I was beginning to see what Rumely expected of me. “You’d like me to ascertain whether these big guns exist. . and whether guns and ammunition are secreted away in the cargo hold.”
“Exactly. . and, of course, you must conduct the interviews Mr. McClure has requested.”
“And how will Mr. McClure react if I come back with a story of American collusion with the British in smuggling contraband through the war zone?”
Rumely’s expansive face expanded further in a wide smile. “For all his pro-British leanings, he will be delighted-he made his reputation on publishing exposes. You, of course, will have stumbled upon these facts innocently, in the course of pursuing your shipboard interviews.”
I said nothing; the likelihood of arranging an interview with Alfred Vanderbilt in a cargo hold seemed distant, but the promise of a trip to Europe to fetch my brother-plus a handsome check-made mentioning this seem imprudent.
Now Rumely and I were dockside, well-positioned to watch as reporters buttonholed prominent passengers who waited in the security line, the war threat having temporarily made equals out of all men. One of those queued up was, in fact, Alfred Vanderbilt himself. . travelling with a valet but without his wife or other family members. Judging by the familiarity of their conversation, Vanderbilt and the slender fellow in line behind him were friends.
In what I would take to be his mid-thirties, Vanderbilt had a handsome oval face characterized by thick dark eyebrows and a dimpled ball of a chin. The slightly built multimillionaire presented a breezy appearance in his charcoal pin-stripe suit, blue polka-dot foulard bow tie and jaunty tweed cap.
The reporters pelted him with questions about the danger of taking this voyage, and he laughingly replied, “Why worry about submarines? We can outdistance any sub afloat.”
“Is this trip business or pleasure, sir?” one reporter called.
“I’m attending a meeting of the International Horse Show Association. And that’s all I have to say, gents.”
While Vanderbilt was known to be happily married (to his second wife), he had long been a popular figure at sporting events; but some said his love for fast horses, and fast cars, was matched by a fondness for fast women. It was no surprise that these reporters might assume the European trip would include discreet appointments that were not exclusively with horse breeders.
“You’ll have your work cut out for you with that one,” Rumely said. “Alfred doesn’t like to talk to reporters. He’s had some unhappy experiences with the press.”
Before long the reporters were descending on a squat, even frog-like figure in a black double-breasted suit with a stiff collar and dark felt hat; he leaned on a cane, which made him seem even shorter. Something in the cheerful expression on his moon face appeared forced-was he in pain, I wondered?
“That’s Charles Frohman,” Rumely said, but I had already guessed as much.
This was the legendary Broadway producer, the so-called “Napoleon of the Drama.” I put him at around sixty years.*
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Rumely.
“Articular rheumatism. He had a bad fall, some time ago, and has never been the same since. Yet he makes these pilgrimages to London, twice a year.”
A reporter was asking, “Are you afraid of the U-boats, Mr. Frohman?”
The producer grinned, a pleasant smile on an ignoble face. “No-I only fear IOU’s.”
Another reporter called, “Going to check out the current crop of West End productions, sir?”
“Yes-in particular, Rosy Rapture at St. Martin’s Lane-we’ll see if it’s Broadway material.”
Another chimed, “Is it true you’ve secretly married Maude Adams?”
He seemed genuinely embarrassed as he shook his head. “If only I were so lucky-I’m afraid this cane is my only wife.”
I said to Rumely, “Seems like a decent sort.”
Rumely nodded. “By all accounts, he is. . That fellow there, with the black bushy beard, that’s Kessler.”
In a well-cut brown suit with darker brown bowler, the sturdy-looking, forty-ish Canadian wine merchant-known as the Champagne King-carried a brown valise so tightly his knuckles were white.
The reporters had questions for him, too.
“What sends you to Europe under this threat?”
“Business and pleasure,” Kessler said, a smile flashing through the black thatch that obscured much of his face.
“Which do you enjoy more, Mr. Kessler?” another journalist asked, good-naturedly. “Making money, or spending it?”
I knew from materials Rumely had provided me that Kessler loved to throw extravagant dinners and parties, particularly in Europe.
“That’s all part of the same process,” the bearded wine magnate said, with another grin.
“What’s in the bag, George?” a reporter asked, with impertinent familiarity.
The grin disappeared and Kessler said, “My clean underwear,” and turned away from the reporters, his good humor turned to irritation.
But the press boys didn’t seem to mind; Kessler was a minor celebrity compared to another man who’d just fallen into line.
In a wide-brimmed Stetson, an oversize blue velvet bow tie and a knee-length, loose-fitting duster-type tan overcoat, Elbert Hubbard (like Kessler) stood clutching a valise-a battered-looking leather one-waiting his turn next to his handsome wife, Alice, modestly attired in a blue linen one-piece travelling suit and straw hat. Hubbard was knocking on sixty’s door, and his wife was perhaps ten years younger. They both had brown, graying, shoulder-length hair.
The reporters were thrilled to see the eccentric homespun philosopher, and Rumely didn’t bother identifying the man to me, because Hubbard’s picture had been unavoidable in the press over the years, particularly after the success of his article “A Message to Garcia.”
“Fra Albertus!” one of the reporter’s cried, invoking a painfully precious nickname the so-called author had bestowed upon himself. As far as I was concerned, self-published books and magazines, and homely little stories and supposedly wry aphorisms, didn’t an author make.
“Yes, friend?” Hubbard said, smiling beatifically at the reporter, who was one of half a dozen swarming around him like flies near something a horse had dropped. “How may I help you?”
“Aren’t you afraid of the U-boat threat, Mr. Hubbard?”
“To be torpedoed,” he said, “would be a good advertisement for my pamphlet ‘The Man Who Lifted the Lid Off Hell.’ ”
“You mean the Kaiser, don’t you?”
“I do. William Hohenzollern himself. I intend to interview Kaiser Bill, you know.”
“You can’t interview him,” another reporter put in, rather snidely, “if the Lucy sinks.”
Hubbard lifted his shoulders in a theatrical shrug. “If they sink the ship, I’d drown and succeed in my ambition to get in the Hall of Fame. After all, there are only two respectable ways to die: one is of old age, the other is by accident.”
The reporters were writing down each glorious word. How I despised this middle-brow malarkey.
“I believe the drizzle has stopped,” Rumely said.
“Perhaps-but not the drivel.”
A brass band had begun to play, drowning out both Hubbard and the reporters; and even John Philip Sousa was a relief by way of contrast.
The reporters gathered around one last passenger, though with the band blaring, we couldn’t eavesdrop on the questions. I was probably too awestruck to have listened, in any event, because the passenger the reporters were clamoring around was a beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed woman of perhaps forty, graceful, lithe, dignified, in a black dress with occasional white frills and a black bonnet with white feathers. Accompanying her was another tall, shapely woman, a little younger-in her mid-thirties, possibly-in a shirtwaist costume of tan cotton pongee with white linen collar and cuffs and, startlingly, no hat.
Rumely identified the beauty in black as Madame Marie DePage, the Special Envoy to the United States from Belgium. The wife of Antoine DePage, the Belgian Army’s Surgeon General, Madame DePage had spent several months in America raising money for her husband’s Red Cross-sponsored field hospital.