“Do I get a meal?”
“Prime sirloin and ribs o’ beef, roast turkey poulet, quarters of lamb, smoked ox tongue, and Rouen ducklings. If you help me. How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“You better know more than ‘just know’ or you’ll be dining on bread and water.”
“I’m not dodging you, Mr. Bell. I’m telling you that it takes one to know one. I smoked right off that the fellow was an imposter. For one thing, he was covered in coal dust. Like a stoker. Well, do they send a stoker to retrieve a rich man’s shiny clean steamer trunk? Of course they don’t. They send a shiny clean bedroom steward. You get my meaning?”
“And for another thing?”
“The stewards usually come in pairs, help each other carry. He was alone.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like I just told you. Like a stoker. Hard as nails tough from the black gang.”
“Big man?”
“Not so big. Powerful build, though. Long arms. Like an ape. Like I said, what you’d expect shoveling coal.”
“Long arms? Did you see his face?”
“Black with soot.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why not?” Bell demanded.
The swindler answered, “Cap pulled down over his eyes, collar up round his ears. All that soot on his face, for all I saw he could have been dancing in a minstrel show.”
Bell looked at him with a wintry eye. Block was a very intelligent crook.
“What color was the trunk?”
“Silver.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Hour? Little more.”
“Enjoy your dinner.” Bell started out the door, then stopped with a new thought. “Was there a sticker on the trunk indicating the passenger’s class?”
“First.”
“Lawrence Block, you’ve earned your first honest meal since you graduated reform school.”
Bell sent the PS man back in with a stern warning to stay on his toes. Then he told Archie, “A coal stoker, or someone who looked like a coal stoker, lifted a silver-colored steamer trunk with a First Class sticker. Question is, why?”
“Assuming the Professor’s been kidnapped, I’d say they stashed him inside it so they could smuggle him into a cabin they booked somewhere in First Class.”
“So would I.”
“But,” Archie said, “we found his glasses down here. How would they know he was coming down here? Maybe they have someone in the crew watching him.”
“Or a passenger,” said Isaac Bell. “We better get Captain Turner to rustle up a search party.”