The Purser's Dark Ledger

• Chapter 1 The Empty Stateroom
• Chapter 2 The Purser’s Manifest
• Chapter 3 Ink and Coal Dust
• Chapter 4 Whispers on the Promenade
• Chapter 5 Bound in Black Calfskin
• Chapter 6 The First Maiden Voyage
• Chapter 7 A Missing Gentleman
• Chapter 8 Below the Waterline
• Chapter 9 Cipher of the Stowaway
• Chapter 10 Blood on the Brass
• Chapter 11 The Captain’s Discretion
• Chapter 12 Shadows in First Class
• Chapter 13 Mid-Atlantic Fog
• Chapter 14 Confessions in the Dark
• Chapter 15 Unaccounted Cargo
• Chapter 16 The Phantom Crew
• Chapter 17 Iron and Ashes
• Chapter 18 A Second Disappearance
• Chapter 19 The Lockbox Broken
• Chapter 20 Parallel Crimes
• Chapter 21 The Engine Room Ghost
• Chapter 22 Tempest at Sea
• Chapter 23 The Ledger Revealed
• Chapter 24 Reckoning in the Bilge
• Chapter 25 The Final Entry
• Chapter 26 Port of Call

The Atlantic in April had the color of cold lead and the temper of a spurned creditor. Outside the thick glass of the purser’s square port, gray swell followed gray swell in endless, methodical repetition, lifting the three-thousand-ton iron hull of the RMS Leviathan before dropping her into the troughs with a shudder that vibrated through every plank, rivet, and tooth in a man’s jaw.

Thomas Gale dipped his steel nib into the inkwell, held it aloft until the excess droplet fell back into the well, and continued his entry in the ship’s official ledger. His hand was steady, forged by twelve years of North Atlantic crossings aboard ships that burned coal and smelled of grease, wet wool, and cheap sherry. A purser’s hand had no right to tremble; if the purser lost his balance, the entire financial equilibrium of the vessel threatened to capsize.

"Seventy-four saloon passengers," Gale muttered, his voice a low, dry rustle like dry paper sliding across a desk. "One hundred and twelve cabin class. Three hundred and forty steerage in the forward hold. Four horses, forty cases of Sheffield cutlery, twelve crates of lace, and three hundred tons of Welsh coal missing from the starboard bunker due to bad weight at the Liverpool docks."

He paused, touching the side of his nose where an old scar from a Liverpool quay-fight left a pale, stiff notch in the skin.

A purser was neither sailor nor gentleman. He existed in the narrow, greasy margin between the two—a bookkeeper clad in brass-buttoned dark blue cloth, tasked with managing the appetites, vanities, and debts of the wealthy while ensuring the boiler fires were fed with cheap coal and the steerage passengers did not die of typhus before reaching Sandy Hook. To the passengers, he was the manager of their grand floating hotel; to the line’s board of directors in London, he was the auditor who accounted for every spoonful of marmalade and every yard of canvas.

A sharp, hurried knock rattled the frosted glass panel of his office door.

Gale did not look up immediately. He carefully blotted the line he had just written, capped his inkwell with a brass cover, and adjusted the cuff of his linen shirt, which was slightly stained with coal dust from his morning walk through the lower deck passageways.

"Enter," he said.

The door swung open, bringing with it the smell of cold sea spray and boiled mutton from the adjacent passageway. John Cobb, the chief first-class steward, stepped across the coaming. Cobb was a man whose natural expression was one of mild, deferential anxiety, but this morning his narrow face had taken on the greasy, yellowish hue of lard left too long in the sun.

"Mr. Gale, sir," Cobb said, pulling his chin into his collar as he closed the door behind him. "We have a bit of an irregularity on B-Deck. Stateroom Nine."

Gale rested his forearms on the leather blotter. "Irregularity is a wide term, Cobb. Is it an irregularity involving a blocked water closet, a lady complaining of draft, or a gentleman who has sampled too much of the ship’s port and forgotten the location of his trousers?"

"It’s Mr. Vance, sir," Cobb replied, stepping closer and lowering his voice as if the iron bulkheads themselves had ears. "Mr. Julian Vance. He hasn't come down for breakfast. He didn't come down for dinner last night either, though the steward on duty assumed he was merely taking his meal in his cabin on account of the sea."

"And?"

"And his cabin key was on the outside ring at the chief steward's desk this morning, sir. When I opened the door to clear the linen, the room was empty. The bed hasn't been slept in. But his boots are there, his trunks are locked, and his coat is still hanging on the peg."

