Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

by Gordon Dahlquist

  “Mr. Chang?”

  “I don’t mean to be impertinent,” observed Svenson, “but when I overheard men speaking of you—they called you ‘Cardinal’.”

  “It is what some call me,” said Chang. “It derives from the coat.”

  “And do you know,” said Miss Temple, “that Doctor Svenson recognized me by the color of my boots? Already we have so many interests in common.”

  Chang smiled at her, cocking his head, trying to gauge whether she was serious. Miss Temple chuckled aloud, satisfied to have pushed the razor so far from his thoughts. She took another sip of tea and began.

  “My name is not Isobel Hastings, it is Celestial Temple. But no one calls me that—they call me Miss Temple, or—in particularly rare circumstances—they call me Celeste. At this moment, in this city, having met the Doctor and extended to him that privilege, the number has risen to two—the other being my aunt. Some time after my arrival here, from well across the sea, I became engaged to marry Roger Bascombe, a Deputy Under-Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, working primarily for Harald Crabbé.” She felt Svenson’s reaction to this news, but did not look at him, for it was so much easier to speak of anything delicate or painful to someone she knew not at all—still more to a man like Chang whose eyes she could not see. “Some days ago, after perhaps a week where I did not see him for various but perfectly believable reasons, I received a letter from Roger severing our engagement. I wish to make very plain to you both that I harbor no further feelings—save those of disdain—for Roger Bascombe. However, his brusque and cruel manner prompted me to discover the true cause of his act, for he tendered no explanation. Two days ago I followed him to Harschmort. I disguised myself and saw many things and many people, none of which I was intended to see. I was captured and questioned and—I will be frank—given over to two men, to be first ravished and then killed. Instead, it was I who killed them—thus, Doctor, my question about bodies. On the return journey I made the acquaintance—the nodding acquaintance—of Cardinal Chang. It was during my interrogation that I gave the name Isobel Hastings…which seems to have followed me.”

  The two men were silent. Miss Temple poured more tea for herself, and then for the others, each man leaning forward with his cup.

  “I’m sure there are many questions—the details of what and who I saw—but perhaps it would be better if we continued in the broadest vein of disclosure? Doctor?”

  Svenson nodded, drank the whole of his cup and leaned forward to pour another. He took a sip of this, the fresh cup steaming around his mouth, and sat back.

  “Would either of you object if I smoked?”

  “Not at all,” said Miss Temple. “I’m sure it will sharpen your mind.”

  “I am much obliged,” said Svenson, and he took a moment to extract a dark cigarette and set it alight. He exhaled. Miss Temple found herself studying the visible structure of the man’s jaw and skull, wondering if he ever ate at all.

  “I will be brief. I am part of the diplomatic party of my country’s heir, Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck, who will marry Lydia Vandaariff. It is a match of international significance, and I am attached to the party in a medical capacity only for the sake of appearance. My prime aim is to protect the Prince—from his own foolishness, and from those around him seeking to take advantage of it—figures of which there has never been short supply. The diplomatic Envoy and the military attaché have both, I believe, betrayed their duty and given the Prince over to a cabal of private interest. I have rescued the Prince from their hands once—after he had been subject, perhaps willingly, to what they called ‘the Process’—which leaves a perhaps temporary facial scarring, a burn—”

  Miss Temple sat up to speak, and saw Chang do the same. Svenson held up his hand. “I am sure we have all seen evidence of it. My first instance was at the ball at Harschmort, when I briefly viewed the body of Arthur Trapping, but there have since been many others—the Prince, a woman named Mrs. Marchmoor—”

  “Margaret Hooke,” said Chang.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Her true name is Margaret Hooke. She is a whore of the highest echelon.”

  “Ah,” said Doctor Svenson, wincing with discomfort at the word being spoken in Miss Temple’s hearing. While she was touched by his care, she found the impulse tiresome. If one was engaged in an adventure, an investigation, such delicacy was ridiculous. She smiled at Chang.

  “There will be more about her later, for she figures elsewhere in our evidence,” Miss Temple told him. “Is this not progress? Doctor, please go on.”

