“He was hanged once,” said Mr. Bolte. “Neck didn't break and he was cut down—proven innocent, he said.”

“Or freed by his friends,” muttered one of the women.

“What did he do?” asked Svenson. “What work in the town?”

“In the mines,” said Bolte. “But he'd been ill. The boy supported them both.”

“How could his wages be enough?” asked Svenson. “Was the man also perhaps… a thief?”

He received no reply—but no denial. Svenson spoke carefully. “I am wondering if any person might have reason to kill him.”

“But why kill his son?” asked Bolte.

“What if the boy saw the murder?” said Svenson.

Bolte looked to the faces around him and then back to Svenson. “We will take you to Mrs. Daube.”

MR. BOLTE and one of his fellows—Mr. Carper, a very short man whose torso was the exact size of a barrel—accompanied Svenson to the inn. The Flaming Star's landlady met them in the perfectly hospitable common room. The Doctor smelled food from the kitchen and gazed jealously past her shoulder to the crackling fire. He nodded kindly at Mrs. Daube as she was named to him, but her eyes darkened as Bolte narrated the circumstances of the Doctor's arrival in Karthe.

“It is that villain,” she announced.

Mr. Bolte paused at the vicious look on the woman's face. “What villain, Mrs. Daube?”

“He threatened me. He threatened Franck. He had a knife—waved it right in my face—in this very room!”

“A knife!” Mr. Carper spoke across Svenson to Bolte. “You saw how the boy was cut!”

Mr. Bolte cleared his throat and called gravely to the young man now visible near the kitchen door.

“What man, Franck?”

“In red, with his eyes cut up, dark glasses. Like a devil.”

“He is a devil!” growled Mrs. Daube.

Svenson's heart sank. Who knew what Chang might have done?

Another voice broke into his thoughts, from the foot of the stairs. “Who are you exactly, sir? I confess I did not hear your introduction.”

The speaker was younger than Svenson—perhaps an age with Chang—with combed, well-oiled black hair and wearing, of all things, black business attire for the city.

“Abelard Svenson. I am a Doctor.”

“From Germany?” The man's smile floated just short of a sneer.

“Macklenburg.”

“Long way from Macklenburg.”

“And yet not so far away to introduce oneself politely,” observed Svenson.

“Mr. Potts is a guest of the Flaming Star,” said Mrs. Daube importantly. “One of a hunting party—”

Svenson looked at the man's pale hands and walking shoes, his well-pressed trouser crease.

Mr. Potts caught Svenson's gaze and cut the woman off with a crisp smile.

“So sorry, to be sure. Potts. Martin Potts. But do you know this— this devil?”

“I know of him. We had been to the same village, up north.”

“Was there trouble?” asked Mr. Carper.

“Of course there was trouble,” hissed Mrs. Daube.

“But who is he?” demanded Mr. Bolte. “Where is he now?”

“I do not know,” said Svenson, looking straight at Potts. “He is called Chang. My understanding is that he was returning to the city.”

“And yet now there has been murder,” observed Mr. Potts mildly, and cocked his head to Bolte. “I heard you mention a boy?”

“Young Willem,” explained Bolte. “A stable groom. This gentleman found him at the black rocks, savagely attacked—we were unable to save him. You know his father—”

“Murdered this night!” whispered Franck.

“Just like that devil promised!” cried Mrs. Daube. “He told me plain as day that any person crossing him would die. No doubt he went from here to the stables! Now that I remember, I am sure he said it quite clear: ‘If that boy crosses me—”

The two townsmen erupted in astonished and outraged shouts, demanding that Mrs. Daube explain more, demanding of Svenson where his friend was hiding, insisting (this was Mr. Carper) that the fellow be hanged. Svenson put up his hands and called out, his eyes darting between the strangely satisfied innkeeper and her watchful guest.

“Gentlemen—please! I am sure this woman is wrong!”

“How am I wrong?” she sneered. “I know what I saw—and what he said! And now you say the boy's been slaughtered!”

“The many cuts—” began Mr. Bolte.

“The knife!” cried Mr. Carper.

“I understand!” shouted Svenson, raising his hands again to quiet them.

“Who are you anyway?” muttered Mrs. Daube.

“I am a surgeon,” said Svenson. “I have spent the last hour attempting to save that poor boy's life—I am not unmindful of the savage way in which he was killed. Mrs. Daube, you have told us what Chang—”

“He is a Chinaman?” asked Mr. Bolte, with open distaste.

“No. It—it does not matter. Mrs. Daube claims that Chang told her—”

“He did tell me!”

“I do not doubt you, madame.” Indeed, Svenson was surprised not to find the imprint of Chang's hand still raw on the woman's face. “But when… when did this conversation occur?”

Mrs. Daube licked her lips, as if she did not trust this line of questioning at all.

“Yesterday evening,” she replied.

“Are you sure?” asked Svenson.

“I am.”

“And after this conversation Cardinal Chang departed—”

“He is a churchman?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“He is a demon,” muttered Mrs. Daube.

“A demon you last saw yesterday evening?” asked the Doctor.

Mrs. Daube nodded with a sniff.

“Why are you defending his man?” Mr. Potts asked Svenson.

“I am trying to learn the truth. The boy was attacked only some hours ago, and by his wounds, the father at most only hours before that.”

“That proves nothing,” offered Mr. Potts. “This fellow might have spent the whole next day tracking them, only to make his attack to night.”

“Certainly true,” nodded Svenson. “The question is whether Chang left town in the intervening hours or not. You did not see him yourself, Mr. Potts?”

“Regrettably, no.”

“Mr. Potts and his fellows have each traveled different directions from Karthe,” explained Mrs. Daube, “the better to find the best hunting.”

“And none of your fellows were back either?” asked Svenson.

“I fear I am the first to return, being less of an outdoorsman—”

“Not like the Captain,” said Mrs. Daube with a smile, “who has come and gone again. As handsome a man as this Chang is a terror—”

“No one was here,” Potts insisted, over her words. “Suspicion naturally falls on this man Chang.”

“Who else could have done these things?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“Why else would anyone do them?” asked Mr. Carper.

“Why would Chang?” countered Svenson. “He is a stranger here— like myself and Mr. Potts—and come to Karthe only in order to leave it, and leave before these killings occurred.”

“And yet,” began Carper, “if he is a natural villain—”

“How would we learn whether he had gone?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“Quite simply,” said Svenson. “Did a train depart last night or this morning?”

Mr. Bolte looked at Mr. Carper.

“Last night,” answered Carper. “But we do not know this Chang was on it.”

“Is there anyone who might know?” asked Svenson. “Usually this sort of thing is quite easily proven, you see.”

“Perhaps we could ask at the train yard,” Mr. Bolte said.

AN HOUR later Doctor Svenson walked back with Mr. Bolte—Mr. Carper, connected to the mines, was still speaking with the trainsmen. There had been an incident—the talk of the rail yard—on the previous night's train: a passenger compartment with its window and door shattered, and a mysterious figure, wearing a blind man's glasses and a long red coat, stalking through the corridor like a wraith. The damaged compartment had been splashed with blood, as had the glass on the trackside, but no victim—dead or alive—had been found. How ever, the trainsmen were sure: the strange figure in red had been aboard when the train had finally left.