The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,7
her an arm, tipping the umbrella’s shelter above her.
She gazed at him with an amusement that wasn’t as detached as it pretended to be. Her full, lushly red-lipsticked lips pursed in a smile that was tantalizingly near a kiss.
But, as she’d said nothing, he repeated his question in German.
“We have not met,” she said, in German-accented English.
“Well, then by all means we should. Allow me to introduce myself—I’m the man who’s going to keep your lovely braids from getting damp. And you are?”
Now she laughed, lightly, and it was fluid, musical. “I am the woman who is going to allow you to do so.”
They began to walk across the final expanse of hangar toward the drizzle and the airship.
“I thought you already had a female companion,” she said, nodding toward Miss Mather, who was on the arm of a young steward.
“I think I’m a little old for her. By the way, my name is Leslie—Leslie Charteris.”
“Hilda—Hilda Friederich. May I ask a favor, Leslie?”
“I hope you will.”
“Could we go for a quick stroll on the airfield? I would like a better look at this balloon that promises to swallow us up.”
“Certainly,” he said, already liking this woman, who seemed as sharp as she was alluring. “After all, I’m sure Jonah would have appreciated a closer look at the whale.”
Rain beating an uneven tempo on the umbrella, they walked out onto the runway, the plump silver airship looming; they couldn’t seem to get far enough away from it to get a decent look at the beast. Finally they stopped and he tilted back the umbrella and they both gaped, unable even from this distance to take it all in without moving their heads side to side, a motion that seemed to express their disbelief. Monocle flecked with droplets, Charteris squinted behind the glass and opened his other eye wide as he surveyed the airship he and Hilda would soon be flying.
The overall impression was of a stupendous streamlined seamed silver specter; but here and there were markings and mechanical manifestations that indicated this was indeed, for all its size, a man-made object. Perhaps a quarter of the way back from the nipplelike mooring cone, lower-case Old English lettering spelled out in red the designation: HINDENBURG. Almost directly below, underneath the belly of the flying whale, extended the boothlike control gondola, seeming ridiculously small. Moving aft, fairly low, lay a long narrow bank of observation windows; farther aft, toward the final third of the ship, perched the propellers of an engine car, like a bug hopping a ride. Another such bug was farther aft still, but between it and its prop-driven predecessor, higher up, were bold block numerals: D-LZ129. Toward the tail, a rocketlike fin separated the rudder-bearing fins above and below—both of which wore the Nazi hakenkreuz—the swastika.
“It is impressive,” Hilda said.
“Size isn’t everything,” Charteris pointed out, and—as she seemed to ponder this concept—walked her toward the ship, skirting puddles.
Despite the drizzle, the Hindenburg was not without spectators to see her off, prominent among them a detachment of Hitler youth in their Nazi uniforms, and a brass band in blue-and-yellow finery, their instruments festooned with matching streamers. Right now they were playing a German folk song, “Muss I denn?”—which, coincidentally, that drunk had already executed (in several senses of the term) on the bus.
A pair of puny-looking aluminum retractable stairways served as the gangway of the ship; between the two sets of hinged stairs, stewards collected umbrellas—the underbelly of the ship providing a roof away from the rain—as the passengers climbed up the flimsy steps into the Hindenburg.
Immediately, ooohs and aaahs of pleasant surprise drifted up the stairwell, as only passengers who (like Charteris) had flown this very ship before could have anticipated such splendid surroundings. Unlike the zeppelins that preceded her, the Hindenburg boasted two decks of luxury-liner lavish passenger accommodations. (Even the grand Graf Zeppelin had housed its passengers in a cramped gondola slung under the ship.)
At the first landing, Hilda paused—taking in the sleek modernity of the surroundings, the soothing pale peach-linen walls, the rich rust-color carpeting, the gleaming chrome railings—until Charteris guided her toward the stairs that led on up.
As they climbed, Hilda glancing back at him, Charteris said, “The bar and smoking room are that level—B deck. We’re headed up to A deck, where the cabins and dining room are, and the observation area, so we can watch the world shrink as we lift off.”
Hilda smiled and nodded at this news. She was still snugged into her