'Really, Mr Lipwig? And whoever told you the ringmaster runs the circus? You are very much mistaken, sir! Why are you cutting out the other shareholders?'
'Because they don't know what a bank is about. Come with me to the Mint, will you?' He strode through the main hall, having to dodge and weave between the queues.
'And you know what a bank is about, do you, sir?' said Bent, following behind with his jerky flamingo step.
'I'm learning. Why do we have one queue in front of each clerk?' Moist demanded. 'It means that if one customer takes up a lot of time, the whole queue has to wait. Then they'll start hopping sideways from one queue to another and the next thing you know someone has a nasty head wound. Have one big queue and tell people to go to the next clerk free. People don't mind a long queue if they can see that it's moving - Sorry, sir!'
This was to a customer he'd collided with, who steadied himself, grinned at Moist and said, in a voice from a past that should have stayed buried: 'Why, if it isn't my old friend Albert. You're doin' well for yourself, ain't you?' The stranger spluttered his words through ill-fitting teeth: 'You in your shuit o' lightsh!'
Moist's past life flashed before his eyes. He didn't even need to go to the bother of dying, although he felt as though he was going to.
It was Cribbins! It could only be Cribbins!
Moist's memory sandbagged him, one bag after another. The teeth! Those damn false teeth! They were that man's pride and joy. He'd prised them out of the mouth of an old man he'd robbed, while the poor devil lay dying of fear! He'd joked that they had a mind of their own! And they spluttered and popped and slurped and fitted so badly that they once turned round in his mouth and bit him in the throat!
He used to take them out and talk to them! And, aargh, they were so old, and the stained teeth had been carved from walrus ivory and the spring was so strong that sometimes it'd force the top of his head back so that you could see right up his nose!!
It all came back like a bad oyster.
He was just Cribbins. No one knew his first name. Moist had teamed up with him, oh, ten years ago and they'd run the old legacy con in Uberwald one winter. He was much older than Moist and still had the serious personal problem that made him smell of bananas.
And he was a nasty piece of work. Professionals had their pride. There had to be some people you wouldn't rob, some things you didn't steal. And you had to have style. If you didn't have style, you'd never fly.
Cribbins didn't have style. He wasn't violent, unless there was absolutely no chance of retaliation, but there was some generalized, wretched, wheedling malice about the man that had got on Moist's soul.
'Is there a problem, Mr Lipwig?' said Bent, glaring at Cribbins.
'What? Oh... no...' said Moist. It's a shakedown, he thought. That bloody picture in the paper. But he can't prove a thing, not a thing.
'You are mistaken, sir,' said Moist. He looked around. The queues were moving, and no one was paying them any attention.
Cribbins put his head on one side and gave Moist an amused look. 'Mishtaken, shir? Could be. I could be mistaken. Life on the road, making new chums every day, you know - well, you wouldn't, would you, on account of not being Albert Shpangler. Funny, though, 'cos you have his smile, sir, hard to change a man's smile, and your smile ish, like, in front of your face, like you ish looking out from behind it slurp. Just like young Albert's smile. Bright lad he was, very quick, very quick, I taught him everything I knew.'
- and that took about ten minutes, Moist thought, and a year to forget some of it. You're the sort that gives criminals a bad name -
"course, sir, you're wonderin', can the leopard change his shorts?
Can that ol' rascal I knew all them years ago have forsook the wide and wobbly for the straight an' narrow?' He glanced at Moist, and amended: 'Whoopsh! No, 'course you ain't, on account of you never seein' me before. But I was scrobbled in Pseudopolis, you see, thrown into the clink for malicious lingering, and that's where I found Om.'
'Why? What had he done?' It was stupid, but Moist couldn't resist it.
'Do not jest, sir, do not jest,' said Cribbins solemnly. 'I am a changed man, a changed man. It is my task to pass on the good news, shir.' Here, with the speed of a snake's tongue, Cribbins produced a battered tin from inside his greasy jacket. 'My crimes weigh me down like chains of hot iron, sir, like chains, but I am a man anxious to unburden himself by means of good works and confession, the last bein' most important. I have to get a lot off my chest before I can sleep easy, sir.' He rattled the box. 'For the kiddies, sir?'
This would probably work better if I hadn't seen you do this before, Moist thought. The penitent thief must be one of the oldest cons in the book.
He said: 'Well, I'm glad to hear it, Mr Cribbins. I'm sorry I'm not the old friend you are looking for. Let me give you a couple of dollars... for the kiddies.'
The coins clanked on the bottom of the tin. 'Thank you kindly, Mister Spangler,' said Cribbins.
Moist flashed a little smile. 'In fact I'm not Mr Spangler, Mr - '
I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!
' - I beg your pardon, I mean reverend,' he managed, and the average person would not have noticed the tiny pause and quite adroit save. But Cribbins wasn't average.
'Thank you, Mister Lipwig,' he said, and Moist heard the drawn-out 'Mister' and the explosively sardonic 'Lipwig'. They meant Gotcha!
Cribbins winked at Moist and strolled off through the banking hall, shaking his tin, his teeth accompanying him with a medley of horrible dental noises.