'What, nothing?'
'Not a dried pea, Fred.'
'I thought all the upper crust had pots of money.'
'Well, I'm the crust on its uppers, Fred. I don't know anything about lording! I don't want to have to wear posh clothes and go to hunt balls and all that stuff.'
Sergeant Colon sat down beside him. 'You never suspected you'd got any posh connections?'
'Well... my cousin Vincent once got done for indecently assaulting the Duchess of Quirm's housemaid...'
'Chambermaid or scullery maid?'
'Scullery maid, I think.'
'Probably doesn't count, then. Does anyone else know about this?'
'Well, she did, and she went and told... '
'I mean about your lordshipping. '
'Only Mr Vimes.'
'Well, there you are,' said Sergeant Colon, handing him back the scroll. 'You don't have to tell anyone. Then you don't have to go around wearing golden trousers, and you needn't hunt balls unless you've lost 'em. You just sit there, and I'll fetch you a cup of tea, how about that? We'll see it through, don't you worry. '
'You're a toff, Fred.'
'That makes two of us, m'lord!' Colon waggled his eyebrows. 'Get it? Get it?'
'Don't, Fred,' said Nobby wearily.
The Watch-House door opened.
Fog poured in like smoke. In the midst of it were two red eyes. The parting shreds revealed the massive figure of a golem.
'Umpk,' said Sergeant Colon.
The golem held up its slate:
I HAVE COME TO YOU.
'Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've, er, yeah, I can see that,' said Colon.
Dorfl turned the slate around. The other side read:
I GIVE MYSELF UP FOR MURDER. IT WAS I WHO KILLED THE OLD PRIEST. THE CASE IS SOLVED.
Colon, once his lips had stopped moving, scurried behind the suddenly very flimsy defences of his desk and scrabbled through the papers there.
'You keep it covered, Nobby,' he said, 'Make sure it don't run off.'
'Why's it going to run off?' said Nobby.
Sergeant Colon found a relatively clean piece of paper.
'Well, well, well, I, well, I guess I'd better... What's your name?'
The golem wrote: