The Truth

'Aha,' he said. 'Innocently taken from the overgrown ruins of a megalithic stone circle, this stone is redolent with the blood of thousands, I have no doubt, who will emerge to seek revenge, you may depend upon it.'

'It was cut specially for me by my brother,' said Gunilla. 'And I don't have to take that kind of talk, mister. Who do you think you are, coming in here and talking daft like that?'

William stepped forward at a healthy fraction of the speed of terror.

'I wonder if I might just take Mr Goodmountain aside and explain one or two things to him?' he said quickly.

The Patrician's bright, enquiring smile did not so much as flicker.

'What a good idea,' he said, as William frogmarched the dwarf to a corner. 'He will be sure to thank you for it later.'

Lord Vetinari stood leaning on his stick and looking at the press with an air of benevolent interest, while behind him William de Worde explained the political realities of Ankh-Morpork, especially those relating to sudden death. With gestures.

After thirty seconds of this, Goodmountain came back and stood foursquare in front of the Patrician, with his thumbs in his belt.

'I speak as I find, me,' he said. 'Always have done, always will--'

'And what is it that you call a spade?' said Lord Vetinari.

'What? Never use spades,' said the glowering dwarf. 'Farmers use spades. But I call a shovel a shovel.'

'Yes, I thought you would,' said Lord Vetinari.

'Young William here says you're a ruthless despot who doesn't like printing. But I say you're a fair-minded man who won't stand in the way of an honest dwarf making a bit of a living, am I right?'

Once again Lord Vetinari's smile remained in place.

'Mr de Worde, a moment, please...'

The Patrician put his arm companionably around William's shoulders and walked him gently away from the watching dwarfs.

'I only said that some people call you--' William began.

'Now, sir,' said the Patrician, waving this away. 'I think I might just be persuaded, against all experience, that we have here a little endeavour that might just be pursued without filling my streets with inconvenient occult rubbish. It is hard to imagine such a thing

in Ankh-Morpork, but I could just about accept it as a possibility. And it so happens that I feel the question of "printing" is one that might, with care, be re-opened.'

'You do?'

'Yes. So I am minded to allow your friends to proceed with their folly.'

'Er, they're not exactly--' William began.

'Of course, I should add that, in the event of there being any problems of a tentacular nature, you would be held personally responsible.'

'Me? But I--'

'Ah. You feel that I am being unfair? Ruthlessly despotic, perhaps?'

'Well, I, er--'

'Apart from anything else, the dwarfs are a very hard-working and valuable ethnic grouping in the city,' said the Patrician. 'On the whole, I wish to avoid any low-level difficulties at this time, what with the unsettled situation in Uberwald and the whole Muntab question.'

'Where's Muntab?' said William.

'Exactly. How is Lord de Worde, by the way? You should write to him more often, you know.'

William said nothing.

'I always think it is a very sad thing when families fall out,' said Lord Vetinari. There is far too much mutton-headed ill-feeling in the world.' He gave William a companionable pat. 'I'm sure you will see to it that the printing enterprise stays firmly in the realms, of the cult, the canny and the scrutable. Do I make myself clear?'

'But I don't have any control ov--'

'Hmm?'

'Yes, Lord Vetinari,' said William.

'Good. Good!' The Patrician straightened up, turned, and beamed at the dwarfs.

'Jolly good,' he said. 'My word. Lots of little letters, all screwed together. Possibly an idea whose time has come. I may even have an occasional job for you myself.'

William waved frantically at Gunilla from behind the Patrician's back.

'Special rate for government jobs,' the dwarf muttered.

'Oh, but I wouldn't dream of paying any less than other customers,' said the Patrician.

'I wasn't going to charge you less than--'

'Well, I'm sure we've all been very pleased to see you here, your lordship,' said William brightly, swivelling the Patrician in the direction of the door. 'We look forward to the pleasure of your custom.'

'Are you quite sure Mr Dibbler isn't involved in this concern?'

'I think he's having some things printed, but that's all,' said William.

'Astonishing. Astonishing,' said Lord Vetinari, getting into his coach. 'I do hope he isn't ill.'

Two figures watched his departure from the rooftop opposite.

One of them said, very, very quietly, '--!'

The other said, 'You have a point of view, Mr Tulip?'

'And he's the man who runs the city?'

