The Thief (11 page)

“It ain’t a cut. It’s a gouge.”

“You can call it a gouge if you like, mate, but I say he whacked it with a sword.”

“Where the bloomin’ hell would a First Cabin nob get his paws on a sword?”

“Concealed in his walking stick. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?” he added, enlisting support when he saw Isaac Bell studying the gouge intently.

“Wire,” Isaac Bell said.

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

“Wire. A thin braided-wire cable.”

“Well, yes, it could be braided cable, sir. On the other hand, you might ask where would the swell get a braided cable and why would he whack the rail with it? Unless he was an out-and-out vandal. Not that we don’t get the odd one or two of them aboard— You’ll recall, Jake, there was that Frenchman.”

“What do you expect?”

“An acrobat,” Bell said, half aloud. Had the Acrobat somehow grappled the railing with a flexible wire cable?

“Acrobat? No, sir, begging your pardon, that Frenchie was no acrobat.”

“A German acrobat.”

The seamen traded baffled looks.”Well, if you say so, sir.”

“An acrobat it is, sir.”

As Bell hurried away, he heard whispers behind him. “What the blazes was he rattlin’ on about?”

“Acrobats.”

“Next’ll be monkeys.”

Isaac Bell walked faster. He could imagine that a superb athlete, a muscular, lithe acrobat, could stop his fall by hooking a thin cable over the railing. But he could not imagine where the man could suddenly get the cable. Nor how he had secured it in the split second that he hurtled past the railing. Nor why the wire didn’t slip through his hands. Or cut him to the bone if he wrapped it around his wrist.

Bell passed a barrier into Second Class, said good morning to the seaman Captain Turner had assigned to stand guard outside Clyde Lynds’s cabin door, and knocked loudly. “It’s Isaac Bell, Clyde. Open up.”

Lynds let him into the cramped, windowless space he had shared with the Professor. He appeared to have slept in his shirt and trousers.

“You look a mess,” said Bell.

“Didn’t sleep a wink. The Professor was a good man. A kind man. He didn’t deserve dying that way.”

“You wouldn’t either,” said Bell.

“Am I next?”

“Make a clean breast of it, Clyde. Your life’s in danger. Who are they? What do they want?”

“I swear I don’t know them.”

“Does it have to do with you deserting the German Army?”

“I didn’t desert. I was never in the Army. I’ve never been a soldier.”

“Then why is the German Army after you?”

“I don’t know. They’re lying.”

“Why would the Army lie? If they are lying, why are they hunting you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I am not a deserter.”

“I know you’re not. That’s what makes it worse.”

“Worse?”

“The German Army is helping Krieg Rüstungswerk steal your invention.”

“I’ll be O.K. when I get to America.”

Isaac Bell asked the question he had come to Clyde’s cabin to ask. “Did you ever hear the Professor mention a name or a word that sounded like ‘acrobat’?”

Lynds turned pale. “Why do you ask?”

“When Professor Beiderbecke asked me to protect you, it was the last word he spoke. ‘Acrobat.’”

“Oh my Lord,” Clyde Lynds breathed. “Are you telling me the guy didn’t fall overboard?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Yes,” Clyde admitted. “He’s the one. Is he really on the ship?”

“I think the Professor saw him. I think this acrobat locked him in the trunk. If that’s true, then you’re being stalked not by his accomplices, but by the man himself, the same man who tried get you in Bremen and again the night we sailed from Liverpool. You were lucky that night that I just happened to be there. Last night the Professor’s luck ran out. Whoever killed Professor Beiderbecke is hiding among either the passengers or the crew. He will not be found before disembarking in New York, at which point he will disappear into the city—where he will find you easily, Clyde. A man who has hunted in the confines of a steamship with nearly a thousand crew to take notice is a formidable hunter. He will find you.”

Clyde Lynds puffed up. “What does an insurance man care about this?” he demanded, truculently.

“I don’t give a hang about this or you,” Isaac Bell shot back.

“You don’t?”

