The Thief

  Suddenly Isaac Bell bolted to the nearest companionway and bounded up the stairs. Would he have noticed in the dark if the Acrobat had jumped up rather than down? Up to one of the many stays and cables rising to the sundeck, immediately above the boat deck, where the Marconi house sat. Would he have seen him grip a line and scramble up to the sundeck?

  Bell ran along the boat deck past the library windows that had backlighted the scene that night and saw immediately that the answer was no. There were no stays remotely near enough for a man to jump to. Therefore, if the Acrobat hadn’t fallen into the sea, he had to have landed on the deck below the boat deck. Also impossible. Baffled, Isaac Bell wandered slowly back down to the promenade deck.

  Two seamen were smoothing the wood railing with rasps and sandpaper.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, gents. Up early?”

  “Soon as we can see to work,” said one.

  The other said, “If we let wear and tear go, the ship would be a bloomin’ embarrassment. Look at this gouge! Fairly tore the rail in half.” He stepped back to show Bell their repair of what was actually the minutest gouge in the teak, which only an eagle-eyed bosun would notice.

  Oddly, the gouge traced the full twelve-inch curve of the wood from inboard to outboard as if something flexible had wrapped around it. “What do you suppose caused that?” Bell asked.

  “Some bloomin’ swell, begging your pardon, sir, must have whacked it with his walking stick.”

  “Or sword,” ventured his mate.

  “Sword?” the first echoed derisively.

  “The grain of the wood is cut.”

  “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 gramop
hone. 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.”

  “SOMEHOW,” SAID MARION, 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.”

  “Where is Clyde now?”

  “He’s safe. Archie’s with him.”

  Marion frowned. “Lillian told me that Archie is still not entirely well.”

  “Archie promised to shoot first and avoid fisticuffs.”

  “But is he well? Lillian says he still drifts off to sleep sometimes.”

  Bell nodded. “It happened last week in Nice. But he snapped out of it. The fact is it’s important to Archie that he pull his own weight. I have to honor that,” he added evenly. “Whether I like it or not.” A warm smile softened his no-nonsense expression. “Which leaves me with time on my hands until we join Captain Turner for dinner tonigh
t. Is there anything you would like to do on our last day at sea?”

  Marion stretched across the bed and lifted the receiver from the switch hook of a white telephone affixed to the paneling. “If you would like to shed your scratchy outdoorsy tweeds, you’ll find in that closet a silk dressing gown that I bought for you at Selfridges— Oh, yes, good morning, steward. We would like our breakfast in bed, please— They’re asking what we want.”

  “Honeymoon specials.”

  THAT NIGHT, THEIR LAST NIGHT at sea, Isaac and Marion and Lillian Hennessy Abbott ate at the Captain’s table in the First Class dining saloon. Archibald Angell Abbott IV sent his regrets. He was busy babysitting Clyde Lynds.

  CLYDE LYNDS WATCHED ARCHIE ABBOTT DRIFT toward sleep, start awake, then drift again.

  Isaac Bell’s redheaded pal would be a goner in ten more minutes, he predicted, and indeed in eight he was fast asleep, sitting up in the chair squeezed into a corner of Clyde’s cabin. Having noticed Archie’s condition, Clyde had prepared for this opportunity by visiting the purser’s office to remove some money from the wallets he and the Professor had left in the safe.

  He slipped quietly out the door and signaled a deck steward he had primed to wait, touching a finger to his lips to ensure silence. The steward hurried off and returned quickly with two mates, bigger men then he. They padded quietly along the corridor, their shoes making no sound on the rubber tiles. All three were grinning like men who were about to earn enormous tips for very little effort.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready, sir.”

  “I don’t expect trouble, but just in case.”

  “Don’t you worry, sir,” all three assured him.

  “If trouble they want, trouble they’ll have.”

  “Bet yer sweet life.”

  He knew this was crazy. But he had to get a look at the machine to be sure it was O.K. It was a move like this that got the poor Professor the ax, which was why he was paying good money to husky stewards to make sure it didn’t happen to him.