The Hellfire Club

'If you don't show it to me, I'm going to say things that you don't want people to hear.'

He gave her an exasperated look and sat down again. 'I don't understand what you think you can get out of this. Even if I did have it, it couldn't do you a bit of good. What's the point?'

'I want to know the truth.'

'That's what you came here for? The truth about Night Journey? Hugo Driver wrote it. Everybody knows it, and everybody's right.'

'That's part of the truth.'

'Apparently your adventures have left you more unsettled than you realize. If you want to come back in the next couple of days to talk business, please do, but for the present, we have nothing more to talk about.'

'Listen to me , Alden. I know you have that manuscript somewhere. Davey once came to you with an idea that would have made you even more money from the book, and you never even bothered to look for it. He did, but you didn't. You knew where it was, you just didn't want him to see it. Now I want to look at it. I won't open my mouth to a single human being. I just want to know I'm right.'

'Right about what?

'That Driver stole most of the story from Katherine Mannheim.'

Alden stood up and looked at her in pity. Just when she could have turned things around and joined the team, Nora had turned out to be a flake after all, what a shame. 'Let me say this to you, Nora. You think you know certain facts which could damage me . I would rather not have these facts come to light, that's true, but while they might stir up some publicity I could do without, I'll survive. Go on, do whatever you think you have to do.'

Nora took a folded sheet of paper from her bag. 'Look at this, Alden. It's a copy of a statement you probably won't want made public.'

Alden signed. He came across the room to take it from her. He was bored, Nora had thrown away her last chance to be reasonable, but he was a gentleman, so he'd indulge her in one final lunacy. He took his reading glasses from the pocket of the blazer, put them on, and snapped open the paper on his way back across the room. Nora watched this performance with immense pleasure. Alden read a sentence and stopped moving. He read the sentence again. He yanked off his glasses and turned to her.

'Read the whole thing,' Nora said. Until this moment, she had wondered if he had already known. The shock and dismay surfacing through his performance made it clear that he had not. She could almost feel sorry for him.

Alden moved behind the leather chair, leaned over it, and read Hugo Driver's confession and Georgina Weatherall's postscript. He read it all the way through, then read it again. He looked up at her from behind the chair.

'Where did you get this?'

'Does it matter?'

'It's a fake.'

'No, Alden, it's not. Even if it were, would you want that story to get out? Do you want people to start speculating about your father and Katherine Mannheim and Hugo Driver?'

Alden folded the letter into one pocket, his glasses into another. He was still hiding behind his chair. 'Speaking hypothetically, suppose I do have the manuscript of Night Journey. Suppose I satisfy your curiosity. If that were to happen, what would you do?'

'I'd go away happy.'

'Let's try another scenario. If I were to offer you two hundred thousand dollars for the original of this forgery, solely for the protection of my father's name, would you accept my offer?'

'No.'

'Three hundred thousand?'

Nora laughed. 'Can't you see that I don't want any money? Show me the manuscript and I'll go away and never see you again.'

'You just want to see it.'

'I want to see it.'

Alden nodded. 'Okay. You and I are both honorable people. I want you to know I never had any idea that… I never had any idea that Katherine Mannheim didn't just walk away from that place. You gave me a promise, and that's my promise to you.' He recovered himself. 'I still say that this is a forgery of course. My father followed his own rules, but he wasn't a rapist.'

'Alden, we both know he was, but I don't care. It's ancient history.'

He came out from behind his barricade. 'It's ancient history whether he was or wasn't.' He moved along the bookcase and swung out a hinged section of a shelf at eye level to reveal a wall safe, another massy vault larger within than without. He dialed it open and with more reverence than she would have thought him capable of reached in and took out a green leather box.

Nora came toward him and saw what looked like the bottom of a picture frame on the top shelf of the safe. 'What's that?'

'Some drawing my father squirreled away.'

Alden pulled the drawing out and showed it to her before sliding it back into the vault. 'Don't ask me what it is or why it's there. All I know is that when Daisy and I moved into the Poplars, he showed it to me and told me to keep it in the vault and forget about it. I think it must be stolen. Somebody probably gave it to him to pay off a debt.'

'Looks like a Redon,' Nora said.

'I wouldn't know.; Is that good?'

'Good enough.'

She took the box to the couch and looked inside. A small notebook with marbled covers sat on top of a lot of typed pages. She picked up the notebook. Katherine Mannheim's signature was on the inside cover. She had written 'Night Journey, novel?' on the facing page. Nora turned page after page filled with notes about Pippin Little; this was the embryo of Driver's book, stolen from Katherine Mannheim's bag. He who steals my trash steals trash. She put the notebook beside her and took the manuscript from the box. It seemed such a small thing to have affected so many lives. She opened it at random and saw that someone had drawn a line in the margin and written in a violent, aggressive hand,

p. 32, Mannheim notebook. She turned to another page and saw in the same handwriting, pp. 40-43, Mannheim. Lincoln Chancel had demanded the stolen notebook, kept the manuscript, and marked in it everything Driver had stolen from Katherine Mannheim. If Driver ever ruined him, he would ruin Driver.

'Do you see?' Alden said. 'Driver wrote the book. These Mannheim people don't have a leg to stand on. He borrowed a few ideas, that's all. Writers do it all the time.'

Nora returned the manuscript and notebook to the box. 'I'm grateful to you, Alden.'

'I still don't see why it was so important.'

'I just wanted to see it all the way through,' she said. 'In a day or two, I'm going to be moving to Massachusetts for a little while. I don't know where I'll be after that, but you won't have to worry about me.'

Alden told her he would say good-bye to Davey for her.

'I already did that,' Nora said.

The second of Nora's errands took her to the post office, where she withdrew from an unsealed envelope addressed to The New York Times a letter describing Hugo Driver's debt to the forgotten poet Katherine Mannheim and an account of the poet's death and her burial a few feet north of the area known as Monty's Glen in the Shorelands woods. To the letter she added, in her hasty hand, this note: 'Katherine Mannheim's original notebook and Hugo Driver's manuscript, with Lincoln Chancel's marginal notes referring to specific passages taken from the notebook, are in a wall safe located in the library of Alden Chancel's house in Westerholm, Connecticut.' Having kept her promise never to speak of these matters, she refolded the letter, wrapped it around another copy of Hugo Driver's confession, put them back into the envelope, sealed it, and sent it by registered mail to New York.

Nora's third errand brought her to Redcoat Road. Natalie Weil's house was still in need of a fresh paint job, but the crime scene tapes had been removed. She pulled up in front of the garage door, walked up the path to Natalie's front door, and pressed the bell. A friendly female voice called out, and footsteps ran down the stairs to