The Hellfire Club

had happened twice.

'Don't tie yourself into knots,' Jeffrey said.

'And you won't tell me how you know them.'

'First we'll take care of Everett Tidy.'

'Then tell me who you were taking me to in Northampton. I'm going to be meeting him anyhow when we leave Amherst.'

'Not him,' he said. 'Her.'

'Who is it?'

'It's about time you met my mother,' Jeffrey said.68

On the way into Amherst, Nora idly inspected a bronze sign and saw that the comfortable-looking two-story brick house on a little rise had been the residence of Emily Dickinson. She heard Dick Dart saying, 'We can find no scar. But internal difference. Where the Meanings, are-' and her mouth went dry and goose pimples rose on her arms.

Uphill into a commercial section with bookstores and restaurants, left past a pretty commons like a green pool, uphill again past Amherst College's weathered brown and red buildings.

Jeffrey turned into a side street lined with handsome old houses, some of them surrounded by white fences, others nearly hidden by gardens of vibrant, nodding lilies and lush hydrangeas. He pulled up in front of a house barely visible behind its front garden.

Nora followed him up a path through waving pink and yellow lilies as high as her head. Three brick steps led up to a gleaming wooden door with a brass bell. The perfume of the lilies surrounded her and drifted off in a breeze she could barely feel. When the door swung open, a tall, gray-haired woman in half-moon glasses and a loose, long-sleeved smock the yellow of daffodils gave her a spine-stiffening glance and pulled Jeffrey into an embrace.

'Jeffrey, you horrible beast, sometime I hope you'll give me more than fifteen minutes' warning before you decide to favor me with a visit. I suppose you're staying with your mother, that's the only reason I ever get to see you!'

'Hello, Sabina, now let go of me before you break something.'

She stepped back and grasped his upper arms. 'You look very dashing in that cap.'

'You look wonderful yourself, but you always do.'

'I trust your mother's fine? She's so busy all the time, I never get to talk to her. I know she did the Trustees' Banquet at the start of the summer, and of course the reception at the President's House, but that's nothing to her, food for two hundred, is it?'

'Piece of cake. Lots of pieces of lots of cakes.'

'And how are things with you?' She had kept her grip on his arms. 'Still happy working for your inferiors?'

'I'm fine. Sabina, this is my friend Nora.'

She released him and extended a hand to Nora. 'You're the mysterious person who had to see Ev Tidy?'

Nora took Sabina Mann's hand and met her intelligent, commanding eyes, a few shades bluer than glacier water. 'Yes, thank you, I hope I didn't put you to any trouble.'

'No trouble, Ev came right over. Jeffrey knows he can get anything he wants. The only problem is he doesn't want enough.' Sabina Mann was making rapid assessments of Nora's age, marital status, social position, and role in Jeffrey's life. 'I'm sworn to silence and secrecy, Jeffrey won't tell me why, but I suppose I might be allowed to ask if you have known him long?'

Nora thought that she had been given a passing grade on the first test. 'I've known Jeffrey for a couple of years, but actually I hardly know him at all.'

Sabina Mann continued her silent assessment. She was far more annoyed than she would let Jeffrey see. 'Let's explore what our mutual friend has told you. I suppose you know about that ridiculous job he's so pleased with, but has he told you about-'

'Now, now, Sabina.'

'Indulge me, dear. Has our friend mentioned his wonderful success at Harvard?'

'He has.'

'Good. Do you know about the Silver Star and Bronze Star he got in Vietnam, or his tenure in a monastery in Japan?'

'No to the first, yes to the second,' Nora said with a glance at Jeffrey.

'Since you have been so favored, you must know that he's fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, but I wonder if he's told you -'

'Please, Sabina, be fair.'

'Has Jeffrey ever told you, my dear, that he has written two plays which were produced off Broadway?'

Nora turned to stare at him.

'Pseudonymously,' he said. 'Weren't nothin'.'

'Now I know something about you, Nora.'

'Don't, Sabina.'

'Be quiet, Jeffrey. You're using my house for your own private reasons, so I'm entitled to all the information I can unearth. And what I have unearthed is that this lovely young woman is an employee at Chancel House, because that awful Mr Chancel is the person from whom you most wanted to keep that particular secret. I'm sure she shares my distaste for your employer and his entire family, including his peculiar wife, his useless son, and the son's unsuitable wife, sufficiently to keep it safe. Isn't that right, my dear?'

'I didn't know the son's wife was as bad as the rest of them,' Nora said.

'She isn't, that's why she's unsuitable. The only thing wrong with her is that she was foolish enough to marry into that family. But you're under Alden Chancel's thumb just like Jeffrey, so you can't be expected to comprehend the trail of destruction left behind by the Chancels.'

'Are you finished, Sabina?' Jeffrey asked.

'I'd better be. Everett never enjoyed being kept waiting.'69

A stocky man with a steel-gray Vandyke beard and short, silver gray hair abruptly closed the book in his hands and looked up frowning. 'Twenty minutes, Sabina. Twenty full minutes.'

'It was only fifteen minutes, Ev. As I am to be excluded from this gathering, I needed a little time by myself with Jeffrey and his companion.'

One side of Everett Tidy's frown tucked itself into his cheek in what might have been amusement.

'Would you like some coffee or tea, Jeffrey? Nora?'

'No, thank you,' Jeffrey said, and Everett Tidy said, 'Tea. Gunpowder.'

'Gunpowder tea, then.' She closed the door behind her.

Nora glanced back at Tidy and caught him looking at her. Unembarrassed, he held her eyes for a moment before turning to Jeffrey. 'Hello, Jeffrey.'

'Thank you for coming on such short notice.'

Tidy nodded, turning over the book in his hands as if puzzled to be still holding it. He moved toward a high- backed velveteen sofa, placed the book on an end table, and looked up at Nora again. A cold, brisk wind, as much a part of him as the crease in his khaki trousers and the brutal little brush of his beard, seemed to snap toward her.

'Sabina thinks I'm impatient,' he said. 'The reason for this misperception is that my awareness of the many tasks which immediate obligations keep me from fulfilling makes me testy.' The temperature of his private breeze dropped by several degrees.

'Until my retirement, I lived in college housing, which means that for twenty-two years I had an extremely pleasant house with plenty of room for my family and my library. I could have remained in my extremely pleasant house, but my wife is dead and my children are gone, and other faculty members had much more need of the space than myself. Therefore I bought an apartment, and when I am not writing two books, one about Henry Adams, the other about my father, I am weeding out books so that I can fit the remainder of my library into three rooms. Half an hour ago Sabina told me that an acquaintance of Jeffrey's wished to speak to me on a matter of the gravest importance. This matter concerned my safety.' He inhaled, and his chest expanded. 'Well, here I am, and I must insist that you tell me what the ragtag hell is going on here.'