The Fifth Elephant Page 10

  Visit saluted. It was probably the only way to get out of there alive. One of Colon’s eyes was twitching.

  “However, you could redeem yourself,” said Colon, “if you was to tell me who has been stealing, I said stealing, the sugar lumps.”

  “Sir?”

  “I knows there was forty-three last night. I counted ’em very thoroughly. There’s forty-one this morning, Constable. And they’re locked in the cupboard. Can you explain that?”

  If Visit had been suicidal and honest, he had said: Well, Captain, while of course I think you have many worthy qualities, I have known you to count your fingers twice and come up with different answers.

  “Er…mice?” he said, weakly.

  “Hah! Off you go, Lance-Constable, and just you think about what I said!”

  When the dejected Visit had gone, Captain Colon sat down at his big, clean desk.

  The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon’s head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses.

  Yes, he did have a clean desk. But that was because he was throwing all the paperwork away.

  It wasn’t that he was illiterate, but Fred Colon did need a bit of a think and a run-up to tackle anything much longer than a list and he tended to get lost in any word that had more than three syllables. He was, in fact, functionally literate. That is, he thought of reading and writing like he thought about boots—you needed them, but they weren’t supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them.

  Of course, Mr. Vimes had kept his desk piled high with paperwork, but it occurred to Colon that maybe Vimes and Carrot between them had developed a way of keeping just ahead of the piles, by knowing what was important and what wasn’t. To Colon, it was all gut-wrenchingly mysterious. There were complaints, and memos, and invitations, and letters requesting “a few minutes of your time” and forms to fill in, and reports to read, and sentences containing words like “iniquitous” and “immediate action” and they tottered in his mind like a great big wave, poised to fall on him.

  The sane core of Colon was wondering if the purpose of officers wasn’t to stand between the sergeants and all this sh—this slush, so that they could get on with sergeanting.

  Captain Colon took a deep, wobbly breath.

  On the other hand, if people were nicking the sugar lumps, no wonder things weren’t working properly! Get the sugar lumps right, and everything else would work out!

  That made sense!

  He turned, and his eye caught the huge accusing heap of paperwork in the corner.

  And the empty fireplace, too.

  That was what officering was all about, wasn’t it? Making decisions!

  Lance-Constable Visit walked dejectedly back down to the main office, which had filled up for a watch change.

  Everyone was clustered around one of the desks on which lay, looking slightly muddy, the Scone of Stone.

  “Constable Thighbiter found it in Zephire Street, just lying there,” said Sergeant Stronginthearm. “The thief must’ve gotten scared.”

  “A long way from the museum, though,” said Reg Shoe. “Why lug it all the way across the city and leave it in a posh part of town where someone’s bound to trip over it?”

  “Oh woe is me, for I am undone,” said Lance-Constable Visit, who felt he was playing a poor second fiddle to what he would call, if he had no use for his legs, a pagan image.

  “Could be drafty,” said Corporal Nobbs, a man of little sympathy.

  “I mean I have been reduced to Lance-Constable,” said Visit.

  “What? Why?” said Sergeant Stronginthearm.

  “I’m…not sure,” said Visit.

  “That just about does it!” said the dwarf. “He sacked three of the officers up at Dolly Sisters yesterday. Well, I’m not waiting for it to happen to me. I’m off to Sto Lat. They’re always looking for trained watchmen. I’m a sergeant. I could name my price.”

  “But, look, Vimesy used to say that sort of thing, too, I heard him,” said Nobby.

  “Yeah, but that was different.”

  “How?”

  “That was Mister Vimes,” said Stronginthearm. “Remember that riot in Easy Street last year? Bloke came after me with a club when I was on the ground, and Mister Vimes caught it on his arm and punched the man right in the head.”

  “Yeah,” said Constable Hacknee, another dwarf, “When your back’s against the wall, Mister Vimes is right behind you.”

  “But old Fred…you all know old Fred Colon, boys,” Nobby wheedled, taking a kettle off the office stove and pouring the boiling water into a teapot. “He knows coppering inside and out.”

