Free The Titanic Murders by Max Allan Collins

a few minutes.”
    “Now, Jack, don’t you strike that blackguard,” she said, her expression stern.
    Then just as the lift steward was closing the cage door, she added, “Unless he deserves it.”
    Patting the fanny of the cherub perched at the pedestal at the foot of the middle handrail, Futrelle jogged up the wide marble stairway. He paused on the landing to admire the intricate wood sculpture of the central panel bearing a round Roman-numeral clock, on either side of which leaned a nymph—classical figures carved there by an artisan of unimaginable skill: Honor and Glory crowning Time.
    Not the most fitting sentiment to carry into a meeting with John Bertram Crafton, he would guess; the stairs forked right and left, and he went right, because Crafton was standing up there, leaning against the railing.
    “How good of you to meet with me,” Crafton said as Futrelle joined him on the balcony. A pair of overstuffed chairs and a small table waited by a window that would have looked out onto the boat deck had its glass not been cathedral gray. Swinging his gold-tipped walking stick, Crafton strode there and Futrelle followed, their heels echoing off the fancy cream-colored tile.
    “I wanted to find out what makes you so popular,” Futrelle said, settling into his chair.
    Crafton’s smiled lifted a corner of his waxy mustache. “Your sarcasm is not lost on me, sir.”
    “Why should it be? It’s about as subtle as your approach.”
    Crafton shrugged, began removing his gray gloves, finger at a time; he had set his fedora upside down on the table and filled it with the gloves. “I understand that the service I provide is an… unsavory one… destined to make me less than anyone’s favorite among their acquaintances.”
    “Well, don’t be proud of it.”
    His smile lifted both sides of the mustache. “Why not? I have a job to do, a service to perform shall we say, and I do it well. The patient never likes hearing bad news from the physician… but without knowledge, what are we?”
    “Ignorant.”
    “Precisely. A doctor properly diagnoses a patient, and a favorable prognosis is then possible— treatment of the problem…. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
    “Why do I think it unlikely you’re a doctor, Mr. Crafton? Unless you perform certain back-alley operations that polite society frowns upon while still finding necessary.”
    One eyebrow arched. “You mean to insult me—though why you should feel any enmity toward me is a mystery…”
    “That’s my line of work—mysteries.”
    “… I admit there’s some truth in what you say. Without the abortionist—let us not mince words, sir, you and I—how many lives, prominent young lives, might be ruined?”
    “Well,” Futrelle said, patting his stomach, “I may look like I’m in need of an abortion, but I assure you I don’t. I’m merely well fed.”
    Crafton chuckled. “You are a successful man—a noted author….”
    “That’s perhaps too generous, sir. I’m a newspaperman who writes popular fiction. Fortunately for me, there’s an audience for my foolish tales.”
    “And we both want that audience to remain steadfastly in your camp, don’t you agree?”
    “It’s blackmail, isn’t it?”
    The dark eyes flared; the ratlike nostrils, too. “What? Sir—please, I beg you not make rash accusa—”
    “Shut up. It’s a dangerous game, Mr. Crafton, in company like this. There are powerful men, on this boat—the likes of Major Butt can snap his fingers and you would be nothing more than just an oily little memory… a memory no one will care to cling to, either.”
    The ferrety face seemed to lengthen into a sinister blankness. “You leave me no choice, but to be blunt.”
    Futrelle leaned back with a grin, arms casually folded. “What the hell do you think you have on me? I love my wife dearly and would sooner cut off my manhood than philander. My business dealings are aboveboard, and all of my children legitimate.”
    Crafton’s mustache