The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,68
behind a stack of tables and chairs, unconscious. In the corner, where the bulkhead met the slanting windows, Herman Doehner, father of the two boys, was similarly unconscious, head bloody from banging it on metal railings as he tumbled down the treacherous slide the deck had become; but his wife was awake and the two boys—very wide-eyed but not crying—were fussing over the papa.
And Moritz Feibusch lay unconscious, dying, his head cracked open against a metal railing, with forty-three unaddressed, unsigned postcards in his pocket, the rest still in the mailroom, waiting to be posted, waiting to burn.
The officers in the control gondola, in their forward position, were perhaps the last on the ship to know of the tragedy they were piloting.
Ernst Lehmann, observing in the gondola, had felt an odd tremor, rather like an ocean wave lapping onto shore.
“Is a rope broken?” he asked Captain Pruss.
“No,” Pruss said, unconcerned.
“I felt a heavy push, Captain….”
That was when someone on the ground yelled, “Run for your lives!”
And the rudder officer began to moan, “Oh, no, oh, no!”
Somewhere a fire bell was ringing, and a red glow was spreading on the ground, like a rosy rash.
The watch officer said, like a man sleepwalking, “I should get the logbook.”
Lehmann barked his first official order of the voyage: “Drop the water ballast!”
The second explosion came just then.
That one they heard, all of them, and it shook them, physically, and otherwise—but they could see or hear no flames, could smell no smoke, not yet. The captains of the Hindenburg stood helpless, impotent, the red reflection of unseen flames like a blush of embarrassment on their dazed faces.
On the portside deck, by the dining room, a chaos similar to that on the starboard had ensued. Fewer passengers on this side, though all of the stewards were over here, in part for the sake of distributing weight, but also for Kubis’s staff to put away dishes and such, including placing leftover sandwiches in the pantry dumbwaiter.
Margaret Mather had been leaning out an open window, chatting with one of the college boys, who was taking photographs with a Kodak, when mysterious sounds from the engines caused her to grasp his arm and look at him for reassurance.
The second explosion—the first had barely been noticed—rocked the ship and sent many of them, passengers and stewards alike, to their knees.
Chief Steward Kubis picked himself up, saying, “Everything will be all right!”
That was when the ship lurched, sitting back on its stern, and began crumpling into itself, and the sudden tilt took the floor out from under them, stewards and passengers toppling and tumbling, furniture cascading after them.
Lightweight Margaret Mather—wrapped up in a navy-and-white herringbone coat due to the cool rainy weather—was hurled twenty feet into the end bulkhead and soon was pinned against the projection of a window bench by a crush of German passengers. She thought she was suffocating, thought she might die from the weight pressing on her, but the passengers clambered to their feet and grabbed onto railings and window ledges, hanging there as the floor canted under them.
Relief flowed through her, and then the fire blew in.
Long tongues of flame, she thought, strangely detached and typically poetic, bright red and so very beautiful.
Though it was mere seconds, the trip up the back-tilted stairs seemed to take forever, and strained the formidable muscles of the well-toned author’s arms. Charteris had never been more glad that he had never allowed his sedentary calling to keep him from physical activity.
As he reached the top of the stairs, the floor under him seemed to right itself somewhat—the stern disintegrating in flame had allowed the bow to drop. Snatching up a blanket that had draped itself over the stair railing, he moved into the starboard promenade deck, where he came upon a picture of chaos, people and furniture scattered like so much discarded refuse. Some of the people were unconscious, perhaps even dead; others had made their way over and around the furniture and the fallen to get to the windows.
Leonhard and Gertrude were poised to jump, pausing to look back urgently at Hilda, who stood fear-frozen, hands covering her face. As Charteris neared them, fire swept into the room, right past them, not touching them, as if seeking the helpless unconscious and dying in the lounge. Flames jumped and danced and crackled, and the Adelts just jumped. Charteris swept Hilda up in the blanket, bundled her in his arms like a baby; she put up no resistance but her eyes