'Yeah,'

'So where's his --ing bodyguards?'

'If we wanted to scrag him, here and now, how useful would, say, four bodyguards be?'

'As a --ing chocolate kettle, Mr Pin.'

'There you are, then,'

'But I could knock him over from here with a --ing brick!'

'I gather there are many organizations who hold Views on that, Mr Tulip. People tell me this dump is thriving. The man at the top has a lot of friends when everything is going well. You would soon run out of bricks,'

Mr Tulip looked down at the departing coach. 'From what I hear he mostly doesn't do a --ing thing!' he complained.

'Yeah,' said Mr Pin smoothly. 'One of the hardest things to do properly, in politics.'

Mr Tulip and Mr Pin brought different things to their partnership, and in this instance what Mr Pin brought was political savvy. Mr Tulip respected this, even if he didn't understand it. He

contented himself with muttering, 'It'd be simpler to --ing kill him,'

'Oh, for a --ing simple world,' said Mr Pin. 'Look, lay off the honk, eh? That stuff's for trolls. It's worse than slab. And they cut it with ground glass,'

' 's chemical,' said Mr Tulip sullenly.

Mr Pin sighed. 'Shall I try again?' he said. 'Listen carefully. Drugs equals chemicals, but, and please do listen to this part, sheesh, chemicals do not equal drugs. Remember all that trouble with the calcium carbonate? When you paid the man five dollars?'

'Made me feel good,' muttered Mr Tulip.

'Calcium carbonate?' said Mr Pin. 'Even for you, I mean... Look, you put up your actual nose enough chalk that someone could probably cut your head off and write on a blackboard with your neck?'

That was the major problem with Mr Tulip, he thought, as they made their way to the ground. It wasn't that he had a drugs habit. He wanted to have a drugs habit. What he had was a stupidity habit, which cut in whenever he found anything being sold in little bags, and this had resulted in Mr Tulip seeking heaven in flour, salt, baking powder and pickled beef sandwiches. In a street where furtive people were selling Clang, Slip, Chop, Rhino, Skunk, Triplin, Floats, Honk, Double Honk, Congers and Slack, Mr Tulip had an unerring way of finding the man who was retailing curry powder at what worked out as six hundred dollars a pound. It was so --ing embarrassing.

Currently he was experimenting with the whole range of recreational chemicals available to Ankh-Morpork's troll population, because at least when dealing with trolls Mr Tulip had a moderate chance of outsmarting somebody. In theory Slab and Honk shouldn't have any effect on the human brain, apart from maybe dissolving it. Mr Tulip was hanging in there. He'd tried normality once and hadn't liked it.

Mr Pin sighed again. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's feed the geek,'

In Ankh-Morpork it is very hard to watch without being watched in turn, and the two furtive watchers were indeed under careful observation.

They were being watched by a small dog, variously coloured but mainly a rusty grey. Occasionally it scratched itself, with a noise like someone trying to shave a wire brush.

There was a piece of string around its neck. This was attached to another piece of string or, rather, to a length made up of pieces of string inexpertly knotted together.

The string was being held in the hand of a man. At least, such might be deduced from the fact that it disappeared into the same pocket of the grubby coat as one sleeve, which presumably had an arm in it, and theoretically therefore a hand on the end.

It was a strange coat. It stretched from the pavement almost to the brim of the hat above it, which was shaped rather like a sugar loaf. There was a suggestion of grey hair around the join. One arm burrowed in the suspicious depths of a pocket and produced a cold sausage.

'Two men spyin' on the Patrician,' said the dog. 'An interestin' fing.'

'Bugrem,' said the man, and broke the sausage into two democratic halves.

William wrote a short paragraph about Patrician Visits The Bucket, and examined his notebook.

Amazing, really. He'd found no less than a dozen items for his news letter in only a day. It was astonishing what people would tell you if you asked them.

Someone had stolen one of the golden fangs of the statue of Offler the Crocodile God; he'd promised Sergeant Colon a drink for telling him that, but in any case had got some way towards payment by appending to his paragraph the sentence: The Watch are Mightily in Pursuit of the Wrongdoer, and are Confident of Apprehen,'ion at an Early Juncture.'

He was not entirely sure about this, although Sergeant Colon had looked very sincere when he said it.

