The Thief

  Tarses knew he had his share of flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one of them, and he said, “Thanks, Joe.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Imperial. Well, sun’s in the sky. Bet you’re itching to get back to work— Say, what’s your picture called?”

  “The Imperial Horseman.”

  McCoy tipped his hat to Tarses’s pretty business manager, slung the unconscious thug over his shoulder, and carried him away.

  Tarses shouted for his players to climb on their animals.

  “Camera…”

  That evening, when Tarses was paying off his extras, the one last in line drawled, “Who were those fellers pushing you around?”

  Tarses was about to tell him to mind his own business when he recognized the extra as the tall, barbed-wire-thin cowboy with whom his costume girl had traded a French Foreign Legionnaire kepi for the cowboy’s Stetson, with a promise to trade hats again over a glass of wine after work. Tarses had noticed him sitting in his saddle as if born to it, and now, close up, he saw angular bone structure in the cowboy’s face that looked ferocious in the light of the setting sun.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tex.”

  “Come back tomorrow, Tex. I’ll be taking pictures for a Wild West drama.”

  TEXAS WALT HATFIELD SAUNTERED into the Los Angeles field office, cast a withering glance at the front-desk man’s fancy duds, and shook howdy with Isaac Bell.

  Bell felt the tall Texan flinch.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Busted it falling off my damned horse. Camel spooked him.”

  Bell was astonished. There was no finer horseman in the West. “When’s the last time you fell off a horse?”

  “Unless you mean shot off,” Texas Walt drawled, “Ah was three years old, and he hadn’t been broke yet.”

  “Did you catch up with Joe McCoy?”

  “Yup. Like Tarses told me, used to thug for Edison—McCoy called it ‘engaged by Mr. Edison’s legal department.’ Quit or got fired, Ah couldn’t tell, came out here, and hired on with Imperial Protection. McCoy claims they’ve been whupping the heck out of the Edison Boys.”

  “I just saw a bunged-up bunch headed back East on the train,” Bell said. “McCoy have any inkling what Imperial Protection’s all about?”

  “He’s not a talkative feller. Though near as Ah can gather, he himself’s on the level.”

  “Are they?”

  “All I know is they ain’t asking for protection money. But if it’s not a racket, why is Imperial taking the independents’ side in the Trust war? Kindness of their hearts?”

  Bell said, “I suspect that the truth is printed on their calling card.”

  “‘The Independent’s Friend?’ How you figure that?”

  “If an outfit that distributes and exhibits moving pictures befriends all the independents, they can rent out a lot of films.”

  Texas Walt shoved his Stetson back on his head. “Like the cattle broker buying up every herd at the railhead.”

  “And the meat packer in Chicago buying by the trainload. The Independent’s Friend could control the distribution and exhibition of all the independents’ moving pictures.”

  “You’re sure they’re the same Imperial as the outfit you’re tracking?”

  Bell nodded emphatically. “Larry Saunders got the Los Angeles exchange to trace their telephone number back to the Imperial Building.”

  “And you’re sure Imperial Film’s a blind for something else?” Hatfield asked.

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” said Isaac Bell.

  “Reckon you want me to continue riding for Tarses?”

  “No. I want you inside that building. They’ve got cinematography studio stages up in the penthouse. Audition at Imperial to get a job acting inside.”

  “Acting jobs ain’t all that easy to tie on to, Isaac. There’s men and women lined up everywhere they’re taking pictures.”

  “You have a leg up, Walt. You look like you should be in pictures. And you’ve already worked in a couple. Get inside Imperial first thing tomorrow.”

  Texas Walt hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Bell.

  “Well, I don’t want to leave Tarses in a lurch.”

  “Tarses? What does Tarses have to do with the Talking Pictures case?”

  Texas Walt scuffed the carpet with his boot. “Fact is, he’s talking about me playing a bigger part.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mr. Van Dorn for a leave of absence?” Bell asked in a quiet, silky manner that Texas Walt Hatfield misinterpreted.

  “Think the boss would go for that?”

  “After we crack the case.”

  Texas Walt worked a deep groove into the carpet. “Sorry, Isaac. I didn’t mean to say I won’t take home the gal I brung to the dance.”

