The Truth

can see through the —ing window there. See the way the ferret’s nose follows you around the room? That’s —ing genius, that is. I don’t mind telling you that if I was here by myself I’d be in —ing tears .”
    “It’s very pretty.”
    “Pretty?” said Mr. Tulip, despairing of his colleague’s taste. He walked over to a statue by the door and stared hard at it, then ran his fingers lightly across the marble.
    “I fort so! This is a —ing Scolpini! I’d bet anything. But I’ve never seen it in a catalogue. And it’s been left in an empty house, where anyone could just —ing walk in and nick it!”
    “This place is under powerful protection. You saw the seals on the door.”
    “Guilds? Bunch of —ing amateurs . We could go through this place like a hot knife through —ing thin ice, and you know it. Amateurs and rocks and lawn ornaments and dead men walking about…we could knock this —ing place over .”
    Mr. Pin said nothing. A similar idea had occurred to him, but in him, unlike his colleague, deed did not automatically follow upon what passed for thought.
    The Firm had, indeed, not operated in Ankh-Morpork before. Mr. Pin had kept away because, well, there were plenty of other cities, and an instinct for survival had told him that the Big Wahooni * should wait a while. He’d had a Plan, ever since he’d met Mr. Tulip and found that his own inventiveness combined with Tulip’s incessant anger promised a successful career. He’d developed their business in Genua, Pseudopolis, Quirm—cities smaller and easier to navigate than Ankh-Morpork, although, these days, it seemed they increasingly resembled it.
    The reason that they had done well, he’d realized, was that sooner or later people went soft. Take the trollish Breccia, f’rinstance. Once the Honk and Slab route had been established all the way to Uberwald, and the rival clans had been eliminated, the trolls had got soft. The tons acted like society lords. It was the same everywhere—the big old gangs and families reached some kind of equilibrium with society and settled down to be a specialist kind of businessman. They cut down on henchmen and employed butlers instead. And then, where there was a bit of difficulty, they needed muscle that could think…and there was the New Firm, ready and willing.
    And waiting.
    One day there’d be time for a new generation, Mr. Pin thought. One with a new way of doing things, one without the shackles of tradition holding them back. Happening people. Mr. Tulip, for example, happened all the time.
    “Hey, will you —ing look at this?” said the happening Tulip, who had uncovered another painting. “Signed by Gogli, but it’s a —ing fake. Look at the way the light falls here, wilya? And the leaves on this tree? If —ing Gogli painted that, it was with his —ing foot . Probably by some —ing pupil…”
    While they had been marking time in the city, Mr. Pin had followed Mr. Tulip, trailing scouring powder and canine worming tablets, through one after another of the city’s art galleries. The man had insisted. It had been an education, mostly for the curators.
    Mr. Tulip had the instinct for art which he did not have for chemistry. Sneezing icing sugar and dribbling foot powder, he was ushered into private galleries, where he ran his bloodshot eye over nervously proffered trays of ivory miniatures.
    Mr. Pin had watched in silent admiration while his colleague spoke colorfully and at length on the differences between ivory faked the old way, with bones, and the —ing new way the —ing dwarfs have come up with, using —ing refined oil, chalk and —ing Spirits of Nacle.
    He’d lurched over to the tapestries, declaimed at length about high and low weaving, burst into tears in front of a verdant scene, and then demonstrated that the gallery’s prized thirteenth-century Sto Lat tapestry couldn’t be more than a hundred years old because, “see that —ing bit of purple there? No way was that —ing dye around then. And…what’s this? An Agatean embalming pot from the P’gi Su Dynasty? Someone took you to the —ing cleaners, mister. The glaze is rubbish.”
    It was astounding, and Mr. Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises, Mr. Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though