Gale stared at the steward for three seconds, assessing the man’s eyes. Cobb was not given to dramatic invention; he was too slow-witted for imagination and too frightened of losing his pension to play tricks.

"Did he register a visit to the surgeon?" Gale asked, reaching for his ring of master keys hanging from a brass hook beside his desk.

"Dr. Mercer hasn't seen him since the hour we cleared the Mersey, sir. I asked."

"Did anyone see him on the promenade deck late last evening?"

"The second officer was on watch until midnight. He saw no one after eleven. The weather was squally, sir. Seas coming over the starboard rail."

Gale pulled his heavy pocket watch from his waistcoat, clicked open the silver case, and noted the time. Ten minutes past nine in the morning. They were three days out from Liverpool, roughly seven hundred miles west of Ireland, steaming straight into a rising westerly gale. If a man went over the side in these waters, his coat would drag him down past the thermocline in less time than it took to ring the ship’s bell.

"Fetch your duplicate key," Gale said, rising from his swivel chair. "We shall inspect Stateroom Nine before this becomes a matter for the captain’s luncheon table."

The upper decks of the RMS Leviathan were designed to disguise the fact that her inhabitants were trapped in a floating iron box suspended over three miles of black water. The first-class companionway was lined with polished Honduras mahogany, carpeted in deep crimson Brussels runner held by bright brass rods, and lit by gimballed oil lamps that cast a warm, flickering light against the wood.

Yet, despite the velvet and gold leaf, the ship smelled of its truth: beneath the faint perfume of lavender water and expensive cigars lay the omnipresent stench of damp iron, hot engine oil, and the sour tang of sea water sloshing in the bilges forty feet below.

Gale walked with the soft, rolling gate of a man who had spent twenty years balancing on shifting decks. Cobb hurried half a pace behind him, his shoes squeaking against the carpet. They passed the grand saloon, where a few brave passengers—wrapped in heavy wool shawls—sat pickling themselves with brandy and dry biscuit in an effort to combat the rolling motion of the vessel.

At the midship corridor on B-Deck, Gale stopped in front of the door marked 9.

The mahogany paneling around the frame showed signs of recent varnish, but near the floor, the wood was slightly discolored—a faint white crust of salt bloomed where sea spray had worked its way down through the deck seams during some previous storm.

"Did you touch anything inside?" Gale asked, turning to Cobb.

"Only the door handle, Mr. Gale. I took one step over the sill, saw the bed was smooth as a board, and came straight down to you."

Gale took his master key, inserted it into the brass lockplate, and turned it. The mechanism gave a satisfying, oily clack. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped into Stateroom Nine.

The room was quiet, save for the rhythmic creaking of the bulkheads as the vessel rolled to port. It was a spacious cabin by ocean-going standards, fitted with a broad sofa upholstered in blue horsehair, a marble-topped washstand with a pitcher and basin, a fitted wardrobe, and a double berth built directly into the ship's side.

Gale stood inside the threshold, his eyes scanning the space with the practiced neutrality of a customs inspector.

The room smelled of dry lavender, cold tallow, and something else—a faint, bitter note that made the back of his throat itch. It was not the salt air, nor was it coal smoke. It smelled like wet iron and old varnish.

Julian Vance’s personal effects were neatly arranged. On the mahogany washstand sat an silver-backed shaving brush, a bone-handled razor resting in its leather case, and a bottle of bay rum, its cork firmly driven home. A heavy dark wool frock coat hung from a brass peg on the forward bulkhead, swaying in a short, stiff arc with the motion of the steamship. Beneath it sat a pair of high-topped calfskin boots, polished to a dull shine, free of mud or salt rings.

Gale walked to the berth. The white linen sheets were turned down in the neat, triangular fold characteristic of the night stewards’ work, but the pillow was crisp and unpressed. No head had rested there last night.

"His luggage?" Gale asked.

Cobb pointed to the foot of the bed. "Two heavy trunks, sir. Leather-bound brass band iron. They’re locked up tight."

Gale knelt by the trunks. He grasped the brass handle of the upper trunk and pulled. It was heavy—unusually heavy for a passenger traveling alone on a two-week voyage. He reached into his vest pocket, produced a small set of iron picks he kept for opening unclaimed baggage, and paused.

"No," he said softly, standing up. "Not yet. We don't break locks until we know whether we are dealing with a dead man or a foolish one."

