“I don’t know,” Clyde answered, slowly, though Archie bet that he did. He laid a tentative hand on one of the crates, bent over it, and sniffed the wood. When he straightened up, Archie thought that he looked terrified.
“Mr. Abbott, we’d better open all the doors and hatches in this baggage room. Immediately — all you men! Open everything. Now!”
The stewards looked about, uncomprehending.
Archie said, “What is going on, Clyde?”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” said Clyde, “these crates contain raw celluloid film stock. Movie film. The tar smell indicates that it’s old and decomposing.”
“So what?”
“It breaks down chemically into a volatile nitrate gas. It will explode.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a scientist! I experiment all the time with celluloid film. It’s manufactured by dissolving nitrocellulose in camphor and alcohol.”
“Guncotton,” said Archie, as the penny finally dropped. “Highly flammable.”
“The gas generated by the breakdown will do more than burn. First it will explode. Then the film will burn. We have to vent the gas before something detonates it.”
“Open everything!” Archie ordered the stewards.
“Do it now. Open every door.”
They ran to obey.
Clyde Lynds looked up at a ten-by-ten square opening in the ceiling. “The cargo hatch!”
“What are you doing?” said Archie.
Lynds scrambled onto a crate, reached up, and pulled himself onto the bottom rungs of a ladder that rose into the darkness overhead. “The cargo hatch,” he called down. “If I can open it, the shaft will suck the gas out like a chimney.”
* * *
Many decks higher and three hundred feet aft in the First Class dining saloon, Marion said, “Captain, I can’t help but notice that eight of the twelve seats at your table are empty. Surely it can’t be for lack of guests who want to dine with you. This is a splendid dinner, and you are a charming host.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bell,” Turner replied, studiously ignoring the titans of industry, the London aristocrats, and the American millionaires at nearby tables who were attempting to catch his eye. “I will carry your sweet compliment to my grave. But I only dine with passengers when I feel like it, which is not often. They tend to be a bunch of bloomin’ monkeys, present company excepted.”
“Doesn’t the line object? Isn’t the captain supposed to woo wealthy passengers?”
“Cunard have taken notice of a curious fact,” the captain answered. “The more I insult First Class passengers, the more First Class passengers wish to sail in my ship. It was the same way on the Lusitania, my previous command. For some reason the wealthy, particularly the newly wealthy, court abuse. As you know”—Turner lowered his voice and beckoned them closer, conspiratorially—“the White Star Line will soon launch Olympic and Titanic. Neither will ever match Mauretania’s speed, of course, but they will be bigger, and there’s always the appeal of novelty, so competition will be hotter than ever. With that in mind, I’ve suggested to the chairman that I drive up ticket sales by treating passengers in First Class to old-fashioned Royal Navy floggings.”
Isaac Bell and Marion burst out laughing.
“Haven’t heard back from him yet,” Captain Turner chortled. “Presumably he’s debating it with his directors.”
Their laughter was abruptly quelled by a hard thump that rattled the silverware. Crystal rang musically. Five hundred people in the enormous dining saloon fell silent.
Bell thought it felt as if something heavy had smashed the carpeted deck under their feet. Either another vessel had struck the ship, or somewhere in the eight-hundred-and-ninety-foot hull something had exploded with terrific force. Then came the most frightening cry heard at sea.
“Fire!”
Book Two: Flickers
13
“Fire! Fire in the forward baggage room!”