Jimmie switched off the radio and turned into his own driveway. The garage was empty. Even Tom’s jalopy was gone. He knew the moment he let himself in the house that the only possible company he might find there was the family cat, and he thought bitterly, observing her reluctant rise from the kitchen rocker at his approach, she wouldn’t be home either if she weren’t already pregnant.
Not a note anywhere: it was entirely unlike Mrs. Norris. Of course, she might have been persuaded earlier to go riding with Tom, and something might have happened to delay them; almost anything could happen in his automobile; he called it “Sophie” in honour of a singer of comparable vintage.
Then the cat jumped up on the table, a laborious leap; but thus was Jimmie’s eye attracted to the words Mrs. Norris had written as Tom remembered them: “Key Bridge, Arlington side,” and the card on which was engraved the name, “Leo Montaigne.”
Jimmie sat down for a moment and made a lap for the cat. The handwriting was Mrs. Norris’, no doubt of it. But the card, Leo Montaigne’s—what was it doing here? Had his father been home? What had gone on here that had taken Tom and Mrs. Norris from the house? The cat stretched and began to purr and knead her paws. Her claws went through to his flesh.
Jimmie thought then of Virginia Allan, remembering her name. She was the woman with whom he presumed his father to be right now. And Virginia Allan sang at a club, or so Helene had said. He got up and put the cat in the chair. He phoned Helene’s hotel and left the message to have her call him here as soon as she came in. Then he sat down to think and wait, staring at the engraved card. It was obvious now that his father was more deeply involved than as a chance dinner guest at Chatterton’s.
It suddenly occurred to him to wonder where Helene had learned Virginia Allan sang blues at a club. He remembered the words, for he had proposed to think she might be a ballad singer. Where but from Henri d’Inde?
But in answer to Jimmie’s question, d’Inde had declined to acknowledge that he knew the singer. On grounds that it might tend to incriminate him?
Jimmie lit a cigarette and began to pace the kitchen while the cat miaowed.
11
MRS. NORRIS HAD NOT ridden in anything like “Sophie” since Master Jamie had mounted an orange crate on roller skates and persuaded her into it. She clung now to her hat with one hand and to the door handle with the other.
“What kind of a car is it?” she asked at the top of her voice.
“As near as I can figure, she’s half-Ford and half-Chevrolet,” Tom shouted.
Mrs. Norris sat back, more or less. She was glad she had worn sensible shoes: there was no telling from where she might have to walk home. Not, of course, that she could find “home” if she were across the street from it. Nyack was never like this.
Tom drove directly up to the hotel entrance. He tumbled out and ran for the building without a word.
The doorman shouted after him, “Come back here! You can’t leave a can like that in front of the door.”
“The lady’ll explain everything,” said Tom, and disappeared.
The doorman came to the car window. He had the decency to remove his cap at least before sticking his face into Mrs. Norris’. “Can you drive this contraption?”
“I might if I was wearing spurs,” Mrs. Norris said, and there was a burr to her spur.
The doorman pulled out. “Are you looking for someone?”
“We are. For Congressman Jarvis who is here at the ball.”
“Jarvis, did you say?”
“I did.”
“He’s just left. I called up for his car not ten minutes ago.”
Tom came out at a gallop and leaped in beside Mrs. Norris. The car seemed almost alive to his touch. It was very nearly beautiful, she thought, the grace with which he could manoeuvre something so ugly. He dimmed the lights and nosed Sophie around a curb and into position.
“This way, if we have to, we can take off in any direction,” he explained.
“We’ll be fortunate if it’s not in all of them,” Mrs. Norris said over the rattle of her teeth. “Mr. James has left. Or did you find that out yourself?”
“I deducted it,” said Tom. “Herself will be coming out in a minute with the Frenchman.”
“Mrs. Joyce?”
“The same, cruel vixen that she is. We’re going to shadow them.”
“In this?” said Mrs. Norris.
“Why not?” said Tom. “She can do everything but climb a tree, Sophie can.”
Mrs. Norris would not have been surprised to see her climb a tree. She laid a hand on Tom’s wrist; it was tense and sinewy, his hand tight on the wheel. “Why did this man send the message to the house, Tom, and both him and Mr. James here all the time? It’s only a minute or two since Mr. James left, the doorman says. I think you’re making it all up, just to get out on a lark.”
