the little orchestra was playing the whimsical idyll “Glow-Worm” from Lysistrata) they found May sitting with Madame Aubert; so was Maggie Brown, in the shade of a wide-brimmed hat covered with pleated pink silk, her bosomy body bedecked in a pink silk gown with a silk posy at the white lace bodice.

Guggenheim introduced Futrelle to Madame Aubert and vice versa. In a French accent as thick as hollandaise, the blonde goddess said, “You have a charming wife, monsieur.”

“Sit down, you two,” Maggie said. “You’re blocking the show for the suckers in the cheap seats.”

Guggenheim laughed, following her command. “You haven’t changed a bit since Leadville.”

“You have, Goog,” Maggie said. “I remember when your hair was brown and your belly flat as a washboard… but to tell more would be indiscreet.”

Futrelle borrowed a chair from a nearby abandoned table, and joined the little group. He whispered to Guggenheim, “This is civilization?” and the millionaire chuckled.

“Get a load of us now, Goog,” Maggie said. “You look like a waiter at a fancy restaurant that wouldn’t seat either one of us, and me, I’m wrapped up in the drapes and pretendin’ to be a lady. Once upon a time you were a young buck who come west, leavin’ Wall Street behind…” She spoke to Madame Aubert, May and Futrelle. “Too depressin’, he told me, too gloomy…”

“And you were a feisty little red-haired blue-eyed number looking for a man with a gold mine,” Guggenheim said.

“An uppity Jew and a hardscrabble Irish Catholic,” she said, shaking her head. “How do you think we made out?”

She was smiling, but Futrelle had a hunch she missed Leadville at least as much as “Goog” did.

“You did fine, Maggie,” Guggenheim said. “I haven’t made my mind up about myself, just yet.”

Madame Aubert didn’t seem to take offense at Maggie’s vulgar gregariousness, or begrudge the warmth between Guggenheim and the gaudy Denver matron; but Futrelle, studying Maggie’s pleasant, slightly irregular features, could suddenly see her as she must have been, age nineteen, busty, blue-eyed, red-haired, in mining camp days. Years and pounds melted away, and there she was, in Futrelle’s writer’s imagination, a beautiful doll.

Which was the song Wallace Hartley’s band began to play.

“That’s my request!” Maggie squealed with delight. “I sent that up there on a napkin!”

Up front, tables were being moved aside to make room for dancing. The room was starting to clear out, leaving only the younger and/or more daring passengers.

Maggie clutched the millionaire’s hand, like she was falling off a cliff, reaching for a branch. “Hey, cowboy—how’s about dancin’ with an old Rocky Mountain belle?”

He glanced at his blonde companion, who granted permission with a regal nod and smile, and Guggenheim walked Maggie Brown up to the impromptu dance floor.

As they cut a rug together, fairly stylish at that, Madame Aubert said, “You don’t think it’s possible? Could Ben and that woman, ever have… ?”

“No,” Futrelle said flatly.

But in their stateroom, Futrelle said to May, “Oh, they were an item all right.”

“Maggie Brown and Ben Guggenheim,” she said, shaking her head, pleasantly amazed. “Who’d have thought it?”

“Well, I don’t think Madame Aubert has much to worry about her meal ticket, tonight. That was too many years, and too many pounds ago.”

May was