"What I"ve got to tell you now is. .."she began, and faded in the face of the task, "is ... Look, shall we have another drink? What"s the next cocktail on the menu?"
Cheery peered at it. "Pink, Big and Wobbly," she announced. "Classy! We"ll have four!"
Fred Colon peered through the bars. He was, on the whole, a pretty good jailer: he always had a pot of tea on the go, he was as a general rule amiably disposed to most people, he was too slow to be easily fooled and he kept the cell keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk, a long way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt or trained Klatchian monkey spider. [1]
He was a bit worried about this dwarf. You got all sorts in jail, and they often yelled a bit but with this one he didn"t know what was worse, the sobbing or the silence. He"d put a candlestick on a Making Fred Colon possibly unique in the annals of jail history.
stool by the bars, too, because the dwarf carried on alarmingly if there wasn"t enough light.
He stirred the tea reflectively and handed a mug to Nobby.
"We"ve got a rum "un here, I reckon," he said. "A dwarf that"s scared of the dark? Not right in the head, then. Wouldn"t touch his tea and biscuit. What do you think?"
"I think I"ll have his biscuit," said Nobby, reaching over to the plate.
"Why"re you down here, anyway?" said Fred. "I"m surprised you ain"t out there a-ogling of young women."
"Tawneee"s going out boozing with the girls tonight," said Nobby.
"Ah, you want to warn her about that sort of thing," said Fred Colon. "You know what it"s like in the centre when the pubs and clubs empty. There"s throwin" up and yellin" and unladylike behaviour and takin" their vests off and I don"t know what. "S called
. "he scratched his head". .. minge drinking."
"She"s only gone out with Angua and Sally and Cheery, sarge," said Nobby, taking another biscuit.
"Oooh, you wanna watch that, Nobby. Women gangin" up on men-" Fred paused. "A vampire and a werewolf out on the razzle? Take my tip, lad, stay indoors tonight. And if they start behaving in-"
He stopped as the sound of Sam Vimes"s voice came down the spiral stone steps, followed closely by its owner.
"So I"ve got to stop them forming a block, right?"
"If you"re playing the troll side, yes," said a new voice. "A tight group of dwarfs is bad news for trolls."
"Trolls shove, dwarfs throw."
"Right:
"And the central rock, no one can jump that, right?" said Vimes.
"Yes."
"I still think the dwarfs have it all their own way."
"We shall see. The important thing-"
Vimes stopped when he saw Nobby and Colon. "Okay, lads, I"ll talk to the prisoner now," he said. "How is he?"
Fred indicated the hunched figure on the narrow bunk in the corner cell. "Captain Carrot tried talking to him for nearly half an hour, and you know he"s got a way with people," he said. "Didn"t get as much as a sentence out of him. I read him his rights but don"t ask me if he understood "em. He didn"t want his tea and biscuit, at any rate. That"s Rights 5 and 5b," he added, looking Bashfullsson up and down. "He gets Right 5c only if we"ve got Teatime Assortment:
"Can he walk?" said Vimes.
"He sort of shuffles, sir."
"Fetch him out, then," said Vimes, and seeing Fred"s enquiring look at Bashfullsson he went on: "This gentleman is here to make sure we don"t use the rubber truncheon, sergeant:
"Didn"t know we had one, Mister Vimes," said Fred.
"We haven"t," said Vimes. "No point in hitting "em with something that bounces, eh?" he added, looking at Bashfullsson, who smiled, once again, his strange little smile.