Old Sinners Never Die (8 page)

“The bloody villain,” said Tom in a hoarse whisper. “He won’t take it from her. No wonder the women are stepping on us every chance they get. Whisst! Here he comes.”

Mrs. Norris gave Tom a poke and pointed to the open window nearby. The Frenchman’s voice came out to them clearly, but alas, he was speaking in a foreign language, presumably French.

“What’s he saying?” said Tom into her ear.

“I think he’s crying,” said Mrs. Norris, for the tone much suggested it. She also caught the word “petit”. The man then lit the lamp and began to gather papers out of a desk. Mrs. Norris took a chance with the possibilities. “I think he’s getting ready to leave, and he doesn’t want to go at all.”

Tom nodded, his mouth a bit open, she presumed in admiration of her knowledge of French.

The woman came into the room without the baby, and the man took her into his arms. She was an ample body, Mrs. Norris thought, overflowing him by a few pounds. Between the tears and the gestures, and the foreign language, the scene bore a remarkable resemblance to grand opera.

“I’ll go up and pack your suitcase,” the woman said then in a native American voice.

“Do not wake the children,” he cried after her dramatically. “I could not bear any more adieus tonight.”

Tom and Mrs. Norris nodded at one another, having heard the confirmation. In the house, the instant the woman had gone upstairs, the Frenchman came to the windows and drew the shades, a great precision about his movements. A few seconds later—before the watchers had decided on their next move—he came out into the vestibule in his shirtsleeves and, most curiously, worked at the mailbox. He seemed to be removing or changing the nameplate.

As soon as he returned to the living room, Tom skipped lightly into the vestibule, glanced at the boxes on both sides and came out, all in a few seconds.

“He’s taken the nameplate off,” he whispered. He caught Mrs. Norris’ arm and led her a distance from the house. “The name of the people on the other side is Walker, by the way. You know—the whisky?

“I thought you didn’t drink,” Mrs. Norris said.

“There’s no harm, is there, in knowing what I’m missing?” Tom snapped. “I want to go round now and see if he has a car in a garage. I’ll be back in a minute. Keep watch.”

Mrs. Norris had never in her life minded the darkness, and she had certainly long since become used to no company but her own. But it was a curious thing she was doing just now, standing on one foot and then the other, spying on an utter stranger in Washington, D.C., and with no other justification than the say-so of a wild young Irishman with the Gaelic imagination. The more she thought about it—and it was a long, long minute he was gone—the madder she thought the whole business. Nonetheless, she made a note of her surroundings, the number of the house, and then the hour of the night. It was 12.40.

Within the house a child started to cry, and then, if she was not mistaken, another. It sounded like a whole parcel of them. And still Tom did not return. The front door of the house opened and the Frenchman came out, dressed now in a business suit, and walked briskly across the veranda to within a foot or two of the very spot Tom and Mrs. Norris had been standing a few minutes before. Without wasting a motion, he removed the round head from one of the balusters in the veranda rail, put his hand into the hollow and drew out a small, oblong parcel. He replaced the head, and then, about to go indoors again, paused and closed the window, cutting off the sound of the squalling from within.

Mrs. Norris knew then that Tom, whether in spite or because of himself, was onto something. The Frenchman hurried indoors. From down the street, someone was whistling. She listened a second:
Annie Laurie
. She went to the sidewalk and looked. Tom was leaning against a lamp post. He straightened up when she came into sight, gave a little jerk of his head and ambled toward Sophie. He had doubtless seen every movie John Ford ever made. Mrs. Norris paced herself unhurriedly, and joined him in the car.

“We’ll wait for him here,” said Tom. “He has to come out by this way if he takes the car. And if he calls a cab, we can’t chance being seen on the walk when it comes for him.”

“Indeed we can’t,” said Mrs. Norris. “Not after what I’ve just seen.” She told him of the baluster with the removable head.

Tom listened, his eyes shimmering like stars in a teacup. “Oh,” he said in almost profound ecstasy. “Aren’t we going to have a time!”

J
IMMIE HAD HAD TO
wait for Helene’s call only a few minutes, but it seemed much longer in the big house alone. For this he had brought Mrs. Norris to Washington! And hired Hennessy! And proposed a home for his father!

