'No!'
Then you have committed no crime. May I express the hope that your business here does not involve any kind of criminal activity?'
'Perish the thought,' said Mr Pin.
'The City Watch here are quite dogged in some respects. And the various Guilds jealously guard their professional territories.'
'We hold the police in high regard,' said Mr Pin. 'We have a great respect for the work they do.'
'We --ing love policemen,' said Mr Tulip.
'If there was a policemen's ball, we would be among the first to buy a ticket,' said Mr Pin.
' 'specially if it was mounted on a plinth, or a little display stand of some sort,' said Mr Tulip, ' 'cos we like beautiful things.'
'I just wanted to be sure that we understood one another,' said Mr Slant, snapping his case closed. He stood up, nodding to them, and walked stiffly out of the room.
'What a--' Mr Tulip began, but Mr Pin raised a finger to his lips. He crossed silently to the door and opened it. The lawyer had gone.
'He knows what we're --ing here for,' Mr Tulip whispered hotly. 'What's he --ing pretending for?'
'Because he's a lawyer,' said Mr Pin. 'Nice place, this,' he added, in a slightly over-loud voice.
Mr Tulip looked around. 'Nah,' he said dismissively. 'I fort that at the start, but it's just a late eighteenth-century copy of the --ing Baroque Style. They got the dimensions all wrong. Didja see them pillars in the hall? Didja? --ing sixth-century Ephebian with
Second-Empire Djelibeybian --ing finials! It was all I could do not to laugh,'
'Yes,' said Mr Pin. 'As I have remarked before, Mr Tulip, in many ways you are a very unexpected man.'
Mr Tulip walked over to a shrouded picture and tweaked the cloth aside.
'Well, -- me, it's a --ing da Quirm,' he said. 'I seen a print of it. Woman Holding Ferret. He did it just after he moved from Genua and was influenced by --ing Caravati. Look at that --ing brushwork, will ya? See the way the line of the hand draws the --ing eye into the picture? Look at the quality of the light on the landscape you 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 city over.'
Mr Pin said nothing. A similar idea had occurred to him, but unlike with 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 Wahoonie*
The world's rarest and most evil-smelling vegetable, and consequently much prized by connoisseurs (who seldom prize anything cheap and common). Also a slang name for Ankh-Morpork, although it does not smell as bad as that.
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, when 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, willya? And the leaves on this tree? If --ing Gogli painted that, it was with his --ing foot. Probably by some --ing pupil