Night Watch

like some kind of talisman. The point made erratic figure-eights in the air.
    “Drop it,” said Vimes. “I won’t ask again.”
    He sighed and pulled a short object out of his back pocket. It was black and tapered and made of leather filled with lead shot. He’d banned them in the modern Watch but he knew some officers had acquired them, and if he judged the man to be sensible then he didn’t know they’d got them. Sometimes an argument had to be ended quickly, and there were worse alternatives.
    He brought the blackjack down on the man’s arm with a certain amount of care. There was a whimper and the knife bounced off the cobbles.
    “We’ll leave your chum to sleep it off,” he said. “But you are coming to see the doctor, Henry. Are you coming quietly?”
    A few minutes later Dr. Lawn opened his back door and Vimes brushed past, the body over his shoulders.
    “You minister to all sorts, right?” said Vimes.
    “Within reason, but—”
    “This one’s an Unmentionable,” said Vimes. “Tried to kill me. Needs some medicine.”
    “Why’s he unconscious?” said the doctor. He was wearing a huge rubber apron, and rubber boots.
    “Didn’t want to take his medicine.”
    Lawn sighed, and with a hand that held a mop he waved Vimes toward an inner door. “Bring him right into the surgery,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m cleaning up after Mr. Salciferous in the waiting room.”
    “Why, what did he do?”
    “He burst.”
    Vimes, his natural inquisitiveness suddenly curbed, carried the body into Lawn’s inner sanctum. It looked little different from when Vimes had last seen it, but then he’d barely been capable of taking in details. There was the table, and a workbench, and all along one wall were racks of bottles. No two bottles were the same size. In one or two of them, things floated.
    On another wall were the instruments.
    “When I die,” said Lawn, inspecting the patient, “I’m going to instruct them to put a bell on my tombstone, just so’s I can have the pleasure of not getting up when people ring. Put him down, please. Looks like concussion.”
    “That was me hitting him,” said Vimes helpfully.
    “You broke his arm, too?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You made a very neat job of it. Easy to set it and plaster him up. Is there something wrong?”
    Vimes was still staring at the instruments.
    “You use all these?” he said.
    “Yes. Some of them are experimental, though,” said Lawn, busying himself at his worktable.
    “Well, I’d hate for you to use this on me,” said Vimes, picking a strange instrument like a couple of paddles tied with string. Lawn sighed.
    “Sergeant, there are no circumstances where the things you’re holding could possibly be used on you,” he said, his hands working busily. “They are…of a feminine nature.”
    “For the seamstresses?” said Vimes, putting the pliers down in a hurry.
    “Those things? No, the ladies of the night take pride these days in never requiring that sort of thing. My work with them is more of, shall we say, a preventative nature.”
    “Teaching them to use thimbles, that sort of thing?”
    “Yes, it’s amazing how far you can push a metaphor, isn’t it…”
    Vimes prodded the paddles again. They were quite alarming.
    “You’re married, Sergeant?” said Lawn. “Was Rosie right?”
    “Er…yes. My wife is, er, elsewhere, though.” He picked the things up and dropped them hastily again, with a clatter.
    “Well, it’s just as well to be aware that giving birth isn’t like shelling peas,” said the doctor.
    “I should bloody well hope not!”
    “Although I have to say the midwives seldom refer anything to me. They say men shouldn’t fish around where they don’t belong. Really, we may as well be living in caves.”
    Lawn looked down at his patient. “In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: Am I going to get paid for this?”
    Vimes investigated the moneybag on the man’s belt.
    “Will six dollars do it?” he said.
    “Why would the Unmentionables attack you , Sergeant? You’re a policeman.”
    “I am, but they aren’t. Don’t you know about them?”
    “I’ve patched up a few of their guests, yes,” said Lawn, and Vimes noted the caution. It didn’t pay to know too much in this town. “People with curious dislocations, hot wax burns…that sort of thing…”
    “Well, I had a little brush with Captain Swing last night,” Vimes said, “and he was polite as hell to