The Hellfire Club

'Wait.'

The man came out of his trailer holding a clipboard with a pen dangling from a string. He thrust it through the window and pointed at a blank space on a form. 'Sign right there, Mrs Desmond. Hope you enjoy your stay.'

Dart leaned forward with a wicked smile. 'What did they put you in for, old-timer?'

'Pardon?'

'Knife a guy in a bar, or was it more like stealing bricks off a construction site?'

Nora handed him the clipboard. 'I apologize for my husband. He thinks he's a comedian.'

'Not all comedians is funny.' The man's face had gone rigid, and the light had disappeared from his eyes. He grabbed the clipboard, stamped across the cement, climbed into his trailer, and slammed the door.

'This may come as a surprise to you,' Nora said, 'but you have an unpleasant streak.'

'Now you want to bet that I can't quote all of 'To a Sky-Lark'?'

The field squished under the Duesenberg's oversized tires. 'No.'

'How about every third word? Slightly adjusted for effect?'

'No.' She put the car in a spot at the far right end of the field.

'Too bad. It's a lot better my way.'

Thee, bird wert -

Heaven it full profuse unpremeditated

still from thou a fire.

Deep and still and singest.

'There are a lot of ways to be a genius. I'm going to feel right at home here.'

Nora picked her way across the field, stepping over the muddy patches. 'I'm not sure it's an act of genius to hang on to that car.'

Dart moved along behind her. 'After you perform your kidnapping stunt, we'll liberate another one. In the meantime there isn't a safer place in the whole state for the Duesie than right here. This was a brilliant idea.'

Nora circled a mudhole and realized with a sinking of her heart that she had brought this madman into a private playpen. After the trust had decided to rent out cottages, they must have put in telephones. Dart could not watch her every minute; by now, he didn't even feel that he had to. They were partners. As soon as possible, she would call the local police and escape into the woods.

The path leading into the center of Shorelands held long, slender pockets of water, and the raised sections gleamed with moisture. Sometime during the night it had rained. While the sidewalks and highways had dried in the sun, open land had not. She looked up. Heavy clouds scudded across a mottled sky.

'Going to be good for both of us,' Dart said.

'Imagine how I feel,' Nora said.

Her short heels sank into the earth, and she moved onto a wet, stony ridge. The trees on either side seemed to close in. Dart began humming 'Mountain Greenery.' They came out of the trees and moved toward a gravel court surrounded by a low stone wall topped with cement slabs. The wall opened onto a white path between two narrow lawns, and the path led up four wide stone steps to the centerpiece of this landscape, a long stone building with three rows of windows in cement embrasures, some dripping water stains like beards. At every second window the facade stepped forward, so that the structure seemed to spread its wings and fold out from the entrance. Near the far end, a workman halfway up a tall ladder was scraping away a section of damaged paint, and another was repairing a cracked sill on the ground floor. Dick Dart linked his arm in hers and led her up the path to Main House.86

White-haired men and women lingered inside a gift shop across from a black door marked PRIVATE STAFF ONLY. Beyond, marble steps ascended to a wide corridor with high peach walls broken by glossy plaster half columns. In the big lounge across the corridor, a group of about twenty people, most of them women, listened to an invisible guide. French doors opened onto a terrace. Dart pulled Nora up the steps. At the left end of the hallway, a knot of tourists emerged from a room at the front of Main House and pursued a small, white-haired woman into another across the corridor. To their right, a curved staircase led past a gallery of paintings to the second floor. Nora thought of screaming for help, and words thrust up into her throat until she realized that if she released them, Dart would yank the revolver from his pocket and murder as many of these people as he could. The group in the lounge began shuffling after their guide through an interior arch on the far side of the fireplace.

Dart tilted his head to admire the plaster palmettes and arabesques spread across the barrel-vaulted ceiling. 'Hell with the roadblock and the violent demise. We lie low for a while, then I touch my old man for a couple million dollars. We go to Canada, buy a place like this. I put in a couple hidden staircases, state-of-the-art operating theater, big gas furnace in the basement. Have a ball.'

The short, white-haired guide led her party into the big room across the corridor and spread her arms. 'Here we have the famous lounge, where Miss Weatherall's guests gathered for cocktails and conversation before their evening meal. If you're wishing you could listen in, I can tell you one thing that was said in this room. T. S. Eliot turned to Miss Weatherall and whispered, 'My dear, I must tell you-'

In a carrying voice, Dart announced, 'That stuffed shirt Eliot stayed here exactly two days, and all he did was complain about indigestion.'

Most of the tourists who had been listening to the guide turned to look at Dart.

' 'The breeding of land and dull spring, us, earth, snow, life, tubers.' Every third word of the beginning of 'The Waste Land,' with certain adjustments for poetic effect, 'Us, the shower; we went sunlight. Hofgarten coffee.' Heck of a lot punchier, don't you think? My 'Prufrock' is even better.'

The guide was trying to shepherd her charges into the next room.

'Can you do that with everything?' Nora asked.

'Everything. 'Go, and the spread, the patient upon; Let through muttering, restless hotels, restaurants, shells insidious. Lead an… Oh, ask it.' '

A voice behind them asked, 'Are you a poet?'

A tall woman in her late twenties, her face strewn with freckles and her strawberry-blond hair hanging straight to her shoulders, stood behind them, one foot on the top of the stairs. She wore a simple off-white suit, and she looked charming.

Dart smiled at her. 'How embarrassing. Yes, I hope I may claim that honor.'

The young woman came toward them, holding out a deeply freckled hand. 'Mr and Mrs Desmond?'

Dart enfolded her hand in both of his. 'I'll tell, if you will.'

'Marian Cullinan. One of my jobs here is being in charge of Guest Services. Tony let me know you were coming, and I'm sorry to be late, but I had to take care of a few things at my desk.' Dart released her. 'You had no trouble finding us, I hope?'

'None at all,' Dart purred.

'Good. And please, don't be embarrassed that we inspired you to think about your work. We hope we have that effect on all the writers who visit us. Are you published, Mr Desmond?'

'A fair bit, I'm happy to say.'

'Wonderful,' said Marian. 'Where? I should know your name. I do my best to keep up with people like you for our reading series.'

Dart glanced at Nora and presented Marian with a shy, modest face. 'Here and there.'

'You can't get out of it that way. I'm interested in contemporary poetry. I bet your wife will tell me where you've placed your work.'

Nora struggled to remember the magazines on Mark Foil's coffee table. 'Let's see. He's published quite a bit in A vec and Conjunctions. And Lingo.'

'Well!' She looked up at Dick Dart with a quick increase of interest and respect. 'I'm impressed. I thought you must be a Language poet. I'd love to ask you about a thousand questions, but I don't want to be rude.'

'Might be enjoyable,' Dart said. 'Poets don't get a great deal of attention, all in all.'

'Around here they do. We'll have to make sure you get our VIP treatment. When good writers do us the honor of visiting, we like to extend our hospitality a little further than we can with the usual guest.'

'Isn't that sweet as all get out?' Dart looked at Nora with dancing eyes.