The nature of truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to 'own up' and some habits are hard to break if they've been beaten in hard enough. And Lord de Worde had inclined to the old proverb that, as you bend the twig, so grows the tree. William had not been a particularly flexible

twig. Lord de Worde had not, himself, been a violent man. He'd merely employed them. Lord de Worde, as far as William could recall, had no great enthusiasm for anything that involved touching people.

Anyway, William always told himself, he was no good at making things up; anything that wasn't the truth simply unravelled for him. Even little white lies, like 'I shall definitely have the money by the end of the week', always ended in trouble. That was 'telling stories', a sin in the de Worde compendium that was worse than lying; it was trying to make lies interesting.

So William de Worde told the truth, out of cosmic self defence. He'd found a hard truth less hard than an easy lie.

There had been rather a good fight in the Mended Drum. William was very pleased with that one: 'Whereupon Brezock the Barbarian picked up a table and delivered a blow to Moltin the Snatcher, who in his turn seized hold of the Chandeliers and swung thereon, the while crying, "Take that, thou B*st*rd that you are!!!", at which juncture, a ruckus commenced and 5 or 6 people were hurt.'

He took it all down to the Bucket.

Gunilla read it with interest; it seemed to take very little time for the dwarfs to set it up in type.

And it was odd, but...

... once it was in type, all the letters so neat and regular...

... it looked more real.

Boddony, who seemed to be second in command of the print room, squinted at the columns of type over Goodmountain's shoulders.

'Hmm,' he said.

'What do you think?' said William.

'Looks a bit... grey,' said the dwarf. 'All the type bunched up. Looks like a book,'

'Well, that's all right, isn't it?' said William. Looking like a book sounded like a good thing.

'Maybe you want it more sort of spaced out?' said Gunilla.

William stared at the printed page. An idea crept over him. It seemed to evolve from the page itself.

'How about,' he said, 'if we put a little title on each piece?'

He picked up a scrap of paper and doodled: 5,'6 Hurt in Tavern Brawl.

Boddony read it solemnly. 'Yes,' he said eventually. That looks... suitable. .' He passed the paper across the table.

'What do you call this news sheet?' he said.

'I don't,' said William.

'You've got to call it something,' said Boddony. 'What do you put at the top?'

'Generally something like "To my Lord the..." ' William began. Boddony shook his head.

'You can't put that,' he said. 'You want something a bit more general. More snappy.'

'How about "Ankh-Morpork Items"?' said William. 'Sorry, but I'm not much good at names.'

Gunilla pulled his little hod out of his apron and selected some letters from one of the cases on the table. He screwed them together, inked them, and rolled a sheet of paper over them.

William read: Ankh-Morpork times.

'Messed that up a bit. Wasn't paying attention,' muttered Gunilla, reaching for the type. William stopped him.

'I don't know,' he said. 'Er. Leave it as it is... just make it a bigger T and a smaller i.'

'That's it, then,' said Gunilla. 'All done. All right, lad? How many copies do you want?'

'Er... twenty? Thirty?'

'How about a couple of hundred?' Gunilla nodded at the dwarfs, who set to work. 'It's hardly worth going to press for less.'

'Good grief! I can't imagine there's enough people in the city that'd pay five dollars!'

'All right, charge 'em half a dollar. Then it'll be fifty dollars for us and the same for you.'

'My word! Really?' William stared at the beaming dwarf. 'But I've still got to sell them,' he said. 'It's not as though they're cakes in a shop. It's not like--'

He sniffed. His eyes began to water.

'Oh dear,' he said. 'We're going to have another visitor. I know that smell.'

'What smell?' said the dwarf.

The door creaked open.

There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odour so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. After some minutes in its presence, wax would trickle out of people's ears and their hair would begin to bleach.

It had developed to such a degree that it now led a semi-independent life of its own, and often went to the theatre by itself, or read small volumes of poetry. Ron was outclassed by his Smell.

Foul Ole Ron's hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, but from one pocket issued a length of string, or rather a great many lengths of string tied into one length. The other end was attached to a small dog of the greyish persuasion. It was possibly a terrier. It walked with a limp and also in a kind of oblique fashion, as though it was trying to insinuate its way through the world. It walked like a dog who has long ago learned that the world contains more thrown boots than meaty bones. It walked like a dog that was prepared, at any moment, to run.

It looked up at William with crusted eyes and said: 'Woof.'