“If I hadn’t promised the Professor to look out for your prevaricating hide, I’d let you to swing it out with this murderer we’re calling the Acrobat. But I did promise. So you’re stuck with my help, like it or not.”

“Can you really protect me?”

“Only if you can tell me what I’m protecting you from. What is your ‘secret invention’? Why do they want it?”

“O.K. O.K. We’ll do it your way.”

Lynds sat silent for a long moment. Bell prompted him, saying, “Professor Beiderbecke started to name it when we had a drink before my wedding. He called it ‘
Sprechchend
-something’ before he clammed up.”

Clyde Lynds laughed.

“What the devil is funny?”

“Sprechendlichtspieltheater.”

“
Sprechendlichtspieltheater?
What is
Sprechendlichtspieltheater
?”

“A ridiculous name. I told him we needed an American name. So he came up with ‘Animatophone.’ I told him that was worse. So he said, ‘How about “Photokinema”?’ Which is a bad joke. I couldn’t get it through his head that we needed a snappy name we could sell.”

“But what is it?” demanded Bell.

“Professor Beiderbecke and I have invented a machine that reproduces sound perfectly.”

“What kind of war machine is that?”

“It’s not a weapon.”

“That’s what Beiderbecke told me. I thought he was lying.” Bell recalled Beiderbecke’s claims for education and science, communication, industrial improvement, even public amusement. It was quite a laundry list, but a better gramophone might fit that. “What is it, a gramophone?”

“It is much more than a gramophone. Much, much more than a gramophone. We perfected a way to add sounds to moving pictures. A machine to make talking pictures.”

“Talking pictures?”

“That’s what I named it. Talking Pictures. Snappy, eh?”

“Better than
Sprechendlichtspieltheater
,” Bell admitted with a smile.

Lynds shook his head ruefully and ran his fingers through his tousled hair.

“Word got out. We were approached immediately by the biggest film manufacturer in Germany. They wanted to make a deal. Invited us to Berlin, First Class, all expenses paid, put us up in the best hotel. But then we learned that the firm was owned by Krieg Rüstungswerk, and we knew they would steal it. The Professor knew a scientist whose invention they robbed. So we decided we would do much better taking it to America to sell it to Thomas Edison… Boy, were we babes in the woods. Never occurred to us they’d try to stop us from leaving Germany. Or that the munitions trust was so in cahoots with the German Army that the Army would help track us when we cut and ran. Blind luck, we got away. That phony warrant gave them the power to have me arrested for desertion and the Professor for harboring a draft dodger. We barely made it out of there with that Rotterdam hocus-pocus. But when we got aboard
Mauretania
we thought we were free to sell Talking Pictures in America. Then surprise, surprise…”

“What do they want it for?” asked Bell.

“It is very valuable,” Lynds answered.

“But the German Army isn’t in the movie line.”

Lynds shrugged. “Maybe they want to be.”

“S
OMEHOW,” SAID
M
ARION, SMILING AWAKE
at the sight of Isaac Bell perched on the edge of their bed with a cup of tea for her, “I always assumed I would see more of you when we married. At least the morning after the wedding.”

“Forgive me. But I’m afraid we’ve landed in a case.”

“Of course you’ve landed a case. After you saved poor Professor Beiderbecke from being kidnapped, he was murdered. That makes him your personal case.” She hugged him and took her tea. “What have you learned since we kissed good-night?”

“Clyde Lynds finally told me what the kidnappers want. But I’m having a hard time believing it.”

Bell reported word for word what Lynds had told him. He often talked through cases with Marion. She had a razor-sharp mind and an uncanny ability to approach an idea from an unexpected angle. In the case of Talking Pictures, she was uniquely qualified to help him as an expert in the moving picture line.

When he was done, Marion put down her cup and sat up straight.

“Talking Pictures?
Real
talking pictures?”

“What do you mean real?”

