Two police officers are far more than doubly worse than one, and Cheery Littlebottom took advantage of the sudden panic to say, carefully, “It’s a very simple question, Mr. Gumption. Where did that cigar come from?”
Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase “The innocent have nothing to fear,” believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like “The innocent have nothing to fear”; but Bewilderforce was fearful—she could see him sweating.
“We know you’re a smuggler, Mr. Gumption, or perhaps I should say that you take advantage of very good deals when they are, ahem, presented to you. Right now, however, all I need from you is to tell me where that cigar came from. Once you’ve been so kind as to tell me that, we’ll walk out of this building in a happy and cooperative frame of mind.”
Bewilderforce brightened up. Cheery continued, “Of course, other departments of the Watch might wish to visit you in due course. At the moment, sir, you just have to deal with me. Do you know where that batch of cigars came from?”
Valiantly Bewilderforce tried it on. “I buy from dealers all the time,” he said. “It’d take me ages to go through the records!”
Cheery kept smiling. “No problem there, Mr. Gumption, I’ll call for my expert colleague Mr. A. E. Pessimal, right now. I don’t know if you know of him? It’s amazing how quickly he can work through paperwork and I’m sure he’ll find time in his busy schedule to help you out at no cost whatsoever.”
Five minutes later a gray-faced and breathless Bewilderforce handed Cheery a small scrap of paper.
Cheery looked up at him. “Howondaland? I thought that tobacco mostly came from Klatch?”
Bewilderforce shrugged. “Well, they’ve been starting up plantations in Howondaland now. Good stuff, too.” Feeling a little bit bolder, Bewilderforce went on. “All properly paid for, I can tell you. Yes, I know there’s smuggling going on, but we don’t have any truck with that. No need to when you can get a pretty good dea
l by buying in bulk. It’s all in my ledgers. Every invoice. Every payment. All set down properly.”
Cheery relented. A. E. Pessimal could probably find something to excite him somewhere in the Gumption ledgers. After all, business was business. But there was business and there was bad business. It didn’t do to get complicated. She stood up. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Mr. Gumption. We’ll trouble you no further.”
Bewilderforce hesitated and said, “What’s up with Fred Colon? He’s a bit of a scrounger, I don’t mind saying, but I would hate anything to have happened to him. It wasn’t…poison or anything, was it?”
“No, Mr. Gumption. His cigar started singing to him.”
“They don’t usually do that,” said Bewilderforce nervously. “I’ll have to check my stock.”
“Please do that, sir. And while you’re doing so perhaps you’ll look out for this little list of snuff products?”
The tobacconist took it from her carefully. His lips moved and he said, “That’s quite a lot of snuff, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cheery. “I’m authorized to pay cash down.”
Bewilderforce looked extremely bewildered. “What? Policemen pay?”
Walking the streets in the company of Wee Mad Arthur presented a difficulty even for a dwarf like Cheery Littlebottom. He was around six inches high, so if you spoke to him while you walked you sounded like a madman. On the other hand, he heartily disliked being picked up. You just had to put up with it. Most people made a slight detour if they saw Wee Mad Arthur in any case.
They arrived back at the Watch House and reported to Carrot and the first thing he said to Cheery was, “Do you know where there are any goblin caves, Cheery?”
“No, sir. Why do you ask?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Carrot. “It’s fairly unbelievable. Did you find out anything from old Gumption?”
Cheery nodded. “Yes, sir. Sergeant Colon’s haunted cigar came from Howondaland, no doubt about it.”
Carrot stared at her. “I didn’t think there were goblins in Howondaland? All Jolson’s family come from there.” He snapped his fingers. “Hang on one moment.” He ran down the corridor to the canteen and came back followed by Constable Precious Jolson, a lady for whom the word large simply would not do. Everything about her was, as it were, family-sized, including her good nature. Everybody liked Precious. She seemed to be a fountainhead of jolliness with always a cheerful word for anybody, even when she was picking up a brace of drunks and throwing them into the hurry-up wagon.
After brief questioning Precious said, “Dad sent me over there last year, remember, wanted me to find my roots. Can’t say I took to it, really. Nice weather. Not much to do. Not very exciting really, unless you try to stroke one of the cats, they get kind of stroppy. Never heard of goblins there, not the sort of place for them, I suspect. Excuse me, captain, can I get back to my tea now?”
The silence that followed was broken by Carrot, who said, “Howondaland is months away by boat, and broomsticks don’t work very well over water, even if we could persuade the wizards to lend us one. Any ideas?”
“Crivens!” said Wee Mad Arthur. “No problemo! I reckon I could get there in less than a day, ye ken.”
They stared at him. Wee Mad Arthur was small enough to ride on the back of any bird larger than a medium-sized hawk—his aerial broadcasts from the sky concerning traffic hold-ups in the city* were a regular feature of Ankh-Morpork street life—but all the way to another continent?
He grinned. “As ye ken, I was away for a wee while lately, making the acquaintance o’ my brothers, the Nac mac Feegle? Weel, they fly the birds a lot, and there’s a thing they have called the craw step, ye ken? And I reckon I’m canny enough to use it, ye ken.”
“That’s three kens in one speech, Wee Mad Arthur,” said Angua, to laughter from the rest of the watchmen. “You really got into the Feegle thing, didn’t you!”