The Truth

through to the cellars of the Inquirer , are you?” said Sacharissa.
    “Who, us?”
    “You are, aren’t you.”
    “We wouldn’t do anything like that.”
    “Yes, but you are, aren’t you.”
    “That’d be tantamount to breaking in, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes, and that’s what you’re planning to do, isn’t it.”
    Boddony grinned. “Well…a little bit. Just to have a look round. You know.”
    “Good.”
    “What? You don’t mind?”
    “You’re not going to kill anyone, are you?”
    “Miss, we don’t do that sort of thing!”
    Sacharissa looked a little disappointed. She’d been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there’s a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out.
    “Well…perhaps just make them a bit sorry, then?”
    “Yes, we can probably do that.”
    The dwarfs were already creeping along the tunnel at the other side of the buried street. By the light of their torches she saw old frontages, bricked-up doors, windows filled with rubble.
    “This should be about the right place,” said Boddony, pointing to a faint rectangle filled with more low-grade brick.
    “You’re just going to break in?” said Sacharissa.
    “We’ll say we were lost,” said Boddony.
    “Lost underground? Dwarfs?”
    “All right, we’ll say we’re drunk. People’ll believe that . Okay, lads…”
    The rotten bricks fell away. Light streamed out. In the cellar beyond, a man looked up from his desk, mouth open.
    Sacharissa squinted through the dust.
    “You?” she said.
    “Oh, it’s you, miss,” said Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. “Hello, boys. Am I glad to see you…”

    The canting crew were just leaving when Gaspode arrived at the gallop. He took one look at the other dogs that were huddled around the fire, then dived under the trailing folds of Foul Ole Ron’s dreadful coat and whined.
    It took some time for the whole of the crew to understand what was going on. These were, after all, people who could argue and expectorate and creatively misunderstand their way through a three-hour argument after someone says “Good morning.”
    It was the Duck Man who finally got the message.
    “These men are hunting terriers?” he said.
    “Right! It was the bloody newspaper! You can’t bloody trust people who write in newspapers!”
    “They threw these doggies in the river?”
    “Right!” said Gaspode. “It’s all gone fruit-shaped!”
    “Well, we can protect you too.”
    “Yeah, but I’ve got to be out and about! I’m a figure in this town! I can’t lie low! I need a disguise! Look, we could be looking at fifty dollars here, right? But you need me to get it!”
    The crew were impressed with this. In their cashless economy, fifty dollars was a fortune.
    “Blewitt,” said Foul Ole Ron.
    “A dog’s a dog,” said Arnold Sideways. “On account of bein’ called a dog.”
    “Gaarck!” crowed Coffin Henry.
    “That’s true,” said the Duck Man. “A false beard isn’t going to work.”
    “Well, your huge brains had better come up with somethin’ , ’cos I’m staying put until you do,” said Gaspode. “I’ve seen these men. They are not nice.”
    There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews. His face flickered as the various personalities reshuffled themselves, and then settled into the waxy bulges of Lady Hermione.
    “We could disguise him,” she said.
    “What could you disguise a dog as?” said the Duck Man. “A cat?”
    “Ae dog is not just ae dog,” said Lady Hermione. “Ai think Ai have an idea…”

    The dwarfs were in a huddle when William got back. The epicenter of the huddle, its huddlee, turned out to be Mr. Dibbler, who looked just like anyone would look if they’re being harangued. William had never seen anyone to whom the word “harangued” could be so justifiably applied. It meant someone who had been talked at by Sacharissa for twenty minutes.
    “Is there a problem?” he said. “Hello, Mr. Dibbler…”
    “Tell me, William,” said Sacharissa, while pacing slowly around Dibbler’s chair, “if stories were food, what kind of food would be Goldfish Eats Cat?”
    “What?” William stared at Dibbler. Realization dawned. “I think it would be a sort of long, thin kind of food,” he said.
    “Filled with rubbish of suspicious origin?”
    “Now, there’s no need for anyone to take that tone—” Dibbler began, and then subsided under Sacharissa’s glare.
    “Yes, but rubbish that’s sort of attractive.