“Not someone behind the screen, but actors actually speaking on the screen? Pictures with sound?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Isaac! Pictures with sound are the Holy Grail. I don’t know how he would do it—scores have tried and failed—but if he could, it would be worth a fortune. It would change everything. Right now we’re stuck in wordless drama. Pantomime.”

“The Humanova troupe got around that.”

“But what are Humanovas and Actologues but a traveling vaudeville show staging the same drama night after night in a single theater? They’re
less
than movies, not more, saddled with all the expense of touring players—payroll, train tickets, room and board. With real talking pictures, hundreds of copies could be exhibited simultaneously. Film reels don’t need to eat or sleep.”

“Like a frying pan factory that didn’t need to pay workmen because machines make frying pans automatically.”

“Exactly. All each theater needs is a projector with a sound machine.”

“You’re very excited by this. Your eyes are shining.”

“You bet I’m excited. It’s like you told me I could suddenly fly to the moon— Don’t you see? Ten-minute, eight-hundred-foot one-reel movies have been playing forever in nickelodeons. But there’s a potential for a huge new audience. Theater- and operagoers would flock to longer two- and three-reelers. Sound would let us tell bigger stories. I would quit Picture World in a flash to make talking pictures.”

“So young Clyde has his hands on something very valuable.”

“If it works,” said Marion.

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“There are three technical problems that no one has been able to solve.” She enumerated them on the long, graceful fingers of her left hand, starting at her index finger and ending on her ring finger, where beside her emerald nestled the gold band from San Francisco.

“One: synchronizing the sound with the picture; the actor’s words must match the movements of his lips, just as a theater audience hears what it sees on the stage. Two: amplifying sound; it must be loud so thousands can hear movies in big theaters. Three: fidelity; so they feel the power of human voices and the beauty of music.”

“What you’d expect in a great opera house.”

“
Hundreds
of opera houses! Simultaneously! Talking Pictures could play in every city at once. Seen and heard by millions. But so far, no one in Europe or America has come close to solving those three problems. Those who tried have given up, ruined. Beiderbecke and Lynds’s Talking Pictures machine has to solve all three.”

“If it does,” said Bell, “they own a commercial gold mine.”

“And an artistic treasure. Isaac, this is so exciting.”

“What do you think of Lynds’s scheme to sell it to Thomas Edison?”

Marion thought on Bell’s question.

“It is very risky to bring a new idea to Thomas Edison. He doesn’t want new inventions unless they’re his own. He fights tooth and nail to keep his monopoly over moving pictures by licensing his cameras and projectors and banning the competition. His Motion Picture Patents Company has U.S. marshals and his own private detectives investigating patent infringements, and he hauls independent filmmakers into court for the smallest thing. The courts are on his side because he’s made friends in the legislatures by supporting the reformers’ silly ‘recruiting stations of vice’ nonsense against nickelodeons—But worst of all, if you’re not working under his Edison Company license, you can’t buy perforated Eastman Kodak film stock, which means that you can’t take quality pictures. And frankly, that is the reason I don’t mind working with Preston Whiteway on Picture World. Edison can’t touch me. Topical films occupy a separate universe, and Preston is too rich to be intimidated.”

“And too unpleasant,” said Bell. “Who should Clyde go to instead?”

“There’s the rub.” Again, she answered carefully. “He has little choice. Edison will be the only market Lynds can sell to—unless he’s willing to risk joining up with an independent who could be crushed any moment by the Trust. You know, maybe you should invest in it. Put some of your grandfather’s fortune to good use.”

“Grandfather Ebenezer told me on his deathbed that a man who acts as his own banker has a fool for a client.”

“I’ve heard that said by lawyers.”

“I mentioned as much, and Grandfather gasped, ‘Lawyers stole that expression from bankers.’ His dying words: ‘Spend all you like on wine, women, and song, but swear to me you won’t invest it.’ So I’ll leave investing in Talking Pictures to the professionals. But I have an idea about getting Joe Van Dorn to waive the agency’s protection fee in exchange for Clyde sharing a piece of his profits.”