_ CHAPTER VI. AN EXPERIMENT WITH THE "MOVIES"
The cross-examination of Polly Marion resulted in little advantage. She had known of the sudden departure of two other songbirds, well equipped with funds for the land of Somewhere Else. Their absence had been the subject of some quiet jesting among the dragon flies who flitted over the pond of pleasure. A suggestion, from some unrecalled source, that their disappearance had been connected with the deaths of the two aged suitors was revitalized in her memory by the words of the elderly detective. Familiar with the strange life of this jeweled half-world Shirley's keenness brought forth nothing to convince him that the girl had been more culpable than in the following of her class, known to the initiate as the "gentle art of gold digging."
"Polly, go home now, and stay away from these parties: that's my honest advice, if you want to be on the 'outside looking in,' when some one is sent to prison for this. I am in favor of hushing up this affair, and want to ease it up for you. Are you wise?"
Polly was wise, beyond her years. Her equipoise was regained, and with a coquettish interest in this handsome interviewer--such girls always have an eye for future business--he returned to her theatrical lodging house, in which at least dwelt her wardrobe and makeup box when she was "trouping" in some spangled chorus. Of recent months she had not been subjected to the Hurculean rigors of bearing the spear, thanks to the gratuities of the open-handed Van Cleft, Senior. She pleaded to remain out of the white lights, meaning it as she spoke. But Shirley wisely felt that the butterfly would emerge from the chrysalis, shortly, to flutter into certain gardens where he would fain cull rare blossoms! Pat Cleary deputized a "shadow" to diarize her exits and entrances.
"The hooks are cleaned, with fresh bait upon them," soliloquized Shirley, as he went down the dark stoop. "Now for a little laboratory work on the wherefore of the why!"
Although long after midnight, he numbered among his acquaintanceship, many whom he could find far from Slumber-land. His steps led to the apartment of a certain theatrical manager, whom he found engaged in a lively tournament of the chips, jousting with two leading men, one playwright, a composer and a merchant prince. The latter, of course, was winning. The host, contributing both chips and bottled cheer, was far from optimistic until the arrival of the club man.
"A live one abaft the mizzen!" exclaimed Dick Holloway, "Here's Shirley sent by Heaven to join us. After all I hope to pay my next month's rent."
Noisily welcomed by the victims of mercantile prowess, he apologetically declined to flirt with Dame Fortune, pleading a business purpose.
"Business, Monty! By the shade of Shakspeare! I never knew you to look at business, except to prevent it running you down like a Fourth Avenue mail bus."
"It is in the interest of science," said Shirley, drawing the manager aside, "an experiment--"
"Fudge on science. You interrupt a game at this time of night!"
"But it means money. I am willing to pay."
"Ah, Monty, money should never come between friends, and so I retract: with three failures this season, because the public doesn't appreciate art."
"It's about moving pictures. I know that you have floated a syndicate for big productions. Do you work night and day?"
"An investment? Heaven bless you! Come into my bedroom and we'll arrange things of course, we work at night. Just this minute they are producing the 'Bartered Bride' in six reels and eighteen thrills a foot. A magnificently equipped studio, the public yelling for more how much have you?"
"Not so fast, Dick. It's merely some special work tonight, what you would call trick photography. I need a photographer, some lights, a little space, a microscopic lens and the complete developing during the night. And, I'll pay cash, as I have done with some suspicious poker losses in this temple of the muses on bygone evenings. Which, I may urge with gentle sarcasm is more than I have frequently received at your hands."
"Touche!" laughed Holloway. "I'll write a note to the studio manager--he's there now, and will do what you want. You could have your picture completed by morning with a little financial coaxing applied in the right place. Come to the library table. Go on with the game, boys, it will save me a little."
The potentate of dry goods was drawing in his winnings, as Shirley leaned over Holloway's shoulder to dictate the missive. Suddenly a revolver shot rang out from the window, and a bullet crashed into the wall behind Shirley's head.
