“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.