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?”