The Thief (19 page)

“Don’t worry,” Bell told her. “We’re not Edison bulls. I’m Isaac Bell, and my wife, Marion, arranged for me and Mr. Clyde Lynds to visit Mr. Tarses.”

“Of course,” she exclaimed. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“Don’t interrupt the picture taking,” said Bell. “We’ll wait for the clouds.”

By half past one the sun had disappeared. As the players opened box lunches, the assistant led Bell and Lynds to Pirate King Jay Tarses, an unshaven fellow in a slouch hat, shirt-sleeves, and vest who was telling a bespectacled man with ink-stained fingers, “Twenty-five dollars is the most I pay for a scenario converted into a complete photoplay.”

“I think I deserve fifty.”

Tarses lighted a five-cent cigar. “If it makes a hit, we’ll send another check for the same sum.”

“But when I write a short story, the magazines pay two hundred dollars.”

“The people who watch my pictures don’t know how to read,” said Tarses, turning his back on the writer.

He cast an amiable smile at Isaac Bell. “Any husband of Marion is a friend of mine, Mr. Bell. She scored a headliner in her first picture.
Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
was alive with human interest. What can I do for you?”

Bell began what Clyde Lynds called a “spiel.”

“I represent Dagget, Staples and Hitchcock of Hartford, Connecticut.”

“Unfortunately,” Tarses interrupted, “I’ve never had the pleasure of borrowing money from them, as they’re not the sort that consorts with my sort.”

“Your luck is about to improve. Dagget, Staples and Hitchcock is considering entering the moving picture business.”

“I am all ears,” said Tarses. Money talked in a business where it had to be borrowed daily, and a prosperous-looking insurance executive dressed in a bespoke suit and made-to-order boots was listened to.

“Our first step is to invest in Mr. Lynds’s Talking Pictures machine. We are looking for partners among moving picture folk, experienced manufacturers who are up to taking superior pictures with the same photography and finish as the French. Mr. Lynds will explain the technical details.”

Tarses’s response was to change the subject. “Is your wife still making those topical films for Whiteway?”

“You can bet she’ll make talking pictures when Mr. Lynds perfects his machine,” said Bell, and turned the spiel over to Lynds. It was up to Clyde to sell his scheme, and Bell had no doubt that he was a born salesman.

“Wait,” said Tarses “What do you want from me?”

“To start, Mr. Lynds needs a laboratory, chemists, machine shops, and moving picture mechanicians.”

Tarses glanced around the barnyard. A gesture with his cigar indicated horses, camels, and actors. “I don’t have any of that stuff.”

“You can get it in a flash,” Bell retorted. “My wife chose wisely, Mr. Tarses. You know all the moving picture folk in all the aspects of the business and manufacture. Plus, you’re a natural-born manager. Everyone in the motion picture business says that if you didn’t hate the Trust, you’d be ramrodding your own big outfit.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t get along with bosses.”

“When his machine is perfected, Mr. Lynds will need a movie manufacturer who knows the line from top to bottom to take charge. You’ll be your own boss, making the pictures and distributing.”

“But who needs Talking Pictures?”

Clyde was dumbstruck. He looked at Bell in disbelief. Hadn’t Krieg and the German Army made it painfully clear that they needed it?

“Who
needs
them?” shouted Clyde, suddenly red in the face and finding the words to denounce the absurd question. “The world needs them. Talking pictures will enable motion picture men to take pictures that are crackerjacks, full of snap and go, and energy and push. We’ll tell stories of original situations dear to the heart of the exchange men, who will know darned well that exhibitors will recognize great features for their audiences.”

Jay Tarses crossed his arms over his chest and stated flatly, “Talking pictures will never happen.”

“Give me one reason why.”

“I’ll give you four. One: Audiences are happy; they don’t want smart-aleck talk, they want pictures that move. Two: How will foreigners understand what the players are saying? Three: Who’s gonna pay for installing Talking Pictures machines in every theater? Exhibitors hate spending money. Four: Who would dare distribute Talking Pictures? If they’re any good, the Edison Trust will block them.”

“H
E’S WRONG,”
M
ARION SAID
fiercely when Bell reported back to the Abbott town house on how they were rebuffed. “Tarses is so busy trying to stay a step ahead of the sheriff, he doesn’t understand. I’m so sorry, I thought he was smarter than that. Isaac, this is so important, we must help Clyde.”

“Who else can we approach?”

“I wonder…”

Bell waited. They were in Archie’s library. From the drawing room came the sounds of a dinner party gathering for cocktails. “Why don’t you get dressed?” said Marion. “Let me think on this.”

When Bell returned in a midnight blue dinner jacket, Marion was fired up and supremely confident. “There is an innovative director at the Biograph Company—bold and very clever.”

“But Biograph is part of the Trust.”

“He’s chafing under company rule. He wants to make his own pictures. He’s so forward-thinking—he’s invented all sorts of wonderful tricks with the camera—he might realize the potential of Clyde’s machine.”

