Read Thud! for Free Online

the street throwing crabs at you?”
    “Exactly those days, Sarge. But good or bad, you can never get rid of the smell of fish. And her eyes are too far apart. I mean, it’s hard to get a relationship goin’ with a girl who can’t see you if you stand right in front of her.”
    “I shouldn’t think Tawneee can see you if you’re up close, either!” Colon burst out. “She’s nearly six feet tall and she’s got a bosom like…well, she’s a big girl, Nobby.” Fred Colon was at a loss. Nobby Nobbs and a dancer with big hair, a big smile, and…general bigitigy? Look upon this picture, and on this! It did your head in, it really did.
    He struggled on. “She told me, Nobby, that she’d been Miss May on the centerfold of Girls, Giggles and Garters ! Well, I mean…!”
    “ What do you mean, Sarge? Anyway, she wasn’t just Miss May, she was the first week in June as well,” Nobby pointed out. “It was the only way they had room.”
    “Err…well, I ask you,” Fred floundered, “is a girl who displays her body for money the kind of wife for a copper? Ask yourself that!”
    For the second time in five minutes, what passed for Nobby’s face wrinkled up in deep thought.
    “Is this a trick question, Sarge?” he said at last. “’Cos I know for a fact that Haddock has got that picture pinned up in his locker and every time he opens it he goes, ‘Pwaor, will you look at th—’ ”
    “How did you meet her, anyway?” said Colon quickly.
    “What? Oh, our eyes met when I shoved an IOU in her garter, Sarge,” said Nobby happily.
    “And…she hadn’t just been hit on the head, or something?”
    “I don’t think so, Sarge.”
    “She’s not…ill, is she?” said Fred Colon, exploring every likelihood.
    “No, Sarge!”
    “Are you sure ?”
    “She says perhaps we’re two halves of the same soul, Sarge,” said Nobby dreamily.
    Colon stopped with one foot raised above the pavement. He stared at nothing, his lips moving.
    “Sarge?” said Nobby, puzzled by this.
    “Yeah…yeah,” said Colon, more or less to himself. “Yeah. I can see that. Not the same stuff in each half, obviously. Sort of…sieved…”
    The foot landed.
    “I say!”
    It was more of a bleat than a cry, and it came from the door of the Royal Art Museum. A tall, thin figure was beckoning to the watchmen, who strolled over.
    “Yessir?” said Colon, touching his helmet.
    “We’ve had a burglareah, officer!”
    “Burglar rear?” said Nobby.
    “Oh dear, sir,” said Colon, putting a warning hand on the corporal’s shoulders. “Anything taken?”
    “Years. I rather think that’s hwhy it was a burglareah, you see?” said the man. He had the attitude of a preoccupied chicken, but Fred Colon was impressed. You could barely understand the man, he was that posh. It was not so much speech as modulated yawning. “I’m Sir Reynold Stitched, the curator of Fine Art, and I was hwalking through the Long Gallereah and…oh, dear, they took the Rascal!”
    The man looked at two blank faces.
    “Methodia Rascal?” he tried. “ The Battle of Koom Valley ?” It is a priceless work of art!”
    Colon hitched up his stomach. “Ah,” he said, “that’s serious. We’d better take a look at it. Er…I mean, the locale where it was situated in.”
    “Years, years, of course,” said Sir Reynold. “Do come this hway. I am given to understand that the modern hWatch can learn a lot just by looking at the place where a thing was, is that not so?”
    “Like, that it’s gone?” said Nobby. “Oh, years. We’re good at that.”
    “Er…Quite so,” said Sir Reynold. “Do come this way.”
    The watchmen followed. They had been inside the museum before, of course. Most citizens had, on days when no better entertainment presented itself. Under the governance of Lord Vetinari it hosted fewer modern exhibitions these days, since his lordship held Views, but a gentle stroll among the ancient tapestries and rather brown and dusty paintings was a