The Hindenburg Murders by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

together, as the trip progresses.”
    With another handshake, Charteris said, “I hope so, Captain.”
    Soon Chief Steward Kubis was leading Spah and Charteris down the B-deck keel corridor, unlocking a door that led onto the lower gangway, which the steward illuminated with a flashlight.
    They were traversing nothing more than a blue-painted plank of aluminum. Here within the zeppelin’s dark interior, the thrumming of diesel engines was distinct, a powerful presence.
    “Passengers are never allowed back here unaccompanied,” the steward told them, as his flashlight found the gangway before them. “Afraid there’s not much to see at night, Mr. Charteris.”
    Indeed the bones of the flying whale—struts and arches and wires—could barely be made out in the darkness. There was only a sense of vast black emptiness all around. It took five minutes to reach the stern, where—within a netted-off baggage area—the dog sat in an enclosed wicker basket.
    Spah, speaking baby talk to the police dog, let her out and she nipped playfully at him, barking joyfully. Hugging the dog, Spah almost fell backward, acrobat or not, and Charteris caught him, steadying him on the shelflike floor of the baggage area.
    Swallowing, holding the animal close to him (she was damn near as big as he was), Spah muttered, “What would happen if we fell?”
    The chief steward said, “You would tear through the linen skin, most probably, and hurtle seven hundred feet into the Rhine.”
    They fed and gave water to the dog, and returned her to her wicker basket, then left to rejoin the well-lighted world of the passenger area. It was almost ten o’clock P.M . and humans had to eat, too.

FOUR
    HOW THE HINDENBURG DELIVERED THE MAIL, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SLEPT ALONE

    F ROM THE PORTSIDE PROMENADE, WHICH had slanting windows identical to those on the starboard side, Charteris and Hilda stood looking down at the glitter and glow of Cologne at night. Before long, silhouetted against the manufacturing center’s expansive profusion of lights, the Gothic towers of the city’s famed cathedral revealed themselves, stretching toward the airship like ghostly fingers.
    “It is a lovely sight,” Hilda sighed.
    “Yes it is,” Charteris said, but he was looking at her.
    She wore a white silk shantung tunic dress with black buttons that angled across her full bosom and then marched down the side of her skirt in a straight line. He found her utterly bewitching, her braided blonde hair and deep blue eyes and creamy complexion, and full lips and full figure, rounding as it did, and narrowing, and flowing, at the precisely correct places….
    She caught him staring at her. “Is something wrong?”
    “Nothing is wrong. Not on the earth or in the heavens.”
    “Well, you look very nice, yourself, Leslie—you seem to be the only man who bothered dressing for dinner.”
    He was in his tuxedo, which seemed none the worse for the half day it had spent folded up in his valise. “Less would have been an insult to such charming company.”
    She laughed, a throaty, endearingly unfeminine laugh at that. “What is it the Americans say? Baloney!”
    He laughed, too. “Coincidentally, I think that’s what we’re having for tonight’s late supper.”
    Stewards were setting up a buffet of cold meats and cheeses and salads in the nearby dining room, which—like the lounge on the starboard side—was separated from the observation deck only by an aluminum railing.
    “Shall we sit for a few moments?” Charteris asked, gesturing to the nearby orange-upholstered bench for two, which made a right angle to the row of windows.
    “Why don’t we?” she said, and sat.
    Settling in next to her, Charteris said, “We don’t really know much about each other, do we? Except that we’re both terribly attractive.”
    The teeth in her smile were perfect and white; beneath all her sophistication, she had the beauty and form of a healthy farm girl. “I gather from remarks I have