The Thief by Clive Cussler (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📕

situations dear to the heart of the exchange men, who will know darned well that exhibitors will recognize great features for their audiences.”

Jay Tarses crossed his arms over his chest and stated flatly, “Talking pictures will never happen.”

“Give me one reason why.”

“I’ll give you four. One: Audiences are happy; they don’t want smart-aleck talk, they want pictures that move. Two: How will foreigners understand what the players are saying? Three: Who’s gonna pay for installing Talking Pictures machines in every theater? Exhibitors hate spending money. Four: Who would dare distribute Talking Pictures? If they’re any good, the Edison Trust will block them.”

“HE’S WRONG,” MARION SAID fiercely when Bell reported back to the Abbott town house on how they were rebuffed. “Tarses is so busy trying to stay a step ahead of the sheriff, he doesn’t understand. I’m so sorry, I thought he was smarter than that. Isaac, this is so important, we must help Clyde.”

“Who else can we approach?”

“I wonder…”

Bell waited. They were in Archie’s library. From the drawing room came the sounds of a dinner party gathering for cocktails. “Why don’t you get dressed?” said Marion. “Let me think on this.”

When Bell returned in a midnight blue dinner jacket, Marion was fired up and supremely confident. “There is an innovative director at the Biograph Company—bold and very clever.”

“But Biograph is part of the Trust.”

“He’s chafing under company rule. He wants to make his own pictures. He’s so forward-thinking—he’s invented all sorts of wonderful tricks with the camera—he might realize the potential of Clyde’s machine.”

“Let’s go see him.”

“He just took fifty people to California. He’s making a Biograph picture in some little village outside Los Angeles.”

“What’s his name?”

“Griffith. You’ve seen his pictures. D. W. Griffth.”

“Of course! He made Is This Seat Taken?”

“He’s your man.”

Isaac Bell said, “I hate to leave you so soon after our wedding, but I had better take Clyde to see him.”

Marion said, “I would love to visit my father in San Francisco and tell him all about the wedding.”

“Wonderful! ’Frisco’s only five hours on the train. We’ll meet in the middle.”

Marion straightened his bow tie and pressed close. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could travel together to California?”

Bell shook his head with a rueful smile. “I wish we could.”

“I love riding trains with you.” She laughed. “Now that we’re married, we don’t have to book two staterooms for propriety’s sake.”

“Unfortunately, escorting Clyde, I’m obliged to double up with him to keep a close watch.”

“Do you expect Krieg to try to kidnap him?”

“No, no, no. Just to be on the safe side. Don’t worry, after we meet Mr. Griffith, I’ll stash Clyde with the Los Angeles office for a weekend, and you and I can rendezvous in Santa Barbara.”

“And after I’ve seen my father, I’ll come down to Los Angeles to find some work.”

THE OLD GRAND CENTRAL STATION was no more. Its classical facade and its six-hundred-and-fifty-foot glass train shed had just been razed, and now steam shovels and hard-rock miners were burrowing sixty feet into the Manhattan schist to make room for a new, two-level Grand Central Terminal.

Isaac Bell led Clyde Lynds into a temporary station that was operating out of the Grand Central Palace, a convention and trade fair building around the corner on Lexington Avenue, and headed for the makeshift gate marked “20th Century Limited.” The chaos of new construction had not persuaded the crack Chicago-bound express to lower its standards. Temporary or not, its famous red carpet had been rolled out the length of the platform.

“Hang on a minute,” said Bell. “Loose shoelace.” He planted his foot on a fire department standpipe protruding from a wall and busied his hands around his boot.

“How can you have a loose shoelace?” asked Clyde. “Your boots don’t have laces.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” Bell straightened up and headed for the telephones. “I have to phone the office. Stick close.”

“I heard there’s a phone on the train.”

“There will be a line of businessmen waiting to telephone their offices that they didn’t miss the train. Stick close.”

Bell told the operator at the front desk, “Van Dorn Agency, Knickerbocker Hotel,” and followed the attendant to a paneled booth. When the Van Dorn operator answered, he asked for the duty man.

“This is Chief Investigator Bell. Two tall yellow-haired men in dark suits and derbies followed me across Forty-second Street and into the Grand Central Palace. They’re hanging around the waiting room pretending not to watch the Twentieth Century gate. One has a mustache and is wearing a green four-in-hand necktie. The other is clean-shaven, with a dark bow tie. I’ll telephone again when we change locomotives at Harmon.”

Bell paid the attendant.

“Let’s go buy some magazines, Clyde— No, don’t look in their direction.”

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER LEAVING NEW York, the 20th Century Limited stopped in Harmon to exchange the electric engine that had hauled it out of the Manhattan tunnels for a high-wheeled 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer that would rocket it north to Albany at seventy-five miles an hour. While train and yard crews swiftly uncoupled the old and coupled the new, Isaac Bell ran to the New York Central dispatcher’s office, identified himself as a Van Dorn detective, and asked to use their telephone.

The duty man at the Knickerbocker reported that Van Dorn operatives were trailing the “gentlemen thugs” who had followed Bell across 42nd Street.

A wire waiting for Bell at Albany, where the flyer got a fresh locomotive and a dining car, reported laconically,

NOTHING YET.

After dinner, there was nothing at Syracuse.

Bell had booked a stateroom with two narrow berths. He stretched out on the bottom berth, fully clothed.

Clyde said, “You know I could have saved money sleeping in a Pullman berth.”

“I assure you, Clyde, you would not be my first choice of company for a night on an express train, but this way I can keep an eye on you.”

“Who were those men? Krieg?”

“I should know for sure by morning.”

“How would they know to follow us from