Free The Lusitania Murders by Max Allan Collins Page B

was about twice the size of my cabin, and the entry area of the white-walledglorified cubicle included a desk and chair (the confiscated camera was on the desktop), with a wall of bars with a jail door separating the rest off into a cell. Two bunks were on either side, with an exposed toilet and a little sink giving them running water but no privacy, or for that matter dignity—not that they deserved either.
    Still in their stolen stewards’ whites, the three stowaways were not taking advantage of the bunks—two of them milled about, the tall skinny one and the fellow of average build, both tossing the occasional wary glance at their apparent leader, the burly blonde one, who stood staring at us sullenly.
    “This is Mr. Van Dine,” Anderson said to them curtly. “He speaks your damn language, so there will be no excuses now.”
    Anderson told me he would leave me to them—he wanted to see how Miss Vance was coming along with her investigating—and he departed. Williams sat at the desk, swivelled toward the prisoners in their cell, the revolver in his hand—a melodramatic touch, it seemed to me, with our spies under lock and key, but a certain point was made.
    Positioning myself a foot or so from the wall of bars, I spoke to them in German. “Who are you, and what is your purpose?”
    The blonde leader shook his head when the other two seemed eager to reply to the comforting sound of their own language.
    “I don’t mean you any harm,” I said. “I’m not a member of the crew—I am merely a journalist who speaks your mother tongue.”
    The burly blonde perked at this, and said, “We are impoverished tourists.”

    “Tourists?” I asked.
    “Yes—college boys who came to America looking for a good time.”
    They seemed a little old for that and I said so.
    The blonde said, “We were foolish. We spent all our money on girls and whiskey. Now to get back to Europe, we have to sneak aboard. And we were caught.”
    “Wearing stewards uniforms.”
    He shrugged. “We found them and put them on. We hoped to blend in.”
    “Speaking nothing but German?”
    Another shrug. “We are foolish boys out on a lark. We made a mistake. You have heard the expression, ‘reckless youth’?”
    I smiled. “Do you really think this story will hold up under British interrogation?”
    The blonde said nothing, but his two cell mates stared at him with anxiety oozing from their pores.
    “You see, Staff Captain Anderson has to quickly decide,” I said, “whether to bundle you boys back to the U.S.—for the next few minutes that remains an option—or to deliver you into the hands of the British secret service.”
    The blonde shrugged. “You imply we would prefer to return to America. But we boarded to go to Europe. We will explain ourselves when we arrive. We’re not spies.”
    “No, no, you’re college boys . . . and I’m just a journalist who doesn’t even know how Britain executes saboteurs. Do you happen to know—for my story? Is it the rope, or firing squad?”
    The skinny one turned pale; he staggered over and sat on the lower bunk and put his face in his hands.
    “We are foolish college boys who stowed away,” theblonde leader said. “We have nothing else to say.”
    “Fellows,” I said amiably, “I told you I’m a journalist. What you don’t know is that I work for a pro-German publisher. I was sent here to ascertain whether there are guns and munitions aboard this ship.”
    That got the blonde’s attention; the other two, as well, the skinny one lifting his face from his hands.
    “If you have discovered that information,” I said, “I will report it to my editor . . . and if you are frank with me about your identity, I will do my best to convince Captain Anderson that you should be sent back to America.”
    The skinny one was on his feet, moving toward his leader. “Listen to him, Klaus!”
    Klaus, the blonde, shot his skinny comrade a look that froze the man.
    Then the blonde said, “If we