Making Money (33 page)

The glow in the golem’s eyes faded for a moment and then grew brighter.

“Miss Dearheart.”

“Yes, she was here this morning.”

“A Lady.”

“She’s my fiancée, Gladys. She will be here quite a lot, I expect.”

“Fiancée,” said Gladys. “Ah, Yes. I Am Reading Twenty Tips To Make Your Wedding Go With A Swing.”

Gladys’s eyes dimmed. She turned around and plodded toward the stairs.

Moist felt like a heel. Of course, he was a heel. But that didn’t make feeling like one feel any better. On the other hand, shedamn, he…it…Gladys was the fault of misplaced female solidarity. What could he hope to achieve against that? Adora Belle would have to do something about it.

He was aware that one of the senior clerks was hovering politely.

“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”

“What do you want us to do, sir?”

“What’s your name?”

“Spittle, sir. Robert Spittle.”

“Why are you asking me, Bob?”

“Because the chairman goes woof, sir. Safes need locking up. So does the ledger room. Mr. Bent had all the keys. It’s Robert, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Are there any spare keys?”

“There might be in the chairman’s office, sir,” said Spittle.

“Look…Robert, I want you to go home and get a good night’s sleep, okay? And I’ll find the keys and turn every lock I can find. I’m sure Mr. Bent will be with us tomorrow, but if he’s not, I’ll call a meeting of the senior clerks. I mean, hah, you must know how it all works!”

“Well, yes. Of course. Only…well…but…” The clerk’s voice faded into silence.

But there’s no Mr. Bent, thought Moist. And he delegated with the same ease that oysters tango. What the hell are we going to do?

“There’s people here? So much for banker’s hours,” said a voice from the doorway. “In trouble again I hear.”

It was Adora Belle, and of course she meant “Hello! It’s good to see you.”

“You look stunning,” said Moist.

“Yes, I know,” said Adora Belle. “What’s happening? The cabbie told me all the staff had walked out of your bank.”

Later Moist thought: That was when it all went wrong. You have to leap on the stallion of rumor before he’s out of the yard, so that you might be able to pull on the reins. You should have thought: What did it look like, with staff running out of the bank? You should have run to the Times office. You should have got in the saddle and turned it right around, there and then.

But Adora Belle did look stunning. Besides, all that had happened was that a member of staff had a funny turn and left the building. What could anyone make of that?

And the answer, of course, was: Anything they wanted to.

He was aware of someone else behind him.

“Mr. Lipwig, thur?”

Moist turned. It was even less fun looking at Igor when you’d just been looking at Adora Belle.

“Igor, this is really not the time—” Moist began.

“I know I’m not thupothed to come upthairth, thur, but Mr. Clamp thayth he hath finithed hith drawing. It ith very good.”

“What was all that about?” said Adora Belle. “I think I nearly got two of the words.”

“Oh, there’s a man down in the forni—the cellar, who is designing a dollar note for me. Paper money, in fact.”

“Really? I’d love to see that.”

“You would?”

I
T WAS TRULY
wonderful. Moist looked at the back and the front of the dollar-note designs. Under Igor’s brilliant white lights they looked rich as plum pudding and more complicated than a dwarf contract.

“We’re going to make so much money,” he said aloud. “Wonderful job, Owls—Mr. Clamp!”

“I’m going to hold on to the Owlswick,” said the artist nervously. “It’s the Jenkins that matters, after all.”

“Well, yes,” said Moist, “there must be dozens of Owlswicks around.” He looked at Hubert, who was on a stepladder and peering hopelessly at the tubing.

“How’s it going, Hubert?” he said. “The money’s still rushing around okay, is it?”

“What? Oh, fine. Fine. Fine,” said Hubert, almost knocking over the ladder in his haste to get down. He looked at Adora Belle with an expression of uncertain dread.

“This is Adora Belle Dearheart, Hubert,” said Moist, in case the man was about to flee. “She is my fiancée. She’s a woman,” he added, in view of the worried look.

Adora Belle held out her hand and said: “Hello, Hubert.”

Hubert stared.

“It’s okay to shake hands, Hubert,” said Moist carefully. “Hubert’s an economist. That’s like an alchemist, but less messy.”

“So you know how the money moves around, do you, Hubert?” said Adora Belle, shaking an unresisting hand.

At last the notion of speech dawned on Hubert.

“I welded one thousand and ninety-seven joints,” he said, “and blew the law of diminishing returns.”

“I shouldn’t think anyone’s ever done that before,” said Adora Belle.

Hubert brightened up. This was easy!

“We are not doing anything wrong, you know!” he said.

“I’m sure you aren’t,” said Adora Belle, trying to pull her hand away.

“It can keep track of every dollar in the city, you know. The possibilities are endless! But, but, but, um, of course we’re not upsetting things in any way!”

“I’m very glad to hear it, Hubert,” said Adora Belle, tugging harder.

“Of course we are having teething troubles! But everything is being done with immense care! Nothing has been lost because we’ve left a valve open or anything like that!”

“How intriguing!” said Adora Belle, bracing her left hand on Hubert’s shoulder and wrenching the other one free.

“We have to go, Hubert,” said Moist. “Keep up the good work, though. I’m very proud of you.”

“You are?” said Hubert. “Cosmo said I was insane, and wanted Auntie to sell the Glooper for scrap!”