He turned his attention to the rest of the room. The brass oil lamp hung in its gimbals beside the mirror; the wick was cold, blackened, and burned down to a short stub. Beside it on the small writing desk sat an empty glass tumbler, a half-filled water carafe, and an unread copy of The Illustrated London News, three weeks out of date.

Gale approached the square glass port. The heavy brass butterfly nuts that held the iron storm deadlight open were screwed tight. The glass itself was wet on the outside with sea spray, but dry on the inside. No one had opened that port during the night unless they had taken the trouble to carefully tighten four rusted brass bolts behind them as they leaped into the Atlantic.

"Where is his hat?" Gale asked abruptly.

Cobb blinked, looking around the small room. "Sir?"

"Look at the pegs, Cobb. His coat is here. His boots are here. His razor is here. But where is his hat? A gentleman of Mr. Vance’s standing does not walk onto the open deck at ten o'clock at night in a gale without his hat, yet there is no bowler, no stovepipe, and no cap in this room."

"Perhaps it blew overboard, sir," Cobb suggested weakly.

"And he blew over with it?" Gale murmured.

He leaned down near the small mahogany nightstand beside the berth. On the lower shelf lay a small brass match-safe, open, its tiny yellow-tipped matches scattered across the dark grain of the wood like dead insects. Beside them was a small, smudged streak on the polished wood—a dull, gray smear that looked like grease mixed with dark dust.

Gale reached out and ran his forefinger through the smear. He brought it to his nose.

Coal dust. Fine, anthracite coal dust, mixed with heavy engine grease.

He turned his hand over, looking at the black smudge on his pale finger. First-class passengers did not have coal dust on their bedside tables. The first-class decks were scrubbed every morning at four by three dozen seamen using sand and holy-stones; the air pipes to the saloon were fitted with gauze filters to prevent the soot from the funnel from settling on the velvet sofas.

"Cobb," Gale said slowly, his voice dropping into the lower register that meant trouble for someone on the payroll. "Who was the steward on duty in this sector between eight and midnight?"

"Young Miller, sir. It was his second shift."

"Where is he now?"

"He should be down in the scullery, sir, helping with the silver from the early breakfast."

"Fetch him," Gale said, stepping back toward the center of the cabin. "Do not speak to the chief steward. Do not speak to the second mate. Tell Miller I wish to ask him about a missing silver spoon. If anyone asks why I am in Stateroom Nine, tell them Mr. Vance requested an extra blanket against the damp."

"Yes, Mr. Gale." Cobb turned on his heel and slipped out the door, his face pale and tight.

Left alone in the quiet cabin, Gale stood motionless for a long moment, listening to the ship around him.

The RMS Leviathan was a modern marvel—a vessel of iron and steam, five hundred horsepower driving two massive paddle wheels that churned the cold ocean into white foam. She was supposed to be the safest, fastest ship afloat, a masterpiece of British engineering that bridged the distance between the Old World and the New in twelve days of effortless luxury.

Yet inside Stateroom Nine, surrounded by gilded mahogany and brass fixtures, Thomas Gale felt the familiar, cold prickle at the base of his neck that had nothing to do with the sea air.

He stepped toward the wardrobe. It was built into the aft bulkhead, constructed of dark, heavy oak with a mirror set into the central panel. He pulled the door open. Inside hung two spare linen shirts, a pair of trousers, and a dark velvet waistcoat.

At the bottom of the wardrobe, tucked far back into the angle where the wooden partition met the outer iron shell of the ship, something caught his eye.

Gale reached down, his tall frame bending awkwardly in the narrow space. His fingers brushed against a cold, hard edge hidden beneath the hem of a spare wool cloak.

He pulled it out.

It was not a piece of personal baggage. It was a heavy brass square-head bolt, six inches long, its thread stripped and smeared with fresh, black axle grease. Attached to it by a length of tarred twine was a small scrap of canvas, scorched at the edges as though it had been exposed to high heat.

Gale turned the bolt over in his hand. It was the type of bolt used to secure the iron inspection plates on the steam boilers three decks below—a heavy, industrial fitting that had no place in a first-class wardrobe.

He held the bolt up to the faint light coming through the port glass. Smeared into the grease on the canvas scrap was a tiny, stiff tuft of hair—dark brown, stiff with dried salt, and stained with a dark, reddish-brown crust that had not yet fully set.

Gale stared at the dark stain for a long, silent minute.