William felt that he ought to stand up for mankind.

'Sorry about the smell,' he said. Then he stared at the dog.

'What's this smell you keep on about?' said Gunilla. The rivets on his helmet were beginning to tarnish.

'It, er, belongs to Mr... er... Ron,' said William, still giving the dog a suspicious look. 'People say it's glandular.'

He was sure he'd seen the dog before. It was always in the corner of the picture, as it were - ambling through the streets, or just sitting on a corner, watching the world go by.

'What does he want?' said Gunilla. 'D'you think he wants us to print something?'

'Shouldn't think so,' said William. 'He's a sort of beggar. Only they won't let him in the Beggars' Guild any more.'

'He isn't saying anything.'

'Well, usually he just stands there until people give him something to go away. Er... you've heard of things like the Welcome Wagon, where various neighbours and traders greet newcomers to an area?'

'Yes.'

'Well, this is the dark side.'

Foul Ole Ron nodded and held out a hand, ' 's'right, Mister Push. Don't try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, I told 'em, I ain't slanging the gentry, bugrit. Millennium hand and shrimp. Dang.'

'Woof.'

William glared at the dog again.

'Growl,' it said.

Gunilla scratched somewhere in the recesses of his beard.

'One thing I already noticed about this here town,' he said, 'is that people'll buy practically anything off a man in the street.'

He picked up a handful of the news sheets, still damp from the press.

'Can you understand me, mister?' he said.

'Bugrit.'

Gunilla nudged William in the ribs. 'Does that mean yes or no, d'you think?'

'Probably yes.'

'Okay. Well, see here now, if you sell these things at, oh, twenty pence each, you can keep--'

'Hey, you can't sell it that cheap,' said William.

'Why not?'

'Why? Because... because...ecause, well, anyone will be able to read it, that's why!'

'Good, 'cos that means anyone'll be able to pay twenty pence,' said Gunilla calmly. There's lots more poor folk than rich folk and it's easier to get money out of 'em.' He grimaced at Foul Ole Ron. 'This may seem a strange question,' he said, 'but have you got any friends?'

'I told 'em! I told 'em! Bugrem!'

'Probably yes,' said William. 'He hangs put with a bunch of... er... unfortunates who live under one of the bridges. Well, not exactly "hangs out". More "droops".'

'Well now,' said Gunilla, waving the copy of the Times at Ron, 'you can tell them that if they can sell these to people for twenty pence each, I'll let you keep one nice shiny penny.'

'Yeah? And you can put yer nice shiny penny where the sun don't shine,' said Ron.

'Oh, so you--' Gunilla began.

William laid a hand on his arm. 'Sorry, just a minute-- What was that you said, Ron?' he said.

'Bugrit,' said Foul Ole Ron.

It had sounded like Ron's voice and it had seemed to come from the general area of Ron's face, it was just that it had demonstrated a coherence you didn't often get.

'You want more than a penny?' said William carefully.

'Got to be worth five pence a time,' said Ron. More or less.

For some reason William's gaze was dragged down to the small grey dog. It returned it amiably and said, 'Woof?'

He looked back up again. 'Are you all right, Foul Ole Ron?' he said.

'Gottle o' geer, gottle o' geer,' said Ron mysteriously.

'All right... two pence,' said Gunilla.

'Four,' Ron seemed to say. 'But let's not mess about, okay? One dollar per thirty?'

'It's a deal,' said Goodmountain, who spat on his hand and would have held it out to seal the contract if William hadn't gripped it urgently.

'Don't.'

'What's wrong?'

William sighed. 'Have you got any horribly disfiguring diseases?'

'No!'

'Do you want some?'

'Oh.' Gunilla lowered his hand. 'You tell your friends to get round here right now, okay?' he said. He turned to William.

'Trustworthy, are they?'

'Well... sort of,' said William. 'It's probably not a good idea to leave paint thinners around.'

Outside, Foul Ole Ron and his dog ambled down the street. And the strange thing was that a conversation was going on,

even though there was technically only one person there.

'See? I told you. You just let me do the talkin', all right?'

'Bugrit.'

'Right. You stick with me and you won't go far wrong.'

'Bugrit.'

'Really? Well, I s'pose that'll have to do. Bark, bark.'

