The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (22 page)

“He’s escaped! For a second time!” Flaüss whispered. He wheeled upon Svenson. “You helped him! You had the key!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” muttered Major Blach. “Look at the room. The bureau is solid mahogany—it took the three of us to shift it. It’s impossible that the Prince himself moved it alone and impossible for the Doctor to have helped him—the Doctor would have had to leave the room
before
the bureau was blocking the doorway.”

Flaüss was silent. Svenson met the gaze of Blach, who was glaring at him. The Major barked out to the men in the hall, “One of you to the gate—find out if the Prince has left the compound, and if he was alone!”

Svenson stepped to the bureau and opened it up, glancing at the contents. “The Prince is wearing his infantry uniform—I do not see it—dark green, a colonel of grenadiers. He fancies it because the badge is of a flaming bomb. I believe it has a sexual significance for him.” They stared at him as if he were speaking French. Svenson stepped to the window and leaned out. Below the window, three stories down, was a raked bed of gravel. “Major Blach, if you’ll send a trusted man to examine the gravel below this window—it will tell us whether a ladder was used—there will be heavy indentations. Of course, a three-story ladder should have attracted attention. Tell me, Herr Flaüss, does the compound possess such a ladder?”

“How should I know?”

“By asking the
staff,
I expect.”

“And if there is no such ladder?” asked Major Blach.

“Then either one was brought—which should have excited notice at the gate—or some other means were used—a grappling hook. Of course”—he stepped back and examined the plaster around the window frame—“I see no identations, nor any rope remaining by which they may have climbed down.”

“Then how
did
they get down?” asked Flaüss. Svenson stepped back to the window, leaning out. There was no balcony, no wall of ivy, no nearby tree—indeed, the room had been chosen for this very reason. He turned and looked upwards—it was but two stories to the roof.

As they climbed the stairwell word came to Blach from the gate—the Prince had not been seen, nor had anyone passed in either direction in the last three hours, since the arrival of the Major. Svenson barely took in the trooper’s report, so much was he dreading the inevitable trip to the building’s rooftop. He walked on the inside wall, clutching the rail as casually as possible, his guts positively seething. Ahead of them another trooper was unfolding a staircase from the ceiling of the sixth-floor hallway. Above it was a narrow attic and within the attic a hatchway to the roof. Major Blach strode forward—somewhere a pistol had appeared in his hand—and climbed rapidly, disappearing in the darkness above, followed quickly by Flaüss, more nimble than his stout frame would suggest. Svenson swallowed and climbed deliberately after them, one hand gripping each side of the ladder, choking a heave of nausea as the hinges of the ladder bounced with the shifting weight of each footfall. Feeling like a child, he crawled on his hands and knees onto the rough timbers of the attic floor and looked around him. Flaüss was just pulling himself through the narrow hatchway, his body framed against the sickly glow of the city lights within the fog. With a barely suppressed groan, Doctor Svenson forced himself after them.

When he reached the roof, first on his knees and then, swaying, onto his feet, he saw Major Blach crouching near the edge that must be above the Prince’s bedroom. The Major turned back and called, “The moss on the stone is worn away in several places—the rubbing of a rope or a rope ladder!” He stood and crossed to Flaüss and Svenson, looking around them as he did. He pointed to the nearby rooftops. “What I don’t understand is that none of these seem close enough. I don’t deny the Prince was pulled to the rooftop—but this building rises at least a story above any neighbor. Beyond this, it is a full street’s width in distance in every direction. Unless they employed a circus, I do not see how anyone might have traversed from this rooftop to escape.”

“Perhaps they didn’t,” suggested the Envoy. “Perhaps they merely reentered the building from above.”

“Impossible. The stair to the attic is bolted from inside.”

“Unless someone helped them,” offered the Envoy, slightly peevishly, “from inside.”

“Indeed,” admitted Blach. “In which case, they have still not passed through the gate. My men will search the entire compound at once. Doctor?”

“Mmn?”

“Any
thoughts
?”

Svenson swallowed, and inhaled the cool night air through his nose, trying to relax. He forced his gaze away from the sky and the open spaces around him, down to the black tarred surface of the roof. “Only…what is that?” he asked.

Flaüss followed his pointing finger and stepped to a small white object. He picked it up and brought his find over to the others.

“That is the butt of a cigarette,” said Major Blach.

