The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

beamed.
    The Doctor looked ahead of him on the catwalk. Bolted to an iron frame suspended from the ceiling—and in reach, for he realized that the catwalk’s sole purpose was to tend them—hung a row of metal-boxed paraffin lamps, as in a theatre. The front of each box was open, to aim the light in one direction, and fixed with a ground-glass lens to focus the light onto a more precise area. For a moment he considered—if he were able to climb out unseen—the possibility of blowing out each lamp and throwing the theatre into darkness…but there were at least five lamps over a fifteen-foot length of the iron grid. He could not reach them all before he was seen and most likely shot. But what else could he do? Moving as delicately and as quickly as he could, Doctor Svenson crawled through the curtain and into view of anyone who happened to look up.

    Miss Poole whispered in her blonde charge’s ear and then led her closer to the audience. The young woman sank into a curtsey, and the audience politely applauded once more. Svenson could swear she was blushing with pleasure. The woman rose again and Miss Poole handed her to one of the Macklenburg soldiers, who offered an arm with a click of his heels. The blonde woman draped her arm in his and with a distinct brightening of her step they disappeared down one of the rampways.
    From the same rampway emerged two more Macklenburg soldiers propelling between them a third masked woman in white. Her feet dragged in awkward steps and her head dipped—she was either drugged or injured. Her brown hair unspooled behind her back and around her shoulders, obscuring her features. Again, despite his best intentions, Doctor Svenson found his gaze falling to the lady’s body, the white silk clinging across the curve of her hips, her pale arms sticking from the balled-up sleeves.
    At their entrance, Miss Poole whipped around in annoyance. Svenson could not hear what she hissed to the soldiers, nor what they deferentially whispered in return. In the moment of disturbance he looked to Miss Temple, the hideous mask in place across her face, twisting ineffectually against her bonds.
    Miss Poole gestured to the new arrival.
    “It is a different sort of case I present to you here—perhaps one emblematic of the
dangers
attending our great enterprise, and of the
corrective
power of this work. The woman here before you—you see her ragged appearance and lowly condition—is one who had been invited to participate, and who then took it upon herself, in league with our enemies, to
reject
this invitation. More than this, her rejection took the form…of
murder
. The woman before you has killed one of our blameless number!”
    The audience whispered and hissed. Svenson swallowed. It was Elöise Dujong. He hadn’t recognized her—her hair had been back in a braid and now it wasn’t—such a foolish detail, but it nearly caused his heart to crack. All his doubts as to her loyalty fell away before this sudden pang of emotion. Seeing her hair down should have been an intimacy given to him from her, and now she was insensible, vulnerable, the intimacy blithely trammeled. He crawled quickly to the next lamp and dug in his pocket for the revolver.
    “And yet,” continued Miss Poole, “she has been brought before you to demonstrate the greater wisdom—and the greater
economy
—of our purpose. For despite everything this woman’s actions carry with them undenied qualities of resilience and courage. Should these be destroyed simply because she lacks the will or the vision to see her true avenue of advantage? We say it shall not be—and so we will
welcome
this woman into our very bosom!”
    She gestured to her attendant. He bent over Miss Temple once more to make sure of his electrical connections and then knelt at the boxes. Svenson looked wildly about him. In a moment it would be too late.
    “Both these women—I promise you, more determined villains you could not find outside the
Thuggee
cult!—will join us, one after the next, by way of the clarifying Process. You have seen its effect with a willing subject. Now see it transform a defiant enemy to the fiercest adherent!”

    The first shot crashed out from the darkness above the theatre. The man near Miss Temple abruptly stumbled back, and then dropped beneath the blackboard, the blood from his wound pooling in the leather apron. Screams erupted from the gallery. The figures on the stage looked up, but straight into the lamps and could