And they'd only used the picture on page one because someone had decided that the main story, which was about another bank going bust and a mob of angry customers trying to hang the manager in the street, did not merit illustration. Did the editor have the common decency to print a picture of that and put a sparkle in everyone's day? Oh no, it had to be a picture of Moist von bloody Lipwig!

And the gods, once they've got a man against the ropes, can't resist one more thunderbolt. There, lower down the front page, was the headline STAMP FORGER WILL HANG. They were going to execute Owlswick Jenkins. And for what? For murder? For being a notorious banker? No, just for knocking out a few hundred sheets of stamps. Quality work, too; the Watch would never have had a case if they hadn't burst into his attic and found half a dozen sheets of halfpenny reds hanging up to dry.

And Moist had testified, right there in the court. He'd had to. It was his civic duty. Forging stamps was held to be as bad as forging coins, and he couldn't dodge. He was the Postmaster General, after all, a respected figure in the community. He'd have felt a tiny bit better if the man had sworn or glared at him, but he'd just stood in the dock, a little figure with a wispy beard, looking lost and bewildered.

He'd forged halfpenny stamps, he really had. It broke your heart, it really did. Oh, he'd done higher values too, but what kind of person takes all that trouble for half a penny? Owlswick Jenkins had, and now he was in one of the condemned cells down in the Tanty, with a tew days to ponder on the nature of cruel fate before he was taken out to dance on air.

Been there, done that, Moist thought. It all went black — and then I got a whole new life. But I never thought being an upstanding citizen was going to be this bad.

' Er… thank you, Gladys,' he said to the figure looming genteelly over him.

'You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,' said the golem.

'I'm sure I don't.'

'There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do, Mr Lipwig,' Gladys rumbled.

Oh, Moist thought. One of those appointments.

'And the time of this appointment would be right now, would it?'

'Yes, Mr Lipwig.'

Moist grabbed his trousers, and some relic of his decent upbringing made him hesitate. He looked at the mountain of blue cotton in front of him.

'Do you mind?' he said.

Gladys turned away.

She's half a ton of clay, Moist thought glumly, as he struggled into his clothes. And insanity is catching.

He finished dressing and hurried down the back stairs and out into the coach yard that had so recently threatened to be his penultimate resting place. The Quirm Shuttle was pulling out, but he leapt up beside the coachman, gave the man a nod, and rode in splendour down Widdershins Broadway until he jumped down outside the palace's main entrance.

It would be nice, he reflected as he ran up the steps, if his lordship would entertain the idea that an appointment was something made by more than one person. But he was a tyrant, after all. They had to have some fun.

Drumknott, the Patrician's secretary, was waiting by the door of the Oblong Office, and quickly ushered him into the seat in front of his lordship's desk.

After nine seconds of industrious writing, Lord Vetinari looked up from his paperwork.

All, Mr Lipwig,' he said. 'Not in your golden suit?'

'It's being cleaned, sir.'

'I trust the day goes well with you? Up until now, that is?'

Moist looked around, sorting hastily through the Post Office's recent little problems. Apart from Drumknott, who was standing by his master with an attitude of deferential alertness, they were alone.

'Look, I can explain,' he said.

Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.

'Pray do,' he said, leaning back.

'We got a bit carried away,' said Moist. 'We were a bit too creative in our thinking. We encouraged mongooses to breed in the posting boxes to keep down the snakes…'

Lord Vetinari said nothing.

'Er… which, admittedly, we introduced into the posting boxes to reduce the numbers of toads…'

Lord Vetinari repeated himself.

'Er… which, it's true, staff put in the posting boxes to keep down the snails…'

Lord Vetinari remained unvocal.

'Er… These, I must in fairness point out, got into the boxes of their own accord, in order to eat the glue on the stamps,' said Moist, aware that he was beginning to burble.

'Well, at least you were saved the trouble of having to introduce them yourselves,' said Lord Vetinari cheerfully. 'As you indicate, this may well have been a case where chilly logic should have been replaced by the common sense of, perhaps, the average chicken. But that is not the reason I asked you to come here today.'

'If it's about the cabbage-flavoured stamp glue—' Moist began.

Vetinari waved a hand. 'An amusing incident,' he said, 'and I believe nobody actually died.'

'Er, the Second Issue 50p stamp?' Moist ventured.

'The one they call the "Lovers"?' said Vetinari. 'The League of Decency did complain to me, yes, but—'

'Our artist didn't realize what he was sketching! He doesn't know much about agriculture! He thought the young couple were sowing seeds!'

'Ahem,' said Vetinari. 'But I understand that the offending affair can only be seen in any detail with quite a large magnifying glass, and so the offence, if such it be, is largely self-inflicted.' He gave one of his slightly frightening little smiles. 'I understand the few copies in circulation among the stamp collectors are affixed to a plain brown envelope.' He looked at Moist's blank face and sighed. 'Tell me, Mr Lipwig, would you like to make some real money?'

Moist gave this some thought and then said, very carefully: 'What will happen to me if I say yes?'

'You will start a new career of challenge and adventure, Mr Lipwig.'

Moist shifted uneasily. He didn't need to look round to know that, by now, someone would be standing by the door. Someone heavily but not grotesquely built, in a cheap black suit, and with absolutely no sense of humour.

'And, just for the sake of argument, what will happen if I say no?'

'You may walk out of that door over there and the matter will not be raised again.'

It was a door in a different wall. He had not come in by it.

'That door over there?' Moist stood up and pointed.

'Indeed so, Mr Lipwig.'

Moist turned to Drumknott. 'May I borrow your pencil, Mr Drumknott? Thank you.' He walked over to the door and opened it. Then he cupped one hand to his ear, theatrically, and dropped the pencil.

'Let's see how dee—'

Clik! The pencil bounced and rolled on some quite solid-looking floorboards. Moist picked it up and stared at it, and then walked slowly back to his chair.

'Didn't there use to be a deep pit full of spikes down there?' he said.

'I can't imagine why you would think that,' said Lord Vetinari.

'I'm sure there was,' Moist insisted.

'Can you recall, Drumknott, why our Mr Lipwig should think that there used to be a deep pit full of spikes behind that door?' said Vetinari.

'I can't imagine why he would think that, my lord,' Drumknott murmured.

'I'm very happy at the Post Office, you know,' said Moist, and realized that he sounded defensive.

'I'm sure you are. You make a superb Postmaster General,' said Vetinari. He turned to Drumknott. 'Now I've finished this I'd better deal with the overnights from Genua,' he said, and carefully folded the letter into an envelope.

'Yes, my lord,' said Drumknott.

The tyrant of Ankh-Morpork bent to his work. Moist watched blankly as Vetinari took a small but heavy-looking box from a desk drawer, removed a stick of black sealing wax from it and melted a small puddle of the wax on to the envelope with an air of absorption that Moist found infuriating.