'I'm sure he means well,' said Bent, leaving the words hanging in the air like a noose.
Out in the hall a dignified hush prevailed. A few people were at the counters, an old lady watched her little dog drink from the brass bowl inside the door, and any words that were uttered were spoken in a suitably hushed voice. Moist was all for money, it was one of his favourite things, but it didn't have to be something you mentioned very quietly in case it woke up. If money talked in here, it whispered.
The chief cashier opened a small and not very grand door behind the stairs and half hidden by some potted plants.
'Please be careful, the floor is always wet here,' he said, and led the way down some wide steps into the grandest cellar Moist had ever seen. Fine stone vaulting supported beautifully tiled ceilings stretching away into the gloom. There were candles everywhere, and in the middle distance something was sparkling and filling the colonnaded space with a blue-white glow.
'This was the undercroft of the temple,' said Bent, leading the way.
'Are you telling me this place doesn't just look like a temple?'
'It was built as a temple, yes, but never used as one.'
'Really?' said Moist. 'Which god?'
'None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,' said Bent. 'I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.'
'He hoped one would turn up?'
'Exactly, sir.'
'Like blue-tits?' said Moist, peering around. 'This place was a kind of celestial bird box?'
Bent sighed. 'You express yourself colourfully, Mr Lipwig, but I suppose there is some truth there. It didn't work, anyway. Then it got used as storage in case of siege, became an indoor market, and so on, and then Jocatello La Vice got the place when the city defaulted on a loan. It is all in the official history. Isn't the fornication wonderful?'
After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured: 'It is?'
'Don't you think so? There's more here than anywhere else in the city, I'm told.'
'Really?' said Moist, looking around nervously. 'Er, do you have to come down here at some special time?'
'Well, in banking hours usually, but we let groups in by appointment.'
'You know,' said Moist, 'I think this conversation has somehow got away from me...'
Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling. 'I refer to the wonderful vaulting,' he said. 'The word derives from fornix, meaning "arch".'
'Ah! Yes? Right!' said Moist. 'You know, I wouldn't be surprised if not many people knew that.'
And then Moist saw the Glooper, glowing among the arches. romise of gold - The Men of the Sheds - The cost of a penny and the usefulness of widows - Overheads underfoot - Security, the importance thereof - A fascination with transactions - A son of many fathers - Alleged untrustworthiness in a case of flaming underwear - The Panopticon of the World and the blindness of Mr Bent - An Arch Comment
'SOMEHOW I WAS expecting something... bigger,' said Moist, looking through the steel bars into the little room that held the gold. The metal, in open bags and boxes, gleamed dully in the torchlight.
'That is almost ten tons of gold,' said Bent reproachfully. 'It does not have to look big.'
'But all the ingots and bags put together aren't much bigger than the desks out there!'
'It is very heavy, Mr Lipwig. It is the one true metal, pure and unsullied,' said Bent. His left eye twitched. 'It is the metal that never fell from grace.'
'Really?' said Moist, checking that the door out of there was still open.
'And it is also the only basis of a sound financial system,' Mr Bent went on, while the torchlight reflected off the bullion and gilded his face. 'There is Value! There is Worth! Without the anchor of gold, all would be chaos.'
'Why?'
'Who would set the value of the dollar?'
'Our dollars are not pure gold, though, are they?'