by Amy Stewart
“Oh, I agree entirely,” Agatha said.
“Well, I’ll be squandering it on a husband, if one will have me after five years at the state home,” Esther said.
“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble,” Minnie said.
“Even the feeble-minded are marriageable with ten thousand dollars on offer,” Agatha said.
“Feeble-minded! Don’t call her that!” said Minnie.
Agatha wiped down the last of her pots and said, “Oh, that’s the name they put on you. You’ll find out, after you’re here for good. There’s a man who comes around and interviews you. We know all the questions and the best way to answer, so you won’t have any trouble.”
“Well, I suppose Esther had some trouble, if she was called feeble-minded.”
“Oh, no,” Esther put in. “Feeble-minded is the best one. Below that is lunatic, imbecile, and idiot.” She struck a pose, as if making a dramatic recitation. “The feeble-minded girl is marked by glibness of tongue, a bold and confident manner, and an attractive physical appearance. She has the passions of a grown woman and an experience of the life of the underworld.”
“Well, that sounds—like a very clever girl,” Minnie said, to agreeable laughter from the others. “You seem to know quite a bit about it.”
Esther wiped her eyes and walked across the kitchen to whisper, “I stole his little book and copied down the best parts so we could all learn them. I’ll give you the questions. As long as you answer them correctly, he’ll put you down as feeble-minded. If you’re at all worried that he won’t, just remind him that you have the passions of a grown woman. He’s quite susceptible to persuasion.”
“Then he’s the feeble one,” Minnie said. “Do you serve less time if you’re feeble-minded?”
Agatha and Esther looked over at each other, calculating. “I don’t think so,” Esther said at last. “But you won’t get sent to the lunatic asylum or to the industrial school. That’s where they put the imbeciles, so they can be trained for a lifetime of pasting cardboard boxes together. And you know they give them an operation so they can’t have babies.”
“No!” Minnie gasped.
“Of course,” Esther said. “They don’t want another generation of idiots and imbeciles. It runs in families, apparently. Be very careful not to say anything about your relations that might raise suspicion. Don’t mention drunkenness, laziness, unexplained deaths, spinsters, anything like that.”
“My mother died when I was young, and I was never told the cause,” Minnie said.
“Invent something blameless,” Agatha said. “Could she have been trampled by a horse or thrown from a train?”
“Agatha!” Esther called. “That’s awful.”
“I’ll think of something,” Minnie muttered.
They worked in silence for a minute. Minnie hoped very much that no one would ask her father and stepmother about her. Mrs. Davis never hesitated to say that Minnie and Goldie were bad girls, through and through. How might she elaborate on that, if given the chance? Minnie could quite easily imagine Edith Davis fabricating all sorts of lies and nonsense about her, her sister, and her mother, and Mr. Davis nodding grimly along.
Five years in a reformatory was bad enough. A lifetime in a box factory—and an operation—that was something she’d never imagined.
“What happens when you go to court?” she ventured to ask at last.
“Oh, it all depends upon who’s going to speak for you,” Agatha said. “What are your parents going to say?”
“They won’t be there,” Minnie said quickly, and very much hoped she was right.
“Have you any kindly schoolteachers or sympathetic aunts?”
“None.” She said this boldly, as if it were a badge of honor. That won a laugh from the other two, and Agatha’s line of questioning became a game.
“Then what about a softhearted shopkeeper or a compassionate clergyman?”
“I haven’t any of those, either.”
Esther joined in. “Perhaps a lenient landlady?”
“The very opposite,” Minnie said.
“Then what about a sweet-tempered supervisor,” Agatha said, straining for another alliteration, “or . . . or a merciful matron?”
“Merciful matron!” Esther cried out. “Are there any of those?”
Minnie thought about Deputy Kopp and wondered how merciful she could be after what Minnie had confessed. They’d parted in such a hurry that she couldn’t begin to guess as to Constance’s state of mind.
“I might know one,” Minnie said, “but I haven’t given her any reason to be merciful.”
“Jail matrons can’t do anything for you anyway,” Agatha said.