Twelve people lived under the Misbegot Bridge and in a life of luxury, although luxury is not hard to achieve when you define it as something to eat at least once a day and especially when you have such a broad definition of 'something to eat'. Technically they were beggars, although they seldom had to beg. Possibly they were thieves, although they only took what had been thrown away, usually by people hurrying to be out of their presence.

Outsiders considered that the leader of the group was Coffin Henry, who would have been the city's champion expectorator if anyone else had wanted the title. But the group had the true democracy of the voteless. There was Arnold Sideways, whose lack of legs only served to give him an extra advantage in any pub fight, where a man with good teeth at groin height had it all his own way. And if it wasn't for the duck whose presence on his head he consistently denied, the Duck Man would have been viewed as well-spoken and educated and as sane as the next man. Unfortunately, the next man was Foul Ole Ron.

The other eight people were Altogether Andrews.

Altogether Andrews was one man with considerably more than one mind. In a rest state, when he had no particular problem to confront, there was no sign of this except a sort of background twitch and flicker as his features passed randomly under the control of, variously, Jossi, Lady Hermione, Little Sidney, Mr Viddle, Curly, the Judge and Tinker; there was also Burke, but the crew had only ever seen Burke once and never wanted to again, so the other seven personalities kept him buried. Nobody in the body answered to the name of Andrews. In the opinion of the Duck Man, who was probably the best in the crew at thinking in a straight line, Andrews had probably been some innocent and hospitable person of a psychic disposition who had simply been overwhelmed by the colonizing souls.

Only among the gentle crew under the bridge could a consensus person like Andrews find an accommodating niche. They'd welcomed him, or them, to the fraternity around the smoky fire. Someone who wasn't the same person for more than five minutes at a time could fit right in.

One other thing that united the crew - although probably nothing could unite Altogether Andrews - was a readiness to believe that a dog could talk. The group around the smouldering fire believed they had heard a lot of things talk, such as walls. A dog was easy by comparison. Besides, they respected the fact that Gaspode had the sharpest mind of the lot and never drank anything that corroded the container.

'Let's try this again, shall we?' he said. 'If you sell thirty of the things, you'll get a dollar. A whole dollar. Got that?'

'Bugrit.'

'Quack.'

'Haaargghhh... gak!'

'How much is that in old boots?'

Gaspode sighed. 'No, Arnold. You can use the money to buy as many old--'

There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews, and the rest of the crew went very still. When Altogether Andrews was quiet for a while you never knew who he was going to be.

There was always the possibility that it would be Burke.

'Can I ask a question?' said Altogether Andrews, in a rather hoarse treble.

The crew relaxed. That sounded like Lady Hermione. She wasn't a problem.

'Yes... your ladyship?' said Gaspode.

'This wouldn't be... work, would it?'

The mention of the word sent the rest of the crew into a fugue of stress and bewildered panic.

'Haaaruk... gak!'

'Bugrit!'

'Quack!'

'No, no, no,' said Gaspode hurriedly. 'It's hardly work, is it? Just handing out stuff and takin' money? Doesn't sound like work to me.'

'I ain't working!' shouted Coffin Henry. I am socially inadequate in the whole area of doin' anything!'

'We do not work,' said Arnold Sideways. 'We is gentlemen of les-u-are.'

'Ahem,' said Lady Hermione.

'Gentlemen and ladies of les-u-are,' said Arnold gallantly.

'This is a very nasty winter. Extra money would certainly come in handy,' said the Duck Man.

'What for?' said Arnold.

'We could live like kings on a dollar a day, Arnold,'

'What, you mean someone'd chop our heads off?'.

'No, I--'

'Someone'd climb up inside the privy with a red-hot poker and--'

'No! I meant--'

'Someone'd drown us in a butt of wine?'

'No, that's dying like kings, Arnold,'

'I shouldn't reckon there's a butt of wine big enough that you couldn't drink your way out of it,' muttered Gaspode. 'So, what about it, masters? Oh, and mistress, o' course. Shall I-- shall Ron tell that lad we're up for it?'

'Indeed,'

'Okay,'

'Gawwwark... pt!'

'Bugrit!'

They looked at Altogether Andrews. His lips moved, his face flickered. Then he held up five democratic fingers.

'The ayes have it,' said Gaspode.

Mr Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. At least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. All the others were just job skills.

