The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,26
the magazine, admiring some fashions and making fun of others. Adelt’s wife wore a pink high-collared frock with a blue floral pattern, short, puffy sleeves, and heart-shaped buttons; her blonde hair was up, and a pink leghorn-style straw hat perched there. Though Gertrude was slightly older than the braided beauty, and had a certain sad tiredness in her pretty face, she was the only woman on the airship whose comeliness rivaled Hilda’s.
“Little early in the voyage to find much to write about,” Charteris said to the journalist.
Adelt half smiled and replied, in that perfect but heavily accented English of his, “I should probably hire you to ghost this piece—it would seem to require a fiction writer. So far this is the most uneventful journey I ever undertook in an airship.”
“Not counting the presence of our friend Eric Knoecher, of course.”
Adelt smirked humorlessly. “I don’t think Ernst would appreciate my mentioning undercover S.D. spies being aboard. But I must thank you again, for the warning.”
“Think nothing of it.”
“Though, to tell the truth, I haven’t yet had to watch what I say around him. Haven’t even seen the son of a bitch today.”
Charteris shrugged. “He’s sick in our cabin—fighting a cold.”
“Wouldn’t it be sad if he lost.”
“It’s a nasty cold, all right, but I doubt it’ll prove fatal…. Do you and your wife play bridge, by any chance?”
Charteris and Hilda spent a lively morning playing bridge with the Adelts in the lounge, the author and his pretty partner taking two rubbers in a row, including a grand slam, Charteris finessing the queen. Luck had been involved, and the Adelts played well themselves, but Charteris was pleased to be able to demonstrate to Hilda that his claims of bridge proficiency had not been entirely “baloney.”
At eleven, Chief Steward Kubis served bouillon (in the fashion of the best ocean liners), and the couples rose from the lounge’s canvas-and-aluminum chairs to stretch and sip the soup.
“You and the lovely Miss Friederich make a good team,” Adelt said to the author.
They were standing at the promenade windows. Though the sky remained overcast, the ship was no longer traveling through gray clouds.
“We had the right cards,” Charteris said.
“I think she had the right partner.”
“I don’t think you should complain about yours. You’re a very lucky man, Leonhard.”
“Oh, I know. I know.”
They were looking down upon an ocean liner that was dwarfed by, and lost within, the huge shadow of the dirigible, making its distinct black stain on the gray-blue sea.
“I haven’t seen Ernst all morning,” Adelt said, as the foursome reassembled at the table. “Where do you suppose he could be?”
“I wonder,” Gertrude said, shuffling cards. “And I don’t believe Captain Pruss took breakfast in the dining room, either.”
“Perhaps that storm was trickier to manage than we might imagine,” Charteris put in lightly. “I believe it’s my deal….”
Charteris and Hilda took a third rubber, and Gertrude commented that she was glad they weren’t playing for money; then the two couples had lunch in the dining room, a sumptuous feast of Rhine salmon, roast gosling meunière, mixed salad, and applesauce, and pears condé with chocolate sauce.
Fortunately the rescheduled ship’s tour gave them a way to walk off the wonderful but heavy meal. Gathering in the starboard lounge, the Adelts joined Charteris and Hilda, as did Margaret Mather, with Joe Spah tagging along as well. Normally Captain Lehmann conducted the airship tours personally; but it seemed today he was otherwise occupied. The ship’s doctor, Kurt Ruediger, slender, youthful, blond, was standing in for Lehmann, this afternoon.
Charteris had met the young doctor on the maiden voyage, and found him pleasant enough, if somewhat callow. Ruediger—the first doctor ever to regularly serve aboard a commercial aircraft—was just a year out of his internship at Bremen, and had snagged this plum position due to a sailing-club friendship with Lehmann.
Speaking in German, Dr. Ruediger informed the tour group that everyone would have to don special slippers—crepe-soled canvas sneakers with laces whose grommets were of reinforced cloth.
“You will be walking on the metal gangways and moving up and down the aluminum shafts of our ship,” Ruediger said, his voice an uncertain second tenor. “A spark struck by a hobnail or static caused by the friction of steel or wool might have an adverse effect.”
“He means the ship could blow up,” Charteris whispered in English to Hilda, whose big blue eyes grew bigger.
A steward had deposited a large box of the slippers on a table, and Dr. Ruediger said, “Please find something in your size.”
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