A platform stage five feet high was built flush to the Liberty Tower, and at its distant edge was something odd: a wooden tub about ten feet tall. Draped in roses and filled with water.

From the audience, the sight was promising: an empty stage always had potential, but then there was the curious bathlike tub (perhaps Chaplin would fall into it?). Then the Liberty Tower itself, six stories tall, “CRUSH THE KAISER WITH CASH!” and since it was late afternoon and the shadows were lengthening, the tower’s crimson walls seemed to glow with heat. The clock face at the top showed the loan was 90 percent subscribed, by a complex formula that estimated pledges, constantly updated and approved by McAdoo every several minutes.

Reverse the angle, and gaze from the platform and into the audience. A newsreel photographer was there to capture it, a vision too broad for that camera’s small, dull eye: a sea of black wool, upon which seemed to bob many bright faces, the uniform of straw boater or tweed cap making it seem like a shoreline upon which shivered an infinite rookery of seagulls and terns. The atmosphere—odd in such a broad outdoor space—was claustrophobic. People were hanging from the lampposts, and they jammed the windows of the Chronicle, the Examiner, the Call, the Palace Hotel, and when the camera had swung as far south as it could, there was still no letup, the crowd seemingly stretched around the world to meet itself. And they waved as if they were not merely there to see the actors, but to make their own mark on the day with a kind “hello.”

The camera could not capture the noise, a Babel of voices, some singing, some shouting for friends. It was like hearing all the known songs of the world at once.

Crushed to the edge of the stage was Münsterberg. He had followed what he was sure was Chaplin and somehow ended up pressed against the platform. He found that if he stacked his reels of film on the ground and stood on them, he could see a little better. There was movement behind the platform, serious, gray-faced men with their collars turned up, consulting on business that, from their demeanor, seemed to involve important machines that required scores of straining, shirtless workers to turn a single squealing valve. He still didn’t know what he’d stumbled into; he wondered if he could ask someone behind him.

“Owen Moore was no good for her. He takes drugs,” said an older man. He folded his arms, as if to protect himself from a volley of facts. Münsterberg realized he’d been hearing the conversation for several minutes, but only now had his mind acknowledged it.

A woman in a cardigan was saying, “Mary’s the best one in her family, by far. Her mother is controlling, and her sister married a lush, too, and Jack—”