The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  She stepped out of the angle in the wall, then moved back. Davey drove by. The blue sedan followed him to the hotel. Both cars pulled into the lot and disappeared.

  Nora hovered in the shelter of the wall, praying for the policemen to leave the hotel. If Jeffrey came by, she’d wave him down and explain that her plans had changed, she was going to go back to Westerholm after all. Shorelands represented someone else’s past, and she had to tend to her present. The policemen stayed inside the hotel, and she hugged herself, watching the glass doors at the edge of the terrace.

  Children ran back and forth on the flagstones, weaving around the waiters. The glass door swung open, and a waiter with a tray balanced on his shoulder and a folding stand in his hand came outside. Before the door could swing shut, Davey rushed out and looked over the tables. When he did not see Nora, he walked across the terrace and came to the steps to the sidewalk.

  Nora moved forward. Another police car turned onto King Street. Davey scanned the sidewalk in front of him. The police car approached. Nora left the angle of the wall and began walking back up toward Main. The patrol car went past without stopping. She turned around on the sidewalk to see Davey making his way back through the tables. When the car reached the front of the hotel, it made a U-turn and pulled up behind the first one. Two officers got out and jogged up the steps, and a third patrol car came up from the bottom of King Street and turned into the hotel parking lot.

  Her only hope was that Davey would return to the terrace alone. She moved a little farther up the street and watched him go back into the hotel. The two policemen were pushing through the tables under the curious gazes of most of the people eating breakfast. Davey disappeared, and the policemen reached the door a few seconds after it closed.

  Come back out, she said to herself. Get out of there and walk up the street.

  Two hefty parents and three even larger teenagers crowded toward the door. Davey came out just as they reached it, moved to one side, and held the door. Nora began walking toward the hotel. When the last of the family had waddled through, Davey held it open for two men in business suits. One of them wore black sunglasses. Davey shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. Nora’s breath caught in her throat, and she took a step backwards. The men in suits were Mr. Hashim and Mr. Shull.

  Conversing like old friends, Davey and the FBI men were walking around the street side of the tables, going toward the steps.

  Too shocked to process what she had just seen, Nora began moving up the street. About twenty feet away was a parking lot for shops fronting on the lower end of Main. If she could get into the lot without being seen, she could walk through one of the shops and work her way to Helen Day’s house.

  She looked over her shoulder. Mr. Shull was jabbing his thumb toward the hotel and talking to Mr. Hashim, who glanced at Nora. Her heart struck her ribs, and her knees seemed loose. She marched past faded posters of handsome old buildings and trees in their fall colors in the windows of an empty information booth. A big black-and-white CLOSED sign, spotted brown by the sun, had been taped to the inside of its door. Nora turned into the lot and risked another glance over her shoulder.

  Davey and Mr. Shull were moving toward Main Street. Mr. Shull was ticking off points on his fingers, and Davey was nodding.

  You worm, you weasel, how could you do this to me?

  An arm wrapped itself around her neck. Shock and terror locked her heart, and the arm tightening around her throat turned her scream into a croak. The man bent her backwards and dragged her into the lot.

  82

  “LOVE THESE REUNIONS of ours,” said Dick Dart. “So important to keep up with old friends, don’t you agree?” Nora pulled at the arm cutting off her breath, and her feet scrabbled on the dirty asphalt. “Especially those who have reached out and touched you.” She tried to kick him, and then her balance was gone. Dart circled her waist with his free arm, lifted her off the ground, and carried her deeper into the lot.

  “You’ll love the car,” he said. “As soon as I saw it, I knew that the time had come to gather in my little Nora-pie, and if you don’t stop thrashing around I’ll slit your throat right here, you stupid piece of shit.” He let go of her waist, and her body sagged against his chest. Beneath his forearm, a sharp point jabbed into her neck. “Don’t want that, do we?”

  She shook her head the eighth of an inch his grip would allow. A dry rattle came from her throat.

