The Chemickal Marriage
soldiers to take care of Francesca’s body, but they only pulled him away and bound his hands. The hood smelt of oats. After minutes of stumbling and barked shins, he was dropped onto a hard wooden chair.
‘Let me see him.’
The hood was removed. Behind a table sat the gentleman he had passed in the Old Palace, Bronque’s
personage
. A soldier set the leather case and Svenson’s rumpled greatcoat onto the table.
‘Wait outside.’
The soldier strode from the room without care. The man behind the table set to emptying the greatcoat’s pockets. Svenson had time to study him: perhaps forty years of age, dark hair oiled and centre-parted, curled moustache, pointed goatee. He was thin-limbed but stout – a trim youth’s thickening from lack of exercise, yet his dancing eyes, and the nimble movements of his gloved hands, showed a restless acuity.
The man set Svenson’s revolver next to a crumpled handkerchief, a pencil stub, soiled banknotes, the mangled silver case. The leather case he ignored.
‘Do you like the room, Doctor? Formerly a library, but there was damp – is there not always damp? – and so the books are gone. Abandoned rooms take what usage they can – like people – still, I so appreciate the cork floor. So quiet, so comforting, and with varnish just the colour of honey. Why isn’t
every
room lined with cork? It would make a better world.’
He arched his eyebrows, plucked as thin as an ingénue’s. The man’s face was formed of potent details – ridged hair, wire spectacles, plump little mouth – creating a too-saturated whole.
‘A more quiet world,’ Svenson replied hollowly.
‘Is that not the same?’ The man shook his head to restore a more sober expression. ‘I am sorry – I have anticipated our meeting, and it makes me merry, though the circumstance is most grave. I am Mr Schoepfil.’
‘And you are acquainted with me?’
‘Of course.’
‘
You
sent Bronque to identify me, in the office.’
‘Just to be sure. I had to be elsewhere.’
‘The Customs House.’
Schoepfil chuckled ruefully. ‘And only to discover but that
you
had been there too! How not, after all – how not, given our mutual
studies
?’
‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’
Schoepfil waved a hand. ‘Inconsequential. But you! You were on Vandaariff’s dirigible! And at Parchfeldt! And the Customs House – and
now
the Institute! How I have waited to put questions to a man who
knows
!’
‘You could ask Robert Vandaariff.’
‘
That
gentleman remains beyond my purview.’
‘What
is
your purview, if I may ask?’
‘It would be such a pleasure to exchange tales, but there is no
time
. Would you like a cigarette?’
Schoepfil grinned at the mangled silver case and rang a bell. The soldier re-entered the room, one hand on his sabre hilt. ‘A cigarette for Doctor Svenson. In fact, let us give the poor fellow half a dozen.’
The trooper measured six cigarettes into Svenson’s shaking palm, then set a box of safety matches on top of the stack. He clicked his heels and was gone.
‘Light up – light up!’ urged Schoepfil. ‘I require a man who can think, not a trembling ruin.’ He slipped a pocket watch from his waistcoat and pursed his lips. ‘To the task. How did Robert Vandaariff arrange for the dirigible to sink into the sea? Was a confederate aboard to trigger the descent, or had the machine been sabotaged before leaving Harschmort?’
Svenson inhaled too deeply and began to cough. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No shyness, Captain-Surgeon. I know of the alliance between Vandaariff, Henry Xonck and the Duke of Stäelmaere. I have identified their top tier of agents and a host of underlings. Their grand plan hovers at the very point of execution … and
then
, in one bold stroke, Vandaariff destroys his two rivals – Henry Xonck and the Duke –
and
launches his minions, their duties done, off to their doom. The entire Macklenburg expedition is but a red herring! Afterwards, to protect himself, he pretends blood fever, but in secret seizes control of Xonck Armaments, the Ministries, and – as is now plain to the simplest corner bootblack – reaches for the nation itself!’
Svenson tapped his ash into the matchbox. ‘Lydia Vandaariff
was
a passenger on that dirigible.’
Schoepfil shrugged. ‘I see you have little experience of men of high finance.’
‘The circumstances of her death were appalling.’
‘Just Lord Vandaariff’s style – the others would believe
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