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what’s he going on about?” he whispered. “It sounds like he’s yawning all the time. What a galler rear?”
    “A gallery, Nobby. That’s very high-class talkin,’ that is.”
    “I can hardly understand him!”
    “Shows it’s high class, Nobby. It wouldn’t be much good if people like you could understand, right?”
    “Good point, Sarge,” Nobby conceded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “You found it missing this morning, sir?” said Colon, as they trailed after the curator into a gallery still littered with ladders and dust sheets.
    “Years indeed!”
    “So it was stolen last night, then?”
    Sir Reynold hesitated.
    “Er…not necessarileah, I’m afraid. We have been refurbishing the Long Gallereah. The picture was too big to move, of course, so hwe had it covered in heavy dust sheets for the past month. But when we took them down this morning, there hwas only the frame! Observe!”
    The Rascal occupied—or rather, had occupied—an actual frame some ten feet high and fifty feet long, which, as such, was pretty close to being a work of art in its own right. It was still there, framing nothing but uneven, dusty plaster.
    “I suppose some rich private collector has it now,” Sir Reynold moaned. “But how could he keep it a secret? The mural is one of the most recognizable paintings in the hworld! Every civilized person hwould spot it in an instant!”
    “What did it look like?” said Fred Colon.
    Sir Reynold performed that downshift of assumptions that was the normal response to any conversation with Ankh-Morpork’s Finest.
    “I can probableah find you a copy,” he said weakly. “But the original is fifty feet long! Have you never seen it?”
    “Well, I remember being brought to see it when I was a kiddie, but it’s a bit long, really. You can’t really see it, anyway. I mean, by the time you get to the other end you’ve forgotten what was happening back up the line, as it were.”
    “Alas, that is regrettableah true, Sergeant,” said Sir Reynold. “And hwhat is so vexing is that the hwhole point of this refurbishment hwas to build a special circular room to hold the Rascal. His ideah, you know, hwas that the viewer should be hwholly encircled by the mural and feel right in the thick of the action, as it hwere. You hwould be there in Koom Valleah! He called it panoscopic art. Say hwhat you like about the current interest, but the extra visitors hwould have made it possible to display the picture as hwe believe he intended it to be displayed. And now this!”
    “If you were going to move it, why didn’t you just take it down and put it away nice and safe, sir?”
    “You mean roll it up ?” said Sir Reynold, horrified. “That could cause such a lot of damage. Oh, the horror! No, hwe had a very careful exercise planned for next wheek, to be done with the utmost diligence.” He shuddered. “hWhen I think of someone just hacking it out of the frame I feel quite faint—”
    “Hey, this must be a clue, Sarge!” said Nobby, who had returned to his default activity of mooching about and poking at things to see if they were valuable. “Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol’ rubbish here!”
    He’d wandered across to a plinth, which did, indeed, appear to be piled high with rags.
    “Don’t touch that, please!” said Sir Reynold, rushing over. “That’s Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! It’s Daniellarina Pouter’s most controversial hwork! You didn’t move anything, did you?” he added nervously. “It’s literalleah priceless, and she’s got a sharp tongue on her!”
    “It’s only a lot of old rubbish,” Nobby protested, backing away.
    “Art is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, Corporal,” said the curator. “Surely you hwould not say that Caravati’s Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze is just, ahem, ‘a lot of old pigment’?”
    “What about this one, then?” said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. “It’s just a