Making Money

I’m pretty certain it’s a fault in the crossover multivalve, right here.” He tapped a thin glass tube.
    “I don’t think the Glooper ith wrong, thur,” said Igor gloomily.
    “Igor, you realize that if the Glooper is right then I’ll have to believe there is practically no gold in our vaults?”
    “I believe the Glooper ith not in error, thur.” Igor took a dollar out of his pocket and walked over to the well.
    “If you would be tho good ath to watch the ‘lotht money’ column, thur?” he said, and dropped the coin into the dark waters. It gleamed for a moment as it sank beyond the pockets of mankind.
    In one corner of the Glooper’s convoluted glass tubing a small blue bubble drifted up, dawdling from side to side as it rose, and burst on the surface with a faint gloop.
    “Oh dear,” said Hubert.

    THE COMIC CONVENTION, when two people are dining at a table designed to accommodate twenty, is that they sit at either end. Moist and Adora Belle didn’t try it, but instead huddled together. Gladys stood at the other end, a napkin over one arm, her eyes two sullen glows.
    The sheep skull didn’t help Moist’s frame of mind at all. Peggy had arranged it as a centerpiece, with flowers around it, but the cool sunglasses were getting on his nerves.
    “How good is a golem’s hearing?” he said.
    “Extremely,” said Adora Belle. “Look, don’t worry, I have a plan.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “No, seriously. I’ll take her out tomorrow.”
    “Can’t you just—” Moist hesitated, and then mouthed: “ change the words in her head? ”
    “She’s a free golem!” said Adora Belle sharply. “How would you like it?”
    Moist remembered Owlswick and the turnip. “Not much,” he admitted.
    “With free golems you should change minds by persuasion. I think I can do that.”
    “Aren’t your golden golems due to arrive tomorrow?”
    “I hope so.”
    “It’s going to be a busy day. I’m going to launch paper money and you’re going to march gold through the streets.”
    “We couldn’t leave them underground. Anyway, they might not be golden. I’ll go and see Flead in the morning.”
    “We will go and see him. Together!”
    She patted Moist’s arm. “Never mind. There could be worse things than golden golems.”
    “I can’t think what they are,” said Moist, a phrase that he later regretted. “I’d like to take people’s minds off gold—”
    He stopped and stared at the sheep, which stared back in a calm enigmatic way. For some reason Moist felt it should have a saxophone and a little black beret.
    “Surely they looked in the vault,” he said aloud.
    “Who looked?” said Adora Belle.
    “That’s where he’d go. The one thing you can depend on, right? The foundation of all that’s worthy?”
    “Who’d go?”
    “Mr. Bent is in the gold vault!” said Moist, standing up so quickly that his chair fell over. “He’s got all the keys!”
    “Sorry? Is this the man who went haywire after making a simple mistake?”
    “That’s him. He’s got a Past.”
    “One of those with a capital P?”
    “Exactly. Come on, let’s get down there!”
    “I thought we were going to have a romantic evening?”
    “We will! Right after we get him out!”

    THE ONLY SOUND in the vaults was the tap-tap-tapping of Adora Belle’s foot.
    It was really annoying Moist as he paced up and down in front of the gold room, by the light of silver candlesticks that had been gracing the dining-room table.
    “I just hope Aimsbury is keeping the broth warm,” said Adora Belle. Tap-tap tap-tap.
    “Look,” said Moist. “Firstly, to open a safe like this you need to have a name like Fingers McGee, and secondly, these little lock picks aren’t up to the job.”
    “Well, let’s go and find Mr. McGee. He’s probably got the right sort.” Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
    “That won’t be any good because, thirdly, there’s probably no such person, and, fourthly, the vault is locked from the inside and I think he’s left the key in the lock, which is why none of these work.” He waved the key ring. “Fifthly, I’m trying to turn the key from this side with tweezers, an old trick which, it turns out, does not work!”
    “Good. So we can go back to the suite?” Tap-tap tap-tap.
    Moist peered again through the little spyhole in the door. A heavy plate had been slid across it on the inside, and he could just make out a glimmer of light around the edges. There was a lamp in there. What there was not, as far as he