Making Money (21 page)

“Well, we could hire some golems, I suppose,” said the printer. “But I fear there are other difficulties less easy to overcome. Do you realize that if you start printing money then you will get forgeries? It’s not worth the trouble, maybe, for a 20p stamp, but if you want, say, a ten-dollar note…?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Probably, yes. Problems?”

“Big ones, my friend. Oh, we can help. Decent linen paper with a pattern of raised threads, watermarks, a good spirit ink, change the plates often to keep it sharp, little tricks with the design…and make it complex, too. That’s important. Yes, we could do it for you. They will be expensive. I strongly suggest you find an engraver as good as this…”

Mr. Spools unlocked one of the lower drawers of his desk and tossed a sheet of 50p green “Tower of Art” stamps onto the blotter. Then he handed Moist a large magnifying glass.

“That’s top-quality paper, of course,” the printer said as Moist stared.

“You’re getting very good. I can see every detail,” Moist breathed, poring over the sheet.

“No,” said Spools, with some satisfaction. “In fact, you cannot. You might, though, with this.” He unlocked a cupboard and handed Moist a heavy brass microscope.

“He’s put in more detail than we did,” he said, as Moist focused. “It’s at the very limit of what metal and paper can be persuaded to do. It is, I declare, a work of genius. He would be your salvation.”

“Amazing,” said Moist. “Well, we’ve got to have him! Who does he work for now?”

“No one, Mr. Lipwig. He is in prison, awaiting the noose.”

“Owlswick Jenkins?”

“You testified against him, Mr. Lipwig,” said Spools mildly.

“Well…yes, but only to confirm that they were our stamps he was copying, and how much we might be losing! I didn’t expect he’d be hanged!”

“His lordship is always touchy when it’s a case of treason against the city, as he describes it. I think Jenkins was badly served by his lawyer. After all, his work made our stamps look like the real forgeries. You know, I got the impression the poor chap didn’t really realize what he was doing was wrong.”

Moist recalled the watery, frightened eyes and the expression of helpless puzzlement.

“Yes,” he said. “You may be right.”

“Could you perhaps use your influence with Vetinari to—”

“No. It wouldn’t work.”

“Ah? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Moist flatly.

“Well, you see, there’s only so much we can do. We can even number the bills automatically now. But the artwork must be of the finest kind. Oh dear. I’m sorry. I wish I could help. We owe you a great debt, Mr. Lipwig. So much official work is coming in now that we’d need the space in the Mint. My word, we’re practically the government’s printer!”

“Really?” said Moist. “That’s very…interesting.”

I
T RAINED UNGRACEFULLY.
The gutters gargled and tried to spit. Occasionally the wind caught the cascading overflow from the rooftops and slapped a sheet of water across the face of anyone who looked up. But this was not a night to look up. This was a night to scurry, bent double, for home.

Raindrops hit the windows of Mrs. Cake’s boardinghouse, specifically the one in the rear room occupied by Mavolio Bent, at the rate of twenty-seven a second, plus or minus fifteen percent.

Mr. Bent liked counting. You could trust numbers, except perhaps for pi, but he was working on that in his spare time and it was bound to give in sooner or later.

He sat on his bed, watching the numbers dance in his head. They’d always danced for him, even in the bad times. And the bad times had been so very bad. Now, perhaps, there were more ahead.

Someone knocked at his door. He said, “Come in, Mrs. Cake.”

The landlady pushed open the door.

“You always know it’s me, don’t you, Mr. Bent,” said Mrs. Cake, who was more than a trifle nervous about her best lodger. He paid his rent on time—exactly on time—and he kept his room scrupulously clean and, of course, he was a professional gentleman. All right, he had a haunted look about him and there was that odd business with him carefully adjusting the clock before he went to work every day, but she was prepared to put up with that. There was no shortage of lodgers in this crowded city, but clean ones who paid regularly and never complained about the food were thin enough on the ground to be worth cherishing, and if they put a strange padlock on their wardrobe, well, least said soonest mended.

“Yes, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. “I always know it’s you because there is a distinctive one-point-four seconds between the knocks.”

“Really? Fancy!” said Mrs. Cake, who rather liked the sound of distinctive. “I always say you’re the man for the adding up. Er…there is going to be three gentlemen downstairs asking after you…”

“When?”

“In about two minutes,” said Mrs. Cake.

Bent stood up in one unfolding moment, like a jack-in-the-box.

“Men? What will they be wearing?”

“Well, er, just, you know, clothes?” said Mrs. Cake uncertainly. “Black clothes. One of them will give me his card, but I won’t be able to read it because I’ll have my wrong spectacles on. Of course, I could go and put the right ones on, obviously, but I get such a headache if I don’t let a premonition go right. Er…and now you’re going to say, ‘Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake.’” She looked at him expectantly. “Sorry, but I had a premonition that I’d come up to tell you I had a premonition, so I thought I’d better. It’s a bit silly, but none of us can change how we’re made, I always say.”

“Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. Mrs. Cake gave him a grateful look before hurrying away.

Mr. Bent sat down again. Life with Mrs. Cake’s premonitions could get a little intricate at times, especially now they were getting recursive, but it was part of the Elm Street ethos that you were charitable toward the foibles of others in the hope of a similar attitude to your own. He liked Mrs. Cake, but she was wrong. You could change how you were made. If you couldn’t, there was no hope.

After a couple of minutes he heard the ring of the bell, the muted conversation, and went through the motions of surprise when she knocked on his door.

Bent inspected the visiting card.

“Mr. Cosmo? Oh. How strange. You had better send them up.” He paused, and looked around. Subdivision was rife in the city now. The room was exactly twice the size of the bed, and it was a narrow bed. Three people in here would have to know one another well. Four would know one another well whether they wanted to or not. There was a small chair, but Bent kept it on top of the wardrobe, out of the way.

“Perhaps just Mr. Cosmo,” he suggested.

The man was proudly escorted in a minute later.

“Well, this is a wonderful little hideaway, Mr. Bent,” Cosmo began. “So handy for, um—”

“Nearby places,” said Bent, lifting the chair off the wardrobe. “There you are, sir. I don’t often have visitors.”

“I’ll come straight to the point, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo, sitting down. “The directors do not like the, ha, direction things are going. I’m sure you don’t, either.”

“I could wish for them to be otherwise, sir, yes.”

“He should have held a director’s meeting!”

“Yes, sir, but bank rules say he needn’t do so for a week, I’m afraid.”

“He will ruin the bank!”

“We are, in fact, getting many new customers, sir.”

“You can’t possibly like the man? Not you, Mr. Bent?”

“He is easy to like, sir. But you know me, sir. I do not trust those who laugh too easily. The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth. He should not be in charge of your bank.”

“I like to think about it as our bank, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo generously, “because, in a very real way, it is ours.”

“You are too kind, sir,” said Bent, staring down at the floorboards visible through the hole in the cheap oilcloth which was itself laid bare, in a very real way, by the bald patch in the carpet which, in a very real way, was his.

“You joined us quite young, I believe,” Cosmo went on. “My father himself gave you a job as trainee clerk, didn’t he?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“He was very…understanding, my father,” said Cosmo. “And rightly so. No sense in dredging up the past.” He paused for a little while to let this sink in. Bent was intelligent, after all. No need to use a hammer when a feather would float down with as much effect.

“Perhaps you could find some way that will allow him to be removed from office without fuss or bloodshed? There must be something,” he prompted. “No one just steps out of nowhere. But people know even less about his past than they do about, for the sake of argument, yours.”

Another little reminder. Bent’s eye twitched.

“But Mr. Fusspot will still be chairman,” he mumbled, while the rain rattled on the glass.

“Oh yes. But I’m sure he will then be looked after by someone who is, shall we say, better capable of translating his little barks along more traditional lines?”

“I see.”

“And now I must be going,” said Cosmo, standing up. “I’m sure you have a lot of things to—” he looked around the barren room which showed no sign of real human occupation, no pictures, no books, no debris of living, and concluded: “—do?”

“I will go to sleep shortly,” said Mr. Bent.

“Tell me, Mr. Bent, how much do we pay you?” said Cosmo, glancing at the wardrobe.

“Forty-one dollars per month, sir,” said Bent.

“Ah, but of course you get wonderful job security.”

“So I had hitherto believed, sir.”

“I just wonder why you choose to live here?”

“I like the dullness, sir. It expects nothing of me.”

“Well, time to go,” said Cosmo, slightly faster than he really should. “I’m sure you can be of help, Mr. Bent. You have always been a great help. It would be such a shame if you could not be of help at this time.”

Bent stared at the floor. He was trembling.

“I speak for all of us when I say that we think of you as one of the family,” Cosmo went on. He rethought this sentence with reference to the peculiar charms of the Lavishes and added: “But in a good way.”

Jailbreak
The prospect of a kidney sandwich
The barber-surgeon’s knock
Suicide by paint, inadvisability of
Angels at one remove
Igor goes shopping
The use of understudies at a hanging, reflections on
Places suitable for putting a head
Moist awaits the sunshine
Tricks with your brain
“We’re going to need some bigger notes”
Fun with root vegetables
The lure of clipboards
The impossible cabinet

O
N THE ROOF
of the Tanty, the city’s oldest jail, Moist was more than moist. He’d reached the point where he was so wet that he should be approaching dryness from the other end.