“Let’s go see him.”

“He just took fifty people to California. He’s making a Biograph picture in some little village outside Los Angeles.”

“What’s his name?”

“Griffith. You’ve seen his pictures. D. W. Griffth.”

“Of course! He made
Is This Seat Taken?
”

“He’s your man.”

Isaac Bell said, “I hate to leave you so soon after our wedding, but I had better take Clyde to see him.”

Marion said, “I would love to visit my father in San Francisco and tell him all about the wedding.”

“Wonderful! ’Frisco’s only five hours on the train. We’ll meet in the middle.”

Marion straightened his bow tie and pressed close. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could travel together to California?”

Bell shook his head with a rueful smile. “I wish we could.”

“I love riding trains with you.” She laughed. “Now that we’re married, we don’t have to book two staterooms for propriety’s sake.”

“Unfortunately, escorting Clyde, I’m obliged to double up with him to keep a close watch.”

“Do you expect Krieg to try to kidnap him?”

“No, no, no. Just to be on the safe side. Don’t worry, after we meet Mr. Griffith, I’ll stash Clyde with the Los Angeles office for a weekend, and you and I can rendezvous in Santa Barbara.”

“And after I’ve seen my father, I’ll come down to Los Angeles to find some work.”

T
HE OLD
G
RAND
C
ENTRAL
S
TATION
was no more. Its classical facade and its six-hundred-and-fifty-foot glass train shed had just been razed, and now steam shovels and hard-rock miners were burrowing sixty feet into the Manhattan schist to make room for a new, two-level Grand Central Terminal.

Isaac Bell led Clyde Lynds into a temporary station that was operating out of the Grand Central Palace, a convention and trade fair building around the corner on Lexington Avenue, and headed for the makeshift gate marked “20th Century Limited.” The chaos of new construction had not persuaded the crack Chicago-bound express to lower its standards. Temporary or not, its famous red carpet had been rolled out the length of the platform.

“Hang on a minute,” said Bell. “Loose shoelace.” He planted his foot on a fire department standpipe protruding from a wall and busied his hands around his boot.

“How can you have a loose shoelace?” asked Clyde. “Your boots don’t have laces.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” Bell straightened up and headed for the telephones. “I have to phone the office. Stick close.”

“I heard there’s a phone on the train.”

“There will be a line of businessmen waiting to telephone their offices that they didn’t miss the train. Stick close.”

Bell told the operator at the front desk, “Van Dorn Agency, Knickerbocker Hotel,” and followed the attendant to a paneled booth. When the Van Dorn operator answered, he asked for the duty man.

“This is Chief Investigator Bell. Two tall yellow-haired men in dark suits and derbies followed me across Forty-second Street and into the Grand Central Palace. They’re hanging around the waiting room pretending not to watch the Twentieth Century gate. One has a mustache and is wearing a green four-in-hand necktie. The other is clean-shaven, with a dark bow tie. I’ll telephone again when we change locomotives at Harmon.”

Bell paid the attendant.

“Let’s go buy some magazines, Clyde— No, don’t look in their direction.”

F
ORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER LEAVING NEW
York, the 20th Century Limited stopped in Harmon to exchange the electric engine that had hauled it out of the Manhattan tunnels for a high-wheeled 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer that would rocket it north to Albany at seventy-five miles an hour. While train and yard crews swiftly uncoupled the old and coupled the new, Isaac Bell ran to the New York Central dispatcher’s office, identified himself as a Van Dorn detective, and asked to use their telephone.

The duty man at the Knickerbocker reported that Van Dorn operatives were trailing the “gentlemen thugs” who had followed Bell across 42nd Street.

A wire waiting for Bell at Albany, where the flyer got a fresh locomotive and a dining car, reported laconically,

NOTHING YET.

After dinner, there was nothing at Syracuse.

Bell had booked a stateroom with two narrow berths. He stretched out on the bottom berth, fully clothed.

Clyde said, “You know I could have saved money sleeping in a Pullman berth.”

“I assure you, Clyde, you would not be my first choice of company for a night on an express train, but this way I can keep an eye on you.”

“Who were those men? Krieg?”

“I should know for sure by morning.”

“How would they know to follow us from your detective agency?”

“They followed us from the
hotel
, not the agency.” Bell had stashed Clyde for safekeeping in a room at the Knickerbocker next door to the Van Dorn bull pen. The hotel was enormous, and the Krieg agents would have no reason to connect Clyde to Van Dorn.

“How’d they know what hotel?”

“They probably followed us to the Knickerbocker from Edison’s laboratory. I believe you did mention Thomas Edison while discussing your machine with Krieg?”

“Sure. I wanted Krieg to know there were others we could go to.”

“You can bet they’ve been watching the Edison laboratory since the
Mauretania
landed, waiting for you to show up.”

Bell locked the door and closed his eyes, recalling nights on the 20th Century when he and Marion would drink champagne in the privacy of adjoining staterooms.

At Rochester, the telegraph delivered pay dirt.