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PEOPLE LIKE ANYTHING SALACIOUS

NEW YORK, SEPT. 7 — Freeman Bernstein, a theatrical booking agent, today stated that Beulah Binford, the girl in the Beattie murder case at Chesterfield, VA, will appear at the Liberty theater, Philadelphia, next Monday.

He said that her act probably will consist of a couple of songs, adding: “It does not matter what she does just so long as the people have a chance to see her.”

Bernstein said that later the girl will appear in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul and Minneapolis with possibly some dates in other cities.

FREEMAN KNOCKED ON the door of Beulah’s hotel suite promptly at nine. He carried a roll of newspapers under his arm, but when he walked in, he saw that Beulah had already been out to gather the morning papers herself. They were scattered all over the floor.

“ ‘People like anything salacious’?” she shouted when she saw him. “Is that how you talk about me?” She threw the paper at him, but it only fluttered to the ground in loose sheaves.

Freeman ducked anyway: it was a habit of his. “I can see you’ve never been introduced to that morally corrupt species known as the headline writer,” he said. “He has more poetic license than Shakespeare. I don’t write the headlines.”

“If it doesn’t matter what I do on stage, why have I been learning songs all this time?”

“You’ll sing them! But it’s far better for audiences to come expecting nothing more than to have a glimpse of the famous Beulah Binford, and then to be surprised and delighted by her many talents. If I told them now about your lovely voice and nimble feet, what would be the mystery? People fill theaters to see the unexpected, don’t you know that?”

Beulah arched an eyebrow and shuffled through the other papers. She’d only been out of jail for two days, but the restorative effects of a long bath, a visit to the beauty parlor, and a fresh change of clothing had been considerable. She lounged at that moment in a long pink kimono patterned in dogwood blossoms, furnished to her by Freeman in a box tied in satin ribbon, although she suspected she was not the first wearer of the kimono. It frayed slightly at the sleeves and there was a faint fragrance of curling cream at the neck.

Nonetheless, she mustered as much elegance as she could on that shabby divan. It was a second-rate hotel, but it offered suites, and the desk clerk bent the rules about male visitors to the women’s floors, allowing Freeman upstairs because Freeman paid for so many of those rooms.

“But that was yesterday. Look at what they’re saying today.” She waved another story at him. “Is it true that the mayors of these towns where I’m to perform are saying they’ll pass a law against me even stepping foot in their town?”

“Well — they might pass a law against you appearing on stage, anyway,” Freeman muttered, preparing to duck again.

“Listen to this,” Beulah said, reading in her slow and halting way. “ ‘The Binford girl did not even figure in the murder trial. She was not an actress. She had no advertisement save as a woman who had relations with the defendant in a murder case. A stage that would welcome a woman of her type would be more degraded than the sufficiently degraded stage that attempted to exploit other women of her type. That there is a limit to the degradation of the stage is encouraging, no matter where that limit is found.’ What do they mean, other women of my type? What type am I?”

“Oh, you know,” Freeman said. “Other women in murder trials. These . . . I’m sure you know what I mean . . . these women who . . . like Nan Patterson, or that Yohe girl.”

“No, I don’t know about other women in murder cases,” Beulah said. “This is my first one. What I do know is that you promised me a thousand dollars a week if I would agree to go on the stage. I’ve done everything you asked. Why am I being cast out of cities when they’ve never even seen what I can do?”

“Oh, they’ll see what you can do. We might just have to make some . . . adjustments.”

Beulah looked at him suspiciously. “What kind of adjustments?”

Freeman jumped to his feet and waved his arms with the air of a showman. “How does a motion picture sound?”

Beulah dropped her paper. “You can’t be serious.”

Freeman went on, undaunted. “We’ll call it ‘Beulah Binford’s Own Story.’ Our tale begins with little Beulah Binford dodging her sixty-year-old grandmother and frequenting roller-skating rinks and similar resorts.”

“I never went to a roller-skating rink. We went to a park, and then we went to Mayo Street. There were no resorts of any kind, not in my neighborhood.”

“People pay to see pretty pictures. We’ll put you at a resort. Then you meet Henry Clay, and it finally winds up with the Beattie tragedy. The last scene shows the bars of your cell dissolving while you step forth, your face wearing the expression of a saint, saying” — here Freeman broke into a falsetto that Beulah found most annoying —“ ‘I wish I could carry my story into every home in America.’ ”

“I would never say it like that, and I don’t think anyone wants my story in their home. Isn’t that what these papers are saying?”

“It all depends on how we sell it. We have to let the public know that this moving picture is an expression of your desire to make yourself a horrible example.”

“A horrible example? I’ve done nothing wrong. Surely that was proven when they let me out of jail! Why, the trial isn’t even over, and the lawyers already decided they had no use for me. The judge agreed. Henry Clay might yet be found innocent. We don’t know. Why can’t we tell that story on the stage?”

“That’s not much of a story,” Freeman muttered, and went to the window, where the sound of a newsboy calling an extra drifted into the room. “Anyway, I’m afraid it’s not true.”

“What do you mean?” Beulah rushed over to the window. Never had she seen a crowd gather so quickly around a newsboy. An entire corner of Eighty-Second Street was impassible owing to the number of people scrambling for the special edition.

“Henry Clay Beattie found guilty,” called the boy. “To be executed by Christmas. Extra paper, just out!”

The room swam around, and Beulah dropped to the floor. She was in a sweat, and there were little pinpricks of ice up the back of her neck.

“They aren’t going to hang him, are they?” Beulah swore she wouldn’t cry over Henry Clay, but the sobs were coming up from inside of her like water bubbling out of a spring.

Freeman had never looked so eager to get out of a room. “You stay right here, Miss Binford. I’ll just go and see about this.”

He didn’t come back. She sat under that window all day, listening to the cries of the newsboys.