  “Appreciate it,” said Bell. “Here’s where we stand: I’ve got the boys watching Clyde on the eighth floor of the Imperial Building; I want you up top in the roof studios. I’ve seen Mademoiselle Viorets’s office on the seventh, and I’m heading now to the fourth floor where they do the recordings.”

  “How you fixin’ to get in?”

  “I already am in.”

  THE TOUGH NUTS IN FANCY uniforms who guarded the Imperial Building lobby were not exactly friendly toward Isaac Bell, but he had visited Clyde Lynds often enough that they acknowledged a familiar face and greeted him by name.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Bell,” said the doorman, then spoke sharply to the well-built men crowding behind Bell who were carrying musical cases for horns, saxophones, a clarinet, a violin, and a double bass. “Wait right there, gents! I’ll be with youse in a minute.”

  “They’re with me,” said Bell.

  “All of ’em?”

  “Mr. Lynds requested a band.”

  “Open those cases.”

  “Gentlemen,” Bell said mildly, “they’re jumpy here. Show him your instruments.”

  Hinged open, the cases revealed shiny trumpets and saxophones, clarinets, a little violin, and an enormous string bass.

  “Fourth floor,” Bell told the glowering elevator operator, who glanced for the O.K. from the chief doorman before delivering them to the fourth floor.

  Clyde Lynds was waiting impatiently in the recording room. “What took so long?”

  “Nervous doormen thought the boys were smuggling Gatling guns.”

  “Idiots— All right, boys, sit yourselves around that recording horn. Violin closest, trumpet over there, saxophone and string bass back there.”

  “Where you want me?’ asked the clarinetist, a nattily dressed wisp of a fellow whom Isaac Bell had last seen in Idaho separating two bank robbers from their shotguns.

  Clyde said, “Stand behind the violin and wait to come in until I tell you.”

  The string bass player, most famous at the Van Dorn Detective Agency for infiltrating San Francisco’s corrupt police department, blew A on a pitch pipe to start the tuning process.

  Clyde said, “When making acoustic recordings of music, we have to replace the violins with horns and clarinets and reinforce the string bass with a bass saxophone and the drums with banjos. One of my goals is to replace the acoustic mechanical systems invented by Edison. Edison machines can’t record strings and drums and can’t record piano, which is really just a bunch of strings and drums. It comes out flat and tinny.”

  Isaac Bell glanced over his shoulder. He had an eerie sense that someone was watching him. But the only people he saw were Clyde’s assistants coming into the room carrying a box trailing wires. While they began attaching the wires to a disc-cutting machine, Bell went to the door and looked out. The corridor was empty, but the feeling persisted that he was under observation.

  Clyde’s helpers lugged in a wooden box on top of which stood a thick round disc peppered with holes. They placed it next to the horn. “This is a carbon microphone, like you’ll find in a telephone, only much bigger. Inside this box is an electrically charged glass vacuum valve
that will amplify and regenerate what the microphone hears. It is my theory that an electric recording will add an octave of sound reproduction so that we can record violins, and hopefully one day, the piano. Eventually I’ll make a microphone that lets the sound wave be lazy, unlike Edison’s microphone, which demands lots of work. By the time the sound comes out of Edison’s horn it’s exhausted, just like some poor laborer. O.K., why don’t you boys tune up while they finish hooking up wires?”

  Clyde joined Bell at the door, and they stepped down the hall into a soundproof room that Clyde had built next to the recording studio. It had a window made of multiple layers of glass that looked out on the musicians. There was an enormous tin gramophone horn on a wooden box, which, Bell noticed, had wires trailing out of it and through the wall into the recording room.

  He asked, “What’s this about cutting a wax disc? I thought you were putting the sound straight on film.”

  “One thing at time. First I have to make a clear electrical recording. There’s no point in putting acoustically recorded sound on the film if I can’t play it back loudly enough for an audience to hear in a big theater.”

  “When do you think you’ll be able to?”

