Thud! (Discworld 34)

Colon stopped with one foot raised above the pavement. He

stared at nothing, his lips moving.

"Sarge?" said Nobby, puzzled by this.

"Yeah ... yeah," said Colon, more or less to himself. "Yeah. I can see that. Not the same stuff in each half, obviously. Sort of ... sieved. .

The foot landed. "I say!"

It was more of a bleat than a cry, and it came from the door of

the Royal Art Museum. A tall, thin figure was beckoning to the

watchmen, who strolled over.

"Yessir?" said Colon, touching his helmet. "We"ve had a burglareah, officer!" "Burglar rear?" said Nobby.

"Oh dear, sir," said Colon, putting a warning hand on the corporal"s shoulders. "Anything taken?"

"Years. I rather think that"s hwhy it was a burglareah, you see?" said

the man. He had the attitude of a preoccupied chicken, but Fred

Colon was impressed. You could barely understand the man, he was

that posh. It was not so much speech as modulated yawning. "I"m Sir Reynold Stitched, curator of Fine Art, and I was hwalking through the Long Gallereah and ... oh, dear, they took the Rascal!"

The man looked at two blank faces.

"Methodia Rascal?" he tried. "The Battle of Koom Valley? It is a priceless work of art!"

Colon hitched up his stomach. "Ah," he said, "that"s serious. We"d better take a look at it. Er ... I mean, the locale where it was situated in.

"Years, years, of course," said Sir Reynold. "Do come this hway. I am given to understand that the modern hWatch can learn a lot just by looking at the place where a thing was, is that not so?"

"Like, that it"s gone?" said Nobby. "Oh, years. We"re good at that."

"Er ... quite so," said Sir Reynold. "Do come this way."

The watchmen followed. They had been inside the museum before, of course. Most citizens had, on days when no better entertainment presented itself. Under the governance of Lord Vetinari it had hosted fewer modern exhibitions, since his lordship held Views, but a gentle stroll amongst the ancient tapestries and rather brown and dusty paintings was a pleasant way of spending an afternoon. Plus, it was always nice to look at the pictures of big pink women with no clothes on.

Nobby was having a problem. "Here, sarge, what"s he going on about?" he whispered. "It sounds like he"s yawning all the time. What"s a galler rear?"

"A gallery, Nobby. That"s very high-class talkin", that is." "I can hardly understand him!"

"Shows it"s high class, Nobby. It wouldn"t be much good if people like you could understand, right?"

"Good point, sarge," Nobby conceded. "I hadn"t thought of that."

"You found it missing this morning, sir?" said Colon, as they trailed after the curator into a gallery still littered with ladders and dust sheets.

"Years indeed!

"So it was stolen last night, then?"

Sir Reynold hesitated. "Er ... not necessarileah, I"m afraid. We have been refurbishing the Long Gallereah. The picture was too big to move, of course, so hwe"ve had it covered in heavy dust sheets for the past month. But when we took them down this morning, there hwas only the frame! Observe!"

The Rascal occupied - or rather, had occupied - a frame some ten feet high and fifty feet long which, as such, was pretty close to being a work of art in its own right. It was still there, framing nothing but uneven, dusty plaster.