The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

“Before, when was that, 1894?”

“Not too far before,” Irina said, her full lips parting in a warm smile. “Allow a woman a certain latitude with her age.”

“Forgive me,” Bell smiled back, satisfied that Grady Forrer — the brilliant head of Van Dorn Research, a large man in whose presence barroom brawls tended to peter out quickly and a hound dog of a tracker — would soon put the question to American embassy officers who had served in Russia when Czar Alexander III still reigned.

“Tell me, Irina, will you miss directing pictures now that you’re running the whole show?”

“Will I miss positioning the camera and waiting for the sun for hours so I may transfer full beauty to the negative? Yes, very much. Will I miss a banker who lent me the money to position the camera for hours telling me that it would be better if I positioned it there, instead of there? No! Not one bit. Now my only ‘boss’ is the Artists Syndicate, and they are three thousand miles away in New York.”

“Who are the investors in the Artists Syndicate?”

“The syndicate is closely held. I met none of them. I don’t even know their names.”

“Why do you suppose they are so secretive?”

“For two reasons,” she answered, with a laugh that did not conceal a certain discomfort, Bell thought. “They are probably respectable bankers who don’t want their wives, club brothers, and fellow progressive reformers to know with whom they rub shoulders. Don’t forget, motion picture manufacturers are thought to be either risqué or tainted by sinful nickelodeon profits or careers that started in carnival shows and low-class vaudeville. I am told that this is a uniquely American attitude, but I saw the same snobbishness in London.”

“And the second reason?”

“The second reason is what I suspect is the real reason: fear. As wealthy as they are, they are not as powerful as Thomas Edison. They’re afraid that if Edison interests learn who they are, the Trust will fight back by shutting them out of their other businesses, not only moving pictures.”

Bell eyed her closely. There was something about the Russian woman he liked — a sense of decency, he supposed, and her liveliness. And she certainly was easy on the eyes. But he wondered, would she ever question the nature of the investors backing her dream of being a boss? Or would her ambition still her doubts?

“We have a proverb,” he said. “‘She who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.’”

Irina Viorets laughed it off. “Russians have a proverb, too: ‘When the devil finds a lazy woman, he puts her to work.’ I admit to many flaws, but sloth is not among them. And I never forget that we Russians also say, ‘God keeps her safe who keeps herself safe.’”

Isaac Bell reckoned he might have opened a chink in her armor. Nonetheless, he would wire a second inquiry to Grady Forrer:

WHO PAYS THE BILLS FOR

IMPERIAL FILM???

* * *

After lunch they got down to business, with Bell acting his part as a Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock insurance executive anxious to invest in the movies. Bearing in mind the outright rejection by Pirate King Tarses, he opened with Marion’s fierce defense. “Without pictures that talk, the screen shrinks drama, tragedy, comedy, and farce to pantomime.”

“But the screen is democracy,” said Viorets, “if not socialism. We are reproducing the rich man’s tragedies, comedies, and farces in pantomime that men on the street can afford.”

“Clyde has invented a way to do it with words and music instead of pantomime,” said Isaac Bell.

Irina nodded. “I heard that your insurance firm was investing in Clyde’s Talking Pictures machine. That’s really why I was intrigued when Mr. Griffith telephoned.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From moving picture people you were shopping it to in New Jersey.”

“Then you heard that my firm seeks manufacturers who are up to taking superior pictures with the same photography and finish as the French.”

Irina Viorets reached across the table and placed a pretty hand on Bell’s arm. “I promise you, Mr. Bell, Imperial will out-French the French — let me show you,” she said, and took him on a tour of the Imperial Building that left Bell with no doubt that Irina Viorets was in command of a going concern.

She showed him the laboratories and machine, repair, and carpentry shops that Griffith had raved about. He saw printing and perforating instruments in the darkrooms, properties and wardrobe rooms of costumes for hundreds of soldiers, police, and cowboys, and rows of flats in the scenic department painted black and white. On the fourth floor was a soundproof recording room, like Edison’s, the walls padded, the floor corked tile, with an array of acoustic horns to capture sound.

She took him outside. In a vacant lot on the south side of the building, a mock street facing toward the sun could be made to look like New York, or London, or medieval Paris.

Next to the building was a life net. Ordinarily held by firemen to catch people jumping from a burning house, this one was permanently fixed. “For catching actors,” Irina laughed, pointing at the building’s parapet a hundred feet off the ground. “Just outside of camera range.”

Bell quoted Clyde Lynds: “Providing thrills dear to the heart of the exhibitor.”