“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 gramophone. 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.”
11
“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.”