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“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 penniless young scientist was choreographing his conversation with the richest, most famous inventor in the world.
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 canned tour of the Edison laboratory. He saw the chemical plant, machine shops, laboratories. At the storeroom he watched a clerk dispense a length of manatee skin, which would be fashioned into belt drives, his guide told him. From a gallery Bell could look down at Mr. Edison’s two-story, book-lined office. The functionary pointed out Edison’s marble statue of an angel shining an electric lightbulb on a heap of broken oil lamps.
“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 Cincinnati. Is this one that you’re repairing?”
“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 spinning. The wires connecting the two machines whirred, their pulleys clattered, and the woman’s voice emerged from the phonograph horn, thin, harsh, and grating, as Van Dorn had said. Within ten seconds her voice had fallen behind the movement of her lips.
“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 funny,” said Bell.
“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?”
