Mr. Bernstein took a deep breath and motioned for her to sit down. Constance tugged on her elbow, and she returned to her chair reluctantly.
“Ladies, I’m only trying to warn you. I’ve been in this game for fifteen years, and I’ve seen this a thousand times if I’ve seen it once. A girl grows up with dreams of being on the stage, and then one day, she gets her chance. But her mother won’t let her go. What mother would, when she can keep her girl at home and have an extra pair of hands about the place? So the girl goes off anyway, and it isn’t long before her mother and father turn up, furious, and make all kinds of noise. Maybe they even bring the police and have the girl arrested for moral depravation or disorderly conduct. But what do they think is going to happen after that? Do they think they can bring her home and put her on the straight and narrow? Do they think that a couple of years in one of those reform homes is going to make a proper lady out of her? I can tell you right now that almost every girl in the theater has spent some time in a reformatory over the years. It only makes them more rebellious and more ambitious. So what do you intend to do about your sister, Miss Lady Sheriff? Are you going to go fetch her and drag her home, so that she can sit around and watch while you go out and get into all kinds of danger? I know what you lady officers do. They have you going in and out of dance halls and amusement parks. I bet you’ve seen the inside of an opium den, and a disreputable house full of girls for hire. Why is it all right for you, but not for your little sister? No. You girls should go on home and forget all about this. Just wait it out, and be glad to have her back when the tour is over. When she does come home, I suggest you listen with interest to what she has to say about it, and treat her like an adult. I hired on a strict old German lady as chaperone, and a tough-looking fellow to be a guard and a lookout, and I did that so that I can look ladies like you in the eye and promise that no harm will come to anyone under the employment of Freeman Bernstein. It would ruin my reputation, and I can’t have that. I’m a businessman. Can you understand what that means?”
At long last he finished. He sat back, put a match to his pipe, and drew on it, looking quite satisfied.
Norma turned and gave Constance a brief look that only a sister can read. It conveyed utter fatigue over the audacity of a man who dared lecture two women he’d never met about matters he couldn’t possibly understand. It told Constance that Norma had hardly listened to a word of his harangue, and had instead put the time to better use in making a plan that the two of them would carry out together.
It was only the faintest flicker of a glance, but Norma didn’t change her views readily. Constance knew quite well what she was likely to say and do in almost any situation. So she sat quietly and waited for her sister’s plan to be put into motion.
Norma managed her own version of a polite smile and rose from her chair. “Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. You’ve made some awfully fine points that my sister and I hadn’t considered until now. It was good of you to take the time to put it before us so clearly. Would you mind walking us downstairs? I’m afraid I might lose my way.”
He jumped to his feet, the pipe bobbing between his teeth. “My pleasure! It was a delight meeting you both. I only wish every worried sister or aunt or mother would come and speak to me before they go chasing after their girls. It’s no trouble at all to set them straight, as you now understand.”
He came around the desk and held his elbows out so that they might walk out the way they walked in. Norma waited until they were across the hall and halfway down the stairs before she said, “My handbag!”
She turned and ran back up the stairs.
“The door’s unlocked!” he called after her. Then, turning to Constance, he said, “Does she need any help?”
“She’ll be fine,” Constance answered. “Are you down here in Leonia because of the moving picture business? There seems to be a new studio opening every week.”
That was all the encouragement Freeman Bernstein needed to deliver a lecture on the advantages of motion pictures over stage acting and the lucrative possibilities for a manager like himself who could put actresses and dancers before the camera, which was to say nothing of prizefighters, war heroes, dogs with special talents, lady deputies, miniature men, and any other human oddity or public figure of note.
This brought him back to the idea of putting Constance in the pictures. “Why, just imagine what audiences would make of a girl chasing a bank robber down the street and making an arrest! It’ll be the most thrilling stunt to ever happen in a theater. Of course, if we want to make a successful picture of it, the girl would have to marry the bank robber. Or—well, she could marry the police chief, or the sheriff, or whoever put her in the job to begin with. That sounds about right. No, I like it better if she marries the crook. Have you ever thought about that, Miss Kopp? Marrying one of them? After they get themselves straightened out, of course. Or maybe it works out that the crook wasn’t really the crook after all. Maybe the girl arrests the wrong man, and when she finds out, she feels so bad about it that she falls in love with him, and they get married. How do you like that? ‘The Wrong Man.’ That’s what we’ll call it.”
Constance wouldn’t have been able to take much more of that, but fortunately she didn’t have to. Norma’s footsteps came down the hall, and soon she was back in the stairway, her handbag tucked under her arm, and a barely concealed look of satisfaction on her face.
34
THINKING THAT MR. BERNSTEIN might get suspicious and demand to look inside her handbag, Norma had instead secreted the sheet of paper into her bosom. But he’d been too bewitched by his idea for a picture about a lady cop who marries the crook to notice. “I’ve got a better title!” he shouted as they walked away. “We’ll call it ‘Captured!’ Subtitle: ‘She Captured His Heart.’”
Once they were around the corner, Norma extracted the handbill and looked over the cities listed. “She’s in Scranton tonight. I don’t think we’ll make it in time. We should go directly on to Bethlehem and meet her there.”
Constance took the bill from her. At the top was a familiar slogan: “Pretty, Vivacious, & Versatile! May Ward and Her Eight Dresden Dolls—The Most Elaborate Girl Act in Vaudeville, Employing Beautiful Costumes and Special Scenery.” Below that was a list of cities, dates, and theaters. After Bethlehem came Allentown, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh, followed by a list of stops in Maryland and Washington, before turning north again to Philadelphia and back to New York City.
“We’ll get her before she leaves Pennsylvania,” Norma said.
“‘Get her’?” They’d reached the train station by then. Constance looked over the timetable while Norma folded the bill and tucked it away in her handbag.