"Mr. Vance," Gale whispered to the empty room, "you have left a very dirty paper trail for a gentleman who travels with two trunks of clean linen."

He slid the heavy iron bolt into his deep coat pocket, stepped out of the wardrobe, and closed its mirrored door just as a fast, nervous set of footsteps echoed down the crimson carpet of the outer passageway.

The purser’s office on the RMS Leviathan was a cabin of narrow utility, situated at the junction where the polished mahogany of the first-class companionway terminated and the cold, painted iron of the crew’s quarters began. It was a space designed to project absolute clerical authority. A heavy brass grille protected the counter where passengers presented their letters of credit, while behind it, rows of pigeonholes held the mail, cabin keys, and daily receipts of a floating town.

Thomas Gale sat at his desk, the heavy brass bolt from Julian Vance’s wardrobe resting inside his drawer, wrapped in a sheet of dry blotting paper. He had not yet recorded its discovery in the rough day-book he kept for matters that lay outside the company’s official view. A purser’s survival depended on knowing which details belonged in the grand leather-bound ledger for the board of directors, and which belonged in the small, black-covered memorandum book he kept inside his breast pocket.

A timid knock announced the arrival of John Cobb and the young saloon steward, Miller.

When they entered, Gale did not immediately look up. He allowed the silence to stretch, finishing a line in his freight manifest with deliberate, slow strokes of his pen. The boy, Miller, was nineteen at most, with the raw, red hands of a galley hand who had only recently been promoted to the clean shirts of the first-class saloon. His collar was too large for his neck, and his eyes darted from the brass inkwell to the heavy iron safe behind Gale’s shoulder with the frantic energy of a cornered alley cat.

"Close the door, Cobb," Gale said, setting his pen down on the rest. He looked at the boy. "Your name is Arthur Miller, is it not? Born in Birkenhead, father a shipwright, employed by the line since November last."

"Yes, Mr. Gale," the boy whispered, his voice cracking slightly under the strain of the purser's flat gaze.

"You were on watch on B-Deck last night between the hours of eight and midnight," Gale continued, his voice perfectly conversational, as though he were asking after the inventory of ship’s biscuit. "It was a dirty night. The ship was pitching, and most of the passengers in your sector had retired early to escape the motion. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir. Most everyone was down by nine, sir. The saloon was near empty after the soup was cleared."

Gale leaned forward, resting his thick forearms on the desk. "Then you would have had very little to do but patrol the corridor and attend to any calls. Tell me about Stateroom Nine. Did you see Mr. Vance return to his cabin after dinner?"

Miller swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing against his stiff celluloid collar. "No, sir. I didn't see him return. But I saw him leave."

Gale’s eyes narrowed slightly. "At what hour?"

"It would have been just after ten, sir. I’d just finished bringing a hot brick wrapped in flannel to Mrs. Arbuthnot in Cabin Fourteen. As I came back into the main passage, I saw the door to Number Nine open. Mr. Vance stepped out."

"How was he dressed?"

"That’s the queer thing, Mr. Gale," Miller said, gaining a sliver of confidence now that the questions were direct. "He wasn't wearing his frock coat, nor his greatcoat. He had on a short dark jacket—the sort the engineers wear when they come up for air—and a common wool cap pulled down over his brow. I wouldn't have known him at all, sir, except he had his silver pocket watch out, and the light from the gimbal lamp caught the engraving on the back. He was moving fast, heading toward the companionway that leads down to the lower decks."

"The lower decks?" Gale repeated. "Not the promenade?"

"No, sir. He went down the companionway toward C-Deck. Toward the steerage quarters and the engine hatch."

Gale exchanged a brief, silent glance with Cobb, who was standing by the door with his hands clamped behind his back like a man awaiting a sentence.

"Did you speak to him?" Gale asked.

"I asked him if he required anything, sir, as was my duty," Miller said. "But he didn't even look at me. He just muttered something under his breath and kept going. He looked... well, he looked proper put out, sir. His face was very white, and he had a smudge of dark grease across his cheek, like he’d been handling something dirty."

Gale reached into his drawer, his hand brushing against the wrapped brass bolt, and pulled out the ship’s first-class passenger manifest. He flipped the heavy, cream-colored pages until he found the entry for Stateroom Nine.

Julian Vance. Age: 34. Residence: London. Occupation: Gentleman.

