The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

"Oh," said Detritus, disappointed.

"And, Detritus, you"re Cultural Attache."

The troll brightened up considerably. "You will not regret dis, sir!"

"I"m sure I won"t," said Vimes. "Right now, I"d like you to come with me."

"Is dis a cultural matter, sir?"

"Broadly. Perhaps."

Vimes led the troll and Sybil up the stairs and into the office, where he stopped in front of a wall.

"This one?" he said.

"Yes," said his wife. "It"s hard to notice until you measure the rooms, but that wall really is rather thick - "

Vimes ran his hands along the panelling, looking for anything that might go "click". Then he stood back.

"Give me your crossbow, sergeant."

"Here we are, sir."

Vimes staggered under its weight but managed to get it pointed at the wall.

"Is this wise, Sam?" said Sybil.

Vimes stood back to take aim, and the floorboard moved under his heel. A panel in the wall swung gently.

"You scared der hell out of it, sir," said Detritus loyally.

Vimes carefully handed the crossbow back and tried to look as though he"d meant things to happen this way.

He"d expected a secret passage. But this was a tiny workroom. There were jars on shelves labelled "New Suet Strata, Area 21", "Grade A Fat, the Big Hole". There were lumps of crumbling rock, with neat cardboard tags attached to them saying things like "Level #3, Shaft 9, Double-Pick Mine".

There was a set of drawers. One of them was full of make-up, including a selection of moustaches.

Wordlessly, Vimes opened one of a stack of notebooks. The first pages had a pencil-drawn streetmap of Bonk, with red lines threading through it.

"Good grief, look at this," he breathed, flicking onwards. "Maps. Drawings. There"s pages of stuff about the assaying of fat deposits. Huh, says here "The new suets, while initially promising, are now suspected of having high levels of BCBs and are likely to be soon exhausted." And here it says "A werewolf putsch is clearly planned in the chaos following the loss of the Scone... K. reports that many of the younger werewolves now follow W., who has changed the nature of the game..." This stuff... this stuff is spying. I wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!"

"Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?"

"But there"s loads of details here... notes about people, lots of figures about dwarf mining production, political rumours... I didn"t know we did this sort of thing!"

"You use spies all the time, dear," said Sybil.

"I do not!"

"Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?"

"That is not spying, that is not spying! That"s just "information received". We couldn"t do the job if we didn"t know what"s happening on the street!"

"Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of... a bigger street, dear."

"There"s loads more of this muck. Look. Sketches, more bits of ore... What the hell"s this?"

It was oblong, and about the size of a cigarette packet. There was a round glass disc on one face, and a couple of levers on one side.