His hand, idly dropped into his overcoat pocket, intuitively closed around his automatic revolver. A dark silhouette was outlined against the gray luminosity cast up by the lights of Broadway, half a block from the window. Through the opening another belching flame shot forth, to be answered by the criminologist's weapon, barking like a miltraileuse. They heard a stifled cry, and as Shirley ran forward, he exclaimed with disappointment.
"He's escaped down the fire-escape and through that skylight."
He faced about to smile grimly at the curious scene within. The playwright had taken refuge among the brass andirons of the big empty fireplace. The matinee heroes were under chairs, and Holloway behind the mahogany buffet. From the direction of the stairway came shrill cries from the speeding merchant, softening in intensity as he neared the street level.
"The battle's over!" exclaimed Holloway. "I don't know whether it was my chorus men wishing the gipsy curse on me, or the stage-carpenters going on a strike. But look! See the swag that Jerry left behind! What shall we do with it?"
"Loot!" suggested the playwright, with rare discrimination, as he dusted off the wood ashes, and approached the table with glistening eyes. "We'll divide share and share alike. It's the only way to win from Jerry."
Temperament was asserting its gameness. Shirley put back into position a shattered portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, and his eyes twinkled as the apostles of the muses hastened to divide the chips of the departed one into five generous piles. Holloway completed the letter, albeit with a nervous chirography, and handed him the envelope.
"Go now, before a submarine war zone is declared. I'm going to close up shop before the police come visiting. Good luck, Monty, in the cause of science."
Although his conscience was clear about the game having created five surprised winners by his interruption, he was disturbed over the certainty that the voice was aware of his personal work in the case. The difficulties were now trebled! Before any policemen appeared Shirley had passed Broadway on his way to the motion picture studio, on the West side of Tenth Avenue. Whatever secret observers may have been on his tracks, nothing untoward occurred: still, his senses were quickened into caution by the attempt on his life.
A parley with a grumpy gateman, the presentation of his letter and he was admitted to the presence of the manager, a man exhausted with the strenuosity of night and day work. Shirley understood the antidote for his sullenness.
"Here, old man, send out for a little luncheon for the two of us. I have some unusual experimental work, and need the assistance of a well-known expert like yourself." The flattery, embellished by a ten-dollar bill, opened a flood-gate of optimism.
A camera man was summoned, and the apparatus prepared for some "close-up" motion pictures. Under the weird green lights of the mercury vapor lamps, a director and company of players were busily enacting a dramatic scene, before a studio set. They gave little heed to the newcomer: boredom is a prime requisite of poise in the motion picture art.
"I have here three phonograph records, which I want photographed."
"But they don't move--you want a still camera," exclaimed the dumfounded manager.
"Yes, they do move as the picture is taken. I want a microscopic lens used in the camera in such a way that we take a motion picture of the twinings and twistings of one little thread on the wax cylinder, as it records the sound waves around the cylinder."
The photographer sniffed with scorn, being familiar with eccentric uplifters of the "movies," but responded to the command of the manager to adjust his delicate camera mechanism for the task.
"There is a certain phrase of words on each cylinder which I want recorded this way. Can all three be taken parallel with each other on the same film?"
"Sure, easiest thing to do--just a triple exposure. We take it on one edge of the film, through a little slit just a bit wider than the space of the thread, cut in a screen. Then we rewind that film, and slide the slit to the middle of the lens, take your second wax record, and do the same on the right edge of the film for the third. But what's the idea?"
The camera man began to show interest: he was a skilled mechanician and he caught the drift of a sensible purpose, at last.
Shirley did not answer. He placed the first record in the phonograph, running it until the feminine voice could be distinguished asking: "Can you hear me now?" He marked the beginning and end of this phrase with his pocket knife. So with the merry masculine and the aged, disagreeable voice, he located the same order of words: "Can you hear me now?" The operation seems easy, in the telling, or again perhaps it appears intensely involved and hardly worth the trouble. A motto of Shirley's was: "Nothing is too much trouble if it's worth while." So, with this. To the cynical camera man its general nature was expressed in his whispered phrase to the manager:
"You better not leave them property butcher knives on that there table, Mr. Harrison. This gink is nuts: he thinks's he's Mike Angelo or some other sculpture. He'll start sculpin' the crowd in a minute!"
