The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

challenge them? Will you go to Robert Vandaariff in force? To Deputy Minister Crabbé? To the Comte d’Orkancz? To the Xonck ironworks? Or does one of you already know where he is—so we may end this ridiculous charade?”
    Svenson was gratified to see that at this both he and the Major were looking at Flaüss.
    “I do not know anything!” the Envoy cried. “If we must ask for the help of these august people you name—if they are
able
to help us—” Doctor Svenson scoffed. Flaüss turned to Major Blach for aid. “The Doctor still has not told us how he located the Prince before. Perhaps he can find him again.”
    “There is no mystery to it,” lied Svenson. “I sought out the brothel. Someone in the brothel was able to assist me. The Prince was right around the corner. Apparently Henry Xonck’s generous donations to the Institute provide a certain level of access for his younger brother’s friends.”
    “How did you know the brothel?” asked Flaüss.
    “Because I know the Prince at least that well—that is not the point! I have told you who he was with. If anyone knows what has happened, it will be they. I cannot confront these figures. It must be you—Herr Flaüss supported by the Major’s men—that is the only way.”
    Svenson ground his cigarette into the china cup that had held his coffee so long ago. “This gets us nowhere,” he told them. He picked up his coat and strode from the room.

    With no other thought than that he had not eaten in hours, Svenson walked down the stairs to the great kitchen, which was unoccupied. He dug through the cupboards to find a hard cheese, dry sausage, and a loaf of that morning’s bread. He poured himself a glass of pale yellow wine and sat alone at the large work table to think, methodically slicing off a hunk of cheese, a matching thickness of sausage, and piling them onto a piece of bread. After the first bite, realizing the bread was too dry, he got up and found a pot of mustard. He opened it and spooned more than he would normally favor onto the bread and re-stacked the sausage and cheese. He swallowed, and took a sip of wine. A routine established, he ate—the sounds of activity brewing about him in the compound—and tried to decide what to do. The Prince had been taken once, rescued, then taken again—it only followed it was by the same people, for the same reasons. Yet in the front of the Doctor’s mind was the cigarette butt.
    Flaüss had given it to him and, after the barest glance, he had handed it back and turned to climb off of the roof with what dignity he could muster—but the glance confirmed the idea that had already formed in his mind. The tip of the butt was crimped in a specific way he’d seen the night before—by a woman’s lacquered cigarette holder—at the St. Royale Hotel. The woman—he took another sip of wine, slipped the monocle from his eye into his breast pocket and rubbed his face—was shockingly, derangingly lovely. She was also dangerous—obviously so—but in such a complete way as to almost be beside notice, as if one were discussing a particular cobra—a description that might include length or color or markings, but never the possession of deadly venom, which was an
a priori
feature that one could not, he found, take exception to…on the contrary. He sighed and pushed his tired mind to focus, to connect that woman at the hotel to her possible presence on the rooftop. He could not make sense of it, but knew that doing so would lead him to the Prince, and began to meticulously recomb his memory.

    Much earlier in the day, when he had realized the Prince had not returned, and then that Flaüss and Blach were gone as well, Svenson had let himself into the Prince’s room and searched it for any possible clue to the Prince’s plans for the evening. In general Karl-Horst was about as cunning as a fairly clever cat or small child. If things were hidden, they were hidden under the mattress or in a shoe, but more likely to be simply tucked into the pocket of the coat he had been wearing and forgotten. Svenson had found embossed books of matches, theatre programs, calling cards, but nothing of any particular, striking nature. He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette, looking around the room, for the moment out of ideas. On the side table next to the bed was a blue glass vase with perhaps ten white lilies stuffed inside, drooping with various degrees of health over the rim. Svenson stared at it. He’d never seen