The Hellfire Club

calf-length black socks, a dozen handkerchiefs, pick out some ties too, please. Alterations immediately, if poss. Nora deposited in a stiff leather chair near the tall minor, a stooping man with a tape measure around his neck summoned from the depths. Dart disappeared into the changing room for an eye blink before emerging in the first of his new suits. Another stooping figure materialized to whisk away the suit while Dart twinkled into number two. Dart and his reflection preened. The fittings completed, Dart inhabited another club chair and the mustache presented a bottle of Finnish vodka, two glasses, a bucket of ice. While you wait, sir. The presentation of the bill. Nora looked over and saw that Dart had purchased six thousand dollars' worth of clothes. 'Nearest really good library?' Dart asked.

He swung the Lincoln into the exit near the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Nora realized that, wherever they had been before, now they were in Springfield, where Dr and Mrs Daniel Harwich lorded it over Longfellow Lane. If she could escape from Dick Dart, would the doctor and his wife give her shelter in their basement? Answer cloudy, ask again. Three years before, a semi-radioactive Nora had whirled into Springfield on what she imagined was a sentimental visit, wound up in a bar, then a motel, with a strange, embittered Dan Harwich, who afterward talked her into coming home with him. Ten-thirty at night. The Mrs Harwich of the time, Helen, who had microwaved her half of dinner an hour earlier and dispatched it with several vodka tonics, started shouting as soon as they came through the door. Nora had attempted an exit, but Harwich had settled her in a chair, presumably as a witness. What she had witnessed had been an old-time marital title bout. Helen Harwich ordered them both out, Dan to return the next morning to pick up some clothes and depart for good. Back to the motel, Harwich uttering evil chuckles. The next morning, he promised to call her soon. Soon meant two days later, another call a week later, a third after another two weeks. After that, intermittent calls, intermittently. Two years later, a wedding announcement accompanied by a card reading. In case you wondered. The new Mrs Dr Harwich was named Lark, nee Pettigrew.

'I have to use the bathroom when we get to the library,' Nora said.

Dandy, he'd go with her, fact was, he had to bleed the lizard.

Dart parked across the street from a long stone building resembling the Supreme Court, complete with Supreme Court steps. In a wide marble hall on the second floor, the ladies' room, like the reading room downstairs, was empty. Dick Dart lounged in behind her. Nora took one stall, he another. They left together, startling a pop- eyed, quavery woman whose mouth opened and closed like a molly's until they had passed out of sight on the stairs.

Dart pushed Nora not ungently into a chair before a long wooden table, sat beside her, and opened a fat volume entitled Shorelands, Home to Genius. She sat beside him, now and then hearing tiny, metallic voices like the voices of insects. She was within the envelope, the envelope excluded feeling, she was fine. Dart grinned at his book. She pulled toward her Muses in Massachusetts by Quinn W. S. Dogbery, opened it, and read a random paragraph.

Due to the erratic nature of the artistic personality, any community like Shorelands will produce scandal. On the whole, Georgina Weatherall's colony of gifted personages ticked peacefully along, producing decade after decade of significant work. Yet problems did arise. There are those who would list the 'strange' disappearance of the minor poet Katherine Mannheim among these, though the present writer is not of their number. This young woman had alienated both staff and fellow guests during her brief residence. There can be no doubt that her hostess was resolved to issue her walking papers. Miss Mannheim, who did not wish to face an humiliating expulsion, departed in a fashion calculated to cause a maximum of confusion.

Shorelands' true scandals, as we might expect, are very different in nature.

Dart thumped two telephone directories on the table and patted her on the back.

Perhaps most distressing to Georgina Weatherall was the disappearance, not of a troublesome young malcontent, but of a favorite work of art from the dining room, a drawing by the Symbolist Odilon Redon of a strapping female nude with the head of a hawk upon her shoulders. There can be no doubt that Georgina's desire for the Redon drawing had its origin in its title, identical to that of a central Shorelands tradition. The works in the dining room were typically of a more traditional nature The Redon drawing, measuring some eight by ten inches, hung far up on a wall filled with more notable works. A guest with a particular interest in Redon first noted its absence in 1939. An immediate search of the rooms and cottages yielded no result. Georgina Weatherall remarked several times to guests during the succeeding years that it would not surprise her to discover that Miss Mannheim had absconded with it during her 'midnight flit' and while the matter may never be resolved, it may be not uncharitable to acknowledge that the drawing did then and does now possess considerable monetary value.

Dart said, 'Out of here,' gripped Nora's arm, and pulled her outside into the heat and light.

They made three trips to get all the bags and packages into the hotel.

'Clark, my old friend, could you spare a moment to help us convey these essentials up to our charming room?'

Clark licked his lips. 'Whatever.' He leaned into the office behind him and said something inaudible to whoever was in there. Then he emerged through the lobby door, glanced at Dart, and moved toward the suitcases. He was shorter than he had seemed behind the counter, four or five inches over five feet.

'I'll get the suitcases,' Dart said 'Help my wife.'

'Whatever.' Clark picked up as many bags as he could. Nora took up three others, leaving one on the floor, Clark looked up at Dart, who smiled, opened his mouth, and chopped his teeth together. The boy glanced at Nora, and bent over, bit down on the twine handles of the remaining bag, and jerked it upward.

The three of them crowded into the elevator.

'I'm interested in your use of the word 'whatever,'' Dart said. 'Mean something, or merely verbal static?'

The boy grunted and clutched his armful of bags. Sweat ran down his forehead.

'Is it as rude as it sounds? Sort of a hint that the person who says 'Whatever' feels a mild disdain for the other party. Is that accurate, or am I being paranoid?'

Clark shook his head.

'A great relief, Clark.'

The elevator reached the third floor, and Dart led them down the hall. 'Clark, old dear, deposit those shopping bags in front of the closet and hang the suit bags.'

Dart motioned Nora through the door. Clark bent over to deposit on the floor the bag he held with his teeth, exhaled a shaking breath, and lowered the shopping bags. He succeeded in getting the hanger wires over the rail in the closet and backed out into the corridor.

Dart locked the door and came into the room to stand smiling in front of her. Nora drew up her knees and hunched her back. He moved away, and she looked up. He was selecting a length of rope. 'Do I have to tell you everything?'

She kicked off her shoes. Her fingers, which did not have to be told what to do, began unbuttoning her shirt. Dart went to the bathroom for the pharmacy bag and carried it to the table as she undressed. One by one, he took the items out of the bag and arranged them on the table. When everything had been satisfactorily aligned, he took the scissors from their plastic case and beckoned Nora into the bathroom.

'Straddle the toilet,' he said. Quivering, Nora positioned herself over the bowl, and Dick Dart hummed to himself as he cut off most of her pubic hair and flushed it away.

'Okay,' he said, moved her backwards like a mannequin, turned her around, planted a hand between her shoulder blades, and urged her back into the bedroom, where he tied her hands behind her back and taped her mouth shut.

She looked up at the flat white ceiling. Dart hiked himself up onto the bed. 'It's not going to be as bad this time, see?' She turned her head to see him brandishing a tube of K-Y.

It was slightly less painful than before, but every bit as bad.50

'Keep your head upright. You have to cooperate with me, or you'll end up looking like a ragamuffin.' Bath cream scented the air in the bathroom, and her hair, still wet, hung straight and flat. Dart lowered his head alongside hers so that the mirror framed their faces.' Tell me what you see.'

Nora saw a terrorized version of herself with shocked eyes, parchment skin, and wet hair, posing with a hyena. 'Us.'

'I see a couple of fine desperadoes,' said the hyena in the mirror. 'You needed me to open your eyes, and