  “I’m a forgiving person,” Dart announced into the rush of blood filling her ears. “Understand your distress, your confusion. Gosh golly gee, you’re a human being, aren’t you? I bet you’d love to take a breath right about now.”

  She did her best to nod.

  “Let me get us out of sight, and we’ll take care of that.”

  He carried her between two vans and pulled her to the wall. His arm loosened. A single breath of burning air rushed into her lungs, then he tightened his grip again. “There, now. Like another one?”

  Braced against the wall, Dart held her back over his knee. If she struggled she would drop to the ground. Her feet dangled on either side of his bent leg. She nodded, and the arm relented for the length of another gasping inhalation.

  She twisted her head and looked at him out of the side of her right eye. He was grinning, his eyes alight with pleasure below the brim of a black poplin cap which revealed a strip of white bandage above his ear. She could just see the shining edge of the knife where it met the hilt.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” he said. “To prove it, I’m going to let you breathe again.” His arm dropped. “We’ll be nice and quiet now, won’t we?” Gulping air, she nodded. “Darling Davey turned you in, didn’t he? Thrill for the boy, hanging out with the big, bad FBI. Think he’s bonded with the one in sunglasses.” He yanked her farther up his leg and closed his arm around her throat a little less tightly than before. “Over the initial shock of joy? Adjusted to the delightful reappearance of an old friend? Do we understand that any outburst will result in a little rough-and-tumble throat surgery?”

  Nora came as close as she could to saying yes.

  “I’m going to prove something to you.” He stood up and deposited her on the ground. She was standing with her back to Dick Dart in the three feet of space between a battered brown van and an even more battered blue one painted with the words MACMEL PLUMBING &” HEATING. At the end of the tunnel formed by the vans lay an asphalt parking lot scattered with crumpled candy wrappers and cigarette butts. Amazed to be alive, she turned around.

  Dart was leaning against the side of the tourist center, one leg bent under him and his arms crossed over his chest. The black cap came down to just above his glittering eyes. A faint stubble covered his cheeks and chin, and in his right hand was the stag-handled German knife he had bought in Fairfield.

  “Do you see?”

  “See what?” Her hands trembled, and something in her stom-ach trembled, too.

  “You’re not running away.”

  “You’d kill me if I did.”

  “There is that. But I’m your best bet for getting out of this mess. You’re afraid of me, but you’re beginning to believe that I’m too interested in you to kill you out of a simpleminded motive like revenge, and you’re furious with Davey. As long as I seem reasonable and calm, you’d rather take your chances with me than let that weak sister see you get arrested.”

  She stared at him—this was almost right.

  “The difference between Davey and me is that I respect you. Am I going to lose my mind because you acted like a woman when I let my guard down? Not at all. You hurt me, but not that much. I have a truly hard head, after all. I’ll have to take more precautions with you, but don’t we still have things to do together? Let’s do them.”

  “Okay,” Nora said, thinking fast and hard. “Whatever you say.”

  “I suppose you did your best to make yourself up, but that’s ridiculous. You smeared it on with a trowel.”

  “Are you going to get me out of here or not?�
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  Dart uncoiled from the wall, gripped her arm, and led her out between the vans. Two uniformed policemen ambled past the entrance. “You’re responsible for my acquiring this wonderful work of art.” She turned from the policemen to see the antique car owned by the tyrant in the ascot and blazer. “We’ll even be able to keep it for a while.”

  He led her to the driver’s door and helped lever her up onto the running board. “Know how to drive stick shift?”

  “Yes.”

  “The perfect woman.” Dart sighed. He trotted around the back of the car to get in on the passenger side. Nora looked at the seats and floor carpeting and was relieved not to see bloodstains.

  BOOK IX

  MOUNTAIN GLADE

  . . . THE HEART’S GLADE, WHERE THE GREAT SECRET LAY BURIED.

  83

  “NICE AND EASY, now. This is an actual Duesie, treat it with respect.”

  “A doozy?”