  “His kind of coppering, yeah,” said Hacknee.

  “I mean, he’s been a copper longer than anyone in the Watch,” said Nobby.

  One of the dwarfs said something in Dwarfish. There were a few smiles from the shorter watchmen.

  “What was that?” said Nobby.

  “Well, roughly translated,” said Stronginthearm, “‘My bum has been a bum for a very long time but I don’t have to listen to anything it says.’”

  “He fined me half a dollar for mumping,” said Hacknee. “Fred Colon! He practically goes on patrol with a shopping bag! And all I had was a free pint at the Bunch of Grapes and I found out that Posh Wally is suddenly flashing a lot of money lately. That’s worth knowing. I remember going out on patrol with Fred Colon when I started and you could practically see him tucking his napkin under his chin whenever we walked past a café. ‘Oh no, Sergeant Colon, wouldn’t dream of seeing you pay.’ They used to lay the table when they saw him turn the corner.”

  “Everyone does it,” said Stronginthearm.

  “Captain Carrot never did,” said Nobby.

  “Captain Carrot was…special.”

  “But what am I supposed to do with this?” said Visit, waving the ink-speckled message. “Mister Vimes wants some information urgently, he says!”

  Stronginthearm took the paper and read it.

  “Well, this shouldn’t be hard,” he said. “Old Wussie Staid in Kicklebury Street was a janitor there for years and he owes me a favor.”

  “If we’re going to send a clacks to Mister Vimes then we ought to tell him about the Scone and Sonky,” said Reg Shoe. “You know he left a message about that. I’ve done a report.”

  “Why? He’s hundreds of miles away.”

  “I’d just feel happier if he knew,” said Reg. “’Cos it worries me.”

  “What good will it do sending it to him, then?”

  “Because then it’ll worry him, and I can stop worrying,” said Reg.

  “Corporal Nobbs!”

  “He listens at the door, I’ll swear he does,” said Stronginthearm. “I’m off.”

  “Coming, Captain!” shouted Nobby. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his battered and stained desk and took out a packet of chocolate biscuits, some of which he arranged daintily on a plate.

  “Does me no good at all to see you acting like this,” Stronginthearm went on, winking at the other dwarfs. “You’ve got it in you to be a really bad copper, Nobby. Breaks my heart to see you throwin’ it all away to become a really bad waitress.”

  “Ha ha ha,” said Nobby. “Just you wait, that’s all I’m saying.” He raised his voice. “Coming right now, Captain!”

  There was a sharp smell of burned paper in the captain’s room when Nobby entered.

  “Nothing cheers up the day like a good fire, I always say,” he said, putting the tray on the desk.

  But Captain Colon wasn’t paying any attention. He’d removed the sugar bowl from the locked drawer of his desk and had laid the cubes out in rows.

  “Do you see anything wrong with these lumps, Corporal?” he said quietly.

  “Well, they’re a bit manky where you’ve been handling them every—”

  “There’s thirty-seven, Corpor
al.”

  “Sorry about that, Captain.”

  “Visit must’ve pinched them when he was in here. He must’ve used some fancy foreign trick. They can do that, you know. Climb ropes and disappear up the top of ’em, that sort of thing.”

  “Did he have a rope?” said Nobby.

  “Are you making fun of me, Corporal?”

  Nobby saluted. “Nossir! Maybe it was a invisible one, sir. After all, if they can disappear up a rope, they can make the rope disappear, too. Obviously.”

  “Good thinking, Corporal.”

  “On the subject of thinking, sir,” said Nobby, plunging in, “have you had time in your busy schedule to give some thought to the promotion of the new sergeant?”

  “I have, as a matter of fact, put that very thing in hand, Corporal.”

  “Good, sir.”

  “I’ve borne in mind everything you said, and the choice was starin’ me in the face.”

  “Yessir!” said Nobby, sticking out his chest and saluting.

