Read Online Jingo by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

won’t take a moment.”
    “Right, sir.”
    Vimes ushered the sergeant up the stairs and closed the door.
    Nobby and the other watchmen strained to listen, but there was no sound except for a low murmuring which went on for some time.
    The door opened again. Vimes came down the stairs.
    “Nobby, come up to the University in five minutes, will you? I want to stay in touch and I’m damned if I’m taking a pigeon with this uniform on.”
    “Right, sir.”
    Vimes left.
    A few moments later Sergeant Colon walked carefully down to the main office. He had a slightly glassy look and walked back to his desk with the nonchalance that only the extremely worried try to achieve. He toyed with some paper for a while and then said:
    “You don’t mind what people call you , do you, Nobby?”
    “I’d be minding the whole time if I minded that, sarge,” said Corporal Nobbs cheerfully.
    “Right. Right! And I don’t mind what people call me , neither.” Colon scratched his head. “Don’t make sense, really. I reckon Sir Sam is missing too much sleep.”
    “He’s a very busy man, Fred.”
    “Trying to do everything, that’s his trouble. And…Nobby?”
    “Yes?”
    “It’s Sergeant Colon, thanks.”

    There was sherry. There was always sherry at these occasions. Sam Vimes could regard it dispassionately, since he always drank fruit juice these days. He’d heard they made sherry by letting wine go rotten. He couldn’t see the point of sherry.
    “And you will try to look dignified, won’t you?” said Lady Sybil, adjusting his cloak.
    “Yes, dear.”
    “What will you try to look?”
    “Dignified, dear.”
    “And please try to be diplomatic.”
    “Yes, dear.”
    “What will you try to be?”
    “Diplomatic, dear.”
    “You’re using your ‘henpecked’ voice, Sam.”
    “Yes, dear.”
    “You know that’s not fair.”
    “No, dear.” Vimes raised a hand in a theatrical gesture of submission. “All right, all right . It’s just these feathers. And these tights.” He winced and tried to do some surreptitious rearranging in an effort to prevent himself becoming the city’s first hunchgroin. “I mean, supposing people see me?”
    “Of course they’ll see you, Sam. You’re leading the procession. And I’m very proud of you.”
    She brushed some lint off his shoulder. *
    Feathers in my hat, Vimes thought glumly. And fancy tights. And a shiny breastplate. A breastplate shouldn’t be shiny. It should be too dented to take a decent polish. And diplomatic talk? How should I know how to talk diplomatically?
    “And now I must go and have a word with Lady Selachii,” said Lady Sybil. “You’ll be all right, will you? You keep yawning.”
    “Of course. Didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”
    “You promise not to run away?”
    “ Me ? I never run—”
    “You ran away before the big soirée for the Genuan ambassador. Everyone saw you.”
    “I’d just got news that the De Bris gang were robbing Vortin’s strongroom!”
    “But you don’t have to chase everyone, Sam. You employ people for that now.”
    “We got ’em, though,” said Vimes, with satisfaction.
    He’d enjoyed it immensely, too. It wasn’t just the pursuit that was so invigorating, with his velvet cloak left behind on a tree and his hat in a puddle somewhere, it was the knowledge that while he was doing this he wasn’t eating very small sandwiches and making even smaller talk. It wasn’t proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren’t doing.
    When Sybil had disappeared into the crowd he found a handy shadow and lurked in it. It enabled him to see almost the whole of the University’s Great Hall.
    He quite liked the wizards. They didn’t commit crimes. Not Vimes’s type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn’t Vimes’s beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn’t lead to paperwork, and that was fine by