Making Money

quickly.
    “You ain’t getting ’em,” said the warden. “The reason bein’, you buggers never bring ’em back!”
    “Okay,” said Moist. “C’mon, it’s freezing out here.”
    Bellyster grunted. He was not a happy man. He bent down, unlocked the shackles, and stood up with his hand once again on the man’s shoulder. His other hand thrust out, holding a clipboard.
    “Sign!” he commanded. Moist did.
    And then came the magic bit. It was why the paperwork was so important in the greasy world of turnkeys, thief-takers, and bang-beggars, because what really mattered at any one moment was habeas corpus: whose hand is on the collar? Who is responsible for this corpus?
    Moist had been through this before as the body in question, and knew the drill. The prisoner moved on a trail of paper. If he was found without a head, then the last person to have signed for a prisoner whose hat was not resting on his neck might well have to answer some stern questions.
    Bellyster pushed the prisoner forward and spake the time-honored words.
    “To you, sir!” he barked. “Habby arse corparse!”
    Moist thrust the clipboard back at him and laid his other hand on Owlswick’s other shoulder.
    “From you, sir!” he replied. “I habby his arse all right!”
    Bellyster grunted, and removed his hand. The deed was done, the law was observed, honor was satisfied, and Owlswick Jenkins—
    —looked up sadly at Moist, kicked him hard in the groin, and went off down the street like a hare.
    As Moist bent double, all he was aware of outside his little world of pain was the sound of Bellyster laughing himself silly and shouting, “Your bird, milord! You habbyed him all right! Ho yus!”

    MOIST HAD MANAGED to walk normally by the time he got back to the little room he rented from “I Don’t Know” Jack. He struggled into the golden suit, dried off the amor, bundled it into the bag, stepped out into the alley, and hurried back to the bank.
    It was harder to get it back in than it had been to get it out. The guards changed over at the same time as the staff left, and in the general milling about, Moist, wearing the tatty gray suit he wore when he wanted to stop being Moist von Lipwig and turn into the world’s most unmemorable man, had strolled out unquestioned. It was all in the mind: the night guards started guarding when everyone had gone home, right? So people going home were no problem, or, if they were, they were not mine.
    The guard who finally turned up to see who was struggling to unlock the front door gave him a bit of trouble until a second guard, who was capable of modest intelligence, pointed out that if the chairman wanted to get into the bank at midnight then that was fine. He was the damn boss, wasn’t he? Don’t you read the papers? See gold suit? And he had a key! So what if he had a big fat bag? He was coming in with it, right? If he was leaving with it, might be a different matter, ho ho, just my little joke, sir, sorry about that sir…
    It was amazing what you could do if you had the nerve to try, thought Moist, as he bid the men good-night. F’rinstance, he’d been so theatrically working the key in the lock because it was a Post Office key. He didn’t have one for the bank yet.
    Even putting the armor back in the locker was not a problem. The guards still walked set routes and the buildings were big and not very well lit. The locker room was empty and unregarded for hours at a time.
    A lamp was still alight in his new suite. Mr. Fusspot was snoring on his back in the middle of the in tray. A night-light was burning by the bedroom door. In fact there were two, and they were the red, smoldering eyes of Gladys. “Would You Like Me To Make You A Sandwich, Mr. Lipwig?”
    “No thank you, Gladys.”
    “It Would Be No Trouble. There Are Kidneys In The Ice Room.”
    “Thank you, but no, Gladys. I’m really not hungry,” said Moist, carefully shutting the door.
    Moist lay on the bed. Up here, the building was absolutely silent. He’d grown used to his bed in the Post Office, where there was always noise drifting up from the yard.
    But it was not the silence that kept him awake. He stared up at the ceiling and thought: Stupid, stupid, stupid! In a few hours there would be a shift change at the Tanty. People wouldn’t get too worried about the missing Owlswick until the hangman turned up, looking busy, and then there would be a nervous time when they decided who was going to go to the palace to see if