Making Money (43 page)

“First, the matter of the gold,” said Vetinari. “I present Drumknott, my secretary and chief clerk, who overnight took a team of my senior clerks into the bank—”

“Am I in the dock here?” said Moist.

Vetinari glanced at him and looked down at his paperwork. “I have here your signature on a receipt for some ten tons of gold,” he said. “Do you dispute its authenticity?”

“No but I thought that was just a formality!” said Moist.

“Ten tons of gold is a formality, is it? And did you later break into the vault?”

“Well, yes, technically. I couldn’t unlock it because Mr. Bent had fainted inside and left the key in the lock.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Bent, the chief cashier. Is he with us today?”

A quick survey found the room Bentless.

“I understood that he was in a somewhat distressed state but not seriously harmed,” said Lord Vetinari. “Commander Vimes, please be so good as to send some men along to his lodgings, will you? I would like him to join us.”

He turned back to Moist. “No, Mr. Lipwig, you are not on trial, as yet. Generally speaking, before someone is put on trial it helps to have some clear reason for doing so. It is considered neater. I must point out, though, that you took formal responsibility for the gold which, we must assume, was clearly gold and clearly in the vault at that time. In order to have a thorough understanding of the bank’s disposition at this time I asked my secretary to audit the bank’s affairs, which he and his team did last nigh—”

“If I’m not actually on trial at this moment can I get rid of these shackles? They do rather bias the case against me,” said Moist.

“Yes, very well. Guards, see to it. Now Mr. Drumknott, if you please?”

I’m going to be hung out to dry, thought Moist, as Drumknott started speaking. What is Vetinari playing at?

He stared at the crowds as Drumknott went through the tedious litany of accountancy. Right in front, in a great black mass, was the Lavish family. From here, they looked like vultures. This was going to take a long time, by the sound of Drumknott’s earnest drone. They were going to set him up, and Vetinari was—ah, yes, and then it would be, in some quiet room: “Mr. Lipwig, if you could see your way clear to telling me how you controlled those golems…”

A commotion near the door came as a welcome respite and now Sergeant Fred Colon, trailed by his inseparable associate Nobby Nobbs, was practically swimming through the crowd. Vimes pushed his way toward them, with Sacharissa drifting in his wake. There was a hurried conversation, and a ripple of horrified excitement rolled through the crowd.

Moist caught the word murdered!

Vetinari stood up and brought his stick down flat on the table, ending the noise like the punctuation of the gods.

“What has happened, Commander?” he said.

“Bodies, sir. In Mr. Bent’s lodgings!”

“He’s been murdered?”

“Nossir!” Vimes conferred briefly and urgently with his sergeant. “Body provisionally identified as Professor Cranberry, sir, not a real professor, he’s a nasty hired killer who likes reading. We thought he’d left the city. Sounds like the other one is Ribcage Jack, who was kicked to death—” there was another whispered briefing, but Commander Vimes tended to raise his voice when he was angry “—by a what? On the second floor? Don’t be daft! So what got Cranberry? Eh? Did you just say what I thought you said?”

He straightened up. “Sorry, sir, I’m going to have to go and see this for myself. I think someone is having a jape.”

“And poor Bent?” said Vetinari.

“No sign of him, sir.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Vetinari waved a hand. “Do hurry back when you know more. We cannot have japes. Thank you, Drumknott. I gather you found nothing untoward apart from the lack of gold. I’m sure that comes as a relief to us all. The floor is yours, Mr. Slant.”

The lawyer arose with an air of dignity and mothballs.

“Tell me, Mr. Lipwig, what was your job before you came to Ankh-Morpork?” he said.

O…kay, thought Moist, looking at Vetinari, I’ve worked it out. If I’m good and say the right things, I might live. At a price. Well, no thanks. All I wanted to do was make some money.

“Your job, Mr. Lipwig?” Slant repeated.

Moist looked along the rows of watchers, and saw the face of Cribbins. The man winked.

“Hmm?” he said.

“I asked you what your job was before you arrived in this city!”

It was at this point that Moist became aware of a regrettably familiar whirring sound, and from his raised position he was the first to see the chairman of the Royal Bank appear from behind the curtains at the far end of the hall with his wonderful new toy clamped firmly in his mouth. Some trick of the vibrations was propelling Mr. Fusspot backward across the shiny marble.

