'Then how do you know about it?'

'You'd be surprised the things men tell me.'

'No, I wouldn't,' said Jack.

'Well, it says here that Boy Blue was a member. And so are most of the old rich. These are rituals, see.'

'They don't make any sense.’ Jack peered at the page. The words meant nothing to him.

'They're in code.'

'I don't think it's a clue. What about the client list?'

Jill pushed the tome aside and pulled another from the drawer. 'Accounts,' she said, 'let's have a look through this.' She began leafing once more through paper.

'Please get a move on,' said Jack.

'Be patient.'

A sudden sound came to Jack's ears. 'What was that sudden sound?' he asked.

'Nothing. Don't worry.'

'But I heard something. Oh.'

Another sudden sound, this time accompanied by a lot of sudden movement, caused Jack to leap back in shock.

There was now a lot of sudden light. Big and sudden and bright and all shining right at Jack.

'Take him, officers!' shouted a sudden voice.

And all of a suddenness, big, blue, jolly, laughing figures were all over Jack. And Jack was pinned to the floor.

From beneath much pressing weight Jack found himself staring fearfully into the perished rubber face of Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis.

'Gotcha,' said Chief Inspector Bellis. 'They always return to the scene of the crime. I knew I was right. I just had to wait this time.'

'Now hold on there.’ Jack struggled without success.

'And you answer to the description of the suspect who broke into Humpty Dumpty's, earlier today. Bill Winkie, private eye, I arrest you for murder.'

'No, stop, this isn't right.'

'Take him to the station, officers,' said Bellis. 'And if he gives you any trouble, then..."

'No,' wailed Jack as laughing policemen dragged him to his feet. 'You've got the wrong man. Tell him, Jill. Tell him.'

But Jill was nowhere to be seen.

13

It is a fact, well known to those who know it well, that there is scarcely to be found anywhere a society which does not hold to some belief in a supreme being.

A God.

A Divine Creator.

Toy City is no exception.

In Toy City a number of different religions exist, each serving the spiritual needs of its particular followers. Four of the more interesting are The Church of Mechanology, The Daughters of the Unseeable Upness, Big Box Fella, He Come, and The Midnight Growlers.

Followers of The Church of Mechanology are to be found exclusively amongst members of Toy City's clockwork toy population: wind-up tin-plate barmen, firemen, taxi drivers and the like.

These hold to the belief that the universe is a vast clockwork mechanism, the planets revolving about the sun by means of extendible rotary arms and the sun in turn connected to the galaxy by an ingenious crankshaft system, the entirety powered by an enormous clockwork motor, constantly maintained, oiled, and kept wound by The Universal Engineer.

The Universal Engineer is pictured in religious icons as a large, jolly, red-faced fellow in greasy overalls and cap. He holds in one holy hand an oily rag and in the other, the Church's Sacred Writ, known as The Manual.

The Manual contains a series of laws and coda, but, as is often the case with Holy books, these laws and coda are penned in a pidgin dialect of unknown origin, which leaves them open to varied interpretation. An example of its text is Winding is not to facilitate in counter to the clockways direction for tuning the to.

Followers of The Church of Mechanology consider themselves special and superior to all other varieties of toy, in that, being clockwork, they are in tune and at one with the Universe.

A number of sub-sects, breakaway factions and splinter groups exist within The Church, with names such as The Cog- Wheel of Life, The Spring Almost Eternal and The Brotherhood of the Holy Oil. These are End Times Cults, which subscribe to the belief that, as individual clockwork toys enjoy only a finite existence due to the ravages of rust, corrosion, spring breakage and fluffin the works, so too does the Universe.

Their prophets of doom foretell The Time of the Terrible Stillness, when the great mechanism that powers the Universe will grind to a halt, the planet will no longer turn upon its axis, the sun will no longer rise and even time itself will come to a standstill.

If asked what The Universal Engineer will be doing at this momentous moment, they will politely explain that He will be cranking up a new Universe elsewhere, powered by something even greater than clockwork.

If asked what this power could possibly be, they will like as not reply, 'And there you have it! What power could be greater than clockwork?'

The Daughters of the Unseeable Upness is a movement composed entirely of dolls — but only those dolls that have weighted eyes which automatically close when the doll's head is tilted backwards. Such city-dwelling dolls can never see the sky, as their eyes shut when they lean backwards to look upwards. These dolls therefore believe that the sky is a sacred place that must not be seen, and that all who do see it risk instant damnation.

As with clockwork toys, dolls enjoy only a limited existence before they eventually disintegrate, and as the onset of disintegration in dolls is inevitably marked by one of their eyes sticking open, followers of this religious persuasion invariably wear large, broad-brimmed, sanctified straw hats, or have their eyes glued in the half-shut position.

According to the followers of Big Box Fella, He Come, as everything new, especially a toy, always comes in a box, then so too did the universe.

The universe, they claim, is a construction kit, which God assembled with the aid of his little helpers. It is God's toy. One day, they claim, God will tire of his toy, disassemble it and, being a well-brought-up God, put it back in its box.

And that will be that for the universe.

This particular religious belief system is predominant amongst Jack-in-the-boxes. They consider themselves to be special and blessed because they are the only toys that actually remain within their original boxes, the toy nearest to perfection being the toy that has never been taken out of its box.

They believe that the universe is cubic, the shape of its original box, and so see themselves as microcosmic. The assembled universe consists of a number of boxes, one inside the other, the smallest of these containing the Jack himself. This exists within a larger cubic box, the city, which stands upon a cubic world, within a boxed solar system.

Mortals, they claim, cannot travel between the separate boxes: only Big Box Fella can do that — he and his nameless evil twin.

Big Box Fella is one of God's little helpers. He and his brother were given the task of assembling the city, which was part of the Universe Kit. It was God's intention that, once the city had been correctly constructed, Big Box Fella and his brother would tend to its upkeep and protect its also-to-be-assembled population (you have to remember that the universe is a very complicated construction kit).

However, things did not go quite as planned, because Big Box Fella's brother refused to follow the instructions, thereby committing the first ever act of evil. He improvised, with the result that certain things were incorrectly assembled, other things had parts left out and a city that would otherwise have been perfect was anything but. -

Big Box Fella cast his brother out of the city and attempted to put things right, but, out of spite, his brother had taken the instructions with him, and so the task was impossible.