Mr  Brown glared  at each  of them in  turn, flourishing  the  crowbar. Sideney cowered in front of the doors.

     He saw Teatime nod gracefully, as if the man had made a small speech of thanks.

     'I  appreciate your point  of  view,' said Teatime.  'And,  I  have  to repeat, it's Teh-ah-tim-eh. Now, please, Banjo.'

     Banjo  loomed  over  Mr Brown, reached down  and  lifted  him up by the crowbar so sharply that his feet came out of his boots.

     'Here,  you  know  me,  Banjo!' the  locksmith  croaked, struggling  in mid-air.  'I  remembers  you  when you was  little, I used  to sit you on my knees, I often used to work for your ma...'

     'D'you like apples?' Banjo rumbled.

     Brown struggled.

     'You got to say yes,' Banjo said.

     'Yes!'

     'D'You like pears? You got to say yes.'

     'All right, yes!'

     'D'you like falling down the stairs?'

     Medium Dave held up his hands for quiet.

     He glared at the gang.

     'This place is getting to you, right? But we've all been in bad  places before, right?'

     'Not this  bad,'  said Chickenwire. 'I've never been  anywhere where it hurts to look at the sky. It give me the creeps.'

     'Chick's a little baby, nyer nyer nyer,' sang Careers.

     They looked at him. He coughed nervously.

     'Sorry... don't know why I said that. .

     'If we stick together we'll be fine-'

     'Teeny meeny minty me...' mumbled Catseye.

     'What? What are you talking about?'

     'Sorry... it just sort of slipped out...'

     'What I'm trying to say,' said Medium Dave, 'is that if-- '

     'Peachy keeps making faces at me!'

     'I didn't!'

     'Liar, liar, pants on fire!'

     Two things happened  at this  point.  Medium Dave lost his temper,  and Peachy screamed.

     A small wisp of smoke was rising from his trousers.

     He hopped around, beating desperately at himself.

     'Who did that? Who did that?' demanded Medium Dave.

     'I didn't see anyone,' said Chickenwire. 'I mean, no  one was near him. Catseye said "pants on fire" and next minute...'

     'Now  he's sucking his thumb!' Catseye  jeered. Nyer nyer nyer!  Crying for Mummy! You know what happens to kids who suck their thumbs, there's this big monster with scissors all ...'

     'Will you stop talking like  that!' shouted Medium Dave. 'Blimey, it is like dealing with a bunch of-'

     Someone screamed, high above. It went on for a  while and  seemed to be getting nearer, but then it stopped and was  replaced by  a rush of thumping and an occasional sound like a coconut being bounced on a stone floor.

     Medium Dave  got to the door just  in time to see the body  of Mr Brown the locksmith tumble past, moving quite fast and not at all neatly. A moment later  his bag  somersaulted around  the curve of the stairs. It split as it bounced and there was a jangle as tools and lockpicks bounced out and followed their late owner.

     He'd  been moving quite fast. He'd  probably  roll all the  way to  the bottom.

     Medium Dave looked up. Two turns above him, on the opposite side of the huge shaft, Banjo was watching him.

     Banjo didn't know right from wrong. He'd always left that sort of thing to his brother.

     'Er... poor guy must've slipped,' Medium Dave mumbled.

     'Oh, yeah... slipped,' said Peachy.

     He looked up, too.

     It was funny. He hadn't noticed them before. The white tower had seemed to glow from within. But now there were shadows, moving across the stone. In the stone.

     'What was that?' he said. 'That sound...

     'What sound?'

     'It sounded... like knives scraping,' said Peachy. 'Really close.'

     'There's  only us  here!'  said  Medium Dave. 'What're  you  afraid of? Attack by daisies? Come on... let's go and help him...'

     She couldn't walk through the door. It simply resisted any such effort. She ended up merely bruised. So Susan turned the doorknob instead.

     She heard the oh god  gasp. But she was  used to  the idea of buildings that were bigger on the inside.  Her  grandfather  had  never  been  able to  get  a handle  on dimensions.

     The second thing the eye was drawn to were the staircases. They started opposite one another in what  was now a big round tower, its ceiling lost in the haze. The spirals circled into infinity.

     Susan's eyes went back to the first thing.

     It was a large conical heap in the middle of the floor.

     It  was white. It glistened in the cool light that shone down from the mists.

     'It's teeth,' she said.

     'I think I'm going to throw up,' said the oh god miserably.

     'There's  nothing that  scary about teeth,' said Susan. She didn't mean it. The heap was very horrible indeed.

     'Did I say I was scared? I'm just hung over again... Oh, me...'

     Susan advanced on the heap, moving warily.

     They  were  small  teeth. Children's  teeth. Whoever  had piled them up hadn't been very careful about it,  either. A  few had been scattered across the  floor.  She  knew  because  she  trod on one, and the  slippery  little crunching sound made her desperate not to tread on any more.

     Whoever had piled them up had  presumably been the  one who'd drawn the chalk marks around the obscene heap.

     'There're so many,' whispered Bilious.

     'At least twenty million, given the size of the average milk tooth,' said Susan. She  was shocked  to find that it came almost automatically.

     'How can you possibly know that?'

     'Volume  of  a cone,' said  Susan.  'Pi times the square  of the radius times the height divided by three. I bet  Miss Butts never thought it'd come in handy in a place like this.'

     'That's amazing. You did it in your head?'

     'This isn't right,' said Susan quietly. 'I don't think this is what the Tooth Fairy is all about. All that effort to get the teeth, and then just to dump them  like this?  No. Anyway, there's a cigarette end on  the  floor. I don't see the Tooth Fairy as someone who rolls her own.'

     She stared down at the chalk marks.

     Voices high above her made her look up. She thought she saw a head look over the  stair rail, and then draw back again. She  didn't see much of  the face, but what she saw didn't look fairylike.

     She glanced back at  the circle of chalk around the teeth. Someone  had wanted  all the teeth  in  one place and had drawn a circle to  show  people where they had to go.

     There were a few symbols scrawled around the circle.

     She had  a good memory for  small details. It was another family trait. And a small detail stirred in her memory like a sleepy bee.

     'Oh, no,' she breathed. 'Surely no one would try to...'

     Someone shouted, someone up in the whiteness.

     A body rolled down the stairs nearest her. It had been a  skinny, middle-aged  man. Technically it still was, but the long spiral staircase had not been kind.

     It tumbled across the white marble and slid to a boneless halt.

     Then, as she hurried towards the body, it  faded away,  leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood.

     A jingle  noise made  her look back  up  the  stairs. Spinning over and over, making salmon leaps  in the air, a crowbar bounded over the last dozen steps and landed point first on a flagstone, staying upright and vibrating.

     Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting.

     'There's  people down there, Mister Teatime!' he wheezed. 'Dave and the others've gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!'