“Yes,” I said. “But I do admire his frankness.”

“Shall we have the Luchow’s fabled sliced pancakes?”

“Certainly.”

And we did. While we ate them, my squat companion pointed out a sort of celebrity to me-a stocky, square-jawed man in his sixties, wearing an unprepossessing black suit with string tie and a bowler hat which he left on while he ate at his solitary table.

“That’s the captain of the Lusitania,” Rumely said. “Bowler Bill himself.”

“That’s this Anderson I’m to check in with?”

“No. Turner’s the captain, the top man, but his second in command, Staff Captain Anderson, really runs the ship. Turner’s an old salt some say is past his prime. . bit of a martinet, a taciturn type who dislikes socializing with the passengers.”

“But doesn’t that come with the job?”

“It does, and you’ll see him from time to time-but Anderson will be your contact. The Cunard people themselves recommended we deal with him.”

“We have their full cooperation?”

“Oh yes,” Rumely said, and there was something sly in that smile into which he was currently shoveling pancakes, and a twinkle in his eyes that wasn’t fairy-like. “We have their full cooperation for a fine set of articles-pure puffery about their famous passengers.”

I was willing to write such tripe, particularly under a pseudonym. One’s pride takes second place to the need for nutrition. In recent months I had, for the first time, lowered myself to the hackwork of popular fiction writing, churning out made-to-order adventure stories for pulp magazines. I had even “novelized” (what an abhorrent word) a putrid play, The Eternal Magdalene, into a passably literate work.

After the pancakes came snifters of Courvoisier. The sweetness of the dessert didn’t really suit this follow-up, but I could never resist that particular cognac, even when ill-advisedly served.