Going Postal

brains?”
    “We have a Code of Conduct, you know!” said a voice.
    All eyes except those belonging to Mr. Slant turned to the speaker, who had been fidgeting in his chair. Mr. Slant was a longtime student of the Patrician and knew that when he appeared to be a confused civil servant asking innocent questions, it was time to watch him closely.
    “I’m very glad to hear it, Mr.…?” Vetinari began.
    “Crispin Horsefry, my lord, and I don’t like the tone of your questioning!”
    For a moment it seemed that even the chairs themselves edged away from him. Mr. Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping, and diving toward obesity. He had acquired, at thirty, an impressive selection of chins, and now they wobbled with angry pride. *
    “I do have a number of other tones,” said Lord Vetinari calmly.
    Mr. Horsefry looked around at his colleagues, who were somehow, suddenly, on the distant horizon.
    “I just wanted to make it clear that we’ve done nothing wrong,” he muttered. “That’s all. There is a Code of Conduct.”
    “I’m sure I’ve not suggested that you have done anything wrong,” said Lord Vetinari. “However, I shall make a note of what you tell me.”
    He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and wrote, in a careful copperplate hand: “Code of Conduct.” The shifting of the paper exposed a file marked “Embezzlement.” The title was, of course, upside down to the rest of the group and, since presumably it was not intended to be read by them, they read it. Horsefry even twisted his head for a better view.
    “However,” Vetinari went on, “since the question of wrongdoing had been raised by Mr. Horsefry,” and he gave the young man a brief smile, “I am sure you are aware of talk suggesting a conspiracy among yourselves to keep rates high and competition nonexistent.” The sentence came out fast and smooth, like a snake’s tongue, and the swift flick on the end of it was: “And, indeed, some rumors about the death of young Mr. Dearheart last month.”
    A stir among the semicircle of men said that the shoe had been dropped. It wasn’t a welcome shoe, but it was a shoe they had been expecting and it had just gone thud .
    “An actionable falsehood,” said Slant.
    “On the contrary, Mr. Slant,” said Vetinari, “merely mentioning to you the existence of a rumor is not actionable, as I am sure you are aware.”
    “There is no proof that we had anything to do with the boy’s murder,” snapped Horsefry.
    “Ah, so you too have heard people saying he was murdered?” said Vetinari, his eyes on Reacher Gilt’s face. “These rumors just fly around, don’t they…”
    “My lord, people talk,” said Slant wearily. “But the facts are that Mr. Dearheart was alone in the tower. No one else went up or down. His safety line was apparently not clipped to anything. It was an accident, such as happens often. Yes, we know people say his fingers were broken, but with a fall of that distance, hitting the tower on the way, can that really be surprising? Alas, the Grand Trunk Company is not popular at the moment and so these scurrilous and baseless accusations are made. As Mr. Horsefry pointed out, there is no evidence whatsoever that what happened was anything more than a tragic accident. And, if I may speak frankly, what exactly is the purpose of calling us here? My clients are busy men.”
    Vetinari leaned back, closed his eyes, and placed his fingers together.
    “Let us consider a situation in which some keen and highly inventive men devise a remarkable system of communication,” he said. “What they have is a kind of passionate ingenuity, in large amounts. What they don’t have is money. They are not used to money. So they meet some…people, who introduce them to other people, friendly people, who for, oh, a forty-percent stake in the enterprise give them the much-needed cash and, very important, much fatherly advice and an introduction to a really good firm of accountants. And so they proceed, and soon money is coming in and money is going out but somehow, they learn, they’re not quite as financially stable as they think, and really do need more money. Well, this is all fine, because it’s clear to all that the basic enterprise is going to be a money tree one day, and does it matter if they sign over another fifteen percent? It’s just money. It’s not important in the way that shutter mechanisms are, is it? And then they find out that yes , it