“Oh, but this one can,” Minnie insisted. “She helped a girl go free just before I was arrested. Just an ordinary factory girl. She told the judge that the charges were baseless, and he believed her.”
Agatha and Esther both turned and looked at her thoughtfully.
“Are you sure?” Esther said.
“She told me herself,” Minnie said.
“Then you’d best go to work on that matron,” said Agatha.
37
GIRL SHERIFF’S GOLD BADGE
Constance Kopp Also Has Gold-Plated Handcuffs and a Title
HACKENSACK, N.J.—Miss Constance Kopp, who has been detecting things ever since she aided in convicting Henry J. Kaufman, a Paterson silk dyer, of sending threatening letters to her in 1914, has been rewarded by Sheriff Robert N. Heath, whose unofficial assistant she has been, with a gold-plated badge, a gold-plated pair of handcuffs, and the title of Under Sheriff. Henceforth Miss Kopp can prove that she’s an honest-to-goodness detective.
Her last feat was to obtain a confession from Miss Minnie Davis of Catskill, N.Y., whose charges have resulted in the arrest of young Anthony Leo of Fort Lee, and nearly a dozen of his friends, the former on a white slavery charge. County Detective John Courter and Chief of Police Patrick Hartnell of Fort Lee discovered Miss Davis’ plight and rescued her from a house in Fort Lee where she said she was detained against her will.
Now Miss Kopp wears the badge and carries her handsome handcuffs in her handbag.
“I’d like to see those gold-plated handcuffs,” Constance said.
“So would I,” said Sheriff Heath. “This isn’t Miss Hart’s story, is it?”
“Of course not. It isn’t her paper, anyway. This must be someone who was at the press conference. What sort of confession do they think I’ve obtained?” Constance said.
“I’d like to know about the dozen white slavery suspects they’ve arrested, as we don’t seem to have them upstairs. But they spelled John Courter’s name right, and that’s all that matters to him.” Sheriff Heath leaned back in his chair. “What happened at the bakery?”
“The landlord didn’t see a thing. Tony’s brother had been over, that’s all. They got into some sort of a fight and the brother ran off. I don’t think the landlord’s going to testify.”
“You’re making it difficult for Detective Courter.”
“He doesn’t have a case. He should let them both go.”
“He likes to win cases.”
Sheriff Heath was sorting through a box of mail and tossing letters at her. She had only to glance at the postmarks to see that they came from the usual far-flung places where her admirers lived: Pie Town, New Mexico; Burden, Kansas; and Chance, South Dakota. Norma would answer them, and all the others that were sure to follow, as the loneliest men in the world read about her gold-plated badge.
Sheriff Heath said, “I don’t suppose Miss Davis had anything more to say on the way to the reformatory.”
It wasn’t easy for Constance to keep the truth to herself, but she thought it in the girl’s best interests. She said, “What could she possibly tell me? She wasn’t held against her will or misled, except for the promise of marriage that went unfulfilled, but you already know about that.”
“Mr. Courter would like to know how Anthony Leo convinced her to go
off with him in the first place. Was she drugged? Does she remember a handkerchief going over her mouth, or a powder being slipped into a drink?”
“Of course not!”
“Then how did it happen?”
“Are you asking me why a girl would give up her factory job and the bed she shares with her sister to run away with a handsome man on a river-boat?”
He made a face at that and put his letters down. “It’s the prosecutor asking these questions, not me. But I wouldn’t mind knowing why a girl would give up a decent home for a furnished room rented under a false name, and an empty promise to go along with it.”
“Her parents are very strict. I saw it myself. A girl like that—she starts to earn a little money, and she doesn’t want to hand it all over to her father. She wants something for herself, in exchange for all the work she’s putting in down at the factory. Something that belongs to her. She doesn’t want to live her whole life for her parents.”
Constance had to fight a little shudder as she said it. Who was she talking about, Minnie or Fleurette?
“She could get married,” the sheriff said.
“She tried to.”
“She didn’t try very hard.”
