Rich carpets and runners in the corridors of passenger quarters gave way to plebeian rubber tiling. Wide staircases narrowed into steel-shrouded companionways. He dodged crew when he saw them in time, and directed at those he could not avoid a haughty stare: Make way for Professor Franz Bismark Beiderbecke in his old-fashioned frock coat and silver-headed walking stick.
Suddenly he had a strange feeling that someone was watching him. His first terrible thought was that the Akrobat—as he had dubbed the long-armed, agile thief who had tried twice to steal his Sprechendlichtspieltheatermachine — was stalking him again.
Impossible. Beiderbecke had seen with his own eyes the mysterious Akrobatjump off the Mauretaniainto the sea. Nonetheless, he stopped in his tracks and cast a fearful glance up the stairs. No one. He craned his neck to peer down another flight. No one. He poked his head into a corridor, saw no one, and continued down into a crew section, past rudimentary sleeping quarters and lavatories, storage rooms, and pantries. The air grew oppressive.
The engines made their presence felt, resonating in the steel around him, ever more strongly the deeper he descended, a muted roar that grew louder and louder. Beiderbecke stopped again and looked back, cocking his ears for footfalls. Silliness! What could he hear over the thunder of the furnaces and the whine of the turbines? Besides, despite Isaac Bell’s efforts to frighten him into revealing his secret, the Akrobatno longer existed.
Real as it was, the sense of being watched was an irrational feeling, he told himself. A shadow flew near. Beiderbecke shrank into a shallow alcove formed by massive steel ribs. He pressed against the steel, which vibrated and felt hot, as if the fires that powered the behemoth ship were burning right behind him. The shadow, cast by electric bulbs caged in the low ceiling, crept along the corridor toward where he cowered. A crewman hurried by, cap and face and clothing black with coal dust.
Beiderbecke waited until he had gone, then darted along the corridor and down a flight of steps to the orlop deck, where he found himself yards from the stern of the ship in an area shared with sleeping barracks for three dozen cooks and stewards. The noise was deafening. Picturing the builders’ drawings, he realized that he was standing below the waterline. Just outside the hull’s shell plating, the propellers pounded a relentless din as they churned the sea at one hundred and eighty revolutions per minute.
He saw another shadow coming toward him and ducked through a door and down a companionway. At last he reached a door that should open — if he had not blundered himself utterly lost — into the corridor to the baggage room where the wooden crate that held his machine was concealed in a shipment of a dozen similar crates. All were addressed to a warehouse on New York City’s 14th Street — a short walk, Clyde had assured him, from the Cunard Line pier where the Mauretaniawould land.
He opened the door and bumped into a broad-shouldered seaman who was just leaving the baggage room. “Begging your pardon, sir?”
Beiderbecke said, “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for my shipment of crates.”
“Crates, sir?”
“Wooden crates. There is something I must get from one.”
“There’s no crates in here, sir. Just luggage.”
“No crates?” he echoed, aghast. Had Krieg Rüstungswerk stolen them? “But they were loaded down here.”
“No, no, no, bless you, sir. In the forwardbaggage room is where you’ll find crates. That’s where they stow crates, whip them down the cargo hatch into the forward baggage room, they do. In the bows, sir. The front.”
“On which deck will I find this room?”
“Lower deck, sir. Directly under the main deck.”
“This plethora of decks — upper, lower, orlop, shelter — appear designed to breed confusion,” said Beiderbecke, taking out his wallet. “Could I possibly prevail upon you to show me the way?”
“Bless you, sir, I wish I could. But passengers really oughtn’t to be down here.”
“I’m afraid I’m lost,” Beiderbecke said, extracting a pound note.
The seaman stared at the money, wet his lips, then sadly shook his head. “I’m afraid that the best I can do for you, sir, is lead you up to the shelter deck. There I’ll point you forward on the Third Class promenade. When you have walked all the way to the bow, go down three decks to the lower deck and perhaps someone can show you the baggage room.”
Franz Bismark Beiderbecke trudged up narrow stairs after the seaman. Then he walked forward over six hundred feet along the Third Class promenade, which was crowded with immigrants — Croats, Bohemians, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, and Czechs, as if half the Austro-Hungary Empire had decided to regroup in America. The promenade ended at the Third Class smoking room near the front of the ship. He found the way down blocked by a scissors gate and climbed upstairs to go around. His pound sterling note persuaded a rough-looking steward to let him around a barrier.
Beyond that barrier, he looked out a porthole down onto the open foredeck and saw, between the mast and an enormous anchor, a cargo hatch. There! That must cover the hole through which the cranes had lowered his crates. He headed downstairs for several decks. Racking his memory of the builders’ plans, he finally opened a door on what could be, hopefully, the forward baggage room.
His heart froze.
The Akrobat, whom Beiderbecke had seen leap into the sea, was loping sure-footedly along the passageway, peering into every nook and cranny. Slung over his back was an enormous silver-colored steamer trunk. Judging by how effortlessly the Akrobatcarried it, the trunk was empty.
7
Isaac Bell promised Marion “… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
When Marion promised to love and cherish him, she added in a strong voice, “with all my heart, forever and ever and ever,” and Bell’s blue-violet eyes swam with emotion as he placed beside their lucky emerald a plain gold wedding ring he had purchased long ago in San Francisco. Then Captain Turner repeated their vows in seamen’s terms, commanding them to “sail in company, in fair winds or foul, on calm seas or rough, in vessels great and small,” and concluded in a mighty voice, “By the powers I hold as master of MauretaniaI pronounce you man and wife.”
Hastily, he added, “You may kiss the bride.”
Isaac Bell was already doing that.
Flanked by Archie and Lillian and Captain Turner, the newly wed Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Bell greeted their guests on a receiving line.
Mademoiselle Viorets and Clyde Lynds brought up the rear.
“In Russia we do everything backwards,” she proclaimed dramatically. “Instead of gentlemen kissing bride, in Russia is the custom for ladies to kiss the groom. Firmly on the lips.”
“Irina,” Marion Bell warned with a steely gaze, “we are not in Russia. If you must kiss someone firmly on the lips, start with that handsome boy trailing you with adoring eyes. Isaac, I want you to meet my very good friend Irina Viorets. It was Irina who told me about this dress.”
“A pleasure.” Bell shook the dark-eyed beauty’s hand. “From what Marion’s told me you two had more fun in London than is usual at royal funerals.”
“We are kindred spirits. Marion, I have arranged for you and your handsome husband a special wedding gift to wish you happiness in your marriage.”
“What is it?”
“An entertainment.” She snapped her fingers and took command of a phalanx of saloon stewards, who marched into the crowded lounge carrying an Edison film projector and a screen improvised from a square of sailcloth.