Clark woke up the next morning with Lois not in the room. He felt the spot beside him. It was cool, meaning she had been up for awhile. He had no way of locating her immediately without his powers.
That wasn't true he told himself. He had to put himself in her shoes. With her anxieties running high, where would she go to release some of her tension? The answer came to him immediately. He got dressed and hurried to the gymnasium. He started to go in, but he was stopped by one of the employees.
"Excuse me, sir. You can't go in there."
"It's not like the women aren't dressed. Why can't I go in for just a moment to speak to my wife? It is the 21st century after all."
"But for the extent of the cruise, it's the early 20th century, which means ladies from 9-2, gentlemen 2-6."
"Okay. I'll just wait for her out here then." He waited until the man was out of sight and then went into the gym.
Clark was half expecting to hear screams after the porter had made such a big deal, but these were 21st century women who could care less. He spotted Lois pedaling on a stationary bike.
Lois was in a sweat and didn't seem surprised to see him. "Well, it's the 13th, Clark. Tomorrow night is the night. How could I have lost that notebook? We should have scanned the notebook for names before we did anything else."
"Wishing isn't going to change anything. We have two days left. I know we can find this person. At least we know he or she is some sort of history scholar."
"Even that's not definite. Maybe he just called himself a scholar. Maybe the notebook wasn't even real. Maybe this is one of Lex's sick games."
"That's true, but right now it's the best lead we've got. Let's see if anybody onboard has a history related job."
Lois nodded and climbed off the bike. "I bet the captain wouldn't mind getting the records for us."
A man with a heavy mustache in a period workout outfit came striding over to him. "You are not supposed to be in here, sir."
"We were just leaving," Clark said.
The man spotted one of the ladies having trouble with the oars and went over to help.
"Check out the phony rowboat and mechanical horse," Lois said as they walked out. "It's certainly not something you see in a gym everyday. Doesn't it scream Edwardian? At least, they had some normal equipment in here. I have a feeling this was more a playhouse for the rich than a genuine gymnasium."
Clark smiled, "At least they were trying to stay fit, and the equipment does look fun."
sss
They found it easy to obtain the records. The captain did want their silence, and he knew they were journalists for an internationally published paper. Clark and Lois split the records up and spent the better part of the day in the library combing through the employment information, taking notes when they ran across a likely suspect. It was a fascinating library. None of the books were published past 1912 and there was a wide variety of materials. Clark wished he'd had some time to read some of the musty tomes.
"What did you come up with?" Lois asked at last in a weary but fervent tone.
"I have 73 people in some sort of teaching professions, 36 who work at a museum, and 8 others in miscellaneous history related professions."
"I have 49 in a teaching profession, 18 who work in a museum, and 21 miscellaneous. And we can't forget the crew or the fact our person might not even have a history related job. This is hopeless. We might as well just randomly select a name and hope for the best." Being facetious she put a finger down and came up with a name. "How does Charles Palmer sound?"
One of the older ladies who was in the library overheard the name, "Oh, you have to meet Charles. He's a walking encyclopedia if you have a question about the Titanic. I'm surprised he's not one of the historical reenactors being the fanatic that he is. He talks all the time as if he's really living it." She frowned, "He's a strange man, a kook really, but an event like this is bound to bring a few nuts out of the woodwork, you know?"
"That sounds like it could be our man," Clark whispered to Lois. "Maybe we've just received a stroke of luck."
"I hope so because if we solve this in time that's exactly what it'll be," she said, standing up, "luck."