The Chemickal Marriage

and began to grind it furiously.
    ‘Why do you need more?’ asked Trooste. ‘A child cannot withstand that current.’
    ‘I am aware of it,’ Svenson replied tightly. Mahmoud murmured to Mrs Kraft, yet her gaze fell on Doctor Svenson, to his discomfort.
    ‘Then for whom?’ Trooste pressed. ‘Not one of us!’
    ‘
No
.’ Svenson filled a stoppered flask with the rust-coloured grains and tucked it inside his tunic.
    ‘Then
what
?’ complained Trooste. ‘For God’s sake will you not leave? They will think I have betrayed them – my entire prospects of advancement –’
    ‘Are
bankrupt
. Lorenz, Fochtmann, Crooner – did you know Crooner?’
    ‘Everyone knew Crooner – ludicrous fellow –’
    ‘Crooner died with both arms shattered at the elbow, turned to blue glass.’
    ‘Well,
exactly
– that is Crooner all over –’
    ‘Don’t be an ass!’ The Doctor pulled on his greatcoat. ‘Listen – we will climb these stairs. Mahmoud must help his mistress, I must carry the girl. We cannot drag you. But Vandaariff must not know what we have done.’
    ‘Lock me in a cupboard, I will say I saw nothing –’
    ‘You will divulge every detail.’ Svenson pulled out the revolver. The Professor swallowed, his wide throat bobbing.
    ‘B-but I have helped you –’
    ‘And so I ask you to come with us. If you do not, I will shoot you or bury your mind in this last glass book.’ The words were inhuman, but had he any choice?
    ‘No. I would not wish it on a fiend.’ Madelaine Kraft’s voice carried an authority, however weak. ‘If the Professor will not leave this business, Mahmoud could perhaps prove his resistance to our trespass … say, by shooting his leg.’
    ‘Through the knee?’ offered Mahmoud.
    ‘Hardly sufficient,’ she observed. ‘
Both
knees would be better.’
    Trooste blanched, at which Mrs Kraft smiled, and the moment of violence was past. The ease of her intervention seemed from another world – as distant to Svenson as allowing himself satisfaction for her cure. The Doctor stuffed away the revolver and slung the leather case over one shoulder. He lifted Francesca and stumped to the door.
    For once the height of a staircase did not disrupt the Doctor’s thoughts, distracted as he was by the question of what to do next. They clustered on the upper landing, all save Mahmoud panting from the climb. Svenson put an ear to the door, but heard nothing.
    ‘If the guard has returned, we must pull him inside – throw him down the stairs, anything for silence. If he has not, then I suggest we run for the same window we came from –’
    ‘We will be seen from the rooftop.’ This was Madelaine Kraft. Her tone carried no criticism, but Svenson felt nakedly at fault.
    ‘Then I will charge the gate. While they surround me, Mahmoud runs for the window with you and the child –’
    ‘They will shoot you dead, then the rest of us from a distance. Where will your mission be then? Or our revenge?’
    Svenson could not think. He could not look down at the girl. He felt the grain of the wooden door against his forehead. ‘I am open to suggestion.’
    ‘I will go with the Professor. He is known, and if I am noticed, the reaction will at least not be immediately hostile. If he betrays me, I will cut him down. Mahmoud?’
    Wordlessly, but in Trooste’s plain view, Mahmoud passed her a short knife in a leather sheath. She gripped it with a turn of her wrist, so it appeared for all the world a folded fan. Mahmoud opened the door and ducked behind.
    The light hit Trooste and Mrs Kraft and for a moment neither moved.
    ‘Lord above,’ Trooste gasped. ‘My lodgings … my writings – O heaven!’
    Trooste ran. Both Svenson and Mahmoud snatched after him, but Mrs Kraft blocked them with her arm. ‘Let him go – look!’
    Before their eyes an entire wing of the Institute stood shrouded in smoke and, licking from the billowing curtain, bright tongues of flame. Svenson shared a guilt-stricken glance with Mahmoud – how could this have come from their diversion of smoke? – but then a spatter of gunshots seized their attention. Trooste had been seen, and he shrieked as the grass around him kicked up in clumps. Hands over his head, the Professor reached the cover of an oak tree. Svenson saw sentries silhouetted above the gate – but who had given the order to fire,
inside
the courtyard, at a man they must recognize?
    His eyes dropped to the gate itself. The iron portcullis had come down, and