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his favorite things, but it didn’t have to be something you mentioned very quietly in case it woke up. If money talked in here, it whispered.
    The chief cashier opened a small and not very grand door behind the stairs and half hidden by some potted plants.
    “Please be careful, the floor is always wet here,” he said, and led the way down some wide steps into the grandest cellar Moist had ever seen. Fine stone vaulting supported beautifully tiled ceilings, stretching away into the gloom. There were candles everywhere, and in the middle distance something was sparkling and filling the colonnaded space with a blue-white glow.
    “This was the undercroft of the temple,” said Bent, leading the way.
    “Are you telling me this place doesn’t just look like a temple?”
    “It was built as a temple, yes, but never used as one.”
    “Really?” said Moist. “Which god?”
    “None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,” said Bent. “I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.”
    “He hoped one would turn up?”
    “Exactly, sir.”
    “Like blue-tits?” said Moist, peering around. “This place was a kind of celestial bird box?”
    Bent sighed. “You express yourself colorfully, Mr. Lipwig, but I suppose there is some truth there. It didn’t work, anyway. Then it got used as storage in case of siege, became an indoor market, and so on, and then Jocatello La Vice got the place when the city defaulted on a loan. It is all in the official history. Isn’t the fornication wonderful?”
    After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured: “Is it?”
    “Don’t you think so? There’s more here than anywhere else in the city, I’m told.”
    “Really?” said Moist, looking around nervously. “Er…do you have to come down here at some special time?”
    “Well, during banking hours usually, but we let groups in by appointment.”
    “You know,” said Moist, “I think this conversation has somehow got away from me…”
    Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling.
    “I refer to the wonderful vaulting,” he said. “The word derives from fornix, meaning ‘arch.’”
    “Ah! Yes? Right!” said Moist. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if not many people knew that.”
    And then Moist saw the Glooper, glowing among the arches.

CHAPTER 3

    The Glooper A proper Hubert One very big mattress Some observations on tourism Gladys makes a sandwich The Blind Letter Office Mrs. Lavish’s posterity An ominous note Flight planning An even more ominous note, and certainly more ominous than the first note Mr. Lipwig boards the wrong coach

     

    M OIST HAD SEEN glass being bent and blown, and marveled at the skill of the people who did it, marveled as only a man can marvel whose skill is only in bending words. Some of those geniuses had probably worked on this. But so had their counterparts from the hypothetical Other Side, glassblowers who had sold their souls to some molten god for the skill to blow glass into spirals and intersecting bottles and shapes that seemed to be quite close but some distance away at the same time. Water gurgled, sloshed, and, yes, glooped along glass tubing. There was a smell of salt.

    Bent nudged Moist, pointed to an improbable wooden hat-stand, and wordlessly handed him a long yellow oilskin coat and a matching rain hat. He had already donned a similar outfit, and had magically procured an umbrella from somewhere.
    “It’s the Balance of Payments,” he said, as Moist struggled into the coat. “He never gets it right.” There was a crash from somewhere, and water droplets rained down on them. “See?” Bent added.
    “What’s it doing?” said Moist.
    Bent rolled his eyes. “Hell knows, Heaven suspects,” he said. He raised his voice. “Hubert? We have a visitor!”
    A distant splashing grew louder and a figure appeared around the edge of the glassware.
    Rightly or wrongly, Hubert is one of those