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

overhead that you are a famous author.”
    “So famous you’ve never heard of me.”
    “Others obviously have. But I am afraid I do not read mysteries.”
    He slipped an arm behind her along the top of the two-seater. “Since I’ve already stolen a kiss, I feel rather awkward asking, but… who are you, Hilda Friederich? Germany’s biggest movie star, perhaps, or are you her most lovely Mata Hari?”
    “Nothing so romantic. I am a secretary, a private secretary, to a vice president at Bundesbank in Frankfurt.”
    “Ah—and you’ve sampled some of the goods, and have a bag of hot cash back in cold storage, and you’re heading to America for a new life.”
    “Nothing so daring. I have a sister in New Jersey—Trenton. She married an American businessman last year, and has just had a baby. I am using my vacation to visit and help out for a few weeks.”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know—that sounds romantic and daring to me. Are you political at all, Hilda?”
    The dark blue eyes flared, eyelashes flying up like a window shade. “Heavens no.”
    “You have no opinion on the current upheaval in your country.”
    “What good would it do me if I did?”
    “A very practical attitude.”
    Passengers had begun to line up at the buffet; it was rather crowded.
    “Do you mind if we just sit here awhile, my dear?” he asked her. “And let that queue thin out a bit?”
    “I don’t mind in the least. The company is pleasant and you are keeping your hands more or less to yourself.”
    “I’m not much for buffets. They make me feel rather like a barnyard animal squeezing in at the trough.” He frowned, sensing something. “I say—have we stopped?”
    “I don’t know.” Hilda narrowed her eyes, cocked her head. “It is so hard to tell on this ship. But it does seem as though we are floating….”
    “We have stopped. I don’t hear the engines.”
    Again the advertising man, Ed Douglas, flagged down a steward, demanding to know the reason for the delay. Thesteward—a different one, but equally young and polite—explained that the ship was parachuting a mail sack down.
    “Good Lord, man,” Douglas said, a hefty drink in one hand, “we just came aboard! Who the hell’s had time to write a goddamn letter!”
    The steward merely apologized and the irritable Douglas— This man needs a cigarette! Charteris thought—rejoined his business-magnate friends Morris and Dolan, already seated in the dining room.
    “Look!” Hilda said, pointing.
    A spotlight from the city a thousand feet below had picked up on the parachute-adorned mail sack, floating its lazy way to the ground. It was easy to make out people in the streets gazing up at the drifting mailbag, and at the ship, waving and yelling. The sound of the latter was faint, like a distant radio station fighting to come in.
    “What Mr. Douglas doesn’t realize,” Charteris told her, “is how profitable it is for the Zeppelin Company to make that little mail run.”
    “How so?”
    “Stamp collectors pay pretty prices for cards and envelopes with Hindenburg postmarks. Remember when the Graf Zeppelin went to the Arctic for scientific exploration? Stamp collectors underwrote the expedition.”
    “How terribly well informed you are.”
    He slipped his arm down from the shelf of the seat behind her until his hand was cupping her shoulder. “I’m merely desperate to impress you. We have such a short time for our shipboard romance. We simply must get started.”
    The red-lipsticked mouth pursed into its kiss of a smile. “Do you have any shame at all, Mr. Charteris?”
    “Oh, yes—but it’s safely stowed away for the duration of the voyage.”
    Soon Charteris, with Hilda on his arm, strolled into the long, narrow dining-room area, the buffet table set up just inside and along the promenade railing. The congenial atmosphere was highlighted by colorful images painted directly onto the beige linen wall panels—picturesque views of scenes as seen from a zeppelin