  “I just hope it don’t cause loss of morals. It can do that, when people are promoted. So if there’s any trouble like that, I want the sugar-stealing person reported to me right away, understand?”

  “Yessir!” Nobby’s feet had almost left the ground.

  “And I shall rely on you, Corporal, to let me know if Sergeant Flint has any trouble.”

  “Sergeant Flint,” said Nobby, in a little voice.

  “I know he’s a troll, but I won’t have it said I’m an unfair man.”

  “Sergeant Flint.”

  “I know I can rely on you, Corporal.”

  “Sergeant Flint.”

  “That will be all. I’ve got to go and see His Lordship in an hour and I want some time to think for. That’s what my job is, thinking.”

  “Sergeant Flint.”

  “Yes. I should go and report to him if I was you.”

  White chicken feathers were scattered across the field. The farmer stood at the door of his henhouse, shaking his head. He glanced up as a horseman approached.

  “Good morrow, sir! Are you experiencing trouble?”

  The farmer opened his mouth for a witty or at least snappy response, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was the sword the horseman had slung across his back. Perhaps it was the man’s faint smile. The smile was somehow more frightening.

  “Er…somethin’s been at my fowls,” he ventured. “Fox, I reckon.”

  “Wolf, I suspect,” said the rider.

  The man opened his mouth to say “Don’t be daft, we don’t get wolves down here this time of the year,” but again the confident smile made him hesitate.

  “Got many hens, did they?”

  “Six,” said the farmer.

  “And they got in by…”

  “Well, that’s the strange th—Here, keep the dog away!”

  A small mongrel had leapt down from the saddle and was sniffing around the henhouses.

  “He won’t be any trouble,” said the rider.

  “I shouldn’t push your luck, mate. He’s in a funny mood,” said a voice behind the farmer. He turned around quickly.

  The dog looked up at him innocently. Everyone knew that dogs didn’t talk.

  “Woof? Bark? Whine?” it said.

  “He’s highly trained,” said the rider.

  “Yeah, right,” said the voice behind the farmer. He felt an overpowering desire to see the back of the horseman. The smile was getting on his nerves, and now he was hearing things.

  “I can’t see how they got in,” he said. “The door’s latched…”

  “And wolves don’t usually leave payment, right?” said the rider.

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “Well…several reasons, sir, but I couldn’t help noticing that you clenched your fist tightly as soon as you heard me, and I surmise therefore that you found…let me see…three dollars left in the chicken house. Three dollars would buy six fine birds in Ankh-Morpork.”

  The man opened his fist, wordlessly. The coins glinted in the sunlight.

  “But…but I sells ’em at the gate for ten pence!” he wailed. “They only had to arsk!”

  “Probably didn’t want to bother you,” said the horsemen. “Since I am here, sir, I would be grateful if you could sell me a chicken—”

  Behind the farmer the dog said “Woof woof!”

  “—two chickens, and I will not trespass further upon your time.”

  “Woof woof woof.”

  “Three chickens,” said the rider, wearily. “And if you have them dressed and cooked while I tend to my horse, I will gladly pay a dollar apiece.”

  “Woof, woof.”

  “Without garlic or any seasoning on two of the chickens, please,” said the rider.

  The farmer nodded wordlessly. A dollar a chicken wasn’t chicken feed. You didn’t turn up your nose at an offer like that. But most importantly, you didn’t disobey a man with that faint little smile on his face. It didn’t seem to move, or change. As smiles went, you wanted this one to go as far away as possible.

  He hurried off to the yard that held his best fowls, reached down to select the fattest…and paused. A man who was fool enough to pay a dollar for a good chicken might be quite content with just a reasonable chicken, after all…He stood up.

  “Only the best, mister.”

  He spun around. No one was there except the little scruffy dog, which had followed him and was now raising a cloud of dust as it scratched itself.

  “Woof?” it said.

  He threw a stone at it, and it trotted off. Then he selected three of the very best chickens.

  Carrot was lying down under a tree, trying to make his head comfortable on a saddlebag.

  “Did you see in the dust where she’d almost rubbed out her footprints?” said Gaspode.

  “Yes,” said Carrot, closing his eyes.

  “Does she always pay for chickens?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Carrot turned over.

  “Because animals don’t.”

  Gaspode looked at the back of Carrot’s head. On the whole he enjoyed the unusual gift of speech, but something about the reddening of Carrot’s ears told him that this was the time to employ the even rarer gift of silence.

  He settled down in the position he almost unconsciously categorized as Faithful Companion Keeping Watch, got bored, scratched himself absentmindedly, curled up in the pose known as Faithful Companion Curled Up With His Nose Pressed On His Bottom,* and fell asleep.

  He awoke shortly afterward, to the sound of voices. There was also a faint smell of roast chicken coming from the direction of the farmhouse.

  Gaspode rolled over, and saw the farmer talking to another man on a cart. He listened for a moment and then sat up, locked in a metaphysical conundrum.

  Finally he awoke Carrot by licking his ear.

  “Fzwl…what?”

  “You got to promise to collect the roast chicken first, all right?” said Gaspode urgently.

  “What?” Carrot sat up.

  “Get the chickens and then we gotta go, right? You gotta promise.”

  “All right, all right, I promise. What’s happening?”

  “You ever heard of a town call Scant Cullot?”

  “I think it’s about ten miles from here…”

  “One of Mister Farmer’s neighbors has just told him that they’ve caught a wolf there.”

  “Killed it?”

  “No, no, no…but the wolf hunters…there’s wolf hunters in these parts, see, ’cos of the sheep up on the hills and…they have to train their dogs first remember you promised about the chickens!”

  At precisely eleven o’clock there was a smart rap on Lord Vetinari’s door.

  The Patrician gave the woodwork a puzzled frown. At last he said: “Come.”

  Fred Colon entered with difficulty. Vetinari watched him for a few moments until pity overcame even him.

  “Acting Captain, it is not necessary to remain at a
ttention at all times,” he said, kindly. “You are allowed to unbend enough for the satisfactory manipulation of a doorknob.

  “Yes, sah!”

  Lord Vetinari raised a hand to his ear protectively.

  “You may be seated.”

  “Yes, sah!”

  “You may be quieter, too.”

  “Yes, sah!”

  Lord Vetinari retreated to the protection of his desk.

  “May I commend you on the gleam of your armor, Acting Captain—”

  “Spit and polish, sah! No substitute for it, sah!” Sweat was streaming down Colon’s face.

  “Oh, good. Clearly you have been purchasing extra supplies of spit. Now then, let me see…”

  Lord Vetinari drew a sheet of paper from one of the small stack in front of him.

  “Now then, Acti—”

  “Sah!”

  “To be sure. I have here another complaint of overenthusiastic clamping…I’m sure you know to what I refer.”

  “It was causing serious traffic congestion, sah!”

  “Quite so. It is well known for it. But it is, in fact, the opera house.”

  “Sah!”

  “The owner feels that big yellow clamps at each corner detract from what I might call the tone of the building. And, of course, they do prevent him from driving it away.”

  “Sah!”

  “Indeed. I think that this is a case where discretion might be advisable, Acting Captain!”

  “Got to make an example to the others, sah!”

  “Ah. Yes.” The Patrician held another piece of paper delicately between thumb and forefinger, as though it were some rare and strange creature. “The others being…let me see if I can recall, some things do stick in the mind so…ah, yes…three other buildings, six fountains, three statues and the gibbet in Nonesuch Street. Oh, and my own palace.”

  “I fully understand you’re parked on business, sah!”

  Lord Vetinari paused. He found it difficult to talk to Frederick Colon. He dealt on a daily basis with people who treated conversation as a complex game, and with Colon he had to keep on adjusting his mind in case he overshot.

  “Pursuing the business of your recent career with, I have to admit, some considerable and growing fascination, I am moved to ask you why the Watch now appears to have a staff of twenty.”