“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.”
“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
