Making Money

anyone.
    “Do you see?” said the chief cashier impatiently.
    “Hmm?” said Moist, watching the woman scurry away.
    “See here, you see?” said Bent, sitting down and pointing with what almost seemed like enthusiasm. “By means of these treadles I can move my desk to face anywhere in the room! It is the panopticon of my little world. Nothing is beyond my eye!” He pedaled furiously and the whole dais began to rumble around on its turntable. “And it can turn at two speeds, too, as you can see, because of this ingenious—”
    “I can see that almost nothing is beyond your eye,” said Moist, as Miss Drapes sat down. “But I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”
    Bent glanced at the in tray and gave a little shrug.
    “That pile? That will not take me long,” he said, setting the hand brake and standing up. “Besides, I think it important that you see what we are really about at this point, because I must now take you to meet Hubert.” He gave a little cough.
    “Hubert is not what you’re about?” Moist suggested, and then headed back to the main hall.
    “I’m sure he means well,” said Bent, leaving the words hanging in the air like a noose.

    OUT IN THE hall a dignified hush prevailed. A few people were at the counters, an old lady watched her little dog drink from the brass bowl inside the door, and any words that were uttered were spoken in a suitably hushed voice. Moist was all for money, it was one of his favorite things, but it didn’t have to be something you mentioned very quietly in case it woke up. If money talked in here, it whispered.
    The chief cashier opened a small and not very grand door behind the stairs and half hidden by some potted plants.
    “Please be careful, the floor is always wet here,” he said, and led the way down some wide steps into the grandest cellar Moist had ever seen. Fine stone vaulting supported beautifully tiled ceilings, stretching away into the gloom. There were candles everywhere, and in the middle distance something was sparkling and filling the colonnaded space with a blue-white glow.
    “This was the undercroft of the temple,” said Bent, leading the way.
    “Are you telling me this place doesn’t just look like a temple?”
    “It was built as a temple, yes, but never used as one.”
    “Really?” said Moist. “Which god?”
    “None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,” said Bent. “I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.”
    “He hoped one would turn up?”
    “Exactly, sir.”
    “Like blue-tits?” said Moist, peering around. “This place was a kind of celestial bird box?”
    Bent sighed. “You express yourself colorfully, Mr. Lipwig, but I suppose there is some truth there. It didn’t work, anyway. Then it got used as storage in case of siege, became an indoor market, and so on, and then Jocatello La Vice got the place when the city defaulted on a loan. It is all in the official history. Isn’t the fornication wonderful?”
    After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured: “Is it?”
    “Don’t you think so? There’s more here than anywhere else in the city, I’m told.”
    “Really?” said Moist, looking around nervously. “Er…do you have to come down here at some special time?”
    “Well, during banking hours usually, but we let groups in by appointment.”
    “You know,” said Moist, “I think this conversation has somehow got away from me…”
    Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling.
    “I refer to the wonderful vaulting,” he said. “The word derives from fornix, meaning ‘arch.’”
    “Ah! Yes? Right!” said Moist. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if not many people knew that.”
    And then Moist saw the Glooper, glowing among the arches.

CHAPTER 3

    The Glooper A proper Hubert
One very big mattress Some observations on tourism
Gladys makes a sandwich The Blind Letter Office
Mrs. Lavish’s posterity An ominous note Flight planning
An even more ominous note, and certainly
more ominous than the first note
Mr. Lipwig boards the wrong coach

    MOIST HAD SEEN glass being bent and blown, and marveled at the skill of the people who did it, marveled as only a man can marvel whose skill is only in bending words. Some of those geniuses had probably worked on this. But so had their counterparts from the hypothetical Other Side, glassblowers who had sold their souls to some molten god for the skill to blow