“All right,” Constance said with a sigh. “I can’t explain sixteen-year-old girls to you. What’s to become of her?”
“It’s Mr. Courter’s idea that if Minnie won’t cast herself as the victim, he’ll decide that she went willingly into a life of depravity, and formally sentence her to the reformatory. He’ll try to make an example out of her.”
“She doesn’t belong there. It’ll ruin her.”
“She’s sixteen years old and she ran away from home. That’s exactly the sort of girl who goes to a reformatory.”
“But Edna Heustis ran away from home and no one sent her away.”
“Miss Heustis was found working at a steady job and living in a good Christian home, or at least that’s what you told me.”
“Yes, and Miss Heustis had a chance to make her case in front of a judge. Minnie deserves the same.”
“Are you going to argue in favor of releasing a sixteen-year-old girl, with no assurances as to her welfare? Even Judge Seufert won’t go along with that. If she hasn’t already been taking favors from men, she’ll fall into it easily enough. She’d have no other prospects and no one to look out for her.”
Sheriff Heath finished his sorting of the mail and dropped another stack in front of Constance. “Besides, John Courter’s running for my office. He thinks a few cases like this will put him on the side of all that is good and righteous in Bergen County.”
“He wants to be sheriff?”
“I thought you knew.”
“I knew he was running for office. I didn’t know he wanted to be sheriff.” She felt considerably deflated at the prospect of having to watch John Courter campaign against Sheriff Heath and toss insults at him, although she had no doubt that Sheriff Heath would win. Nor did she think she could persuade Mr. Courter to do the good and decent thing for Minnie Davis and drop the charges.
“Talk to her parents again,” Sheriff Heath said. “She’s going home or she’s going to the state home. Put it to them like that, and try to get them to think sensibly about it.”
“I’m not sure the Davises go in for sensible thinking, but I’ll try. I should check up on Edna, too.”
“Go ahead.”
She took up her stack of letters, and then she saw it.
A postcard from Fleurette.
38
By now you know it, or if you don’t, you’re no kind of detective at all. I’ve gone off with May Ward & Dresden Dolls—I’m now quite the doll myself—know all the songs & am learning the dance steps—This is the kind of life I love and you know it—not to worry, there is a Mrs. Ironsides and a Mr. Impediment to keep us straight, and they do, usually—
F.
“This doesn’t tell us a thing,” Norma muttered.
Constance sat at the writing desk in their parlor. Norma stood over her and peered at the postcard through her ill-fitting steel-rimmed spectacles.
“It tells us that she has a chaperone, and that she’s keeping busy with work that she enjoys. What else would you have her tell us?”
Norma shook her head. “There’s something about this Bernstein. You’re too trusting of him.”
“I’m not trusting of him at all! He proposed turning my life into a moving picture, and told us how to run our own household, and what we ought to think of him, and how we ought to regard Fleurette, as if he knows a thing about her. But I don’t have to trust Freeman Bernstein, as long as I trust Fleurette.”
“Well, don’t try to tell me that you trust her,” Norma said. “This is the girl who ran away without so much as a word of good-bye. What would you think if I did that?”
Constance found the idea momentarily cheering, but didn’t say so. Instead she looked up at Norma, who was still standing over her, waiting for an answer, and said, “She’s always wanted to be on the stage. If we weren’t going to allow it, we should’ve told her before now. She’s having the time of her life, and it isn’t our place to stop her.”
THE EIGHT DRESDEN DOLLS usually slept four to a room, which meant two to a bed. With Fleurette added to the company they now slept three to a room, a state of unexpected luxury that had the effect of ingratiating Fleurette to the entire company.
She had, of course, paid the cost of the third room, at the rate of a dollar a night, although there was no discussion of her having it to herself. Charlotte and Eliza eagerly volunteered to share the room with her. There was likewise no debating the sleeping arrangements: they each took a bed, and Fleurette slept on a cot.
“You’re the smallest,” Eliza said. “Look at how perfectly that little cot fits you!”
