The Hellfire Club

monsters. Pippin's grandfather killed a whole lot of people to gain control of a gold mine, but that was a secret, too. The gold mine has to be taken back from the Nellads, and Pippin has to reveal the truth, and then everything is all right.'

It was not merely incredible; it was stupefying: Hugo Driver had structured his last two novels around the best-kept secrets of his publisher's family. No wonder they were published posthumously, Nora thought, and then wondered why they had been published at all. She marveled at the grandeur of Alden Chancel's cynicism; certain that no one but himself and his wife would understand the code, he had cashed in on Driver's popularity. Probably his audacity had amused him.

'Your father published these books,' she said, as much to herself as to Davey.

'They don't sound like his kind of thing, do they? But you know how proud he is of never reading the books he publishes. He always says he wouldn't be able to publish them half as well if he actually had to read them.'

Davey was right. Alden took an ostentatious pride in never reading Chancel House books. He had not known the contents of Hugo Driver's posthumous novels.

'Why are we talking about this?' Davey asked. 'Nora, come home. Please. Come here, and we'll settle everything.' With these words, he had produced his own golden key. He wanted her back; he would not abandon her during the ordeal of Slim and Slam. 'I'll drive up there and bring you back. You could stay the night in the house, and I'd come over in the morning to take you to the station. Everybody's going to be pissed as hell at me, but I don't care.'

He wanted her to stay in the house while he returned to the Poplars. He wanted her back, but only so that he wouldn't have to worry about her. 'You can't drive, Davey,' she said. 'You've been drinking.'

'Not that much. Two drinks, maybe.'

'Four, maybe.'

'I can drive.'

'No, don't do it. I don't want to come back until I know I'm not going to be arrested.'

'What about not getting killed? Isn't that a little more important?'

'Davey, I'll be fine.' Nora promised herself to leave Northampton early the next morning. 'Listen, I was looking at those books I bought today, and there's something I can't figure out. On the paperbacks of the last two, the copy on the back cover says that the manuscripts were discovered among the author's papers.'

'Where else do you find manuscripts?'

'Hugo Driver's haven't exactly been easy to find, have they? Hugo Driver is about the only writer in history who didn't leave any papers behind when he died.'

'Well, they didn't just drop down out of the sky.'

The recognition hovering about Nora streamed into her in a series of images: a baby left in a forest, then reclaimed by his mother; an old man, the baby's grandfather, wearing a Nazi uniform; Daisy Chancel exhaling smoke as she fondled a copy of Driver's last book. You're not one of those people who think Journey into Light is a terrible falling off, are you?

The last two Driver novels had not fallen from the sky; they had flowed from the busy typewriter just off the landing of the Poplars' front staircase. Twenty years before he had turned to Daisy to produce the Blackbird Book. Alden had cajoled her into giving him two imitation Hugo Driver novels. He had needed money, and sly Daisy, knowing he would never read the books, had vented her outrage while she saved his company. Alden - Adelbert - was a fraud in more than one way. This was the real reason for her hysteria and his rage at Nora's discovery that Daisy had written the Blackbird books.

'What's going on?' Davey asked. 'I don't like this. I know you, you have something up your sleeve. You could have come home this afternoon, and instead you get Jeffrey to drive you around the Berkshires so you can meet the Cup Bearer and ask a lot of questions about Hugo Driver. Are you trying to help these Mannheim people destroy my father?'

'No, Davey-'

'Jeffrey is like a spy, he came here to burrow around for proof his aunt wrote Night Journey, Helen Day was probably doing the same thing, they both wanted the money, only my father figured out what the Cup Bearer was up to and he fired her, but he's such a good guy he hired half her family anyhow.'

'That's wrong. Neither one of them wants anything from you. Helen Day is convinced that her sister didn't write Night Journey.'

'They're using you. Can't you see that? God, this is horrible. I used to love the Cup Bearer, and she lied to my parents, she lied to me, and she lied to you. Her whole goddamned life is a lie, and so is Jeffrey's. I'm coming up there tonight and taking you away from these people.'

'No, you're not,' she said. 'Helen Day is not a liar, and you're not coming up here just to drive me back to the police.'

'Hold on, I'll be right back.' The clunk of the telephone against the desk, the opening of the refrigerator. The rattle of ice cubes, the gurgle of vodka. 'Okay. Now. Helen Day, damn her to hell. Can't you see that if she was Katherine Mannheim's sister, she's also the sister of these two old bats who are suing us?'

'She never even liked her other sisters. She won't have anything to do with them.'

'Sure, that's what she told you, and you're so naive you believed her. What's this 'Day' business, anyhow? That can't be her name. She came here under an alias. I suppose that isn't suspicious.'

Nora explained how and why his grandfather had shortened her name.

'But she's still a liar.'

'Helen Day isn't the liar in this story, Davey.' She immediately regretted having been provoked into making this statement.

'Oh, it's me, isn't it? Thank you so much, Nora.'

'I didn't mean you, Davey.'

'Who's left? I was right the first time, you have something up your sleeve. Oh God, what else? You hate my father and you'd like to ruin him, just like these Mannheims or Deodatos or whatever their real names are. I should hang up and tell the cops where you are.'

'Don't, Davey, please.' She drew in a large breath. 'You're right. There is something I'm not saying, but it doesn't have anything to do with Night Journey.'

'Uh huh.'

'I found out something about you tonight, but I'm not sure I should tell you now because you won't believe me.'

'Swell. Good-bye, Nora.'

'I'm telling you the truth. Helen Day knows this thing, this fact about you. She kept it secret all her life, but now she thinks you ought to know it.'

Davey abused and insulted Helen Day for the space of several sentences, and then asked, 'If this information is so important, why didn't she tell it to me?'

'She promised not to.'

'Then why did she tell you? I hear the faint sound of tap Dancing, Nora.'

'She didn't tell me. She made me guess until I got it right.'

He gave a weary chuckle.

'Why do you think Helen Day left the Poplars?'

After another couple of abusive sentences, he said, 'At the time, what my parents told me was that she decided to go away and open her own businesis. Which I guess is what she did, right?'

'On her savings? Do you think she could have saved up that much money?'

'I see. The story is that my father paid her to keep quiet, right? This secret must be right up there with the key to the Rosetta stone.'

'For you it is the Rosetta stone,' Nora said.

'I know, I'm the real author of Night Journey. No, too bad, it was published before I was born. Nora, unless you spit out this so-called secret right now, I'm going to hang up on you.'

'Fine,' she said. 'I just have to work out a way to say it.' She thought for a moment. 'Do you remember what