“A great lark, with you along clipping my wings. There they are, getting into that cab!” Tom eased the car into first gear and allowed it to roll gently forward.
Mrs. Norris, peering at the couple, and at her mind’s after-image of them when they were out of view, knew that if it was Mrs. Joyce in the cab, she was not there with Representative Jarvis: and that in itself portended trouble, so she held her peace.
Tom had no trouble following the cab to the hotel where he said Mrs. Joyce was stopping.
“I hope she doesn’t invite him up,” Mrs. Norris said without realizing she had said aloud her moral appraisal of the situation. For Mr. James’ sake she wanted fervently to believe in Mrs. Joyce.
“So do I,” said Tom, but for quite another reason. “Oh, we’re in luck. He’s having the cab wait.”
“You’re going to follow him from here?”
“Sure, as long as we’re on his tail, he’s not fighting with the boss, is he?”
“I’d rather, to tell you the truth, be following Mr. James.”
“That wouldn’t even be decent,” Tom said. He let the car motor idle lower. “What kind of shoes do you have on in case we have to go after him on foot?”
“They’re as good as my feet,” she said. “Isn’t that him now?” The man came out of the hotel at a much faster pace than he had gone in. Truly he seemed to stride with purpose and Mrs. Norris’ heart gave a leap in spite of herself.
“Look sharp, Sophie,” Tom said. The cab shot ahead and then left a smokescreen as the driver changed speeds. “He’s in earnest now, wherever he’s going. By God, I hope the old girl doesn’t backfire! She’d give us away sure, and us the only ones on the road. Sophie, behave, dear!”
“You’ll soon have company at this speed, if there are police,” Mrs. Norris said. She could make neither head nor tail, north nor south of the Washington streets, the names of which she was no sooner finding than she was losing. It was a town put together in diamond patches, like a quilt designed from the centre.
“Where are we now?” she asked, not that she would know, being told.
“In the neighbourhood of Dupont Circle. I’ve a notion he’ll stop here. It’s an artisty kind of section.”
Tom’s hunch was right. The cab came to a sudden stop and he had to take Sophie around it. It was to be said for his boldness, he did it with a flair, giving a blast of his horn to the cabbie for not having warned him of the sudden stop.
“Baaaa,” said the cabbie, articulate as a goat.
“Sounds just like New York,” Mrs. Norris said.
“Watch where he goes in,” Tom alerted her.
“I didn’t come only for the ride,” Mrs. Norris said. “He’s already in and I’ve seen where he went.” She was grateful for the moonlight, and drew her identification of the house from a tree stump.
Tom drove around the block and parked near the corner. “I wonder if he’s come home for the artillery.”
“The what?”
“Pistols. What he wants to fight with. Come on and show me the house. We’ll walk by.”
There wasn’t a sound but their own footfalls and the burble
of frogs, as they went silently toward the tree stump Mrs. Norris had chosen as marker. Then there were other sounds—music of a listening variety somewhere nearby, and laughter from somewhere else, the distant banging of a car door, a dog’s barking.
“There it is,” Mrs. Norris said, indicating a two-family stone dwelling.
“We’re all right if he lives in the one on the left,” said Tom. “The blinds are up, and there’s people you can see through to.” The other half of the house was in darkness.
“You’ve the eyes of a ferret,” she said, but yielded her hand to his when he groped for it, and allowed herself to be led off the sidewalk into the shadow of bushes near the house. “We’re trespassing, Tom.”
“Aye, and I wonder if he isn’t himself. Look there, he’s talking to some woman with a baby in her arms.”
“I can’t see a thing,” Mrs. Norris said, for the window was above a veranda.
“Well, I’m not going to lift you up,” said Tom. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”
The room to the front of the house was dark, but Mrs. Norris could see the shadows from the figures in the second room playing upon the ceiling. Suddenly the woman was trying to thrust the baby into the man’s arms, and he was backing away from it, his own arms flailing while he talked.
“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!”
12
JIMMIE 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 righteo
us. 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.”
Old Sinners Never Die Page 6
