The Chemickal Marriage

fashioned of wood planks laid across two barrels. A square of newsprint had been spread, and atop it lay an assortment of glass.
    Most might have come from a scientist’s laboratory – fragile coils to aid condensation, slim spoons and rods – but two pieces caught Chang’s eye. The first was broken, but Chang recognized it all the same – a thin bar ending in a curled circle: half of a glass key. The Contessa had described keys that allowed a person safely to examine the contents of a glass book – andthen asserted that all such keys had been destroyed. Chang turned the fragment in his hand. The original keys had been made by the Comte from indigo clay. The broken one in his hand was as clear as spring water.
    The second piece was more confounding still: a thin rectangle, the twin of the Comte’s glass cards, yet so transparent that it might have been cut from a window. Chang held the card to his eye without any effect whatsoever … yet its size, like the construction of the key, could be no accident. Someone without a supply of indigo clay was nevertheless learning to make the necessary objects.
    The city was full of glassworks large and small – no doubt Pfaff had isolated the proper one after a great deal of legwork. Chang searched the desk, under the newspaper, even lifting the planking to examine the barrels, but found no papers, no list, no helpful notes. Not that note-taking was Pfaff’s style. The information would be in his head and nowhere else.
    Apart from the wardrobe, Pfaff’s possessions were few and without character. Crammed in a box and set on the street, they would denote no particular man. Chang thought of his own rooms, so recently rummaged. His books of poetry might offer a measure of identity – but was a taste for words so different from that for gaudy clothing? Would Pfaff ever come back to his rat’s nest above the theatre? Would Chang ever return to his own den? He had longed for his rooms – but the place answered his deeper need no more than a dream. Like a wolf whose forest has been cut down, Chang knew his life had irrevocably changed, that in some profound way it was over. The crime, the corruption, the violence, everything that fed him had only become more virulent. He ought to feel alive, surrounded by dark opportunity. But change was not a force Cardinal Chang enjoyed. He blew out the candle and descended quickly.
    As he stepped off the ladder a giggling woman dressed as a shepherdess burst in from the corridor beyond, no doubt accustomed to the always-closed rear door providing a private alcove. She stopped dead – Chang’s glasses had slid down his nose – and screamed. Behind her stood a shirtless man in trousers of white fleece – a costumed sheep. The woman screamed again, and Chang’s left hand shot out, taking hold of her jaw. He shoved her into the man, throwing them off balance, and swept out the razor. The pair gaped upat him. Chang wheeled away. He strode down the alley, angry at how close he had come to carving them both, his jaw still tight with the desire to have done it.
    He had an hour before meeting the others, not that he cared to keep them waiting – but how could he replicate Pfaff’s labour in an hour? And where was Pfaff now? Had his investigation taken him too near the Contessa? Did he still trail her or had he been killed? If he had fled, it had not been to his garret. Was there
any
way to guess where the man had gone to ground? One possibility was a brothel. Miss Temple would have advanced him money …
    He tried the South Quays. Pfaff was not there. Chang spoke to the strong men minding the door and then to the skeletal Mrs Wells, whose surprise at finding Cardinal Chang alive actually distracted her from demanding a fee for their conversation. Back on the foul cobbles of Dagging Lane, Chang frowned. However early the hour, he had never seen the South Quays so quiet – he could not ever remember actually being able to hear the fiddle players scraping away in the main parlour. Was Mrs Wells so worried as to seek goodwill from a villain like Chang? As he could imagine no person of less sentiment than the beak-nosed brothel-mistress, he had to admit the disturbing possibility.
    Pfaff could have found a room at any of twenty waterfront inns, but Chang had no more time to search. He made his way from the river, keeping to the wider streets. The narrow alleys remained thick with the disaffected poor, and he’d no care to arouse either their