Full of suspense and violence, The Voice on the Wire (1917) was the rare serial whose story line became even more interesting as it progressed. Detective John Shirley has been trying, unsuccessfully, to end a crime wave of inexplicable murders that always seem to follow warnings imparted by a mysterious voice over the telephone. Meanwhile, the “Black Seven,” a psychical-research group in Paris, have been holding secret meetings to advance their curious theories of life and death. In an attempt to prove their theory of “The Living Death,” one of the members, Laroux, mummifies the wife of another member, Dr. Reynolds. In the chase after his arch-enemy, Reynolds suffers a serious injury: a snakebite causes him to lose one of his arms and forces him to get a new arm grafted to his body. That new arm, however, creates another problem: it inhibits his special ability to project his “astral body” through space. As Kalton Lahue explains, the grafted limb “shows” and gives the eerie appearance of an arm without a body attached. It is only at the end of the serial that Detective Shirley, who has been assisted all along by his colleague and love interest Polly Marion, realizes the killings he has been investigating have been committed by Reynolds’ disembodied hand as revenge against the Black Seven, all of whom he has managed to dispatch as punishment.

Teamed together for the first time in the production were co-stars Neva Gerber and Ben Wilson, two highly popular performers who began appearing in tandem in other adventure serials. Successors to the wildly successful Universal team of Grace Cunard and Francis Ford, Gerber and Wilson became a star duo at the box-office. They would go on to headline numerous serial dramas between 1919 and 1921, among them Trail of the Octopus, The Screaming Shadow, The Branded Four, and The Mysterious Pearl; and they would re-team a few years later, in 1925-1926, for other less successful serials such as The Power God, The Mystery Box, and Officer 444. The handsome Wilson was a true serial veteran: he had appeared opposite Mary Fuller in What Happened to Mary; and, after numerous on-screen performances, he would put his practical knowledge to work as a director of more than a hundred pictures. Gerber, a pretty former Chicago society girl, projected a genuine sweetness that endeared her to audiences, especially when she appeared opposite Wilson. The two, who enjoyed performing together, are remembered as one of silent film’s most appealing and popular screen couples.