When Helene’s call did come, she could tell him nothing more than he had already surmised: her information came from d’Inde. But she said, “Jimmie, come over here. I may have information by the time you get here, and I think it’s just as well to avoid an hotel phone. Don’t you?”

Jimmie arrived to find Senator Grace Chisholm waiting at the elevator. They went up to Helene’s suite together, both, Jimmie was sure, measuring one another in terms of sense and sensibility. In the apartment, the senator threw off her velvet wrap somewhat as she might a buffalo robe, and came to the point immediately.

“I assume I am not interrupting a sociable evening here?”

“My father has managed to take so much of the sociability out of my life,” Jimmie said, “I sometimes envy the frolics in a monastery.”

“That tells me something of what I want to know,” the senator said. She turned to Helene. “Mrs. Joyce, how well do you know this d’Inde man?”

“That would tell me something I want to know, too,” Jimmie said dryly.

“Well enough only to concur in most of his opinions about sculpture,” Helene said.

“Is he
bona fide
?” the senator asked.

“I should think it would be better to ask that of the director of the Museum,” Helene said.

“I intend to, but not at one in the morning, and now is when I want to know.”

“I feel that he knows his business,” Helen said. “I have had correspondence with him and I’ve met him two or three times. I will admit to a small prejudice in that he likes my work.”

The senator turned to Jimmie: “Do you know why your father was invited to Chatterton’s tonight?”

“I assumed it was because they are friends,” Jimmie said, “but I’d certainly like to know why some of the other guests were there.”

Grace Chisholm nodded. “The oddest pack outside of a zoo. I think your father and I are in a mess, Congressman, and since, to tell you the truth, I thought he was being played for a fool at dinner tonight, I’m in danger of being a mite righteous. But I don’t know why
I
was invited to the Chatterton table tonight.”

“Why did you go then?” Jimmie asked quietly.

The older woman looked at Helene and smiled. “He asks because he doesn’t know, doesn’t he?” Helene nodded. The senator went on: “Vanity, young man. Plain and simple, that’s it: I was flattered to be asked by so urbane a gentleman.”

“Then you and Chatterton had met?”

“Only on the same terms as he would have met two or three dozen other people on the Hill. I don’t see any way of figuring out this mess if we don’t tell the truth when we see it. I think I can fairly say I wasn’t there because of friendship.”

“Whom did you know among the other guests, Senator?”

“General Jarvis, Secretary Jennings, and I’d met this d’Inde fellow before.”

“That adds up to four, doesn’t it?” Jimmie said.

“Simple arithmetic,” the senator said. “Even Fagan’s kind.”

“Well, I don’t think we should do it for him, do you?” Jimmie said. “But we must assume he has some foundation, whatever it is, and however it came about.”

“Agreed.”

“What about Dr. d’Inde?” Helene said. “You came here because you thought I knew him, didn’t you, Senator?”

“And because I knew this young man was likely to be concerned with the same problem I was, the disloyalty charges Fagan has aimed at the Chatterton dinner.”

Jimmie was impatient, but he tried to hold steady: piece by piece. “Something has made you genuinely suspicious of d’Inde, however,” he suggested.

“Could be entirely irrelevant,” Senator Chisholm said, “but it came back to me tonight. I was coming out of a committee meeting one day last week—an Armed Forces Planning hearing where we’d been shown some pretty top secret stuff. D’Inde bottled me up and tried to get me to look at some photostats he had, thought I’d find them interesting. I gave him the brush the same way I would newspaper men on the subject. I make it an absolute practice never to talk of what goes on in those meetings outside.”

“How did he react?”

“Formal, polite. ‘But of course, Madame Senator—I understand.’ And he was nice as pie at the Chattertons.”

“Did you see the photostats?”

“Well, sort of the way you see the countryside from a train window. I saw geometric drawings and math figures. I couldn’t see more, refusing to look.”

“He wasn’t exactly covert about it, though,” Jimmie said.

“Not in the least. And maybe you can tell me, Congressman, if that’s good or bad.”

Jimmie grinned. “I know what you mean. Imagination and timing: most factors are alterable.”

“Exactly. A white dress makes a black shadow.”

Jimmie’s respect for this grey-haired, blunt woman had deepened considerably. He drew the engraved card from his pocket and gave it to her.

