“I got you gov'nor,” cried the operator. “Some dope, all right, all right.”
“Why, what is all this?” asked the manager, nonplussed. “The last three are alike, but what good does it do?”
“It is known that the human voice in its inflections is like handwriting—with a distinct personality. Certain words, when pronounced naturally, without the alterations of dialect, are always in the same rhythm. The records taken in the studio of those five words, 'Can you hear me now?' are in the same general rhythm, but only the last three snakes show exact similarity, to each little quaver and turn. There was only the difference in shading: one was the voice of a women. The second of a man of perhaps forty, the third of an old man—all three taken at different times, and I thought from different people. But they all came from one throat, and my work is completed along this line—Will you please lock up the films, the phonograph, and my records in your film vault, until I send for them; through Mr. Holloway?”
The criminologist arose and walked into the deserted studio, from whence the company had long since departed for belated slumbers. He picked up three bricks which lay in a corner of the big studio, and placed them gently into his grip. The manager and the camera man observed this with blank amazement, as he locked it and put the key into his pocket. Then he handed each of them a large-sized bill.
“I'm very grateful, gentlemen, for your assistance. Pleasant dreams.”
Shirley abstractedly walked out of the studio, one hand comfortably in his overcoat pocket, swinging the grip in the other.
“Say, Lou,” confided the manager, “he's the craziest guy I've ever seen in the movies. And that's going some, after ten years of it.”
Lou treated himself to a generous bite of plug tobacco, and spat philosophically, before replying.
“Sure, he's crazy. Crazy, like the grandfather of all foxes!”