“What’s wrong with that, Jack? He’s been after you for years to write him a play.”
“I’m not sure my work is suited for Broadway. There are precious few locked-room murders in Naughty Marietta.”
“You could do a mystery for him. Look how well Henry did with The Third Degree.”
May had a point, and doing a play for Henry was certainly not out of the question; but the puzzle of their elevation to First-Class status nagged at him.
Now they were waiting for the Harrises on the platform at Waterloo Station, that Victorian jumble of smoke-stained ancient buildings under an absurdly new steel-and-glass roof. Among millionaires British and American alike, he felt decidedly like a poor relation. A dozen men, divided between this boat train and the similar one departing from Paris to Cherbourg where the Titanic would make a brief stop, netted a total worth approaching $600 million.
Futrelle, on the other hand, at the conclusion of this European trip, was bringing home $30,000 in cash advances and contracts from publishers in Holland, Germany, France, Sweden and England. To the likes of John Jacob Astor or J. P. Morgan, this sum which seemed so grand to Futrelle would be pocket change.
Acting as his own agent, Futrelle had for a number of years been making regular trips overseas to maintain his contacts (and contracts) in European publishing. Many transatlantic travelers were the free-spending nomad rich with their endless retinue of maids and valets; others were captains of industry to whom North Atlantic crossings were business necessities. Futrelle liked to think of himself as belonging to this second group.
“Jack!”
The gruff voice was a familiar one, rising above the top hats and bowlers; but Futrelle at first did not place it.
Then, cutting a path through the crowd, the man who belonged to the voice revealed himself: in a long black topcoat with an appropriately military cut, and a black garrison cap, came the formidable form of Major Archibald Butt, a tall broad-shouldered figure in his mid-forties, trimly mustached, with dimpled, jutting jaw. Even out of uniform, he was the exemplar of the military man.
Archie’s hand was extended as if he were charging with a saber. The Georgia-born major’s Southern accent was gently intact: “Jack! Jack Futrelle, is it really you, old man?”
“It’s me, all right.” Futrelle shook the major’s hand, and said, “Like you-older, fatter, no wiser. I don’t believe you know my wife….”
Introductions were made and Archie, admiring May, said, “She’s a lovely bride, Jack. How did you manage it?”
“No earthly explanation can cover it.”
May was atypically speechless. Major Archibald Butt’s household-name fame had nothing to do with wealth; he was the military aide to President Taft, and had been Roosevelt’s aide-de-camp prior to that. Diplomat, soldier, novelist, Archie Butt moved in the highest circles, politically and socially.
Finally May managed, “Jack, you never mentioned that you knew Major Butt… that you were friends….”
Futrelle, his arm around May, said, “Archie and I were coworkers at the Atlanta Journal, years ago, before you and I met… and before he traded journalism for the army… hell, man, should I be calling you Major Butt?”
“No, no… we’ll not stand on formalities at this late date. I take it you’re boarding this boat train, for the Southampton dock?”
“Yes. You’re taking the Titanic as well?”
Archie nodded. “Heading home after a little mission to Rome for the president.”
“Do tell! The Vatican?”
“Delivered a letter to the pontiff thanking him for creating those three American cardinals.”
Futrelle laughed, shook his head; his friend had been pompous and puffed up with himself even before his celebrity. “To think I beat the pants in poker off such a high mucky-muck as you.”
Blustery as he was, Archie could still take a jest. “Perhaps aboard the ship you’ll have another opportunity-but I may have improved in the intervening years.”
“I doubt it,” Futrelle said.
May shot her husband a look for taking such liberties with so important a personage, unaware of the nights he and the major-to-be had closed down any number of Atlanta saloons.
Something about Archie did strike Futrelle as changed, however-of course, no one was impervious to the passage of time, but the weariness, the sadness in the eyes of the seemingly cheerful major did give Futrelle pause.
Through the crowd of swells another figure emerged, a distinguished-looking gentleman in a dark gray Chesterfield and top hat. In his middle sixties, his hair white, his generous mustache salt-and-pepper, he carried himself with an easy grace in contrast to the martinet movements of Archie Butt, whom he approached with a gentle smile.
“All the baggage is aboard, Major,” he said in the cultured manner of an American who had spent considerable time in England. “Our compartment is ready.”
“Frank,” the major said, “I’d like you to meet Jack Futrelle and his lovely wife, May… Jacques Futrelle, the detective writer, that is.”
The major’s traveling companion turned out to be Francis Millet, the celebrated painter. Futrelle told Millet how much he loved his famous painting Between Two Fires, a gently comic slice of life and love among the Puritans, and Millet praised “The Problem of Cell 13.” May oohed and ahhed over the artist; though the Futrelles had traveled in circles of celebrity since their Gramercy Park days, during Jack’s tenure on the New York Herald, May remained girlishly impressed by the famous.
“Oh, how we’ve enjoyed your paintings in the Metropolitan, Mr. Millet,” she burbled. “And at the Tate Gallery, here in London!”
His smile was shy, his eyes twinkling with pleasure and embarrassment. “Call me Frank, please, Mrs. Futrelle.”
“Only if you’ll call me May.”
As they stood chatting, a rather bizarre figure rolled through the crowd like a cannon on wheels, a figure so out of place in this posh company he seemed designed to make Futrelle feel more at home here: wearing a gray suit that seemingly had been slept in, a shapeless brown hat whose brim was as crooked as a beggar’s smile, came a potbellied cross between a hobo and Saint Nick, with wild sky-blue eyes in a splotchy visage adorned with a full nest of snow-white beard that all but blotted out his string tie. He was probably in his mid-sixties, as was the rather ordinary, heavyset woman trailing along after him.
“My word,” May breathed. “Who is that creature?”
“A colleague of mine, madam, unlikely as it may seem,” the major said, “though we’ve never met.”
“That’s William T. Stead, dear,” Futrelle told his wife. “One of the world’s foremost eccentrics.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”
“Well,” the major said, “you’ll undoubtedly hear him on the ship-he’s quite vociferous, one of the most notorious of the muckraking journalists of Britain, lately an outspoken pacifist, and a devoted spiritualist.”
“What an outlandish combination of interests,” May said.
Futrelle could see that his wife’s initial unfavorable reaction to Dr. Stead’s appearance had already been overcome by her native curiosity in the complex package that was this strange man, who the mystery writer knew to have been an influential, even pioneering newspaperman in his day.
But Futrelle was puzzled about something, even as he watched the burly bearded figure board the train, the elderly woman seeing him off. “And how is it that Mr. Stead is your colleague, Archie?”
“I understand the president has invited him to speak at the international peace conference, later this month in New York.”
“Who else is appearing?” Millet asked dryly. “A trained bear?”