It wasn’t mean-spirited, or at least Fleurette didn’t take it that way. She was absolutely giddy over the fact that she was there at all, as she’d half expected to find her sisters standing in front of the Hotel Jermyn, blocking the entrance. Sheriff Heath would be nearby with his motor car, looking on approvingly as Constance arrested a few mashers on the sidewalk for good measure before dragging Fleurette bodily back to Wyckoff.
It was tiresome to even think of it. How dull and predictable they both were, Norma with her war-mongering and her silly birds, and Constance with her blind crusades for justice and her petty grievances against the sheriff’s enemies. Other girls had sisters who loaned them dresses and introduced them to the younger brothers of promising young men. Why didn’t she have sisters like that?
To her relief, Norma and Constance hadn’t been lying in wait outside the hotel. Once Fleurette had been swept upstairs with the rest of the troupe, leading a fleet of porters who wheeled cart-loads of trunks and bags, and once she’d settled into her room with Charlotte and Eliza (trying to look as blasé as they did about every cunning detail of the room: the tiny sink in the corner, the little gilt-edged mirror, and the vanity with a neat stack of free writing paper)—once she was settled, and saw that she really had triumphed in launching herself into a new life—a monumental task came to her, in the form of billowy armloads of costumes in need of mending.
“You’ll have to stitch our names into these terrible old petticoats,” Eliza said. “We’re supposed to wash them ourselves, but we get them hopelessly mixed up anyway.”
“The sleeves are too tight on these shirtwaists,” said Bernice. “The costume change is so fast that we rip them. Do something about the sleeves, or do something about May’s favorite number. One of the two isn’t going to survive another week.”
“A few of us are slipping out after Ironsides falls asleep tonight,” Charlotte said, and Fleurette’s hopes flew around wildly. “I wonder if you can bring up this hem by a couple of inches so I don’t look like a schoolgirl when I wear it.” There was no mention of Fleurette going along when they snuck away. It was only her first night with them, so she didn’t dare ask. As it was, she had more than enough mending
to keep her occupied.
May Ward, of course, kept a suite to herself, down the hall and around the corner from the Dolls and Mrs. Ironsides. (Mr. Impediment wasn’t allowed on the women’s floor but stationed himself in the lobby, within easy sight of the elevator, and paid the hotel porters to keep watch when he couldn’t.)
Mrs. Ward liked to keep a room apart from the girls, they told her, because she “comes and goes at irregular hours, and keeps irregular company.”
It was easy enough to guess at what that meant. Fleurette wondered how May Ward managed to slip past Mr. Impediment, or wasn’t he in charge of watching her, too?
There was no performance on the first night owing to the late hour of their arrival, but on the second night, a maid knocked at her door around five o’clock. The Dolls had gone ahead to the theater, and Fleurette stayed behind to finish what mending she could before the show started. Seeing the Dolls perform every night was to be her great reward for a day spent in a cramped hotel room, bent over a sewing machine that rocked back and forth on the unsteady vanity. It didn’t matter if the Dolls went running around to shops and arcades all day without her, or snuck past the chaperone at night, as long as she was with them at the theater and could somehow be a part of the show, even from backstage.
The maid had a little card for Fleurette, with a note from Mrs. Ward summoning her to her room. Was this another audition? Was she to be put on stage already? The maid didn’t know and said only that she was to come quickly.
There was no time to do anything about her hair or to find a better dress among the half-unpacked trucks and piles of frills in need of mending, so she slipped on her shoes and followed the maid down the hall. At Mrs. Ward’s door, the maid knocked and went on her way.
“Florine!” called a raspy voice from inside.
“It’s Fleurette.” She hoped she didn’t sound impertinent.
“Well, hurry up and help me with this!”
Fleurette let herself into what must’ve been the hotel’s most lavish suite for women. There was a woven carpet of royal blue and gold fleurs-de-lis, wallpaper of a matching blue and gold stripe, heavy mahogany chairs, three electric chandeliers, a marble fireplace, and, in the room beyond, an enormous brass bed with a heavy brocade coverlet tossed over it. May Ward was nowhere in sight.
