The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

I saw—but perhaps it would be better if we continued in the broadest vein of disclosure? Doctor?”
    Svenson nodded, drank the whole of his cup and leaned forward to pour another. He took a sip of this, the fresh cup steaming around his mouth, and sat back.
    “Would either of you object if I smoked?”
    “Not at all,” said Miss Temple. “I’m sure it will sharpen your mind.”
    “I am much obliged,” said Svenson, and he took a moment to extract a dark cigarette and set it alight. He exhaled. Miss Temple found herself studying the visible structure of the man’s jaw and skull, wondering if he ever ate at all.
    “I will be brief. I am part of the diplomatic party of my country’s heir, Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck, who will marry Lydia Vandaariff. It is a match of international significance, and I am attached to the party in a medical capacity only for the sake of appearance. My prime aim is to protect the Prince—from his own foolishness, and from those around him seeking to take advantage of it—figures of which there has never been short supply. The diplomatic Envoy and the military attaché have both, I believe, betrayed their duty and given the Prince over to a cabal of private interest. I have rescued the Prince from their hands once—after he had been subject, perhaps willingly, to what they called ‘the Process’—which leaves a perhaps temporary facial scarring, a burn—”
    Miss Temple sat up to speak, and saw Chang do the same. Svenson held up his hand. “I am sure we have all seen evidence of it. My first instance was at the ball at Harschmort, when I briefly viewed the body of Arthur Trapping, but there have since been many others—the Prince, a woman named Mrs. Marchmoor—”
    “Margaret Hooke,” said Chang.
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Her true name is Margaret Hooke. She is a whore of the highest
echelon
.”
    “Ah,” said Doctor Svenson, wincing with discomfort at the word being spoken in Miss Temple’s hearing. While she was touched by his care, she found the impulse tiresome. If one was engaged in an adventure, an investigation, such delicacy was ridiculous. She smiled at Chang.
    “There will be more about her later, for she figures elsewhere in our evidence,” Miss Temple told him. “Is this not progress? Doctor, please go on.”
    “I say the scars may be temporary,” continued Svenson, “because this very night I overheard Francis Xonck query Roger Bascombe about his own experience of this ‘Process’—though I saw Bascombe’s face myself when I was at the Institute—I am getting ahead of myself—and there was no such scarring.”
    Miss Temple felt a distant pang. “It was before he sent his letter,” she said. “The days he claimed to be at work with the Deputy Minister…it was happening even then.”
    “Of course it was,” said Chang, not unkindly.
    “Of course it was,” whispered Miss Temple.

    “Harald Crabbé.” Svenson nodded. “He is near the heart of it, but there are others with him, a cabal from the Ministry, the military, the Institute, other individuals of power—as I say, the Xonck family, the Comte d’Orkancz, the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, even perhaps Robert Vandaariff—and somehow my country of Macklenburg is a part of their plan. In the face of indifference from my colleagues, I rescued the Prince from their twisted science at the Institute. It was there I saw Cardinal Chang. At our compound I was forced to attend to several of our soldiers—also, I believe, a result of Cardinal Chang”—again he held up his hand—“I make no judgments, they have since tried to kill
me
. In that time, the Prince was taken in secret from his room, I do not know how—from
above
. I set out alone to find him. In Harald Crabbé’s house I heard Francis Xonck and Roger Bascombe discuss philosophy over the strangely disfigured body of an Institute savant—quantities of his blood had been turned to blue glass. They were joined by my own military attaché, Major Blach, who is part of their plans—the only bit of news being Blach’s assumption that the cabal had taken the Prince, and Xonck’s assurance that they had not. In any case, I escaped, and attempted to find Madame Lacquer-Sforza, but was taken by the Comte d’Orkancz—dragooned to consult on another medical matter, another of their experiments that had gone wrong—and then—it is a long story—given over to be killed, sent to the river bottom with the corpses of this dead scientist