  Dart rolled his eyes, and Nora backed smoothly out of the parking spot, shifted into first, and drove toward the King Street exit. “A Duesie. A Duesenberg, one of the greatest cars ever made. An aristocrat. It’s really delicious, the way these plums fall into my hands when you’re around.”

  Davey and the two FBI agents stood at the center of a group of uniformed policemen in front of the hotel. Some of the men looked at the Duesenberg as Nora turned toward Main Street.

  “People are so busy looking at the car that they don’t pay any attention to who’s driving it.”

  Out of habit, she turned right on Main. Two college-aged young women crossing Gothic Street watched them go by with smiles on their faces. Dart was right, people stared at the car, not the people in it.

  “You’ve had time to consider things, see what the world is like without me, so all you need is some consistent supervision and we’ll be back on the right track. How’d you learn to work a gearshift, anyhow? Most women don’t have a clue.”

  “I learned to drive in an old pickup.” Dart was leaning against a walnut-paneled door, smirking at her and fondling the pistol he had taken from Officer LeDonne. “How did you get this car?”

  “Nora magic. If not for this evidence of your ability to smooth my passage, I might have treated your moment of rebellion a good deal more harshly. But here you are, and instantly, here’s the Duesie. Kismet. Though I did have my eye on your friend’s MG. Is he an ex-cop?”

  “He’s an ex–lots of things.” She glanced again at his twist of a smirk, unwilling to let him see her dismay. “Including a cop. He was the housekeeper at the Poplars.”

  “Devoted manservant,” Dart said. “Deeply attached to the young lord’s beloved. A romantic dalliance, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  He raised his eyebrows and grinned. A stream of pedestrians moved staring past the front of the car.

  “Last night, I asked some questions of the local citizens. An MG fancier who had observed the two of you pointed me toward the hotel, and there I came upon the vehicle in question. I thought I’d collect your friend when he came back for you this morning, but you came out and had your encounter with the previous owners of the Duesie. The old black magic has them in its spell, I says to myself, I says. Give me a little peek into the workshop, Nora-pie, tell me what you said to them.”

  “I said I hoped his wife would kill him in bed one night.”

  Dart barked out his ugly laugh and patted his fingertips against the barrel of the gun in applause. “Struck a nerve, magic one, struck a nerve. By the time they got to the corner, the old waffle was screeching at him. When you ducked into the front of the theater, I hustled across the street and followed them, acting on faith, always the proper thing to do, and before they went ten feet, Douglas Fairbanks pulled over to chastise her. The waffle got out and walked away. Doug took after her, so angry he forgot his keys. He trotted along, screaming at her, collapsed, bang—the old boy’s flat out on the sidewalk. Another victim of an unwise marriage. I got in the Duesie and drove it right past the commotion, and do you know what? I think the waffle saw me. Bet she experienced one of the great moments of her life. When Douglas Fairbanks wakes up in the hospital, he’ll take one look at the monitors at his bedside, the tubes coming from his every orifice, and he’ll say—What happened to my car? And the waffle will say, Dear, I was too worried about you to think about the Duesie. This is the most important thing in his life, but can he criticize her for letting it get stolen? He wants to tear her heart out and fry it over an open fire, but instead he has to be grateful to her!”

  Dart smiled to himself. “Sometimes I doubt myself. Sometimes I stop and wonder if I’m wrong and everybody else is right. And then something like this happens, and I know I can relax. Men are just dogs, but women are lions.”

  He reached over what seemed a much greater distance than would have been the case in any other car and patted her knee.

  “You, Nora, are still a baby lion, but you’re a great baby lion, and you’ve grown by leaps and bounds. When we started on our odyssey, you didn’t know enough to last five minutes. But after twenty-four hours at the feet of the great Dick Dart, you’re able to figure out a way to see Dr. Foil and Everett Tidy.”

  Nora pulled up at the stop sign before the Smith campus at State Street, and the usual backpacks and blue jeans gave the car the usual appreciative stares.