People in the audience craned their necks as, with tail wagging, the little dog passed behind Vetinari’s chair and disappeared behind the curtains on the opposite side.

I’m in a world where that just happened, Moist thought. Nothing matters. It was an insight of incredibly wonderful liberation.

“Mr. Lipwig, I asked you a question,” Slant growled.

“Oh, sorry. I was a crook.”…And he flew! This was it! This was better than hanging off some old building! Look at the expression on Cosmo’s face! Look at Cribbins! They had it all planned out, and now it had got away from them. He had them all in his hand, and he was flying!

Slant hesitated.

“By ‘crook’ you mean—”

“Confidence trickster. Occasional forgery. I’d like to think I was more of a scallywag, to be frank.”

Moist saw the looks that passed between Cosmo and Cribbins, and exulted within. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? And now you’re going to have to run to keep up…

Mr. Slant was certainly having trouble in that area.

“Can I be clear here? You broke the law for a living?”

“Mostly I took advantage of other people’s greed, Mr. Slant. I think there was an element of education, too.”

Mr. Slant shook his head in amazement, causing an earwig to fall, with a keen sense of the appropriate, out of his ear.

“Education?” he said.

“Yes. A lot of people learned that no one sells a real diamond ring for one-tenth of its value.”

“And then you stepped into one of the highest public offices in the city?” said Mr. Slant, above the laughter. It was a release. People had been holding their breath for too long.

“I had to. It was that or be hanged,” said Moist, and added, “again.”

Mr. Slant looked flustered, and turned his eyes to Vetinari.

“Are you sure you wish me to continue, my lord?”

“Oh yes,” said Vetinari. “To the death, Mr. Slant.”

“Er…you have been hanged before?” Slant said to Moist.

“Oh, yes. I did not wish it to become a habit.”

That got another laugh.

Mr. Slant turned again to Vetinari, who was smiling faintly.

“Is this true, my lord?”

“Indeed,” said Vetinari calmly. “Mr. Lipwig was hanged last year under the name of Albert Spangler, but it turned out that he had a very tough neck, as was found when he was being placed in his coffin. You may be aware, Mr. Slant, of the ancient principle quia ego sic dico? A man who survives being hanged may have been selected by the gods for a different destiny, as yet unfulfilled? And since fortune had favored him, I resolved to put him on parole and charge him with resurrecting the Post Office, a task which had already taken the lives of four of my clerks. If he succeeded, well and good. If he failed, the city would have been spared the cost of another hanging. It was a cruel joke which, I am happy to say, rebounded to the general good. I don’t think that anyone here would argue that the Post Office is now a veritable jewel of the city? Indeed, the leopard can change his shorts!”

Mr. Slant nodded automatically, remembered himself, and fumbled with his notes. He had lost his place.

“And now we come to, er, the matter of the bank—”

“Mrs. Lavish, a lady many of us were privileged to know, recently confided in me that she was dying,” said Vetinari. “She asked me for advice on the future of the bank, given that her obvious heirs were, in her words, ‘as nasty a bunch of weasels as you could ever hope not to meet—’”

All thirty-one of the Lavish lawyers stood up and spoke at once, incurring a total cost to their clients of $AM119.28p.

Mr. Slant glared at them.

Mr. Slant did not, despite what had been said, have the respect of Ankh-Morpork’s legal profession. He commanded its fear. Death had not diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew reasoning, and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, for if you do I will have the flesh from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound tomes you have on the wall behind your desk to impress your clients? I have read them all, and I wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a good mood.

One by one, they sat down.
*

“If I may continue?” said Vetinari. “I understand that Mrs. Lavish subsequently interviewed Mr. Lipwig and considered that he would be a superb chairman in the very best traditions of the Lavish family and the ideal guardian for the dog Mr. Fusspot, who is, by the custom of the bank, its chairman.”

Cosmo rose slowly to his feet and stepped out into the center of the floor. “l object most strongly to the suggestion that this scoundrel is in the best traditions of my—” he began. Mr. Slant was on his feet as though propelled by a spring. Quick as he was, Moist was faster.