"You take the picture and keep your opinions to yourself," snapped Shirley whose hearing was highly trained.
The man lapsed into silence. For two hours they fumed and perspired and swore, under the intense heat of the low-hung mercury lamps, until at last a test proved they had the right combination. Shirley greased the skill of the camera man with a well-directed gratuity, and ordered speedy development of the film. Before this was done, however, he took six other records of voices from the folk in the studio, using the same words: "Can you hear me now?"
The three strips of triple exposures were taken to the dark room and developed by the camera man. They were dried on the revolving electric drums, near a battery of fans. Shirley studied every step of the work, with this and that question--this had been his method of acquiring a curiously catholic knowledge of scientific methods since leaving the university, where sporting proclivities had prompted him to slide through courses with as little toil as possible.
A print upon "positive" film was made from each: every strip was duplicated twenty-five times, at Shirley's suggestion. Then after two hours of effort the material was ready to be run through the projecting machine, for viewing upon the screen.
The manager led Shirley to the small exhibition theatre in which every film was studied, changed and cut from twenty to fifty times before being released for the theatres. The camera man went into the little fire-proof booth, to operate the machine.
"Which one first, chief?"
"Take one by chance," said Shirley, "and I will guess its number. Start away."
There was a flare of light upon the screen, as the operator fussed with the lamp for better lumination. He slowly began to turn the crank, and the criminologist watched the screen with no little excitement. The picture thrown up resembled nothing so much as three endless snakes twisting in the same general rhythm from top to bottom of the frame. The twenty-five duplicates were all joined to the original, so that there was ample opportunity to compare the movements.
"Well, gov'nor, which film was that?" asked the operator.
"Not A--it was B or C!"
"Correct. How'd you guess it? Which is this one?"
As he adjusted another roll of film in the projector, Shirley turned to the manager sitting at his side. "Mr. Harrison, were those snakes all exactly alike?"
"No. They all wriggled in the same direction, at the same time. But little rough angles in some movements and queer curves in others made each individually different."
"Just what I thought. There goes another.--That is not film A, either!"
"Righto!" confirmed the camera man. As the detailed divergence between the lines became more evident in the repetitions, Shirley slapped his knee.
"Now for the finish. Try reel A."
This time the three snakey lines moved along in almost identical synchronism. The only difference was that the first was thin, the second heavier, the third the darkest and most ragged of all. The relationship was unmistakable!
"I got you gov'nor," cried the operator. "Some dope, all right, all right."
"Why, what is all this?" asked the manager, nonplussed. "The last three are alike, but what good does it do?"
"It is known that the human voice in its inflections is like handwriting--with a distinct personality. Certain words, when pronounced naturally, without the alterations of dialect, are always in the same rhythm. The records taken in the studio of those five words, 'Can you hear me now?' are in the same general rhythm, but only the last three snakes show exact similarity, to each little quaver and turn. There was only the difference in shading: one was the voice of a women. The second of a man of perhaps forty, the third of an old man--all three taken at different times, and I thought from different people. But they all came from one throat, and my work is completed along this line--Will you please lock up the films, the phonograph, and my records in your film vault, until I send for them; through Mr. Holloway?"
The criminologist arose and walked into the deserted studio, from whence the company had long since departed for belated slumbers. He picked up three bricks which lay in a corner of the big studio, and placed them gently into his grip. The manager and the camera man observed this with blank amazement, as he locked it and put the key into his pocket. Then he handed each of them a large-sized bill.
"I'm very grateful, gentlemen, for your assistance. Pleasant dreams."
Shirley abstractedly walked out of the studio, one hand comfortably in his overcoat pocket, swinging the grip in the other.
"Say, Lou," confided the manager, "he's the craziest guy I've ever seen in the movies. And that's going some, after ten years of it."
Lou treated himself to a generous bite of plug tobacco, and spat philosophically, before replying.
"Sure, he's crazy. Crazy, like the grandfather of all foxes!" _