Free Old Sinners Never Die by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

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
    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