  “I say the scars may be temporary,” continued Svenson, “because this very night I overheard Francis Xonck query Roger Bascombe about his own experience of this ‘Process’—though I saw Bascombe’s face myself when I was at the Institute—I am getting ahead of myself—and there was no such scarring.”

  Miss Temple felt a distant pang. “It was before he sent his letter,” she said. “The days he claimed to be at work with the Deputy Minister…it was happening even then.”

  “Of course it was,” said Chang, not unkindly.

  “Of course it was,” whispered Miss Temple.

  “Harald Crabbé.” Svenson nodded. “He is near the heart of it, but there are others with him, a cabal from the Ministry, the military, the Institute, other individuals of power—as I say, the Xonck family, the Comte d’Orkancz, the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, even perhaps Robert Vandaariff—and somehow my country of Macklenburg is a part of their plan. In the face of indifference from my colleagues, I rescued the Prince from their twisted science at the Institute. It was there I saw Cardinal Chang. At our compound I was forced to attend to several of our soldiers—also, I believe, a result of Cardinal Chang”—again he held up his hand—“I make no judgments, they have since tried to kill me. In that time, the Prince was taken in secret from his room, I do not know how—from above. I set out alone to find him. In Harald Crabbé’s house I heard Francis Xonck and Roger Bascombe discuss philosophy over the strangely disfigured body of an Institute savant—quantities of his blood had been turned to blue glass. They were joined by my own military attaché, Major Blach, who is part of their plans—the only bit of news being Blach’s assumption that the cabal had taken the Prince, and Xonck’s assurance that they had not. In any case, I escaped, and attempted to find Madame Lacquer-Sforza, but was taken by the Comte d’Orkancz—dragooned to consult on another medical matter, another of their experiments that had gone wrong—and then—it is a long story—given over to be killed, sent to the river bottom with the corpses of this dead scientist and Arthur Trapping. I escaped. I again tried to find Madame Lacquer-Sforza, only to see her with Xonck and d’Orkancz—she is one of them. In my flight from her hotel, I saw Miss Temple through the window—recognizing her from the card—I have not mentioned the cards—” He fumbled the cards onto the small table that held the tea tray. “One from the Prince, one from Trapping. As Miss Temple points out—they are valuable, if mysterious, evidence.”

  “You did not say where you heard the name Isobel Hastings,” observed Chang.

  “Didn’t I? I’m sorry, from Madame Lacquer-Sforza. She asked that I help her find one Isobel Hastings in exchange for telling me where the Prince was—at the Institute. That was the curious thing, for she told me where he was, allowing me to take him away quite against the wishes of Crabbé and d’Orkancz. This was why I had thought to find her again—for while someone took the Prince from our rooftop tonight, at least some of these conspirators—Xonck and Crabbé—seemed ignorant of his whereabouts. I had hoped she might know.”

  Miss Temple felt the back of her neck tingle. “Perhaps it would help, Doctor, if you could describe the woman.”

  “Of course,” he began. “A tall woman, black hair, curled about her face and gathered in the back, pale skin, exquisite clothing, elegant to an almost vicious degree, gracious, intelligent, wry, dangerous, and I should say wholly remarkable. She gave her name as Madame Lacquer-Sforza—one of the hotel staff ref
erred to her as Contessa—”

  “The St. Royale Hotel?” asked Chang.

  “The same.”

  “Do you know her?” asked Miss Temple.

  “Merely as ‘Rosamonde’…she hired me—that is what people do, hire me to do things. She hired me to find Isobel Hastings.”

  Miss Temple did not speak.

  “I assume you know the woman,” said Chang.

  Miss Temple nodded, her earlier poise slightly shaken; as much as she tried to deny it, the Doctor’s description had conjured the woman, and the dread she inspired, freshly into her thoughts.

  “I do not know her names,” said Miss Temple. “I met her at Harschmort. She was masked. At first she assumed I was one of a party with Mrs. Marchmoor and others—as you say, a group of whores—but then it was she who questioned me…and it was she who gave me over to die.” As she finished speaking, her voice seemed painfully small. The men were silent.