“Typical hidebound, old-fashioned thinking,” said Moist. “This is the Century of the Anchovy. The future belongs to men like you, who can tell us how everything works.”

“It does?” said Hubert.

“You mark my words,” said Moist, ushering Adora Belle firmly toward the distant exit.

When they were gone, Hubert sniffed the palm of his hand and shivered.

“They were nice people, weren’t they,” he said.

“Yeth, marthter.”

Hubert looked up at the glittering, trickling pipes of the Glooper, faithfully mirroring in its ebbing and flowing the tides of money around the city.

Just one blow could rattle the world. It was a terrible responsibility.

Igor joined him. They stood in a silence broken only by the sloshing of commerce.

“What shall I do, Igor?” said Hubert.

“In the Old Country we have a thaying,” Igor volunteered.

“A what?”

“A thaying. We thay, ‘If you don’t want the monthter you don’t pull the lever.’”

“You don’t think I’ve gone mad, do you, Igor?”

“Many great men have been conthidered mad, Mr. Hubert. Even Dr. Hanth Forvord wath called mad. But I put it to you: could a madman have created a revolutionary living-brain extractor?”

“I
S
H
UBERT QUITE
…normal?” said Adora Belle, as they climbed the marble staircase toward dinner.

“By the standards of obsessive men who don’t get out into the sunlight?” said Moist. “Pretty normal, I’d say.”

“But he acted as if he’d never seen a woman before!”

“He’s just not used to things that don’t come with a manual,” said Moist.

“Hah,” said Adora Belle, “why is it only men that get like that?”

Earns a tiny wage working for golems, thought Moist. Puts up with graffiti and smashed windows because of golems. Camps out in wilderness, argues with powerful men. All for golems. But he didn’t say anything, because he’d read the manual.

They had reached the managerial floor. Adora Belle sniffed. “Smell that? Isn’t that just wonderful?” she said. “Wouldn’t it turn a rabbit into a carnivore?”

“Sheep’s head,” said Moist gloomily. “Only to make the broth,” said Adora Belle. “All the soft wobbly bits get taken out first. Don’t worry. You’ve just been put off by the old joke, that’s all.”

“What old joke?”

“Oh, come on! A boy goes into a butcher’s shop and says, ‘Mum says can we please have a sheep’s head and you’re to leave the eyes in ’cos it’s got to see us through the week.’ You don’t get it? It’s using see in the sense of to last and also in the sense of, well, to see…”

“I just think it’s a bit unfair to the sheep, that’s all.”

“Interesting,” said Adora Belle. “You eat nice, anonymous lumps of animals but think it’s unfair to eat the other bits? You think the head goes off thinking, ‘At least he didn’t eat me?’ Strictly speaking, the more we eat of an animal the happier its species should be, since we wouldn’t need to kill so many of them.”

Moist pushed open the double doors, and the air was full of wrongness again.

There was no Mr. Fusspot. Normally he’d be waiting in his in tray, ready to greet Moist with a big, slobbery welcome. But the tray was empty.

The room seemed larger, too, and this was because it also contained no Gladys.

There was a little blue collar on the floor. The smell of cooking filled the air.

Moist ran down the passage to the kitchen, where the golem was standing solemnly by the stove, watching the rattling lid of a very large pot. Grubby foam slid down and dripped onto the stove.

Gladys turned when she saw Moist.

“I Am Cooking Your Dinner, Mr. Lipwig.”

The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist’s inner eyeballs.

“Could you just put the ladle down and step away from the pot, please?” said Adora Belle, suddenly beside him.

“I Am Cooking Mr. Lipwig’s Dinner,” said Gladys, with a touch of defiance. The scummy bubbles, it seemed to Moist, were getting bigger.

“Yes, and it looks as if it’s nearly done,” said Adora Belle. “So I Would Like To See It, Gladys.”

There was silence.

“Gladys?”

In one movement the golem handed her the ladle and stood back, half a ton of living clay moving as lightly and silently as smoke.

Cautiously, Adora Belle lifted the pot’s lid and plunged the ladle into the seething mass.

Something scratched at Moist’s boot. He looked down into the worried goldfish eyes of Mr. Fusspot.

Then he looked back at what was rising out of the pot, and realized that it was at least thirty seconds since he’d last drawn a breath.

Peggy came bustling in. “Oh, there you are, you naughty boy!” she said, picking up the little dog. “Would you believe it, he got all the way down to the cold room!” She looked around, brushing hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Gladys, I did tell you to move it onto the cool plate when it started to thicken!”

Moist looked at the rising ladle, and in the flood of relief various awkward observations scrambled to be heard.

I’ve been in this job less than a week. The man I really depend on has run away screaming. I’m going to be exposed as a criminal. That’s a sheep’s head…

And—thank you for the thought, Aimsbury—it’s wearing sunglasses.

Cribbins fights his teeth
Theological advice
“That’s what I call entertainment”
Mr. Fusspot’s magic toy
Sir Joshua’s books
Breaking into banking
The minds of policemen
What about the gold?
Cribbins warms up
The return of Professor Flead, unfortunately
Moist counts his blessings
A werewolf revealed
Splot: it does you good
Time to pray

“I
’M AFRAID
I have to close the office now, Reverend,” the voice of Ms. Houser broke into Cribbins’s dreams. “We open up again at nine o’clock tomorrow,” it added hopefully.

Cribbins opened his eyes. The warmth and the steady ticking of the clock had lulled him into a wonderful doze.