The Thief

Clyde had prepared a sketchbook with drawings and titles written out in block letters. Thomas nodded appreciatively. “This even beats Mr. Bell’s telegram.” He flipped through the pages. “‘Pictures that talk’? Everyone brings me pictures that talk. Trouble is, none of them work.”

Clyde Lynds faced the inventor and spoke loudly and slowly, moving his lips to exaggerate each word. “This. One. Works.”

“You don’t say? O.K., show me. Where is it?”

Lynds tapped the sketch pad and then tapped his head. “In here.”

“What was that?”

Bell watched with admiration as Clyde turned a page of his pad to display the words he had written out ahead of time: The first machine was lost. I need a laboratory, machine shops, and money to build a new one.

“What do you mean ‘lost’?” Edison shouted.

Clyde flipped to the next page, on which he had written In a fire, and Isaac Bell’s admiration went up a notch. The pe

Edison glanced at Bell. Whatever the expression in his eyes, it was lost in the shadow of his brow, but Bell sensed a shift in his attitude. “Mr. Bell,” he said briskly, suddenly all business, “I suspect that the purely scientific conversation we are about to embark on will bore you. I’ve arranged a tour of my laboratories for your enjoyment while Mr. Lynds and I pursue what makes his talking pictures different from all the others.”

“Thoughtful of you,” said Bell, rising to his feet. “I’m curious to see your operation.” Clearly, Edison wanted to get rid of him. But just as clearly, Bell concluded, Clyde could take care of himself. Besides, they had made a pact that Clyde would sign no papers without Van Dorn attorneys reading them first.

The functionary sprang into the room as if he had had his ear pressed to the door, and Isaac Bell allowed him to walk him through a standard ca

“What’s that?” Bell asked. They were passing a door marked “Kinetophone Laboratory,” and through the top glass he could see an older bearded man hunched over a cat’s cradle of wires and pulleys that linked a moving picture projector to a phonograph. Joe Van Dorn, Bell recalled, had been disappointed by a Kinetophone. “I said, ‘What’s that?’”

“Just an experiment.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“It’s not ready to be seen.”

“I don’t mind,” said Bell, and pushed through the door, ignoring his guide’s protests. The bearded old man looked up, blinking in surprise, as if unaccustomed to visitors.

“We should not be in here, Mr. Bell,” said the functionary. “This experiment is very important to Mr. Edison. Much is riding on it.”

“Go ask Mr. Edison’s permission,” said Bell. “I’ll wait here. Go on!”

The functionary scuttled out. Bell said to the old man, “A fellow I know saw one of these in Cinci

“Repairing? Don’t make me laugh. God Himself couldn’t repair this piece of trash.”

“What’s wrong with it? Why is it trash?”

“Listen.” He moved an electric switch, and the machine projected on the wall a moving picture of a woman singing. At the same time, the phonograph cylinder began spi

“She doesn’t sound synchronized with her picture,” said Bell.

“And never will be,” said the old man.

The song ended, but the woman appeared to keep on singing. Her mouth opened wide, holding a note, while from the horn a male voice said, “What a fine voice you have.” Five seconds later a man appeared, mouthing the words he had spoken earlier and clapping silently as an invisible violin played. At last the violinist appeared.

“That’s rather fu

“It is supposed to be a drama.”

“If it can’t be fixed, why are you working on it?”

“Because this is the only job Edison will give me,” the old man answered bitterly. “He has younger men working on similar experiments, but they’re all trash.”

“Why don’t you work elsewhere?”

The old man looked at Isaac Bell. A strange light shone in his eyes as if he were staring so deeply inward that he could not quite see what was in front of him. “Edison bankrupted me. I had debts I could never repay. Edison bought them up. I owe him. I am forced to work here.”

“Why would Mr. Edison want you to work on something that doesn’t work?”

“Don’t you understand?” the old man railed, and Bell wondered about the man’s sanity. “He keeps me from inventing things that would put him out of business. He stole my greatest invention, and now he makes sure I will never invent another.”

“What invention?” Bell asked gently, feeling sorrow for the man’s distress.

“I invented an inexpensive gramophone. Edison copied it — poorly, shabbily. Mine was better, but he undercut the price and inundated the market with cheap copies. He named his ‘phonograph.’ People fell for it — people are such fools — and bought the less expensive one. He drove me out of business.”

“When was this?” asked Bell.

“Long, long ago.” His face worked, contorted, and he shouted, “Mine was a beautiful machine. He is a monster.”

The door flew open. The functionary had returned with a heavyset bruiser whose coat bulged with saps and a pistol. “O.K., mister, out of here,” he ordered, and took Bell’s arm.

The tall detective turned eyes on him as bleak as an ice field and said, very softly, “Don’t.”

The bruiser let go.

“Take me back to Mr. Edison.”

Thomas Edison was not smiling when Isaac walked into the soundproof recording room, and Clyde Lynds’s normally cheery countenance had hardened into one tight-lipped with anger.

“There you are, Mr. Bell. We were just finishing up our discussion. Clyde, I look forward to hearing back from you as soon as you’ve had the opportunity to speak with your lawyer. Good day, gentlemen.”

The shadow of a grin crossed Clyde’s face, and he scrawled on his sketch pad, Good day.

“Would you leave your drawings with me?” Edison asked. “Let me peruse them at my leisure.”

To Isaac Bell’s surprise, Clyde handed them over.

He was unusually quiet on the trolley to Newark. Bell waited until they boarded a train for Pe

“I believe he thinks that it is very, very valuable. Of course he didn’t say that.”

“What did he say?”

“In exchange for providing a laboratory, he demands complete control of the patent, not just license to manufacture it. In other words, he would own it.”

“Those are harsh terms.”

Clyde gri

Bell said, “I had a gander at his ‘Kinetophone.’ It didn’t strike me it’s going anywhere.”

“All mechanical methods of synchronization are doomed to failure,” Clyde said, flatly. “The Professor and I figured out at the start that we’d never get two separate machines to run precisely synchronized. We knew we had to invent a better way. And we did. Better and completely different.”

“Wasn’t it risky giving Edison your plans?”