The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

looking into a pool—take it with both hands or you will surely drop it. I will stand apart. Perhaps it will tell you more than it has told me.”
    He gave her the card and stepped away from the settee. With shaking hands he took a dark foul-looking cigarette from a silver case and lit it. Miss Temple studied the card. It was heavy, made of a kind of glass she had never seen, brilliant blue that shifted in hue—from indigo to cobalt to even bright aqua—depending on the light passing through. She glanced once more at the strange doctor—he
was
a German, by his accent—and then she looked into the card.

    Without his warning she would have certainly dropped it. As it was, she was happy to be sitting down. She had never experienced the like, it was as if she were swimming, so
immersive
were the sensations, so tactile the images. She saw herself—
herself
—in the parlor of the Bascombe house, and knew that her hands were clutching the upholstery because, out of his mother’s sight, Roger had just leaned forward to blow softly across her nape. The experience was not unlike seeing herself in the mirror wearing the white mask, for here she somehow appeared through the eyes of another—lustful eyes that viewed her calves and bare arms with hunger, almost as if they were rightful possessions. Then the entire location shifted, somehow seamlessly, as if in a dream…she did not recognize the pit or the quarry, but then gasped to see the country house of Roger’s uncle, Lord Tarr. Next was the coach and the Deputy Minister—“your decision?”—and finally the eerie curving hallway, the banded metal door, and the terrifying chamber. She looked up and found herself once again in the lobby of the Boniface. She was panting for breath. It was Roger. She knew that all of this had been the experience—in the mind—of Roger Bascombe. Her heart leapt in her chest, surging with anguish that was swiftly followed by rage. Decision? Could that mean what she thought? If it did—and of course it must—it
must
!—Harald Crabbé became in that instant Miss Temple’s particular, unpardonable enemy. She turned her flashing eyes to Svenson, who stepped back to the settee.
    “How—how does this
work
?” she demanded.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Because…well…because it is
very
queer.”
    “Indeed, it is most disquieting—an—ah—unnatural
immediacy.
”
    “Yes! It is—it is…” She could not find the words, and then stopped trying and merely blurted, “…
unnatural
.”
    “Did you recognize anything?” he asked.
    She ignored him. “Where did you get this?”
    “If I tell you—will you assist me?”
    “Possibly.”
    He studied her face with an expression of concern that Miss Temple had seen in her life before. Her features were pretty enough, her hair fine and her figure, if she were permitted to have an opinion, reasonably appealing, but Miss Temple knew by now and was no longer disquieted by the knowledge that she was only truly remarkable in the way an animal is remarkable, in the way an animal so fully and purely inhabits its
self
without qualm. Doctor Svenson, when faced with her strangely elemental presence, swallowed, then sighed.
    “I found it sewn into the jacket of a dead man,” he said.
    “Not”—she held up the card, her voice suddenly brittle, feeling completely caught out—“not
this
man?”
    She was unprepared for the possibility that anything so serious could have happened to Roger. Before she could say more, Svenson was shaking his head.
    “I do not know who
this
man is, the—the point of
vantage,
so to speak—”
    “It is Roger Bascombe,” she said. “He is at the Foreign Ministry.”
    The Doctor clucked his tongue, clearly annoyed at himself. “Of course—”
    “Do you know him?” she inquired tentatively.
    “Not as such, but I have seen—or heard—him this very morning. Do you know Francis Xonck?”
    “O! He is a terrible rake!” said Miss Temple, feeling foolishly prim as soon as she said it, having so thoughtlessly parroted the gossip of women she despised.
    “No doubt,” agreed Doctor Svenson. “Yet Francis Xonck and this man—Bascombe—between them were disposing of a body—”
    She indicated the card. “The man who had this?”
    “No, no, someone else—though they are related, for this man’s arms—the blue glass—excuse me, I am getting ahead of myself—”
    “How many bodies are involved—to your own knowledge?” she asked, and then, before he