Thirty minutes had passed. They had returned to the Prince’s room, where the Major was systematically rooting through each drawer and closet. Flaüss sat in the armchair, brooding, while Svenson stood near the open window, smoking. A complete search of the compound had produced nothing, nor were there any footprints or indentations to be seen in the gravel below the window. Blach had gone back to the rooftop with lanterns, but had found no footprints other than their own—though there were several marks on the side of the building, near where the ropes had worn into the slippery grime along the gutters.

“Perhaps he has merely escaped for an evening of pleasure,” offered the Envoy. He looked darkly at Svenson. “Because of your hounding him earlier—he does not trust us—”

“Do not be a fool,” snapped Major Blach. “This was planned, with or without the Prince’s help—most likely without, if he was insensible as the Doctor describes. At least two men entered the room from above, possibly more—the guard did not hear the bureau being moved, which makes it more likely to be four men—and took the Prince with them. We must assume he has been taken, and must decide how to recover him.”

Major Blach slammed the last drawer closed and turned his gaze to Svenson.

“Yes?” the Doctor asked.

“You found him earlier.”

“I did.”

“So, you will tell me where and how.”

“I applaud your eventual concern,” replied Svenson, his voice tight with disdain. “Do you think it is the same collection of people? Because if so you know who they are—you both know. Will you challenge them? Will you go to Robert Vandaariff in force? To Deputy Minister Crabbé? To the Comte d’Orkancz? To the Xonck ironworks? Or does one of you already know where he is—so we may end this ridiculous charade?”

Svenson was gratified to see that at this both he and the Major were looking at Flaüss.

“I do not know anything!” the Envoy cried. “If we must ask for the help of these august people you name—if they are
able
to help us—” Doctor Svenson scoffed. Flaüss turned to Major Blach for aid. “The Doctor still has not told us how he located the Prince before. Perhaps he can find him again.”

“There is no mystery to it,” lied Svenson. “I sought out the brothel. Someone in the brothel was able to assist me. The Prince was right around the corner. Apparently Henry Xonck’s generous donations to the Institute provide a certain level of access for his younger brother’s friends.”

“How did you know the brothel?” asked Flaüss.

“Because I know the Prince at least that well—that is not the point! I have told you who he was with. If anyone knows what has happened, it will be they. I cannot confront these figures. It must be you—Herr Flaüss supported by the Major’s men—that is the only way.”

Svenson ground his cigarette into the china cup that had held his coffee so long ago. “This gets us nowhere,” he told them. He picked up his coat and strode from the room.

With no other thought than that he had not eaten in hours, Svenson walked down the stairs to the great kitchen, which was unoccupied. He dug through the cupboards to find a hard cheese, dry sausage, and a loaf of that morning’s bread. He poured himself a glass of pale yellow wine and sat alone at the large work table to think, methodically slicing off a hunk of cheese, a matching thickness of sausage, and piling them onto a piece of bread. After the first bite, realizing the bread was too dry, he got up and found a pot of mustard. He opened it and spooned more than he would normally favor onto the bread and re-stacked the sausage and cheese. He swallowed, and took a sip of wine. A routine established, he ate—the sounds of activity brewing about him in the compound—and tried to decide what to do. The Prince had been taken once, rescued, then taken again—it only followed it was by the same people, for the same reasons. Yet in the front of the Doctor’s mind was the cigarette butt.

Flaüss had given it to him and, after the barest glance, he had handed it back and turned to climb off of the roof with what dignity he could muster—but the glance confirmed the idea that had already formed in his mind. The tip of the butt was crimped in a specific way he’d seen the night before—by a woman’s lacquered cigarette holder—at the St. Royale Hotel. The woman—he took another sip of wine, slipped the monocle from his eye into his breast pocket and rubbed his face—was shockingly, derangingly lovely. She was also dangerous—obviously so—but in such a complete way as to almost be beside notice, as if one were discussing a particular cobra—a description that might include length or color or markings, but never the possession of deadly venom, which was an
a priori
feature that one could not, he found, take exception to…on the contrary. He sighed and pushed his tired mind to focus, to connect that woman at the hotel to her possible presence on the rooftop. He could not make sense of it, but knew that doing so would lead him to the Prince, and began to meticulously recomb his memory.

