The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

“I’ve never seen voice and picture synchronized for longer than five seconds.”

“You’ll see mine for five reels.”

Griffith glanced from the brash young scientist into the steady gaze of the tall detective.

“My firm, Dagget, Staples and Hitchcock, is betting it will work,” said Bell. “Clyde developed a new process with Professor Franz Beiderbecke, who was an electro-acoustic scientist at the Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute in Vienna.”

Griffith said, “I would love to make talking pictures. The human voice is a wondrous factor at intense moments But I am not in any position to invest.”

“I don’t need your money,” Clyde shot back. “All I need is a laboratory like you’ve set up in that shed. And a machine shop like you have for the cameras. And—”

“Most of all,” Isaac Bell interrupted, “Clyde needs an important director to make a picture show with his machin

e.”

“That would be me,” said Griffith, “Except I’m only here until we finish In Old California. Then it’s back to New York, and I doubt very much that Biograph will have any interest in a machine that would compete with Mr. Edison. But—” Here, with a dramatic pause, he raised a finger for emphasis. “By coincidence, I was, only yesterday, approached by the Imperial Film Manufacturing Company offering to woo me away from Biograph.”

Bell did not like coincidences. “Who is Imperial?”

“They showed me their cinematography studio, and I’ll tell you it’s the finest motion picture plant in the West. Four hundred hands, a corps of stage directors, magnificent stages, complete laboratories, darkrooms, and machine shops. All installed at a cost that must have run into big money, thanks to financial backing by the Artists Syndicate.”

“What is the Artists Syndicate?” asked Bell.

“They’re a combine of Wall Street bankers who don’t give a hoot for the Edison Trust. Wait until you see Imperial. They have a wealth of brand-new equipment capable of turning out a quantity of film, and they’ve engaged stars, both legit and vaud. They’re all set to make big plays — longer, multi-reel pictures.”

Clyde said to Isaac Bell, “Imperial sounds up-to-date.”

“Could you arrange an appointment, Mr. Griffith?”

“I’ll do better than arrange an appointment. I’ll tell them I’ll make the first picture with sound as soon as you’ve perfected it. That ought to get their attention.”

“Don’t you have a contract with Biograph?”

Griffith placed his right hand over his heart. “I promise that I will break my contract with Biograph in a flash for a chance to direct moving pictures that can truly make the sound of human voices. But it’s up to you, Mr. Bell, to sell them the machine, and you, Mr. Lynds, to perfect it. I’ll telephone Imperial right away.”

“Before you phone,” said Bell. “May I do you a kindness in return?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I notice you carry a six-shooter.”

“Old habit from before Biograph joined the Trust,” Griffith grinned, joking, with a theatrical wink, “Haven’t shot an Edison thug in years.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure.” Griffith tugged the revolver from his waistband.

Bell opened the cylinder, counted six cartridges, and removed one. “Gents I know who carry a six-gun in their waistband make a habit of leaving the hammer on an empty chamber. At least so long as they intend to father children.”

* * *

Isaac Bell left Clyde Lynds in the care of the Los Angeles Van Dorn field office and went alone to his appointment at Imperial Film, intending to get a clear-eyed look at what had fallen into their laps. He found a brand-new, ten-story red sandstone building with a glass penthouse that towered over a newly surveyed block of lots for sale. The neighborhood looked destined to become the next center of the up-and-coming city, and the substantial modern headquarters seemed proof that the independent movie factory had deep enough Wall Street pockets to defy Edison’s Patents Trust.

Motorcycle messengers with sidecars full were rushing reels of film in and out of Imperial’s first-floor film exchange. The exchange was plastered with “No Smoking Allowed” signs, which none of the cyclists distributing highly flammable reels to exhibitors were obeying. The building directory listed offices and lofts on the upper floors housing laboratories, machine and repair shops, properties and costume wardrobes, and a main studio containing Stage 1 and Stage 2 in the glass penthouse.

The entire second floor was devoted to the factory’s own moving picture theater — the Imperial. Newspaper reviews posted in the lobby called it a “Movie Palace,” and while absorbing the details of the building and the people coming and going, Bell read of gleaming gilt cherubs in a “finely appointed place that will draw the more wealthy classes who do not patronize moving picture shows except on ‘slumming’ exhibitions.”

The doormen patrolling the lobby were harder-cased than he would expect to find wearing uniforms as lavishly gilded as Captain Turner’s. That a bruiser corps was considered a wise precaution for an independent a full three thousand miles from New Jersey spoke volumes about the power of the Edison Trust. One of the doormen watching Bell read the reviews swaggered over to investigate.