Mr Tulip's vices were also limitless, but he owned up to cheap aftershave because a man has to drink something. The drugs didn't count, if only because the only time he'd ever got real ones was when they'd robbed a horse doctor and he'd taken a couple of big pills that had made every vein in his body stand out like a purple hosepipe.

The pair were not thugs. At least they did not see themselves as thugs. Nor were they thieves. At least they never thought of themselves as thieves. They did not think of themselves as assassins. Assassins were posh and had rules. Pin and Tulip - the New Firm, as Mr Pin liked to refer to themselves - did not have rules.

They thought of themselves as facilitators. They were men who made things happen, men who were going places.

It has to be added that when one says 'they thought' it means 'Mr Pin thought'. Mr Tulip used his head all the time, from a distance of about eight inches, but he was not, except in one or two unexpected areas, a man given much to using his brain. On the whole, he left Mr Pin to do the polysyllabic cogitation.

Mr Pin, on the other hand, was not very good at sustained, mindless violence, and admired the fact that Mr Tulip had an apparently bottomless supply. When they had first met, and had recognized in each other the qualities that would make their partnership greater than the sum of its parts, he'd seen that Mr Tulip was not, as he appeared to the rest of the world, just another nutjob. Some negative qualities can reach a pitch of perfection that changes their very nature, and Mr Tulip had turned anger into an art.

It was not anger at anything. It was just pure, platonic anger from somewhere in the reptilian depths of the soul, a fountain of never-ending red-hot grudge; Mr Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a spanner. For Mr Tulip, anger was the ground state of being. Pin had occasionally wondered what had happened to the man to make him as angry as that, but to Tulip the past was another country with very, very well-guarded borders. Sometimes Mr Pin heard him screaming at night.

It was quite hard to hire Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. You had to know the right people. To be more accurate, you had to know the wrong people, and you got to know them by hanging around a certain kind of bar and surviving, which was kind of a first test. The wrong people, of course, would not know Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. But they would know a man. And that man would, in a general sense, express the guarded opinion that he might know how to get in

touch with men of a Pin-like or Tulipolitic disposition. He could not exactly recall much more than that at the moment, due to memory loss brought on by lack of money. Once cured, he might indicate in a general kind of way another address where you would meet, in a dark corner, a man who would tell you emphatically that he had never heard of anyone called Tulip or Pin. He would also ask where you would be at, say, nine o'clock tonight.

And then you would meet Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. They would know you had money, they would know you had something on your mind and, if you had been really stupid, they now knew your address.

And it had therefore come as a surprise to the New Firm that their latest client had come straight to them. This was worrying. It was also worrying that he was dead. Generally the New Firm had no problem with corpses, but they didn't like them to speak.

Mr Slant coughed. Mr Pin noticed that this created a small cloud of dust. For Mr Slant was a zombie.

'I must reiterate,' said Mr Slant, 'that I am a mere facilitator in this matter--'

'Just like us,' said Mr Tulip.

Mr Slant indicated with a look that he would never in a thousand years be just like Mr Tulip, but he said: 'Quite so. My clients wished me to find some... experts. I found you. I gave you some sealed instructions. You have accepted the contract. And I understand that as a result of this you have made certain... arrangements. I do not know what those arrangements are. I will continue not to know what those arrangements are. My relationship with you is, as they say, on the long finger. Do you understand me?'

'What --ing finger is that?' said Mr Tulip. He was getting jittery in the presence of the dead lawyer.

'We see each other only when necessary, we say as little as possible.'

'I hate --ing zombies,' said Mr Tulip. That morning he'd tried something he'd found in a box under the sink. If it cleaned drains, he'd reasoned, that meant it was chemical. Now he was getting strange messages from his large intestine.

'I am sure the feeling is mutual,' said Mr Slant.

'I understand what you're saying,' said Mr Pin. 'You're saying that if this goes bad you've never seen us in your life--'

'Ahem...' Mr Slant coughed.

'Your afterlife,' Mr Pin corrected himself. 'Okay. What about the money?'

'As requested, thirty thousand dollars for special expenses will be included in the sum already agreed.'

'In gems. Not cash.'

'Of course. And my clients would hardly write you a cheque. It will be delivered tonight. And perhaps I should mention one other matter.' His dry fingers shuffled through the dry papers in his dry briefcase, and he handed Mr Pin a folder.