  “Thought we’d get out of Massachusetts for a couple of nights, find a nice motel somewhere up in Maine. Safest place in America. Half of Maine hasn’t even heard of television yet. They’re still waiting to see if that moon-landing thing worked out.” He opened the glove compartment. “Must be some maps here. Assholes with medals on their cars always have a million maps. Right again, Dick, we knew we could count on you.”

  Smith College rolled past the side of Dart’s head. Nora glanced up Green Street and saw Jeffrey sprinting across the sidewalk to his car. “Would you consider another possibility?”

  He tilted his face toward her as he sorted through the maps. “Maine sound a little primitive? I have a better idea. Canada. Don’t need passports, they just wave you in and out. Our charming cousins to the north. Most self-effacing people on earth. You know what a Canadian says when you’re about to kill him? ‘May I floss first?’ ”

  “I have a reservation in one of the cottages at Shorelands.”

  “Shorelands?” He fell back against the leather seat. “Idea has a decided sparkle. Continuation of our original quest. I trust this reservation is in some suitably neutral name.”

  “Mrs. Norma Desmond.”

  “Lovely. I can be Norman Desmond. My character takes shape about me even as we speak. Norm, husband of Norm. Lawyer by day, devotee of the written word by night. All my talks with my old dears very useful. Every now and then I could reel off some verse to impress the shit out of the guardians of culture. Wouldn’t have to be Emily, I can quote lots of other idiots, too. Keats, Shelley, Gray—all the greats.”

  “Can you?”

  “I told you, as soon as I read something, it’s in there for good. Let me win a couple of bets in bars, but after a while, I couldn’t get anybody to wager that I wasn’t able to recite all of ‘To a Sky-Lark.’ Want to hear it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. It’s terrible. Now, were you going there by yourself?”

  “Jeffrey was going to drive me there and drop me off.”

  He nodded. “Pull over to the side, so I can look at one of these maps and figure out how to get there.”

  She coasted to a stop. Dart removed a folded map from the pile. “Okay, here’s Lenox and here’s us. No problem. We go back into town, take 9 all the way to Pittsfield, and go south on 7. On the way, you can tell me what you got out of Mark Foil and Everett Tidy. But before that, do explain why you decided to go to this broken-down literary colony. Documents hidden under the floorboards? Katherine Mannheim’s draft of Night Journey salted away in the bole of a tree?”

  “I want to see where they all met each other.”

 
“And?”

  “Get a better idea of the layout.”

  “Piece together their comings and goings, that sort of thing? What else?”

  She remembered the boys arranging the terrace in the lemon light of the morning” she remembered Helen Day. “I thought I might be able to talk to some of the maids.”

  “You mystify me.”

  “Some of the old staff is still around. The other night I realized that servants know everything. Like those boys you told me about, the ones who work at the Yacht Club.”

  “Deeply flattered, but the hag who changed Hugo Driver’s sheets fifty-five years ago isn’t likely to know what he wrote or didn’t write, even if she’s still alive.”

  “Katherine Mannheim didn’t write Night Journey. That isn’t the issue anymore.”

  He took it in. “Then why didn’t Alden Chancel tell the old ladies to cram their lawsuit up the old rectal valve? He could have told their lawyer to go to hell at the beginning, but he put Dart, Morris on the case. If he’s in the clear, why fork out money to his law firm?”

  Nora remembered how she had felt when she had seen Davey on the hotel terrace with his new pals, Mr. Hashim and Mr. Shull. Dart was going to love what she was about to tell him. “Alden doesn’t want anybody to question Driver’s authorship of his books. That’s a sensitive point.”

  He became instantly attentive. “Do tell. I mean, do. Tell.”

  “The horror novels weren’t the first books Daisy wrote for Alden under a phony name. The other name she used was Hugo Driver.”

  Dart blinked, then laughed. “That boozy old pillowcase wrote Night Journey?” For a second he was the nice-looking man he would have been if he were not Dick Dart, and he laughed again. “No wonder Alden got rid of the manuscript! No, it can’t be. She’s too young. You’re riding the wrong horse, babycakes.”