The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,25
was removing their empty plates.
Charteris touched a linen napkin to his lips. “Then let’s seek some victims.”
The deep blue eyes twinkled, the smile lines around them crinkled. “Why, are you good at it?”
Tossing his napkin on the table before him, he said, “Among the ways I took money from people, prior to bilking the public for my published lies, was playing bridge. I was, for a time, a professional at a London club.”
Her eyes flared with interest. “You were a gambler?”
“Gambling as a pure sport doesn’t appeal to me. The only games worth playing are those matching your wits against another’s. Like in a good game of poker, backgammon, or even gin rummy.”
“Or bridge.”
“Bridge best of all.”
“You fascinate me, Leslie.”
“Well, hell—I’m trying to.”
Elbows propped on the table, she gazed with quiet amusement at him over clasped hands. “What were some of your other jobs?”
He shrugged, sipped his coffee. “I prospected for gold and fished for pearls, in Malaysia. Worked in a tin mine and on a rubber plantation. Seaman on a freighter. This is all required training for writers, you know.”
“How exotic. How romantic.” She only seemed to be half kidding.
“Oh, terribly exotic, very romantic, all of my jobs—like driving a bus, for instance. Or working as a bartender. I even blew up balloons for a game booth in a traveling fair—but if this balloon springs a leak, don’t expect me to repair it.”
“Why? Don’t you think you have enough hot air?”
He laughed at that. “What a relief!”
“What is?”
“That you have a sense of humor. So many Germans don’t, these days, it would seem.”
“That is all too true, Leslie.”
He reached across the table and took her hand, gently. “I don’t mean to condescend. I’m rather fond of Germany, or at least I have fond memories of it.”
“You spent time in my country?”
“Oh yes. Back in, when was it? Thirty-one, I went open-air hiking all over the fatherland.”
She nodded. “We are big on rucksacking through the countryside, on foot, or bicycle.”
“I remember singing along the roadsides and in country inns with German boys and girls.”
“More often girls, I would guess.”
“Boys or girls, they were so much more charming than their hot-rodding and jitterbugging American counterparts. I have to admit, my dear, that I came away thinking there was a new spirit at large among the youth of your country.”
“You were right—unfortunately.”
“Well, back in thirty-one, ol’ Schickelgruber was just a housepainter turned beerhall politician. I think, without him, that youthful spirit I saw might have developed into something very fine indeed…. But now I’ve gone and done it.”
“What?”
“Dragged politics back in.”
“Are you political, Leslie?”
“Heavens no! The idea of accepting any prefabricated platform is to me the antithesis of sound thinking.”
They strolled to the reading and writing room on the starboard side (passing the window where Charteris had found the necktie fragment). With its comfy chairs at tiny tables and wall-attached desk trays, this cozy nook, just beyond the lounge, was a retreat for letter writing or curling up with a book or magazine. The linen wall panels were a soothing gray decorated with pastel paintings delineating the development of the worldwide postal service, which struck Charteris as perhaps the dullest subject ever chosen for artistic interpretation.
A white-jacketed steward was on hand to unlock the bookcase and provide periodicals and novels, at no cost, or to sell Hindenburg stationery and stamps (letters could be posted to the ship’s mailroom by a pneumatic tube); also free was the loan of chess sets, Chinese checkers, and playing cards.
Charteris was gathering two decks of the latter when he noticed Leonhard Adelt at one of the wall desks, typing; Adelt’s wife, Gertrude, was at one of the round little tables, thumbing through an issue of the American fashion magazine Vogue.
“That looks too much like work,” Charteris said to Leonhard, when the handsome journalist paused to change sheets of typing paper.
“Good morning, Leslie,” Adelt said cheerily, looking up from his typewriter. He was wearing glasses, and the same dark suit as last night at dinner.
“I don’t type, myself, of course—strictly a dictation man.”
“Really, Leslie? How long does it take you to do a book?”
“Two years.”
“So much dictation!”
“Oh, no—I think about it for two years. The dictation takes two days.”
Adelt rolled his eyes and laughed, then gestured toward the typewriter. “Yes, well, I’m just earning my keep. Frankly, Ernst booked us free passage in return for my writing a magazine article about the joys of zeppelin travel.”
Hilda had joined Gertrude at her table and the two were chatting over