FREEMAN BERNSTEIN KEPT HIS office in a building of pink brick that filled most of a city block on Broad Avenue in Leonia. Norma spotted him walking out the front door when they were still half a block away. She ran ahead to catch him and Constance lagged behind, as she was limping along in the same wet boots, now dried to a stiff and blister-inducing form.
At the sound of Norma’s footsteps, he turned around, wearing a bemused expression and puffing on a pipe.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said as Norma caught up with him. She wore the split riding skirt that she refused to describe as trousers, and her mackinaw flapped along behind her as she ran. She couldn’t have looked anything like a woman with aspirations for the stage, but he said, “The auditions are over, and we’ve filled all the parts.”
“I don’t want to audition,” Norma said. “I’ve come to get my sister back.”
He patted his pockets with comic exaggeration and claimed not to have any sisters on his person at present.
By then Constance had caught up with them. Mr. Bernstein looked her over with great interest. “Have you brought a lady policeman with you?” He seemed transfixed by Constance’s badge.
“She’s my sister, too,” Constance said, “and we’ve reason to believe that she’s traveling with your wife’s troupe. She left without a word. We must know where we can find her.”
Now he was grinning broadly at her. “You’re that lady deputy at the sheriff’s office, aren’t you? They sure do like to put you in the papers. Why don’t you girls come up to my office and we’ll talk about it.”
Before either sister could say a word, he linked elbows with them and marched them back down Grand Avenue and through the wide double doors of the building.
Norma and Constance were not the sort of women to be swept up by a man and led down the street, but Mr. Bernstein proved to possess an irresistible force. He wore a lively checkered suit in a fashionable cut and walked with the lanky grace of a dancer. His face was deeply lined and easily contorted into any expression, so that when he raised his considerable eyebrows, great lines of befuddlement or curiosity came into being across his forehead. When he smiled, there weren’t two dimples, but three or four, plus a single one in the center of his chin. Now that she saw him up close, Constance had to admit that he was one of the most interesting-looking men she’d ever met. He smelled good, too: as he pulled them along, they were enveloped in the fragrance of good tobacco smoke, a barber’s tonic, and whatever cream or salve he used to slick down his curly hair.
There was also just a hint of some liquor about him, but it wasn’t so overpowering that Constance believed him to be a drunk. She was introduced to the source of it soon enough. He whisked them upstairs and deposited them into leather chairs in his office, where he presented them with two dainty glasses and a bottle of sherry.
“We couldn’t possibly,” Norma said, with her arms crossed in front of her.
“Oh, you could. It’s very easy. You just splash a little into the glass and take a sip every now and then.” Mr. Bernstein grinned. He had eyes more green than brown, and after he removed his hat, Constance saw a little red in his hair. There was some Irish in his family line somewhere.
But Norma waved him away, and Constance explained that she was on duty, although she wouldn’t have taken any regardless. There had never been liquor in the house after their father left, apart from a little medicinal brandy that their mother kept hidden away.
“Yes, you’re on duty. The lady deputy,” Mr. Bernstein said as he flopped into the chair behind his desk. “Is it really you? It must be. I’ve never seen a woman better suited to it. We ought to put you into the pictures. What do you think about that?”
“She doesn’t think anything about it at all,” Norma said. “We’ve come to see about our sister. It was irresponsible of you to hire her on without speaking to her family first. We are her guardians, and it is our duty?—”
“Oh dear!” Mr. Bernstein’s eyebrows lifted in an expression of mock surprise. “Did I hire a girl of fourteen? I’d never do it deliberately. Tell me her name and I’ll send her home tonight.”
“She’s eighteen.” Constance put an arm on Norma to settle her down. “We only want to ask after her welfare, and to make sure that she is, in fact, traveling with Mrs. Ward. She left us no note. It was irregular of her to go away without telling us.”
Mr. Bernstein wasn’t listening. He’d been riffling through a drawer in his desk, and after a few minutes of searching, he pulled out a crumpled newspaper clipping describing Constance’s capture of an escaped fugitive in December. It wasn’t Carrie’s story, which told the truth. It was one of the others.
“‘Lunatic Captured on the Subway Steps,’” he read. “I know just the fellow who can play the lunatic.”
“He only pretended to be a lunatic,” Constance said. “He’s nothing but a common criminal.”
“All the better, because my fellow will only be pretending, too! Now, I’d like to hear you deliver that line again, about him being nothing but a common criminal, if you wouldn’t mind standing over by the window and giving it your very best. Here, try it like this,” and to her astonishment, Mr. Bernstein stood, put a hand on his hip, and delivered the line in a falsetto that sounded nothing like her.
Constance did not get up from her chair, but just sat and stared at him. When he saw that he wasn’t going to get any applause, he sat down again and said, “I just have to know. Did you really put him in a halter hug? If you can show me that maneuver, I’ll have you on the stage in a week.”
By this time Norma was thoroughly fed up and snatched the newspaper story away from him as if it belonged to her. “She didn’t come here to audition for a part. If you won’t tell us anything about our sister, we’ll go straight to the police. Her name is Fleurette Kopp. Is she with Mrs. Ward or not?”
Mr. Bernstein arranged his face into something that looked like sincerity and said, “I do apologize, miss. I can see that you’re both very worried about her. She has joined our little company, and I can assure you that she’s perfectly safe. But if I can give you girls some advice?—”
Norma was on her feet, glaring down at him. “You may not give us advice. You may give us the touring schedule so that we might know where on God’s green earth our sister has gone off to, and make certain for ourselves that no harm has come to her, because no one else seems to be looking out for her except the two of us.”