Much earlier in the day, when he had realized the Prince had not returned, and then that Flaüss and Blach were gone as well, Svenson had let himself into the Prince’s room and searched it for any possible clue to the Prince’s plans for the evening. In general Karl-Horst was about as cunning as a fairly clever cat or small child. If things were hidden, they were hidden under the mattress or in a shoe, but more likely to be simply tucked into the pocket of the coat he had been wearing and forgotten. Svenson had found embossed books of matches, theatre programs, calling cards, but nothing of any particular, striking nature. He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette, looking around the room, for the moment out of ideas. On the side table next to the bed was a blue glass vase with perhaps ten white lilies stuffed inside, drooping with various degrees of health over the rim. Svenson stared at it. He’d never seen flowers in the Prince’s room before, nor were any similar touches of feminine decoration present in the diplomatic compound. He was unaware of any woman’s presence in the compound at all, now that he thought of it, nor had Karl-Horst ever shown a preference for flowers or, for that matter, beauty. Perhaps they were a gift from Lydia Vandaariff. Perhaps some shred of affection had actually penetrated Karl-Horst’s pageant of appetite.

Svenson frowned and scooted closer to the side table, peering at the vase. He wiped his monocle and looked closer—the glass was somewhat artistic, with a slightly irregular surface and occasional deliberate flaws, whorls, or bubbles. He frowned again—was there something
in
it? He snatched a towel from the Prince’s shaving table and laid it on the bed, and then gathered the lilies with both hands and placed them dripping on the towel. He picked up the vase and held it to the light. There
was
something in it, another piece of glass perhaps, deflecting the light passing through, though it itself seemed invisible. Svenson put the vase down and pushed up his sleeve. He reached in, groped for a moment—the thing was quite slippery—and extracted a small rectangle of blue glass, approximately the size of a calling card. He wiped it and his hand on the towel and studied it. Within seconds, as if he had been struck with a hammer, Svenson was on his knees—shaking his head, dizzy, having nearly dropped the glass card in surprise.

He looked again.

It was like entering someone else’s dream. After a moment the blue cast of the glass vanished as if he had pierced a veil…he was staring into a room—a dark, comfortable room with a great red sofa and hanging chandeliers and luxurious carpets—and then, which was why he had nearly dropped it the first time—the image
moved,
as if he was walking, or standing and turning his gaze about the salon—and he saw
people,
people who were looking right at him. He could hear nothing save the sound of his own breath, but his mind had otherwise fully entered the space of these images—
moving
images—like photographs but not like them also, at once more vivid and less sharp, more fully dimensional and incomprehensibly infused with
sensation,
with the feel of a silken dress, petticoats bunched up around a woman’s legs, her satin flesh beneath the petticoats and then of a man stepping between her legs, sensing her smile somehow as his body fumblingly found its position. Her head leaned back over the top of the sofa—for he saw the ceiling and felt her hair hanging around her face and throat—a face that was masked, he realized—and then the sensation in her loins—luscious, exquisite—as, quite clearly—from the liquid sensations shuddering through Svenson’s own body—the man was penetrating her. Then the image turned slightly, as the woman’s head turned, and just visible against the wall behind her was part of a large wall mirror. For a sharp second, Svenson saw the reflection of the man’s face and the back of the room beyond him. The man, perfectly plainly, was Karl-Horst von Maasmärck.

The woman was not Lydia Vandaariff, but someone with brown hair. In the glimpse of the room beyond the Prince, Svenson had been shocked to see other people—spectators?—and something else beyond them—an open door? a window?—but he let it be and with more effort than he expected wrenched his gaze from the card. What was he looking at? He looked down at himself with a spasm of shame—he had become quite aroused. What’s more—he forced his mind to think clearly—he had been aware of moments within the interaction that he had not actually seen…the woman touching herself, both for pleasure and to gauge her lubrication, Karl-Horst fumbling with his trousers, and the moment of penetration itself…all of these, he realized, came from the point of view, the
experiential
point of view, of the woman—though the moments themselves had not been seen at all. With a breath of preparation he fixed his eyes again on the glass card, sinking into it as if he was entering a deep pool: first the bare sofa, then the woman pulling up her dress, then the Prince stepping between her legs, the coupling itself, the woman turning her head, the mirror, the reflection, and then, a moment later, the view was again the bare sofa—and then the entire scene was repeated…and then repeated again.