Read Fifth Elephant for Free Online Page B

man, who appeared permanently poised to answer a question.
    “We all make mistakes,” said Vimes. “You heard glass break?”
    “Yessir. And someone swore.”
    “Really? What did they say?”
    “Er…‘bugger,’ sir?”
    “And you went around the back and saw the broken window and you…?”
    “I called out ‘is there anyone there?,’ sir.”
    “Really? And what would you have done if a voice had said ‘no’? No, don’t answer that. What happened next?”
    “Er…I heard a lot more glass break and when I got around to the front the door was open and they were gone. So I legged it back to the Yard and told Captain Carrot, sir, knowing he sets a lot of store by this place…”
    “Thank you…Ping, is it?”
    “Yessir.” Entirely unasked, but obviously prepared to answer, Ping said, “It’s a dialect word meaning ‘water-meadow,’ sir.”
    “Off you go, then.”
    The lance-constable visibly sagged with relief, and left.
    Vimes let his mind unfocus a little. He enjoyed moments like these, the little bowl of time when the crime lay before him and he believed that the world was capable of being solved. This was the time you really looked to see what was there, and sometimes the things that weren’t there were the most interesting things of all.
    The Scone had been kept on a plinth about three feet high, inside a case made of five sheets of glass, forming a box that was screwed down on the plinth.
    “They smashed the glass by accident,” he said, eventually.
    “Really, sir?”
    “Look here, see?” Vimes pointed to three loose screws, neatly lined up. “They were trying to take the box apart carefully. It must have slipped.”
    “But what’s the point ?” said Carrot. “It’s just a replica, sir! Even if you could find a buyer, it’s not worth more than a few dollars.”
    “If it’s a good one, you could swap it with the real thing,” said Vimes.
    “Well, yes, I suppose you could try,” said Carrot. “There would be a bit of a problem, though.”
    “What is it?”
    “Dwarfs aren’t stupid, sir. The replica has got a big cross carved into the underside. And it’s only made of plaster in any case.”
    “Oh.”
    “But it was a good idea, sir,” Carrot said encouragingly. “You weren’t to know.”
    “I wonder if the thieves knew.”
    “Even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have a hope of getting away with it, sir.”
    “The real Scone is very well guarded,” said Cheery. “It’s very rare that most dwarfs get a chance to see it.”
    “And other people would notice if you had a great lump of rock up your sweater,” said Vimes, more or less to himself. “So…this was a stupid crime. But it doesn’t feel stupid. I mean, why go to all this trouble? The lock on that door is a joke, you could kick it right out of the woodwork. If I was going to pinch this thing, I could be in here and out again before the glass had stopped tinkling. What would be the point of being quiet at this time of night?”
    The dwarf had been rummaging under a nearby display cabinet. She drew her hand out. Drying blood glistened on the blade of a screwdriver.
    “See?” said Vimes. “Something slipped, and someone cut their hand. What’s the point of all this, Carrot? Cat’s piss and sulfur and screwdrivers…I hate it when you get too many clues, it makes it so damn hard to solve anything.”
    He threw the screwdriver down. By sheer luck it hit the floorboards tip first and stood there shuddering.
    “I’m going home,” he said. “We’ll find out what this is all about when it starts to smell.”
     
    Vimes spent the following morning trying to learn about two foreign countries. One of them turned out to be called Ankh-Morpork.
    Uberwald was easy. It was five or six times bigger than the whole of the Sto Plains, and stretched all the way up to the Hub. It was mostly so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly