Making Money

Moist spun round. It had not been a good day. It had not been a good night, either. ‘Mr Bent, if you do not like what I am doing, feel free to leave. You’ll have a good reference and all the wages due to you!’

Bent looked as though he’d been slapped. ‘Leave the bank? Leave the bank? How could I do that? How dare you!’

A door slammed above them. They looked up. The Men of the Sheds were coming down the stairs in solemn procession.

‘Now we shall see,’ hissed Bent. ‘These are men of solid worth. They’ll have nothing to do with your gaudy offer, Mr … Ringmaster!’

The Men reached the bottom of the steps. Without a word they all looked at Mr Shady, except for Mr Shady, who looked at Moist.

‘The sheds stay, right?’ he said.

‘You’re giving in?’ said Mr Bent, aghast. ‘After hundreds of years?’

‘We-ell,’ said Mr Shady, ‘me and the boys had a bit of a talk and, well, at a time like this, a man’s got to think of his shed. And the outworkers will be all right, right?’

‘Mr Shady, I’d go to the barricades for the elim,’ said Moist.

‘And we talked to some of the lads from the Post Office last night and they said we could trust Mr Lipwig’s word ’cos he’s as straight as a corkscrew.’

‘A corkscrew?’ said Bent, shocked.

‘Yeah, we asked about that, too,’ said Shady. ‘And they said he acts curly but that’s okay ’cos he damn well gets the corks out!’

Mr Bent’s expression went blank. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘This is clearly some kind of judgement-clouding joke, which I do not understand. If you will excuse me, I have a great deal of work to attend to.’

His feet rising and falling, as though he was walking on some kind of shifting staircase, Mr Bent departed in jerky haste.

‘Very well, gentlemen, thank you for your helpful attitude,’ said Moist, watching the retreating figure, ‘and for my part I will get those uniforms ordered this afternoon.’

‘You’re a fast mover, Master,’ said Mr Shady.

‘Stand still and your mistakes catch up with you!’ said Moist. They laughed, because he’d said it, but the face of Cribbins rose up in his mind and, quite unconsciously, he put his hand in his pocket and touched the blackjack. He’d have to learn how to use it now, because a weapon you held and didn’t know how to use belonged to your enemy.

He’d bought it — why? Because it was like the lockpicks: a token to prove, if only to himself, that he hadn’t given in, not all the way, that a part of him was still free. It was like the other ready-made identities, the escape plans, the caches of money and clothes. They told him that any day he could leave all this, melt into the crowd, say goodbye to the paperwork and the timetable and the endless, endless wanting.

They told him that he could give it up any time he liked. Any hour, any minute, any second. And because he could, he didn’t … every hour, every minute, every second. There had to be a reason why.

‘Mr Lipwig! Mr Lipwig!’ A young clerk dodged and weaved through the busyness of the Mint, and stopped in front of Moist, panting.

‘Mr Lipwig, there’s a lady in the hall to see you and we’ve thanked her for not smoking three times and she’s still doing it!’

The image of the wretched Cribbins vanished and was replaced by a much better one.

Ah, yes. That reason.

***

Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, known to Moist as Spike, was standing in the middle of the banking hall. Moist just headed for the smoke.

‘Hello, you,’ she said, and that was that. ‘Can you take me away from all this?’ She gestured with her non-smoking hand. Staff had meaningfully surrounded her with tall brass ashtrays, full of white sand.

Moist shifted a couple of them, and let her out.

‘How was—’ he began, but she interrupted.

‘We can talk on the way.’

‘Where are we going?’ Moist asked hopefully.

‘Unseen University,’ said Adora Belle, heading for the door. She had a large woven bag on her shoulder. It seemed to be stuffed with straw.

‘Not lunch, then?’ said Moist.

‘Lunch can wait. This is important.’

‘Oh.’

It was lunchtime at Unseen University, where every meal is important. It was hard to find a time when some meal or other was not in progress there. The Library was unusually empty, and Adora Belle walked up to the nearest wizard who did not seem gainfully employed and demanded: ‘I want to see the Cabinet of Curiosity right away!’

‘I don’t think we have anything like that,’ said the wizard. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Please don’t lie. My name is Adora Belle Dearheart, so as you can imagine I’ve got a pretty short temper. My father brought me with him when you people asked him to come and look at the Cabinet, about twenty years ago. You wanted to find out how the doors worked. Someone must remember. It was in a big room. A very big room. And it had lots and lots of drawers. And the funny thing about them was—’

The wizard raised his hands quickly, as if to ward off further words. ‘Can you wait just one minute?’ he suggested.

They waited for five. Occasionally a pointyhatted head peered around a bookshelf to look at them, and ducked away if it thought it’d been spotted.