“Well, I . . .”
“Good. Then let’s not keep these ladies on an assignment that has no merit, when there is surely more serious work to be done, and girls in real distress who could use their help.”
Mrs. Headison wouldn’t look at Constance after that, but she nodded and went over to her desk to write something down.
“Thank you,” said Constance. “Now, I wouldn’t want Fleurette to find out about our misunderstanding . . .”
“Misunderstanding?” Belle Headison sounded bereft.
“Yes, because that’s all it was. It would only upset her to think we didn’t trust her, and we do.”
With her eyes still on her desk, Mrs. Headison said, “Oh, it’s never the girl I mistrust, but the hands she might fall into. Take that white slave case of yours. What’s to become of that poor girl?”
“Yes, I saw you at the press conference.”
“Mr. Courter invited me. I hope you don’t mind.”
Constance minded very much but tried not to let it show. “Minnie Davis insists that she left home of her own free will. It would be the worst sort of exaggeration to call it a white slave case.”
Mrs. Headison shook her head pityingly. “I wouldn’t be so sure. I had a girl just like her a few months ago. Claims she ran off willingly, and found a man who might get around to marrying her one day, except he never did.”
“What became of her?”
She seemed surprised that Constance would even ask the question. “Why, I had her sent to the state home on a charge of social vagrancy. I’m sure you’ll do the same with Miss Davis.”
“I’d like to try to put girls like her on a better path,” Constance said. “Some of them never meant to do wrong. Don’t you think they can be saved?”
“Saved for what?” Belle Headison seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. “They’ll never marry. No employer would have them. There’s no telling what social diseases they might be spreading among the men in this county, just before we’re about to send our boys to war. Can you imagine? No, I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep them away from society until they’re much older, and not such a trap for healthy young men. Besides, we don’t want a child born to a morally degraded mother. We’d have an entire generation of degenerate and feeble-minded children. I’d lock Minnie Davis up until she was quite past childbearing age. Wouldn’t you?”
43
CONSTANCE TOOK THE TROLLEY as far as Main Street in Hackensack, then decided to walk the rest of the way to clear her head. It was one of those blindingly bright afternoons that was always accompanied by a high wind in winter. The men walked with their hands clasped down over the tops of their hats, and the women felt around for pins and straps and ribbons. Every shop awning snapped and shook like a sail. A strip of bunting had worked loose from the Odd Fellows Hall and flew high above the second-story windows, tethered by a single fraying knot at the base of a flag-pole.
From across the street, she spotted Sheriff Heath coming out of the Bergen Evening Record’s office. He paused for a minute in front of Mr. Terhune’s shop and looked in the window. There were a few other men admiring whatever was inside. Constance stepped up next to him and saw that it was a motorcycle.
“It looks like a terribly clumsy bicycle,” she said.
“It’s quite a bit more than that,” Sheriff Heath said.
“You’re right. It’s probably noisy, too.”
“I’ll tell Mr. Harley you’re not impressed.”
“Are you planning to take Mrs. Heath to Washington on one of those?”
He turned to her and tipped back the brim of his hat. He had a way of leaning in and squinting at her sometimes, as if he were trying to read small type. “What do you think? Congressman Heath?”
It took her breath away, the way he put his ambition out before her like that.
“I thought Sheriff Heath sounded just fine.”
He shrugged and said, “So did I. But the law says a man can only serve as sheriff for one term in a row. I could run again someday, if Washington won’t have me.”
“Oh, they’ll have you. Why wouldn’t they?”
He turned and they walked together toward the jail. “I’m up against a brick-maker. There’s less to dislike about him.”
“Well, I’d vote for you,” Constance said, although she didn’t like the idea of voting him out of town.
“Then I wish you could,” he said.
“I didn’t think you wanted to go to Washington.”
They passed a barber shop, a druggist, and a hardware store. Every man coming in and out wanted to stop and shake hands with the sheriff. Constance could see him as a politician, making promises and giving speeches. He would miss the crooks, although he might find some in the capital.
After that business concluded, he said, “The local party nominates the best man for every office. They put me up for sheriff and I was glad to have the chance. Now they’ve put me up for Congress. Mrs. Heath believes I can win. She intends to make my campaign a success. I’ll let her run the whole thing if she wants. It’s good to see her taking an interest.”
That was as much as Sheriff Heath was going to say about his marriage, but Constance understood. It was better between them when Cordelia could be on his side, and have a cause to rally around. She was miserable living in the sheriff’s quarters, and who could blame her? Of course she preferred a nice home in Washington.
By now they’d reached the jail. She followed Sheriff Heath into his office.
“One of our guards has an aunt in Atlanta,” he said as he settled behind his desk. “You’ve made the papers again.”
Constance groaned and dropped into a chair across from him. “Why would they bother about me all the way down there?” She took the article from him. It had been folded several times, and was heavily marked with underlining and exclamation points by the guard’s aunt, who apparently thought the whole business appalling.
From the very first paragraph, Constance found herself agreeing with the aunt.
Constance the Cop is a real police officer, stout-hearted and daring. She does not hesitate to venture into a physical mixup with the sterner sex in the pursuit of her duty. Also does she operate the “halter hug,” which, though it may sound rather enticing to the imaginative masculine reader, still it has proved to be just as distressingly effective to the culprit as a regular wrestling strangle hold. For Constance’s arms are both lithe and muscular, and while they unquestionably could be shaped to tenderer ends have, nevertheless, the compressive power of steel cables when hardened by the call of duty.
She couldn’t bear to look at another word and tossed the paper back to him. “I feel sorry for Atlanta if it must send all the way to New Jersey for its entertainment.”