  “Listen to this.” Clyde closed a knife switch on the box that held the horn. The horn emitted the discordant cacophony of the musicians tuning violins and banjos. Bell listened carefully, trying to distinguish between the different instruments he was watching through the window. “I can’t hear much difference between the violin and the clarinet.”

  “The fact that you’re hearing the violin at all tells me I’m on the right track.” Clyde opened the switch, and the noise stopped. “You can tell Mr. Van Dorn that we can sell a version of this microphone to Alexander Graham Bell to make longer long-distance telephone calls. Like from here all the way to New York.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Bell, adding drily, “I’ll also tell him that it sounds like we have a long way to go.”

  “I had a better one made, but someone stole it.”

  “Stole it? Who?”

  Clyde shrugged. “I don’t know. I came in yesterday morning, and the best one I’d made yet had disappeared. None of my boys saw anything. And neither did yours.”

  “Do you think someone sneaked in while you were

  sleeping?”

  “I went back to the house to get a bath and a full night’s sleep. The cleaners might have tossed it out with the garbage, but they claim they didn’t.”

  Isaac Bell was troubled that he could not tell for sure whether the young scientist was speaking the truth or making excuses for slow progress. He said, “I’ll post a man in here, overnight, when you’re not here.”

  “I don’t leave often.”

  “I know. Mr. Van Dorn is impressed by your dedication. Have you heard anything new to do with Imperial?”

  Clyde Lynds had made many friends, as was his wont, while wandering the halls and riding the elevators while pondering the knotty science behind his Talking Pictures machine. He shared Bell’s suspicion of the mysteriously wealthy company. “I met an Imperial director who’s taking pictures outside. He got the job ’cause he’s pals with somebody high up in the company. He might know something. Or he might be just another hired hand.”

  “What’s his picture called?”

  “The Brewer’s Daughter.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The hero marries a German immigrant’s daughter, and they live happily ever after.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  ISAAC BELL DABBED A MIXTURE OF BLACK shoe polish and Pinaud Clubman Wax on his mustache, stuffed his distinctive golden hair under a leather flying-machine helmet, and pulled a big set of birdman goggles over his blue eyes. Then he mounted a shiny black Indian motorcycle and roared up Second Street, weaving in and out of streetcars, autos, trucks, and wagons at breakneck speed. The machine was the brand-new model with an automatic oil pump, a two-speed transmission for lightning starts, and a springy front fork that Bell hoped would help in the jumps.

  Leaning into a turn, he cut along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks toward Aliso. He careened onto Aliso, headed straight for an intersection occupied by an enormous red brick brewery and its bottling plant, and poured on the speed. Closing fast on the brewery, he saw a canvas sign hanging above a roped-off empty lot that read:

  IMPERIAL FILM

  “THE BREWER’S DAUGHTER”

  Extra Players Wait Here

  A huge crowd of costumed extras milled around the lot: mustachioed villains, helmeted cops, fat men bulging in loud suits, and dozens of dust-caked cowboys—many twirling lassos—numerous circus clowns, and no less than three female trick riders in buckskin standing on their saddles. Texas Walt was right. Competition was tough. Everyone in Los Angeles wanted to be in a movie. To get the job, you had to stand out.

  Bell spotted the camera operator at the brewery’s ornate iron gates, cranking at full speed. The camera was flanked by a director with a megaphone and a blazing bank of Cooper-Hewitt lamps. A Pierce-Arrow limousine rolled in front of the gates. A beautiful actress in evening clothes stepped from it into the glare of the Cooper-Hewitts.

  Isaac Bell twisted his throttle and kicked the Indian into first gear. Hunkered low over the handlebars, he headed for a long ramp down which motortrucks and horse-drawn beer wagons were exiting the brewery’s second story. Dodging trucks and horses, he leaned into a sharp turn, raced up the ramp, and leaned into another. The Indian’s motor screamed in protest as his wheels left the pavement.

  The motorcycle took to the air, flew from the top of the ramp, and soared over the hood of the Pierce-Arrow. Clearing the auto by a whisker, Bell banged down hard on the cobblestones and skidded to a rubber-scorching halt in front of the camera.

  When he saw that the startled camera operator had kept his wits about him and continued cranking, Bell extended his gloved hand to the beautiful woman with a courtly bow. The actress took it, covering her surprise, as if assuming Bell was a part of the film no one had told her about.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the director yelled.

