Old Sinners Never Die (21 page)

“Look here,” Forsman cried, going up to the Treasury officer, “I’m a Federal agent myself.”

“Then more’s the shame on you, getting caught!”

Suddenly then, one of the women screamed.

The place was tilting one way, then another.

“An earthquake!” someone screamed.

A good, hearty voice spoke out: Senator Chisholm: “It’s an act of God, and high time.”

Jimmie knew well the feeling. So did the General: he had been to sea oftener than many a sailor.

“No real cause for alarm!” Jimmie said, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Nothing to be afraid of. This place was built on a barge. Somebody’s cut us loose, that’s all.”

There were some sensible people aboard, or perhaps they were merely exhausted. They stood where they were while those closest to the windows broke open the shutters. And by the dawn’s early light, they were indeed sailing down the river, slowly, ponderously, but inevitably.

“Who’s at the helm?”

“There is no helm, madam.”

“Then what’s to become of us?”

“It would seem we are now to have our chance at immortality,” the General said.

Jimmie reached Helene’s side. “Don’t be alarmed, darling.”

“I assume there are two possibilities,” Helene said, “either we sink or we float, and right now, Jimmie, I don’t think I’d know the difference.”

The weight of the barge broke their last contact with land—the lights went out.

And in the phone booth, one reporter was cut off from his night editor just in time to save his job.

M
RS. NORRIS, MULROONEY AND
partner could not find a place to park, so crowded was the neighbourhood with police and government cars, and then finally, leaving the car half-blocking the street, they were almost run down by a canvas-topped truck.

Mulrooney shouted the driver down. “Where the hell do you think you’re going at that speed?”

“We’re a-going home, man, fast as we can get there. We got work to do.”

“Where’s home?”

“Yonder mountains, friend.”

“By the looks of that thing you’re driving,” Mulrooney said, “you’d better stay there.”

“Man, you never gave better advice in your life. We don’t ever expect to come down again.”

“Where’s the Club Sentimentale? Do you know that?”

The red-headed man grinned. “I understand it just moved out of drydock. It now a-floating perty as a bar of soap.”

The two investigators and Mrs. Norris walked zigzag through the cars and down to the water’s edge even as the sound of the truck echoed over the hollow. A bit of song hung in the air after them and then it, too, faded away toward the far hills: “Wake up, wake up, darling Cory. What makes you sleep so sound? The revenue officer’s a-comin’ to tear that still house down …”

The Club Sentimentale was almost midstream, easing toward Theodore Roosevelt Island. Mulrooney examined the hacked ropes and shore lines, the severed pilings. A moment later a public service truck arrived, its crew ordering them to stay right where they were until the power wires were safe.

“We’d have been here for whatever happened,” Mulrooney said, “if it hadn’t been for you misplacing the tree.”

“A tree is a tree is a tree,” Mrs. Norris said, “except that it’s not by moonlight.” A nip of sun was peeking over the horizon. “Isn’t it lovely to waken the sun?”

“I’d rather any day it wakened me,” Mulrooney said.

Mrs. Norris contemplated the quiet, floating barge and the gentle river, all as peaceful as a Scottish sabbath. “I wonder,” she said, “if there is anyone aboard it.”

Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1959 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

978-1-4804-6034-8

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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