Making Money

said in the slow, careful voice people use for talking to mental patients, the elderly, and the dangerously armed.
    “A funny turn? I did something funny?” He raised his head from the pillow, and sniffed.
    “You are wearing a necklace of garlic, Miss Drapes?” he said.
    “It’s…a precaution,” said Miss Drapes, looking guilty, “against…colds…yes, colds. You can’t be too careful. How do you feel, in yourself?”
    Mr. Bent hesitated. He wasn’t certain how he felt. He wasn’t certain who he was. There seemed to be a hole inside. There was no himself in himself.
    “What has been happening, Miss Drapes?”
    “Oh, you don’t want to worry about all that,” said Miss Drapes, with fragile cheerfulness.
    “I believe I do, Miss Drapes.”
    “The doctor said you weren’t to get excited, Mr. Bent.”
    “I, to the best of my knowledge, have never been excited in my life, Miss Drapes.”
    The woman nodded. Alas, the statement was so easy to believe.
    “Well, you know Mr. Lipwig? They say he stole all the gold out of the vault! The—”
    —story unfolded. It was, in many places, speculations, both new and secondhand, and because Miss Drapes was a regular reader of the Tanty Bugle, it was recounted in the style and language in which tales of ’orrible murder are discussed.
    What shocked her was the way the man just lay there. Once or twice he asked her to go back over a detail, but his expression never changed. She tried to add excitement, she painted the walls with exclamation marks, and he did not budge.
    “—and now he’s banging up in the Tanty,” Miss Drapes said. “They say he will be hangéd by the neck until dead. I think hangéd is worse than just being hanged.”
    “But they cannot find the gold…” whispered Mavolio Bent, leaning back against the pillow.
    “That’s right! Some say it has been spirited away by dire accomplices!” said Miss Drapes. “They say informations have been laid against him by Mr. Lavish.”
    “I am a damned man, Miss Drapes, judged and damned,” said Mr. Bent, staring at the wall.
    “You, Mr. Bent? That’s no way to talk! You, who’ve never made a mistake?”
    “But I have sinned. Oh, indeed I have! I have worshiped false idols!”
    “Well, sometimes you can’t get real ones,” said Miss Drapes, patting his hand and wondering if she should call someone. “Look, if you want absolution, I understand the Ionians are doing two sins for one this week—”
    “It’s caught me,” he whispered. “Oh dear, Miss Drapes. There is something rising inside that wants to get out!”
    “Don’t you worry, we’ve got a bucket,” said Miss Drapes.
    “No! You should go, now! This will be horrible!”
    “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Bent,” said Miss Drapes, a study in determination. “You’re just having a funny turn, that’s all.”
    “Ha,” said Mr. Bent. “Ha…ha…haha…” The laugh climbed up his throat like something from the crypt.
    His skinny body went rigid and arced as if it was rising from the mattress. Miss Drapes flung herself across the bed, but she was too late. The man’s hand rose, trembling, and extended a finger toward the wardrobe.
    “Here we are again!” Bent screamed.
    The lock clicked. The doors swung open.
    In the cupboard was a pile of ledgers and something…shrouded. Mr. Bent opened his eyes and looked up into those of Miss Drapes.
    “I brought it with me,” he said, as if talking to himself. “I hated it so much but I brought it with me. Why? Who runs the circus?”
    Miss Drapes was silent. All she knew was that she was going to follow this to the end. After all, she’d spent the night in a man’s bedroom, and Lady Deirdre Waggon had a lot to say about that. She was technically a Ruined Woman, which seemed unfair given that, even more technically, she wasn’t.
    She watched as Mr. Bent…changed. He had the decency to do so with his back turned, but she closed her eyes anyway. Then she remembered that she was Ruined, and so there wasn’t much point, was there?
    She opened them again.
    “Miss Drapes?” said Mr. Bent dreamily.
    “Yes, Mr. Bent?” she said through chattering teeth.
    “We need to find…a bakery.”
    Cranberry and his associate stepped into the room, and stopped dead. This was not according to the plan.
    “And possibly a ladder,” said Mr. Bent. He pulled a strip of pink rubber from his pocket, and bowed.

CHAPTER 12

    No help from on high Drumknott reports A possible jape Mr. Fusspot