Griffith placed his right hand over his heart. “I promise that I will break my contract with Biograph in a flash for a chance to direct moving pictures that can truly make the sound of human voices. But it’s up to you, Mr. Bell, to sell them the machine, and you, Mr. Lynds, to perfect it. I’ll telephone Imperial right away.”

“Before you phone,” said Bell. “May I do you a kindness in return?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I notice you carry a six-shooter.”

“Old habit from before Biograph joined the Trust,” Griffith grinned, joking, with a theatrical wink, “Haven’t shot an Edison thug in years.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure.” Griffith tugged the revolver from his waistband.

Bell opened the cylinder, counted six cartridges, and removed one. “Gents I know who carry a six-gun in their waistband make a habit of leaving the hammer on an empty chamber. At least so long as they intend to father children.”

ISAAC BELL LEFT CLYDE LYNDS in the care of the Los Angeles Van Dorn field office and went alone to his appointment at Imperial Film, intending to get a clear-eyed look at what had fallen into their laps. He found a brand-new, ten-story red sandstone building with a glass penthouse that towered over a newly surveyed block of lots for sale. The neighborhood looked destined to become the next center of the up-and-coming city, and the substantial modern headquarters seemed proof that the independent movie factory had deep enough Wall Street pockets to defy Edison’s Patents Trust.

Motorcycle messengers with sidecars full were rushing reels of film in and out of Imperial’s first-floor film exchange. The exchange was plastered with “No Smoking Allowed” signs, which none of the cyclists distributing highly flammable reels to exhibitors were obeying. The building directory listed offices and lofts on the upper floors housing laboratories, machine and repair shops, properties and costume wardrobes, and a main studio containing Stage 1 and Stage 2 in the glass penthouse.

The entire second floor was devoted to the factory’s own moving picture theater—the Imperial. Newspaper reviews posted in the lobby called it a “Movie Palace,” and while absorbing the details of the building and the people coming and going, Bell read of gleaming gilt cherubs in a “finely appointed place that will draw the more wealthy classes who do not patronize moving picture shows except on ‘slumming’ exhibitions.”

The doormen patrolling the lobby were harder-cased than he would expect to find wearing uniforms as lavishly gilded as Captain Turner’s. That a bruiser corps was considered a wise precaution for an independent a full three thousand miles from New Jersey spoke volumes about the power of the Edison Trust. One of the doormen watching Bell read the reviews swaggered over to investigate.

Bell said, “It says here that ladies who come downtown on shopping expeditions spend an hour in the Imperial.”