Read Online The Lusitania Murders by Max Allan Collins - Free Book Online

surrounded by shelved canned goods and other foodstuffs. They were young men—a skinny tallish brown-haired one, a shorter broad-shouldered very blonde fellow and a rather average one, whose hair shade was somewhere between that of his companions—and two of them froze,chatter ceasing. The shorter one had his back to Anderson, and as he turned, he began, in German, “About time—”
    But Anderson was clearly not who these fellows were expecting.
    And the wide-eyed fellow who had just swivelled indeed held in his hands a camera.
    Before Anderson could pose a question, the man with the camera barrelled at him, thrusting him out of the doorway and against the corridor wall, staggering the staff captain with both surprise and power.
    The brawny blonde fellow, clutching his camera, moved right past me—or tried to: I stuck my foot out, and he tripped, diving gracelessly into the linoleum, his precious cargo flying. I fell upon him, inserting a knee in his back and looping an arm around his neck, incapacitating him.
    From the corner of my eye I witnessed Anderson deliver a fist to the chin of the skinny one, who’d come scrambling out after his compatriot’s break for it, knocking him back into the pantry, presumably into the other fellow (this I adjudged from sounds, as I could not see that action from my vantage point).
    Reinforcements seemed to appear immediately, including the master-at-arms, whose name was Williams, and a steward named Leach—the pantry was his province, and the young man was shocked to find it crawling with German stowaways.
    For that, apparently, was what the trio was—and spies to boot, if the camera meant what it seemed to.
    The master-at-arms took my prisoner off my hands, and hauled him back to the pantry, where soon all three were locked inside, awaiting further decisions.

    The first one came from Anderson, who said to Williams, “Fetch the ship’s detective.”
    Breathing hard, I said, “I wasn’t aware the ship had a detective.”
    Anderson explained that no detective was on staff; Cunard hired Pinkertons and sometimes made arrangements with travelling Scotland Yard or New York Police Department men. On this trip, however, it was a Pink.
    “You’ve already met her,” Anderson said, eyes atwinkle.
    And I didn’t need the deductive powers of Philomina Vance to figure out whom he meant.

FIVE

Tourist Trade
    Within five minutes, Miss Vance had arrived, still fetchingly hatless and attired in tan cotton pongee. Her first request was to gain access to the pantry, behind the closed door of which the three stowaways were at the moment stowed.
    “Did you search the pantry,” she asked Anderson rather sternly, “before confining them?”
    “No,” he said, taken aback by the query. “Should I have?”
    “There is no telling,” she said, her manner as coolly professional as a doctor examining a patient whose symptoms were troubling, “how long this trio had been left to their own devices in there.”
    She meant the pantry.
    “That’s true,” Anderson admitted.
    “They had plenty of time to secrete a weapon or even an explosive device. You may have just thrown Brer Rabbit into the briar patch, Captain.”

    I have to give Anderson credit: Some men wouldn’t have taken such criticism, coming from a woman; but the staff captain was a bigger man than that.
    “You’re correct,” he said, shaking his head. “I was a fool. . . . Williams!”
    The master-at-arms, short but sturdy with dark eyes and dark thick eyebrows, snapped to; he had the confiscated camera in hand. “Yes, sir.”
    “Get your revolver.”
    The dark eyes flared, but the man said, “Yes, sir.”
    “Handcuffs, too.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Miss Vance was nodding approvingly.
    We were clustered in the compact hallway, a group of men providing a court for this commanding woman. In addition to myself and the staff captain (and the now absent Williams), steward Neil Leach—a brown-haired, blue-eyed, pasty-white fellow