Free Dreams Bigger Than the Night by Paul M. Levitt Page A

his chance. Excusing himself, he returned to his room and took the vial of cyanide and a dental pick. Back in the dining room, the passengers were eating their desserts. He would have to wait.
    Later that evening, before the passengers retired to their rooms, the captain distributed champagne to toast the ship’s safe arrival, albeit under trying circumstances. The orchestra played some mood music, and several people took to the dance floor. As Elizabeth and Elspeth sipped their champagne—Rolf and Avery were teetotalers—Rolf asked Elspeth to dance. The Brundages followed. Rolf deliberately spun Elspeth around several times, until she pleaded dizziness, and he helped her back to the table, where she pushed away her champagne glass. Rolf eyed it hoping that she would take a last sip. When she lowered her head to the table, he spilled the remaining contents of his vial into the glass and urged her to finish it off—for good luck.
    “No, no,” she said, “I couldn’t. My head is spinning.”
    Lest anyone accidentally drink the poisoned champagne, Rolf leaped to his feet and tossed the glass over his shoulder.
    “An old German custom,” he said, apologizing to the waiter who came running to mop up the broken glass and champagne.
    After this public episode, Rolf decided that he would have to act below deck. With Elspeth feeling ill, he accompanied her back to her cabin. The next day, as the liner entered New York Harbor with all the expectant passengers crowding the railing and most of the steamer trunks and baggage neatly arranged for the handlers to move them by hand and by dolly to the dock, a coast guard cutter brought the ship to a halt short of its berth. Several policemen boarded and summoned all the passengers to the ballroom. Here each person was questioned as to the unhappy events that had occurred during the crossing. One person was missing, Elspeth Botinsky. Although her luggage had been brought to the deck, she was nowhere to be seen. The police made careful notes and then allowed the boat to dock and the passengers to proceed to passport control.
    Rolf showed his black-covered diplomatic passport, which allowed him to carry his luggage through customs free of an inspection that might have discovered his pistol and knife and dental picks. He then waited for the Brundages. When they arrived, they asked him if he had seen Elspeth.
    “One minute she was there,” said Elizabeth, “the next, gone.”
    “Strange, very strange,” said Avery, and turned to Rolf. “You saw her to her cabin. Did she say anything? Did you have any inkling of something amiss?”
    Rolf put his palms up gesturing innocence and said, “I saw nothing.”
    A redcap carried their luggage to the curb. The cabstand was crowded. As Rolf and the Brundages waited, Francesca Bronzina also waited, out of sight. When the next vacant cab pulled up, Rolf embraced Elizabeth and then Avery, promising to ring them at their hotel. If he was needed, or if they heard from Elspeth, he could always be reached through the German consul in New York. The Brundages bundled into the backseat of the taxi, which immediately turned into the flow of traffic. Rolf waved. The Brundages never saw him again.
    On leaving the pier and reaching the street, Rolf waited. Moments later, Axel Kuppler drove up, identified himself, introduced Rolf to the beautiful woman in the passenger seat, Arietta Ewerhardt, and opened the back door of the sedan for Rolf, who was delighted to learn that Axel had saved him the trouble of locating Fräulein Ewerhardt.
    Once Rolf had left, Signorina Bronzina stepped out of the shadows, waited her turn for a cab, and handed the driver a piece of paper with an address in West Orange, New Jersey: the home of Abner Longie Zwillman.

    After all the passengers had disembarked, an unclaimed steamer trunk remained on the dock. When the customs officials forced the lock, Elspeth Botinsky tumbled out. Her killer had left behind the dental pick used to