  “What is amusing—genuinely amusing,” said Chang, “is that for all they are hunting us, we are not at all what they assume. My own portion of this tale is simple. I am a man for hire. I also followed a man to Harschmort—the man you saw dead, Doctor—Colonel Arthur Trapping. I had been hired to kill him.”

  He took a sip of tea and watched their reactions over the rim of his cup. Miss Temple did her level best to nod with the same degree of polite detachment as when someone mentioned a secret keenness for growing begonias. She glanced at Svenson, whose face was blank, as if this new fact merely confirmed what he’d already known. Chang smiled, somewhat bitterly, she thought.

  “I did not kill him. He was killed by someone else—though I did see the scars you mentioned, Doctor. Trapping was a tool of the Xonck family—I do not understand who killed him.”

  “Did he betray them?” asked Svenson. “Francis Xonck sunk his body in the river.”

  “Does that mean Xonck killed him, or that he didn’t want the body found—that he could not allow it to be found with the facial scars? Or something else? You mentioned the woman—why would she betray the others and allow you to rescue your Prince? I have no idea.”

  “I was able to examine the Colonel’s body briefly, and believe he was poisoned—an injection of some kind, in his finger.”

  “Could it have been an accident?” asked Chang.

  “It could have been anything,” answered the Doctor. “I was about to be murdered at the time, and had no mind to reason clearly.”

  “May I ask who hired you to kill him?” asked Miss Temple.

  Chang thought for a moment before answering.

  “Obviously it is a professional secret,” Miss Temple said. “Yet if you do not wholly trust that person, perhaps—”

  “Trapping’s adjutant, Colonel Aspiche.”

  Svenson laughed aloud. “I met him yesterday in the presence of Madame Lacquer-Sforza at the St. Royale Hotel. By the end of the visit, Mrs. Marchmoor—” He glanced awkwardly at Miss Temple. “Let us say he is their creature.”

  Chang nodded and sighed. “The entire situation was wrong. The next day there was no body, no news, and Aspiche was useless and withdrawn, because—as you confirm—he was in the midst of being seduced. In short order, it was I who met seduction, in the form of this woman, who hired me to find one Isobel Hastings—a prostitute who had murdered her very dear friend.”

  Miss Temple snorted. They looked at her. She waved Chang on.

  “With this description, I searched several brothels—never, for reasons that are now obvious, finding Isobel Hastings, but soon learning that two others—Mrs. Marchmoor and Major Black—”

  “Blach, actually,” said Svenson, providing the proper pronunciation.

  “Blach, then,” muttered Chang. “They were both searching for her as well, and in the Major’s case at least, also searching for me. At Harschmort, I had been seen—and I am a figure some people know. When I returned to my own lodgings one of the Major’s men tried to kill me. A trip to a third brothel led me to follow a small party—your Prince, Bascombe, Francis Xonck, a large fellow in a fur—”

  “The Comte d’Orkancz,” said Svenson.

  “O!” said Miss Temple. “I have seen him as well!”

  “He had taken Margaret Hooke from this same brothel, and was now taking another woman—I followed them to the Institute—saw you enter, Doctor, and followed you down. They are doing strange experiments with great amounts of heat and blue glass…” Chang picked up one of the blue cards from the tray. “It is the same glass, but instead of these small cards, here—and with great effort, with vast machinery—they had made a blue glass book—unfortunately the man making it was startled—by me—and dropped it. I am sure he is the man you saw on the Deputy Minister’s table. In the confusion I escaped, only to meet your Major and his men. I escaped from them as well, and found my way here…quite entirely by chance.”

  He leaned forward and took up the pot, pouring another round of tea. Miss Temple cradled her fresh cup and allowed it to warm her hands.

  “What did you mean when you said we are not what our enemies assume?” she asked Chang.

  “I mean,” Chang said, “that they believe that we are agents of a larger power—a cabal opposing their interests that has hitherto existed without their knowledge. They are so arrogant as to think that such a body—a mighty union of insidious talents like themselves!—is all that could possibly threaten them. The idea that they have been attacked by the haphazard actions of three isolated individuals—for whom they have contempt? It is the last thing they could believe.”