  “Came for a job,” said Isaac Bell, mimicking the tone of a country man trying his luck in the big city.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I hear you got a chase coming up in this Bride of the Brewery show you’re taking pictures for.”

  “It’s called The Brewer’s Daughter—hey, hold on a minute! Where’d you hear I have a chase scene?”

  “Feller in the business told me.”

  Among the acquaintances Clyde Lynds had met in the halls was this Imperial director, who had boasted to Clyde he was planning to have the couple elope on a bicycle chased by brewery trucks and wagons spilling barrels.

  “Where’s he work?”

  “Works for Mr. Griffith.”

  The director beamed proudly. “D.W. heard I’m doing a chase scene?”

  “That’s what the feller said.”

  “Did Mr. Griffith mention anything specific about it?”

  “‘If I was filming it, I’d use something more exciting than a bicycle.’”

  The director’s face fell. Then he got truculent. “Oh, I get it. You think I need a lunatic on a motorcycle.”

  Isaac Bell pointed at the camera. “Look at the pictures that camera just took. Then tell me I’m not the best motorcycle rider in the movies.”

  A BREMSERHÄUSCHEN—A BRAKEMAN’S van, which Detective Curtis had told Pauline was called a caboose in America—sat by itself on a lonely track siding. It had high spoked wheels like a freight wagon, a cupola above one end, three square windows, a tin chimney, and ventilators in the roof, which the wind was spinning. She saw a door in the middle and two more on the platforms in front and back.

  It was starting to rain again. Night was falling. Pauline was cold, hungry, and still hundreds of miles from France. What, she asked herself, is the best thing possible at this moment?

  None of the windows showed lights, and no
smoke rose from the chimney.

  No one was around. All day she had been surprised by the emptiness of the countryside the train tracks traversed. Germany’s population had grown enormous, even in her short lifetime. She had expected the freight trains to take her through busy cities and bustling suburbs. Instead, they trundled past farm after farm and more animals than people. It was an unexpected piece of good luck—this empty caboose. It would be dry inside, and out of the wind. There might even be food.

  She checked for the tenth time that no one was near, then sprinted as fast as she could across a muddy field and climbed a short ladder onto the back platform. The door was locked. She climbed down, walked along the siding, and tried the center door. Locked. She went to the front of the caboose, climbed up, and discovered that door locked, too.

  She was so cold she began shivering. The cupola! Maybe it had a hatch they’d forgotten to lock. A ladder was attached to the side. She climbed the wet metal rungs, scrambled along the roof, and knelt to inspect the cupola. There was no hatch in its roof, but then she discovered the entire roof was a hatch that hinged open and no one had locked it. She lowered herself down a ladder into near darkness, closing the roof hatch to keep out the rain.

  She felt around until her hands brushed a lantern and a box of matches. She was afraid to light it because someone might see. But then she thought, the brakemen sleep in here when they are not working. She was right. The windows had curtains. She felt her way around, drew the curtains shut, located the lantern again, and lighted its wick.

  She looked around in amazement.

  It was neat and cosy as a dollhouse. It had sleeping bunks along the walls with warm blankets and a little kerosene stove with a teakettle, and she suddenly realized she would give anything for a warm drink. The kettle had water in it. She struck a match to the kerosene, and while the water heated she found a tin of tea and another of sugar. When she found a jar of blackberry jam, she thought she would cry with happiness.

  She was spooning the jam from the jar when her active gaze fell on a map of the railroad system that covered one wall. She saw why the route was lonely. The tracks ran in a remarkably straight line southeast from Berlin, through Güsten, Wetzlar, and Koblenz to Metz, in Alsace-Lorraine. The Berlin-Metzer Bahn bypassed cities like Leipzig and Frankfurt in favor of a direct route. This was what people called the Kanonenbahn, the Army’s strategic railway, built with gentle curves and easy grades to transport cannon and soldiers quickly to the border to defend against French invasion. Looking east on the map she saw similarly straight lines radiating from Berlin across Poland to hold the Russians at their border.