“Leo Montaigne,” she said. “I sat next to him at dinner. Do you know him?”

Jimmie shook his head. “But when I went home tonight, I found this card on the kitchen table—and nobody at home; not my housekeeper, my man, and certainly not my father. Mrs. Norris had written the words ‘Key Bridge, Arlington side’ on the table, but I don’t even know that there is any connection. I came back by way of the Key Bridge. Nothing.”

“He can’t be more than thirty,” the senator said, “but he smells musty, talks about the Riviera. He didn’t have much to say to me, but he seemed on intimate terms with the rest of the crowd.”

“All of them?” Jimmie queried.

“No, I wouldn’t say that. He had an argument with d’Inde. Your father took d’Inde’s side, I think. But it was trivial. I’m sure of that. Oh, something that struck me as queer; he was sitting between me and Secretary Jennings, and do you know, he called her by her first name?”

“Curious,” Jimmie agreed, but there was something else curious, too. He was looking at the list of guests he had compiled with d’Inde’s help. “Have you any idea what he does for a living?”

“Yes. And come to think of it, I found out by eavesdropping on the conversation across the table—between General Jarvis and whatever her name was. Montaigne runs something called the Club Sentimentale, and this woman is supposed to sing there.”

Jimmie got up. “Well, as they used to say in the D.A.’s office, somebody sang tonight. I think I’ll try the Club Sentimentale.”

“Senator Chisholm, will you stay and have some coffee with me?” Helene said.

“Bless you, girl, I will.”

Jimmie took his hat. Helene went out to the deserted hall with him and, when he gently lifted her chin with his forefinger, kissed him as though it were going to have to last him for some time.

“I’d almost forgotten there were moments like this,” he said.

Helene said, “There aren’t. You have to steal them. Call me as soon as you can.”

T
HERE WERE NO MORE
than a half-dozen private automobiles scattered along the street near the Club Sentimentale. Washington was a city of taxicabs. Sometimes Jimmie thought its economy was structured on the zoning of cab fares. Certainly the economy of government employees was. Jimmie parked his car.

The music reaching his ears was peculiarly thin, reedy, although the beat was ragtime. An electrified carriage lamp hung at the side of the club door, one weak light bulb faintly illuminating the sign. Identification, not advertising, he thought. The building itself was like an old stable, or perhaps a dock shed. There was even the suggestion of motion, but that doubtless was due to the ripple of moonlight on the Potomac in the background. It was an eerie night, at least down here: there was much so-called postwar building under way in this area, and everywhere the night-stilled cranes, derricks and other monsters of construction stood gaunt and fearsome as some nameless survivors of a dead era. About them, too, there was a suggestion of motion: and that, Jimmie realized, was the wafting of light clouds in the sky above them. A solitary cab was parked in the hackstand, driverless.

Jimmie opened the heavy door and went inside, ignoring the jangling bell that reacted to the door’s motion. A bar stood some distance in front of him, he thought, although it would have been better lit by pure moonlight. The music was still off somewhere like an auditory will-o’-the-wisp. He stood just inside the door, trying to accustom his eyes to the atmosphere. He sensed walls close on either side of him. Catching the scent of disinfectant he supposed the washrooms were on his left.

Someone spoke to him from out of the darkness on his right. “Are you a member of the Sentimentale, sir?” The female voice was jazzy, coming from false tones, he would guess, deliberately off-key.

Jimmie also guessed that he had been thoroughly observed in the few seconds by someone better accustomed to the semidarkness. He ventured to move a few steps forward. “No, I’m not. But I come well recommended. I should like to see Mr. Montaigne, please.”

She flipped over her hand so that its palm was upturned. “Let me have your hat.”

Jimmie, seeing better now, at least as far as he was looking, watched her sashay into the cloakroom and out again. She gave him a tab for his hat and then, hips swaying, led him into the bar-room and through it into the main clubroom. Her hair was blonde-white, glittery with some sort of luminous dust. The top of her dress was V’d, back and front, and fit her snugly but without a waistline all the way to the hips where it ruffled out into an extremely short skirt. He was put in mind of the frilled panties worn by the well-turned-out lamb chop. She might have been done up, Jimmie thought, for a Warner Baxter movie.