Under the column marked Destination, the clerk in Liverpool had written New York, with a small, penciled notation beside it: Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. Vance was supposedly one of many English gentlemen traveling to the Americas to view the great Crystal Palace exhibition that had been re-erected in New York. His passage had been paid in gold sovereigns—not with a bank draft or a personal check—at the company’s office in Water Street.

"Did Mr. Vance receive any visitors during the first two days of the voyage?" Gale asked.

"No one from first class, sir," Miller said. "He kept to himself. He took his meals in his cabin mostly, complaining of the damp. But..." The boy hesitated, looking down at his boots.

"Go on, Miller," Gale said softly. "The only way to find yourself in trouble in this office is to keep a secret that I later have to find out for myself."

"Well, sir, on the second night out, after the midnight watch had gone on, I saw one of the black-gang—one of the coal-passers from the boilers—standing outside Number Nine. He was whispering through the door-gap. I couldn't see his face because he had his coal-cap pulled down, but he was greasy as a mutton chop. He handed a small scrap of paper through the crack of the door, and then he ran off down the forward fire-escape before I could call out to him."

"Did you see any part of the note?"

"No, sir. But Mr. Vance must have opened it right away, because I heard him cursing inside the cabin. He sounded... frightened, sir. Not angry, but like a man who’s just seen a ghost through his window."

Gale tapped his fingers against the leather desk pad. The puzzle was beginning to take on a shape, but it was a shape that did not belong on a luxury transatlantic steamer. A wealthy gentleman from London did not receive midnight visits from the coal-passers, nor did he slip down into the iron belly of the ship dressed in grease-stained clothes, leaving his trunks locked and his bed unslept in.

"Thank you, Miller," Gale said, his voice flat and businesslike once more. "You will return to your duties in the scullery. You are not to speak of Mr. Vance’s absence to the other stewards, nor to any passenger. If anyone asks after him, you will say that he is indisposed with the influenza and has requested that his cabin not be disturbed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Gale."

"If I hear so much as a whisper of this in the smoking room, Miller, I will have the master-at-arms put you on coal-shoveling duty for the rest of the run. And the coal-bunkers are very cold this time of year."

The boy went pale, nodded quickly, and slipped out of the cabin as though the floorboards were hot iron.

Once the door had clicked shut, Gale turned his attention to Cobb. "What do you make of it?"

"It’s a bad business, Mr. Gale," the chief steward said, rubbing his hands together as if to warm them. "If a first-class passenger has gone over the side, the captain will have to hold an inquiry. The newspapers in New York will have a field day. 'The Ghost Ship of the Atlantic,' they’ll call us. It’s bad for the line, sir. Very bad for passenger bookings."

"The captain will do nothing until I tell him what to write in his report," Gale said, standing up and reaching for his heavy blue wool waistcoat. "Captain Henderson is an excellent seaman when the weather is clear, but he has no stomach for anything that cannot be resolved with a sextant or a lead-line. He is currently occupied with a leak in the forward coal-starboard bunker and the complaints of three American senators about the quality of the ship’s claret. We will not trouble him with Mr. Vance until we have something more substantial than a missing hat and a greasy cheek."

"And what do we do about his cabin, sir?"

"Lock it," Gale said, pocketing his master keys. "Post a notice on the door stating that the occupant is quarantined under the surgeon's orders with a suspected case of the smallpox. That will keep the curious passengers from poking their noses where they don't belong. Not even the most inquisitive gossip in first class will knock on a door that has a yellow quarantine tag on it."

Gale walked to the heavy iron safe in the corner of his office. He unlocked it with a key he kept on a steel chain around his neck, swung the heavy door open, and reached into the dark interior. He did not pull out the cash-drawer or the gold sovereigns. Instead, he reached for a thick, leather-bound book that lay at the very bottom, beneath the ship’s official articles and the customs declarations.

This was the Leviathan’s maiden manifest—the record of her very first voyage across the Atlantic, two years prior, before she had been refitted with her new, larger paddle wheels and her high-pressure boiler system.

It was a voyage Gale had not made. He had been employed by the auxiliary line on the Mediterranean run at the time, only taking over the Leviathan’s ledger after her previous purser, a man named Charles Sterling, had died of a sudden, violent fever while the ship was docked in Boston.

Gale carried the old manifest to his desk, cleared away his current day-books, and opened the heavy calfskin cover. The pages were yellowed around the edges from the damp air of the lower storage lockers, and they smelled strongly of vinegar and old tallow—the preservatives used to keep the paper from rotting in the hold.

