'A conundrum indeed, Berenice,' said Cribbins, following her. 'The holy texts don't mention it, but I have no doubt that…' His forehead creased. Cribbins was seldom troubled by religious questions, and this one was pretty difficult. He rose to it like a born theologian. 'I have no doubt that they will be found shtill jogging along, but possibly in the opposite direction!

'Back towards the Last?' she said, looking worried.

'Ah, dear lady, remember that they will by then be the First.'

'Oh yes, I hadn't thought of it like that. That's the only way it could work, unless of course the original First would wait for the Last to catch up.'

'That would be a miracle indeed,' said Cribbins, watching her lock the door behind them. The evening air was sharp and unwelcoming after the warmth of the newspaper room, and made the prospect of another night in the flop-house in Monkey Street seem doubly unappealing. He needed his own miracle right now, and he had a feeling that one was shaping up right here.

'I expect it's very hard for you, reverend, finding a place to stay,' Ms Houser said. He couldn't make out her expression in the gloom.

'Oh, I have faith, shister,' he said. 'If Om does not come, He schends— Arrg!' And at a time like this! A spring had slipped! It was a judgement!

But agonizing as it was, it might yet have its blessing. Ms Houser was bearing down on him with the look of a woman determined to do good at any price. Oh, it hurt, though; it had snapped right across his tongue.

A voice behind him said: 'Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing… Are you Mr Cribbins, by any chance?'

Enraged by the pain in his mouth, Cribbins turned with murder in his heart, but 'That's Reverend Cribbins, thank you,' said Ms Houser, and his fists unclenched.

"Shme,' he muttered.

A pale young man in an old-fashioned clerk's robe was staring at him. 'My name is Heretofore,' he said, 'and if you are Cribbins I know a rich man who wants to meet you. It could be your lucky day.'

'Ish zat sho?' muttered Cribbins. 'And if zat man ish called Coshmo, I want to meet him. It could be hish lucky day, too. Ain't we the lucky onesh!'

'You must have had a moment of dread,' said Moist, as they relaxed in the marble-floored sitting room. At least Adora Belle relaxed. Moist was searching.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said as he opened a cupboard.

'Golems weren't built to be free. They don't know how to handle… stuff.'

'They'll learn. And she wouldn't have hurt the dog,' said Adora Belle, watching him pace the room.

'You weren't sure. I heard the way you were talking to her. "Put down the ladle and turn around slowly" sort of thing.' Moist pulled open a drawer.

'Are you looking for something?'

'Some bank keys. There should be a set of them somewhere around.'

Adora Belle joined in. It was that or argue about Gladys. Besides, the suite had a great many drawers and cupboards, and it was something to do while dinner was prepared.

'What is this key for?' she asked, after a mere few seconds. Moist turned. Adora Belle held up a silvery key on a ring.

'No, there'll be a lot more than that,' said Moist. 'Where did you find it, anyway?'

She pointed to the big desk. 'I just touched the side here and— Oh, it didn't do it this time…'

It took Moist more than a minute to find the trigger that slid the little drawer out. Shut, it disappeared seamlessly into the grain of the wood.

'It must be for something important,' he said, heading for another desk. 'Maybe the rest of the keys were kept somewhere else. Just try it on anything. I've only been camping here, really. I don't know what's in half of these drawers.'

He returned to a bureau and was sifting through its contents when he heard a click and creak behind him and Adora Belle said, in a rather flat voice: 'You did say Sir Joshua entertained young ladies up here, right?'

'Apparently, yes. Why?'

'Well, that's what I call entertainment.'

Moist turned. The door of a heavy cupboard stood wide open. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'What's all that for?'

'You are joking?'

'Well, yes, all right. But it's all so… so black.'

'And leathery,' said Adora Belle. 'Possibly rubbery, too.'

They advanced on the museum of inventive erotica just revealed. Some of it, freed at last from confinement, unfolded, slid or, in a few cases, bounced on to the floor.

'This…' Moist prodded something, which went spoing!… 'is, yes, rubbery. Definitely rubbery.'

'But all this here is pretty much frilly,' said Adora Belle. 'He must have run out of ideas.'

'Either that or there were no more ideas to have. I think he was eighty when he died,' said Moist, as a seismic shift caused some more piles to slide and slither downwards.

'Well done him,' said Adora Belle. 'Oh, and there's a couple of shelves of books, too,' she went on, investigating the gloom at the back of the cupboard. 'Just here, behind the rather curious saddle and the whips. Bedtime reading, I assume.'

'I don't think so,' said Moist, pulling out a leather-bound volume and flicking it open at a random page. 'Look, it's the old boy's journal. Years and years of it. Good grief, there's decades!

'Let's publish it and make a fortune,' said Adora Belle, kicking the heap. 'Plain covers, of course.'

'No, you don't understand. There may be something in here about Mr Bent! There's some secret…' Moist ran a finger along the spines. 'Let's see, he's forty-seven, he came here when he was about thirteen, and a few months later some people came looking for him. Old Lavish didn't like the look of them— Ah!' He pulled out a couple of volumes. 'These should tell us something, they're around the right time…'

'What are these, and why do they jingle?' Adora Belle said, holding up a couple of strange devices.

'How should I know?'

'You're a man.'

'Well, yes. And? I mean, I don't go in for this stuff.'

'You know, I think it's like horseradish,' said Adora Belle thoughtfully.

'Pardon?'

'Like… well, horseradish is good in a beef sandwich, so you have some. But one day a spoonful just doesn't cut the mustard—'

'As it were,' said Moist, fascinated.

'—and so you have two, and soon it's three, and eventually there's more horseradish than beef, and then one day you realize the beef fell out and you didn't notice.'

'I don't think that is the metaphor you're looking for,' said Moist, 'because I have known you to make yourself a horseradish sandwich.'

'All right, but it's still a good one,' said Adora Belle. She reached down and picked up something from the floor. 'Your keys, I think. What they were doing in there we shall never know, with any luck.'

Moist took them. The ring was heavy with keys of all sizes.

'And what shall we do with all this stuff?' Adora Belle kicked the heap again. It quivered, and somewhere inside something squeaked.

'Put it back in the cupboard?' Moist suggested uncertainly. The pile of passionless frippery had a brooding, alien look, like some sea monster of the abyss that had been dragged unceremoniously from its native darkness into the light of the sun.

'I don't think I could face it,' said Adora Belle. 'Let's just leave the door open and let it crawl back by itself. Hey!' This was to Mr Fusspot, who'd trotted smartly out of the room with something in his mouth.

'Tell me that was just an old rubber bone,' she said. 'Please?'

'No-o,' said Moist, shaking his head. 'I think that would definitely be the wrong description. I think it was… was… it was not an old rubber bone, is what it was.'

'Now look,' said Hubert, 'don't you think we'd know if the gold had been stolen? People talk about that sort of thing! I'm pretty certain it's a fault in the crossover multivalve, right here.' He tapped a thin glass tube.