“Sounds like you’re working at vertical integration, too, Uncle Andy.”
“From your lips to God’s ear, young Isaac. But don’t go blabbing it about.”
“Will you keep digging into who’s behind her?”
“I’ve already begun inquiries,” Rubenoff replied.
“Quiet as a church,” the Van Dorn Protective Services operatives reported whenever Bell dropped by the Imperial Building laboratory where Clyde Lynds was hard at work. “He’s at it from breakfast to supper, and sometimes half the night. The man works hard as a nailer.”
“Have you seen anyone hanging around?”
“No. It’s just him and us and Clyde’s helpers — and you know we looked at them real close.”
“No shadows on the way home?”
“No, sir, Mr. Bell. None coming in either. And the boys watching the house haven’t seen a soul who looked like trouble. Do you think maybe they just gave up and packed it in?”
“I would be very surprised,” said Bell. “Keep on your toes. And remember, the hardest part of guarding a fellow is that the attack can come anytime, night or day.”
Privately, however, Bell had to wonder. Had Krieg given up? Or were they laying back, reasoning that once he was set up in a laboratory, Clyde Lynds wasn’t going anywhere until he had finished the machine, in which event they had him just where they wanted him?
28
Joseph Van Dorn arrived on the train, unexpectedly.
Isaac Bell saw by his expression that the boss doubted that his chief investigator was on the right course, although Van Dorn’s opening salvo was uncharacteristically mild and somewhat oblique.
“Our friends at Dagget, Staples and Hitchcock are alarmed by inquiries from disreputable types.”
“What sort of disreputable types?”
“Some furrier and his cousin in the glove trade marched in big as day demanding to borrow money to build a plant for the manufacture of motion pictures. Thanks to your bankrolling masquerade, word’s getting around the film folk that Dagget has money to lend.”
“Are you sure they weren’t Krieg agents onto us?”
“I looked into them, of course. But they appear legitimate.”
“Legitimately disreputable?” Bell asked with a smile.
“That’s what I just said: a furrier and a glover. How’s Clyde making out with the machine?”
“He’s making progress. Seems excited by a scheme to photograph the sound directly onto the movie film.”
“I hope he makes progress faster. Guarding a man night and day does not come cheap.”
“How did you make out with the German ambassador?” Bell asked.
“We danced around each other, me pretending I was merely curious about Army officers serving as consular attachés, the ambassador pretending not to wonder why I was pretending mere curiosity. I left the Cosmos Club with the distinct impression that he hasn’t a clue what his consuls are up to, much less the German Army. Nor does he want to.”
“In other words, the consuls do the dirty work.”
“As I told you in Washington.”
“So nothing new from the ambassador.”
Van Dorn sighed. “Look here, Isaac, is it possible Krieg and company have thrown in the towel?”
“No. They’re biding their time.”
“Until when?”
“Until Clyde gets closer to finishing.”
“That could be years!” Van Dorn exploded. “‘Several years.’ Clyde’s own words.”
“I doubt they’ll hold off that long. For now, he’s working on the machine and they can wait until he’s made enough progress so they’ll know it really works.”
“How will they know? You’ve forted him up. He’s surrounded with costly detectives, night and day, in the laboratory, home in bed, and the quick-march in between.”
“All they need is one spy in the Imperial Building, watching and reporting back. There are scores of employees within range of Clyde’s laboratory. It would only take one to keep an eye on him — an otherwise legitimate technical fellow or a mechanician.”
“If that’s the case, then Clyde Lynds is safe while he works on his machine.”
“Temporarily safe,” retorted Isaac Bell. “Each time they’ve tried to lay hands on him it was clear they intended to take him back to Germany, where they’re ready to put him to work making the machine. Now we’ve put him to work, so right now they’re watching and waiting. What will trigger their next attempt will either be movement ahead on Clyde’s part, or us lowering our guard.”
“It is very hard to keep your guard up for a long time, Isaac.”
“That is why I am investigating what Krieg Rüstungswerk is up to in America. When we find out what and put a stop to it, Clyde and the talking machine will be free and clear.”
Van Dorn sighed again. “What if all they are ‘up to in America’ is grabbing Clyde and his machine? It’s the machine they want. If you hadn’t stopped them on the ship, they’d be happily holed up in some Prussian castle while Clyde and Beiderbecke tinkered away with guns to their heads. The first the world would know was when the Germans showed talking pictures.”
“The Germans were here already,” said Bell.
“Here? What do you mean?”
“Here in America, long before I broke up the kidnapping.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Look at the operation to grab Clyde off the Limited. Back in Chicago they smuggled the Acrobat into the express car. Only thirty-six hours later in New Mexico, halfway across the continent, they wrecked the train and had horsemen and mounts positioned to spirit Clyde across the Mexican border and onto a train. Five to one, they had a ship waiting in Veracruz. And they organized the entire operation in the few short days after Clyde gave their Marzipan Boys the slip in New York. Don’t you see, Joe? This is a gigantic outfit with a continental reach. I’ll bet you ten to one, Krieg secretly owns American factories, farms, ranches, and hotels where their agents hole up.”
In dead silence, and in movements so lithe he seemed to flow like oil, Christian Semmler roamed up and down a stairwell concealed in the center of the Imperial Building. The hidden shaft let him enter every floor from the subcellar to the roof. He could watch, unseen, seeing everything. On the penthouse story, he pressed his eye to a spy hole. The cinematography stage camera operator was photographing a scene of a couple kissing good-bye in their parlor as the man went off to war.
Semmler descended three floors to watch Irina Viorets busy at her desk, female stenographers on either side, a runner hurrying notes to a telegrapher tapping in a far corner, and the telephone pressed to her ear. Though the walls that encased his secret stairwell were thick, he fancied he smelled her perfume.
Floor by floor he descended, peering through spy holes at scene shops, carpenters, and seamstresses, ranks of darkroom chemists laboring under red lights, films being loaded into canisters. He stopped to watch an entire ten-minute reel of film being presented to Imperial Company salesmen, who would take it to the exhibitors and distributors around America. All was up-to-date, all the latest way of doing things, with one glaring exception: the sound-recording studio on the fourth floor.
Christian Semmler surveyed the recording studio with a knowledgeable eye. It was antiquated — even though the equipment was the latest available — because words and music were recorded here as feebly as they had been when Edison and his competitors first tinkered with phonographs and gramophones thirty years ago. Grim proof of how antiquated was the makeup of the band of trumpets, clarinets, and saxophones playing into an acoustical horn. Where were the violins? Where was the double bass? Where was the piano? Where was the tympani? Nowhere! None of those instruments could be recorded faithfully. The saxophone played for the string bass. The clarinet was supposed to fill in for the violins. Banjos attempted to keep the beat. The untutored listener of the recorded wax disc would assume that the piano had never been invented.