The Hellfire Club

'Hugo Driver never saw that picture. Where did he get the phrase from?'

'You got me.'

In the warm evening air they moved toward the concrete steps, washed shining white by the lights, leading to the hotel's back door. Half his face in shadow, the Eton cap tilted over his forehead, Jeffrey more than ever resembled a jewel thief from twenties novels. 'Maybe this is none of my business,' he said. 'But if she leans on you to call Davey, think hard before you do it. And if you do decide to call him, don't tell him where you are.'

He turned away and led her up the gleaming steps.76

Within a small, wary portion of her mind, Nora had been awaiting the news that the hotel had only a single unoccupied room, but Jeffrey had not turned into Dan Harwich. He had returned from the desk with two keys, hers; for the fifth-floor room overlooking the terrace and the top of King Street where she had taken a long bath and now, wrapped in a white robe, occupied a grandmotherly easy chair, the radio playing Brahms's Alto Rhapsody and the air conditioner humming, reading her husband's favorite novel as an escape from thinking about what to do next.

Pippin Little wandered from character to character, hearing stories. Some of these characters were human and some were monsters, but they were fine storytellers one and all. Their tales were colorful and involved, full of danger, heroism, and betrayal. Some told the truth and others lied. Some wanted to help Pippin Little, but even they were not always truthful. Some of the others wanted to cut him up into pieces and turn him into tasty meat loaf, but these characters did not always lie. The truth Pippin required was a mosaic to be assembled over time and at great risk. Nearly everybody in Night Journey was related to everybody else; they made up a single enormous, contentious family, and as in any family, its members had varying memories and interpretations of crucial events. There were factions, secrets, hatreds. Pippin had to risk entering the Field of Steam to learn its lessons, or he had to avoid its contagion; if he stood among the Stones of Toon, he would acquire a golden key vital to his search, or he would be set upon by the fiends who pretended to possess a golden key.

It was just past nine-thirty, half an hour before she had been invited to call Helen Day. Did she want to call Helen Day? Not if Jeffrey's mother was going to do no more than try to make her feel sorry for Davey. She already felt sorry for Davey. Then she remembered that Helen Day had spoken of having to think about some matter before she could discuss it. Probably the old woman was considering telling her something she had already guessed, that the Chancels had never wanted their son.

She might as well get as far as she could with Night Journey. If she skipped here and there, she could just about finish the hundred pages remaining. Or she could go straight to the last twenty-five pages and see if Pippin ever made it to Mountain Glade. On the night her life had started to go wrong, she had come awake in time to see Pippin racing downhill toward a white farmhouse, which she had made the mistake of calling 'pretty.' Pretty, so what if it's pretty, Davey had said, or something close; it's all wrong, Mountain Glade isn't supposed to be pretty. Does that place look like it contains the great secret?

So what did this all-important place look like? Lord Night said it was an 'unhallowed haunt of baleful spirits revealed by the Stones of Toon'; the Cup Bearer described it as 'a soul-thieving devastation you must never see'; even less satisfactorily, Gentle Friend called it 'the locked prison cell wherein you have interred your greatest fear.' Nora turned over most of the pages remaining before the end of the book and skimmed down the lines before finding this paragraph:

The great door yielded to the golden key and revealed what he had most feared, yet most desired to see, the true face of Mountain Glade. Far down the stony, snow-encrusted mountain, he beheld a misshapen cottage, a bleak habitation of lives as comfortless as itself.

Pippin had come back home.

A few minutes before the appointed time, Nora found the Northampton telephone directory in a drawer and sat on the bed to use the telephone.

'Heavenly,' said a female voice.

Nora asked for Helen Day, and the phone rapped down on a counter. She heard a buzz of cheerful female voices.

'Hello, this is Helen Day.'

Nora gave her name and added, 'Sounds like you're having a party over there.'

'Some of the elves got home early from the Asia Society. I have to change phones.' Nora held the dead receiver while time ticked on. She moved the telephone closer to the side of the bed, stretched out, yawning, and closed her eyes.

'Are you there? Nora? Are you all right?'

The ceiling of a strange room hung above her head. She lay on an unfamiliar bed slightly too soft for her taste.

'Nora?'

The strangeness around her again became the room at the top of the Northampton Hotel. 'I think I fell asleep for a second.'

'I have at least half an hour before anybody's going to need me again. Can you talk for a bit, or do you want to forget about it and go back to sleep?'

'I'm fine.' She yawned as quietly as possible.

'I often think about Davey. He was such a darling little fellow. I want to hear whatever you can tell me about him. What is he like now? How would you describe him?'

'He's still a darling little fellow,' Nora said.

'Is that good?'

Nora did not know how honest she should be, nor how harsh an honest description of Davey would be. 'I have to admit that being a darling little fellow at the age of forty has its drawbacks.'

'Is he kind? Is he good to people?'

Now Nora understood what Helen Day was asking. 'He isn't anything like his father, I have to say that. The problem is, he's insecure, and he worries a lot, and he's frustrated all the time.'

'I suppose he's working for his father.'

'Alden keeps him under his thumb,' Nora said. 'He pays Davey a lot of money to do these menial jobs, so Davey is convinced he can't do anything else. As soon as his father raises his voice, Davey gives up and rolls over like a puppy.'

Helen Day said nothing for a moment. 'Do you and Davey go to the Poplars often?'

'At least once a week. Usually on Sundays.'

'How are relations between Alden and you?'

'Strained? Rocky? He put up a good front for about six months, but then he started to show how he really felt.'

'Is he civil, at least?'

'Not anymore. He despises me. I did this stupid thing and Daisy went out of her mind, so Alden called Davey on the carpet and said that unless he left me, he'd fire him from Chancel House and cut him out of his will.'

Helen Day was silent. 'I had the feeling that you had something else in mind when you asked me to call,' Nora said.

'Alden is blackmailing Davey into leaving you.'

'That's the general idea. I tried to convince him that we didn't need Alden's money, but I don't think I did a very good job.'

'What was this thing that gave Alden his excuse?'

'Daisy talked me into reading her book. When she called me up to talk about it, she went on a kind of rampage. Alden blamed me.'

'He's a terrible bully. I respect the man no end, but that's what he is.'

'I don't respect him. He never wanted Davey, but he can't let him go. All Davey's life he's suffered from the feeling that he's not the real Davey Chancel, so he'll never be good enough.'

'I was afraid of this,' Helen Day said. 'Alden's making him pay.'

'Lincoln did the same thing, didn't he? He forced Alden and Daisy to adopt a grandson, and they went along for the sake of the money. Isn't that what you were thinking about telling me? You didn't want to say it in front of Jeffrey.'