Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [45]
“You sign,” said Vimes woodenly. “Them’s the rules. Prisoners moved from one custody to another, you have to sign. More’n my job’s worth, not to get signature.”
“Your job’s not worth spit,” snarled the man, grabbing the board. He looked at it blankly and Vimes handed him a pencil.
“If you need any help with the difficult letters, let me know,” he said innocently.
Growling, the guard scrawled something on the paper and thrust it back.
“Now open up, pl-ease,” he said.
“Certainly,” said Vimes, glancing at the paper. “But now I’d like to see some form of ID, thank you.”
“What?”
“It’s not me, you understand,” said Vimes, “but if I went back and showed my captain this piece of paper and he said to me, Vi—Keel, how d’you know he’s Henry the Hamster, well, I’d be a bit…flummoxed. Maybe even perplexed.”
“Listen, we don’t sign for prisoners!”
“We do, Henry,” said Vimes. “No signature, no prisoners.”
“And you’ll stop us taking ’em, will you?” said Henry the Hamster, taking a few steps forward.
“You lay a hand on that door,” said Vimes, “and I’ll—”
“Chop it off, will you?”
“—I’ll arrest you,” said Vimes. “Obstruction would be a good start, but we can probably think of some more charges back at the station.”
“Arrest me? But I’m a copper, same as you!”
“Wrong again,” said Vimes.
“What is the trouble…here?” said a voice.
A small, thin figure appeared in the torchlight. Henry the Hamster took a step back and adopted a certain deferential pose.
“Officer won’t hand over the curfew breakers, sir,” he said.
“And this is the officer?” said the figure, lurching toward Vimes with a curiously erratic gait.
“Yessir.”
Vimes found himself under cool and not openly hostile inspection from a pale man with the screwed-up eyes of a pet rat.
“Ah,” said the man, opening a little tin and taking a green throat pastille. “Would you be Keel, by any-chance? I have been…hearing about you.” The man’s voice was as uncertain as his walk. Pauses turned up in the wrong places.
“You hear about things quickly, sir.”
“A salute is generally in order, Sergeant.”
“I don’t see anything to salute, sir,” said Vimes.
“Goodpoint. Goodpoint. You are new, of course. But, you see, we in the Particulars…often find it necessary to wearplain…clothes.”
Like rubber aprons, if I recall correctly, thought Vimes. Aloud, he said: “Yes, sir.” It was a good phrase. It could mean any of a dozen things, or nothing at all. It was just punctuation until the man said something else.
“I’m Captain Swing,” said the man. “Findthee Swing. If you think the name is amusing, pleasesmirk…and get it over with. You may now salute.”
Vimes saluted. Swing’s mouth turned up at the corners very briefly.
“Good. Your first night on our hurry-up wagon, Sergeant?”
“Sir.”
“And you’re here so early. With a full load, too. Shall we take alook…at your passengers?” He glanced in between the ironwork. “Ah. Yes. Good evening, Miss Palm. And an associate, I see—”
“I do crochet!”
“—and what appear to be some partygoers. Well, well. What little scamps your street officers are, to be sure. They really have scoured the streets. How they love their…littlejokes, Sergeant.” Swing put his hand on the wagon door’s handle and there was a little noise, which was, nevertheless, a thunderclap in the silence, and it was the sound of a sword moving very slightly in its scabbard.
Swing stood stock-still for a moment and then delicately popped the pastille into his mouth. “Aha. I think that perhaps this little catch can be…thrownback, don’t you, Sergeant? We don’t want to make a mockery of…thelaw. Take them away, take them away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But just onemoment, please, Sergeant. Indulge me…just a little hobby of mine…”
“Sir?”
Swing had reached into a pocket of his over-long coat and pulled out a very large pair of steel calipers. Vimes flinched as they were opened up to measure the width of his head, the width of his nose, and the length of his eyebrows. Then a metal ruler was pressed against one ear.
While doing this, Swing was mumbling under his breath. Then he closed the calipers with a snap,