Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“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 Flauss.

“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 Flauss 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.

Flauss 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 Flauss 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 Maasmarck.

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.

Svenson put down the card. His breath was rapid. What was he holding? It was as if the essence of this woman’s feeling had been captured and somehow infused into this tiny window. And who was the woman? Who were the spectators? When had this happened? And who had instructed the Prince on where and how to hide it? He watched it again and found that he was able, with intense concentration, to slow the progress of movement, to dwell in a particular instant, with almost unbearably delicious results. With a firm resolve he pushed himself on to the moment with the mirror, studying the reflection closely. He was able to discern that the figures—perhaps ten men and women—were also masked, but he recognized none of them. He nudged himself onward and saw, in the last instants, an open doorway—someone must have been leaving the room—and through it a window, perhaps distant, with something written on it, in reverse, the letters E-L-A. At first, this made him think he was looking out from a tavern—the word “ale” being an advertisement—but the more he thought of the luxury of the room, and the elegance of the party, and the distance between the door and the lettered window the less a tavern or even restaurant seemed likely.

His thinking stalled for a moment and then he suddenly had it. A hotel. The St. Royale.

Within five minutes Svenson was in a coach, wheeling toward what was perhaps the most esteemed hotel in the city, in the heart of the Circus Garden, the card and his revolver in separate pockets of his coat. He was no creature of luxury or privilege—he could only adopt the haughty manner of those he knew from the Macklenburg court and hope he found people able to help, either through natural sympathy or by intimidation. His initial intention