The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

other door…and yet something caught his eye. The wallpaper was red, with a circular decoration of golden rings that looked vaguely Florentine. Chang crossed the room to a section of wallpaper, perhaps as high as his head. In the middle of one of the golden rings the pattern appeared to be frayed. He pressed at it with his finger and the interior of the ring popped through, leaving a hole. A spy hole. Chang strode past the woman—dreamily shaking her head and struggling to raise herself to one elbow—and out to the corridor.

    Once more, Chang’s notion that most things are only effectively hidden because no one ever thinks to look for them was confirmed. Once he knew what he sought—a narrow corridor between rooms—it was easy enough to identify what door might lead to it. While it was possible that the other side of the spy hole was in another normal room, Chang felt this went against the entire idea—as he understood it—of Harschmort House, which was the
integrated
nature of the establishment. Why have a spy hole into one room, when one might construct an inner passage that spanned the length of many apartments to either side, so one man with patience and soft shoes could effectively gain the advantage on a whole collection of guests? He chuckled to think that he had here explained Robert Vandaariff’s famed success at business negotiation, his uncanny aptitude for knowing what his rivals were planning—a reputation side by side with his renown as a generous host (especially—Chang shook his head at the cunning—to those with whom he most bitterly strove). Not three yards from the one he’d entered Chang found two doors quite closely set together—or more accurately, one door in the space that, elsewhere in the corridor, was only blank wall.
    Chang dug out his keys—first Gray’s and then his own—and struggled to open the lock. It was actually rather tricky, and differed from others he’d found in the house. He looked around him with growing alarm, trying a second key and then fumbling for a third. He thought he heard a rising noise from the far end, near the staircase…applause? Was there some sort of performance? The key did not work. He felt for the next. With a click that echoed down the length of the corridor, a door was opened in the balcony above the staircase—and then the sound of steps, many people…they would be at the railing any instant. His key caught, the lock turned, and without hesitation Chang slipped the door open and darted through into the bitter dark. He closed it as quickly and silently as he could, with no idea if he’d been seen or heard.
    There was nothing for it. He turned the lock behind him and felt his way deeper into the blackness. The walls were narrow—his elbows rubbed the dusty brick on either side as he went—but the floor was smoothly laid stone (as opposed to wood that might warp and in time begin to creak). He felt his way along, hampered by his restored stick in one hand and the wrapped book in the other, and by Miss Temple’s boots jostling the walls from his pockets. The spy hole in the woman’s room had been at head height, so he placed his hands there as he walked, to feel for any depression in the brick. Surely it had to be near…his impatience nearly caused him to pitch headlong into the dark as his foot struck a step in the blackness below him and he tripped forward—only saved from falling outright, despite a cruel barking on his knee, by another two steps on top of that. He found himself kneeling on what was effectively a small stepladder spanning the width of the passage. Chang carefully set down his stick and the book, and then felt the wall for the hole, finding it by the small half-circle of light caused by his partial dislodging of its plug from the room. He silently pulled the plug free and peered in. The woman had crawled away from the dead soldier, and crouched kneeling on the carpet. Her hands were under her dress—restoring her undergarments or perhaps attempting to see how far along the dead soldier’s obvious intentions had proceeded. She still wore her mask, and Chang was curious to see that despite the tears on her cheeks she seemed calm and determined in her manner…was this a result of her experience with the book?
    He replaced the plug in the wall and wondered that the stair-step should be built across the entire passage…was there another spy hole on the opposite wall? Chang shifted his position and felt for it,