“I object!” he said.

“How do you dare object,” Cosmo spat, “when you have admitted to being an arrogant scofflaw?”

“I object to Lord Vetinari’s allegation that I have had anything to do with the fine traditions of the Lavish family,” said Moist, staring into eyes that now seemed to be weeping green tears. “For example, I have never been a pirate or traded in slaves—”

There was a great rising of lawyers.

Mr. Slant glared. There was a great seating.

“They admit it,” said Moist. “It’s in the bank’s own official history!”

“That is correct, Mr. Slant,” said Vetinari. “I have read it. Volenti non fit injuria clearly applies.”

The whirring started again. Mr. Fusspot was coming back the other way. Moist forced himself not to look.

“Oh, this is low indeed!” snarled Cosmo. “Whose history could withstand this type of malice!”

Moist raised a hand. “Oooh, oooh, I know this one!” he said. “Mine can. The worst I ever did was rob people who thought they were robbing me, but I never used violence and I gave it all back. Okay, I robbed a couple of banks, well, defrauded, really, but only because they made it so easy—”

“Gave it back?” said Slant, looking for some kind of response from Vetinari. But the Patrician was staring over the heads of the crowd, who were almost all engrossed in the transit of Mr. Fusspot, and merely raised a finger in either acknowledgment or dismissal.

“Yes, you may recall that I saw the error of my ways last year when the gods—” Moist began.

“‘Robbed a couple of banks’?” said Cosmo. “Vetinari, are we to believe that you knowingly put the most important bank in the city into the charge of a known bank robber?”

The mass ranks of the Lavishes arose, united in the defense of the money. Vetinari still stared at the ceiling.

Moist looked up. A disc, something white, skimmed through the air near the ceiling, descended as it circled, and hit Cosmo between the eyes. A second one swooped on over the head of Moist and landed in the bosoms of the Lavishes.

“Should he have left it in the hands of unknown bank robbers?” a voice shouted, as collateral custard landed on every smart black suit. “Here we are again!”

A second wave of pies was already in the air, circling the room in trajectories that dropped them into the struggling Lavishes. And then a figure fought its way out of the crowd, to the groans and screams of those who’d temporarily been in its way; this was because those who managed to escape having their feet trodden on by the big shoes jumped back in time to be scythed down by the ladder the newcomer was carrying. Then it’d innocently turned to see what mayhem it had caused, and the swinging ladder felled anyone too slow to get away. There was a method to it, though; as Moist watched, the clown stepped away from the ladder, leaving four people trapped among the rungs in such a way that any attempt to get out would cause huge pain to the other three and, in the case of one of the watchmen, a serious impairment of marriage prospects.

Red-nosed and raggedy-hatted, it bounced into the arena in great, leaping strides, his enormous boots flapping on the floor with every familiar step.

“Mr. Bent?” said Moist. “Is that you?”

“My jolly good pal Mr. Lipwig!” shouted the clown. “You think the ringmaster runs the circus, do you? Only by the consent of the clowns, Mr. Lipwig! Only by the consent of the clowns!”

Bent drew back his arm and hurled a pie at Lord Vetinari, but Moist was already in full leap before the pie started its journey. His brain came a poor third, and delivered its thoughts all in one go, telling him what his legs had apparently worked out for themselves: that the dignity of the great could rarely survive a faceful of custard, that a picture of an encustarded Patrician on the front page of the Times would rock the power politics of the city, and most of all, that in a post-Vetinari world he, Moist, would not see tomorrow, which was one of his lifelong ambitions.

As in a silent dream, he sailed toward the oncoming nemesis, reaching out with snail-pace fingers while the pie spun on to its date with history.

It hit him in the face.

The Patrician had not moved. Custard flew up and four hundred fascinated eyes watched as a glob of the stuff was thrown up by the collision and headed on toward Vetinari, who caught it in an upraised hand.

The little smack as it landed in his palm was the only sound in the room.

Vetinari inspected the captured custard.

He dipped a finger into it, and tasted the blob thereon. He cast his eyes upward thoughtfully, while the room held its collective breath, and then said: “I do believe it is pineapple.”