The Hellfire Club(95)

With the stampeding ponies several yards to her right, Margaret—her agility and speed compromised by the pregnancy—jogged alongside them, running through the brush and onto the northern shore as the ponies continued their charge. The storm, while steady and intense, hadn’t noticeably increased in the past few minutes; panic was the only explanation she could imagine. She jogged behind a scrub pine tree, then looked around for any sign of a human as the last of the herd—foals, mainly, accompanied by their mothers—galloped past her.

Margaret realized that the distraction of the stampede might be her only chance to escape the island. She was about to sprint toward the bridge, when she saw Gwinnett emerge from behind a shrub thicket maybe ten feet away; she didn’t need her night-vision binoculars to see him. He was close enough that she could see him scowling at her, with a look of menace she’d never seen before. She stopped in her tracks and unconsciously reached under her shirt to pat her abdomen, to reassure herself that the baby was okay and also to calm herself. Her swollen belly felt perfectly fine, but the shock of her ordeal caused her to shake. A wave of nausea hit her and as she gasped, she was stunned by a bright strobe of light and, one second later, a loud crack.

She thought lightning had struck. But the lightning bolts that had struck the sea and the island over the previous few hours had been clear bolts zigzagging from the sky with deliberate speed. This was just a circle of light that flashed from the bridge, and it was followed by Gwinnett falling limply back into the thicket.

Then she saw: someone was on the bridge with a gun.

Margaret squinted as the beam from a powerful flashlight blinded her.

“Don’t move!” a voice commanded.

A woman’s voice.



The streets outside Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station were being pounded with torrential rains, and taxicabs were scarce. When Charlie finally found one, the grizzled hack wouldn’t consider any sum to make the drive all the way out to the bridge to Susquehannock Island. “Never,” he said, chomping on his cigar. “And you ain’t gonna find no one willing to do it in this weather. Not no one.” The prediction proved correct, and soon enough Charlie was at the local Hertz auto-rental office, where he was offered a black 1951 Studebaker Commander.

The last time I was in a Studebaker was that night in Rock Creek, Charlie thought. And then he corrected himself, since he now knew he hadn’t been in the car that night at all.

When he was here a month ago, the journey via taxi had taken an interminable three and a half hours. Driving himself, he could theoretically drive faster and more recklessly, but with accidents and flooding from the storm, it took him five hours—an insufferably frustrating trek that reminded Charlie of a recurring nightmare he’d had in high school in which no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach an object that he desperately needed to.

As he neared the bait shop, he saw in the distance not only his car, which Margaret had driven there, but three others parked on the shoulder between the store and the footbridge. One car had its lights on and was still running. Charlie turned off his lights and pulled over to the side of the road.



At first Margaret didn’t recognize the woman. Her head was shrouded in the hood of a dark poncho; she looked like a sinister nun. But then the woman lowered her lamp and came closer, and Margaret realized who had just shot Gwinnett.

“Make sure he’s dead,” Catherine Leopold said.

Stunned, Margaret obeyed, hustling to the thicket where Gwinnett had fallen. She reached into the brambles and pulled him up by the back of the neck. His head was heavy and lifeless. No breath, no movement, no pulse. She gently released him back into the bush.

What on earth is happening? she thought. Why is Miss Leopold holding a gun?

“He’s dead,” Margaret said, still reeling from the intensity of the night, all ending with the shock of seeing Leopold. She was of course relieved that Gwinnett was no longer chasing her down, but why did Leopold shoot him, and who was she with?

Leopold turned to two other figures standing behind her, men that Margaret hadn’t focused on until now. “Go find the others,” she told them, and they hustled past Margaret onto the island.

From under her poncho, Leopold produced a cigarette, but she struggled to light it in the rain. She finally ducked completely into the poncho like a turtle and then reemerged with it lit.

Margaret braced herself to ask. “Why—”

“He was a threat to you, your Dr. Louis Gwinnett,” Leopold interrupted, exhaling her cigarette smoke. “He wanted the dossier, of course. Where is the dossier, Margaret?” No more “Mrs. Marder”; such formalities were no longer called for, apparently.

Margaret had so many questions.

“At the house,” she replied. “The dossier is at our house. We made a photocopy; Charlie has the original.”

Leopold nodded.

It all seemed impossible, this scene: Catherine Leopold holding a gun while they stood there soaking wet, minutes after the ponies stampeded. Gwinnett, who just hours ago had gone from seductive to menacing, dead in a bush just feet away. Margaret tried to make sense of it but couldn’t. She tried to appeal to Catherine, figuring it was her only chance.

“Thank you for saving me, Catherine,” she said. The rain poured down on her face as if she were standing beneath a fire hose. “He and his…goons were chasing me all over the island.”