He turned the pages slowly, his eyes scanning the lists of names from that first, ill-fated crossing in the winter of 1851.

The maiden voyage of the Leviathan had been celebrated in every newspaper from London to Edinburgh as a triumph of modern engineering. She was the largest iron vessel afloat, a monument to British industry. Yet, as Gale turned the pages, he noted several strange, irregular marks in the margins of the crew registers.

There were small, penciled crosses beside several names in the engineering department—men who had signed on in Liverpool but whose names were not present on the discharge sheets when the ship arrived in Boston. Beside one name, James Croft, Assistant Engineer, there was no cross, but a single, dark smear of red ink that had dried into a brown crust, nearly identical in color to the stain on the canvas scrap Gale had found in Vance’s wardrobe.

Gale touched the dried spot with his fingernail. "Cobb," he said, without looking up. "Who was the chief engineer on the maiden voyage?"

"Mr. McInnis, sir," Cobb said, squinting through his spectacles as he leaned over the desk. "He’s still with us. Down in the engine room now, most likely. He’s been with the line since they laid the first keel-plate at Laird's yard."

"And the purser? Charles Sterling. Did you know him?"

Cobb’s expression shifted, his brow furrowing into a series of deep, defensive lines. "I knew him, sir. A quiet gentleman. Very particular about his books. He didn't mix much with the crew. Kept to his cabin when he wasn't at his desk."

"The records say he died of the typhus in Boston," Gale said, his voice dropping to a low, suggestive whisper. "Is that what happened, Cobb?"

Cobb shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He looked toward the frosted glass of the office door, then back at Gale. "That’s what the certificate said, Mr. Gale. The port doctor in Boston signed it. They buried him at sea just outside the harbor mouth, before we cleared for the return run. It was a very quick business. The captain wanted the ship cleaned and cleared before the port authorities could put us under quarantine."

"And his papers?" Gale asked, his eyes still fixed on the dried red stain on the old manifest. "His personal effects? His ledger?"

"I believe they were sent back to his sister in Newcastle, sir," Cobb said, though his voice lacked conviction. "The company handles all of that. We just packed his trunks and handed them over to the agent at the wharf."

Gale did not answer. He knew how the line operated. When a senior officer died at sea, his papers were locked in the ship’s safe until they could be inspected by a company director. If there was anything in those papers that suggested negligence, or anything that might affect the value of the line's stock on the London exchange, it did not survive the journey to the head office.

But Sterling’s official ledger—the daily record of the ship’s expenses, cargo, and passenger receipts—had remained on board. It was the very book that now lay open on Gale’s desk.

Gale turned to the back of the ledger, past the lists of beef barrels, coal tons, and linen sheets, to the section marked Unusual Occurrences. It was a section that every purser was required to keep, though most entries were dry reports of broken spars, lost sheep, or minor disputes among the steerage passengers.

The pages for the maiden voyage were clean. Too clean.

Gale held one of the yellowed sheets up to the whale-oil lamp on his desk. The paper was thick and heavy, but as the light passed through it, he could see the faint, jagged edge of a stub near the binding.

Three pages had been carefully, cleanly removed with a razor.

The cut was so precise that only a tiny sliver of the white paper remained in the seam, hidden deep within the leather binding. To an ordinary inspector, the book would have appeared perfectly intact, but to Gale, who had spent his life managing books and accounts, the missing pages were as obvious as a missing tooth in a smuggler's grin.

He closed the ledger with a heavy, dull thud that made Cobb jump.

"Cobb," Gale said, rising from his chair and pocketing his brass key-ring once more. "I am going below. I want to speak with Mr. McInnis. While I am gone, you will keep watch on B-Deck. If anyone asks after Mr. Vance, you know what to tell them."

"Yes, Mr. Gale. But... you’re not going down into the bunkers alone, are you? It’s not safe down there for a saloon officer, sir. The black-gang... they’re a rough lot. They don't take kindly to anyone from the upper decks poking around their coal."

"I have been dealing with rough men since before you learned how to fold a dinner napkin, Cobb," Gale said, his hand resting on the heavy brass bolt in his pocket. "And unlike the gentlemen in first class, the black-gang usually tells the truth when you ask them a direct question. They don't have enough money to afford the luxury of a lie."

He stepped out of his office, leaving the chief steward standing alone in the damp, narrow room, and turned his face toward the iron hatch that led down into the dark, vibrating heart of the Leviathan.