  “Only because it does not flatter them,” Miss Temple sniffed.

  Doctor Svenson was in the other room, asleep. His coat and boots were being cleaned. For a time Miss Temple and Chang had spoken about his experience of the hotel, and the coincidence that had brought all three of them together, but the conversation had fallen into silence. Miss Temple studied the man across from her, trying to make palpable sense of the knowledge that he was a criminal, a killer. What she saw was a certain kind of animal elegance—or, if not elegance, efficiency—and a manner that seemed both brazen and restrained. She knew this was the embodiment of experience, and she found it an attractive quality—wanting it for herself—even as she found the man daunting and disquieting. His features were sharp and his voice was flat and raw, and direct to a point just before insolence. She was intensely curious to know what he thought of her—what he had thought when he saw her on the train, and what he thought now, seeing her normal self—but could not ask him any of these things. She felt he must somehow despise her—despise the hotel room, the tea, the entirety of her life—for if she herself were not born to privilege, she was sure she would carry with her a general hatred for it every day of her life.

  Cardinal Chang watched her from his chair. She smiled at him, and reached into her green bag.

  “Perhaps you will help me, for I am only now tackling the matter…” She pulled out the revolver and placed it on the table between them. “I have sent out for more ammunition, but have little sense of the weapon itself. If you are knowledgeable about it, I would appreciate any advice you can give me.”

  Chang leaned forward and took the revolver in his hand, cocking it, and then slowly easing the hammer down. “I am not one for firearms,” he said, “but I know enough to load and fire and keep a weapon clean.” She nodded with anticipation. He shrugged. “We will need a cloth…”

  Over the next half an hour he showed her how to reload, to aim, to break the gun apart, to clean it, to put it back together. When she had done this for herself, to her own satisfaction, she put the pistol back on the table and looked up at him, finally broaching the question she had withheld all that time.

  “And what about killing?” she asked.

  Chang did not immediately respond.

  “I would appreciate your advice,” she prompted.

  “I thought you were already a killer,” observed Chang. He was not smiling at her, which she appreciated.

  �
�Not with this,” she said, indicating the revolver.

  She realized that he was still trying to decide if she was serious. She waited, a firm expression in her eyes. When Chang spoke, he was watching her very closely.

  “Get as close as you can—grind the barrel into the body—there’s no reason to shoot unless you mean to kill.”

  Miss Temple nodded.

  “And stay calm. Breathe. You will kill better—and you’ll die better too, if it comes to that.” She saw that he was smiling. She looked into his black lenses.

  “You live with that possibility, don’t you?”

  “Don’t we all?”

  She took a deep breath, for all of this was going a bit too quickly. She put the revolver back into her bag. Chang watched her stow it away.

  “If you didn’t kill them with that, how did you kill them? The two men.”

  She found she could not easily answer him.

  “I—well, one of them—I—it was very dark—I…”

  “You do not need to tell me,” he said quietly.

  She took another heavy breath and let it out slowly.

  It was after another minute that Miss Temple was able to ask Chang what his plans for the day had been, before seeing them in the corridor. She indicated the papers and maps and explained her own intentions, and then noted that she ought to return to her rooms, if only to allay the worries of her aunt. She also remembered the two glass cards that Doctor Svenson had placed on the table.

  “You really should look at them, particularly as you have seen some of their strange glasswork for yourself. The experience is unlike anything else I have known—it is both powerful and diabolical. You’ll think I am foolish, but I promise you I know enough to see that in these cards is another kind of opium, and in the books you describe—an entire book—well, I cannot imagine it is anything but a splendid—or indeed, horrid—prison.”

  Chang leaned forward to pick up one of the cards, turning it over in his hand.

  “One of them shows the experience—I cannot explain it—of Roger Bascombe. I myself make an appearance. Believe me, it is most disquieting. The other shows the experience of Mrs. Marchmoor—your Margaret Hooke—and is even more disquieting. I will say no more, only that it were better to view it in discreet solitude. Of course, to view either, you will really have to remove your spectacles.”