‘You sure you want to hire the whole coach?’ said Harry, as he rubbed down a horse. ‘It’ll be expensive, ‘cos we’ll have to put on another for the passengers. It’s a popular run, that one.’

‘Just the mail in that coach,’ said Moist. ‘And some guards.’

‘Ah, you think you’ll be attacked?’ said Harry, squeezing the towel bone dry with barely an effort.

‘What do you think?’ said Moist.

The brothers looked at one another.

‘I’ll drive it, then,’ said Jim. ‘They don’t call me Leadpipe for nothing.’

‘Besides, I heard there were bandits up in the mountains,’ said Moist.

‘Used to be,’ said Jim. ‘Not as many now.’

‘That’s something less to worry about, then,’ said Moist.

‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘We never found out what wiped them out.’

Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

People like a show…

… and so mail was coming in for Genua, at a dollar a time. A lot of mail.

It was Stanley who explained. He explained several times, because Moist had a bit of a blind spot on this one.

‘People are sending envelopes with stamps inside envelopes to the coach office in Genua so that the first envelope can be sent back in the second envelope,’ was the shape of explanation that finally blew on some sparks in Moist’s brain.

‘They want the envelopes back?’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because they’ve been used, sir.’

‘That makes them valuable?’

‘I’m not sure how, sir. It’s like I told you, sir. I think some people think that they’re not real stamps until they’ve done the job they were invented to do, sir. Remember the first printing of the one penny stamps that we had to cut out with scissors? An envelope with one of those on is worth two dollars to a collector.’

‘Two hundred times more than the stamp?’

‘That’s how it’s going sir,’ said Stanley, his eyes sparkling. ‘People post letters to themselves just to get the stamp, er, stamped, sir. So they’ve been used.’

‘Er… I’ve got a couple of rather crusty handkerchiefs in my pocket,’ said Moist, mystified. ‘Do you think people might want to buy them at two hundred times what they cost?’

‘No, sir!’ said Stanley.

‘Then why should—’

‘There’s a lot of interest, sir. I thought we could do a whole set of stamps for the big guilds, sir. All the collectors would want them. What do you think?’

‘That’s a very clever idea, Stanley,’ said Moist. ‘We’ll do that. The one for the Seamstresses’ Guild might have to go inside a plain brown envelope, eh? Haha!’

This time it was Stanley who looked perplexed. ‘Sorry, sir?’

Moist coughed. ‘Oh, nothing. Well, I can see you’re learning fast, Stanley.’ Some things, anyway.

‘Er… yes, sir. Er… I don’t want to push myself forward, sir—’

‘Push away, Stanley, push away,’ said Moist cheerfully.

Stanley pulled a small paper folder out of his pocket, opened it, and laid it reverentially in front of Moist.

‘Mr Spools helped me with some of it,’ he said. ‘But I did a lot.’

It was a stamp. It was a yellowy-green colour. It showed - Moist peered - a field of cabbages, with some buildings on the horizon.

He sniffed. It smelled of cabbages. Oh, yes.

‘Printed with cabbage ink and using gum made from broccoli, sir,’ said Stanley, full of pride. ‘A Salute to the Cabbage Industry of the Sto Plains, sir. I think it might do very well. Cabbages are so popular, sir. You can make so many things out of them!’

‘Well, I can see that—’

‘There’s cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage—’

‘Yes, Stanley, I think you—’

‘—pickled cabbage, cabbage jelly, cabbage salad, boiled cabbage, deep-fried cabbage—’

‘Yes, but now can—’

‘—fricassee of cabbage, cabbage chutney, Cabbage Surprise, sausages—’

‘Sausages?’

‘Filled with cabbage, sir. You can make practically anything with cabbage, sir. Then there’s—’

‘Cabbage stamps,’ said Moist, terminally. ‘At fifty pence, I note. You have hidden depths, Stanley.’

‘I owe it all to you, Mr Lipwig!’ Stanley burst out. ‘I have put the childish playground of pins right behind me, sir! The world of stamps, which can teach a young man much about history and geography as well as being a healthy, enjoyable, engrossing and thoroughly worthwhile hobby that will give him an interest that will last a lifetime, has opened up before me and—’

‘Yes, yes, thank you!’ said Moist.

‘—and I’m putting thirty dollars into the pot, sir. All my savings. Just to show we support you.’

Moist heard all the words, but had to wait for them to make sense.

‘Pot?’ he said at last. ‘You mean like a bet?’

‘Yes, sir. A big bet,’ said Stanley happily. ‘About you racing the clacks to Genua. People think that’s funny. A lot of the bookmakers are offering odds, sir, so Mr Groat is organizing it, sir! He said the odds aren’t good, though.’

‘I shouldn’t think they are,’ said Moist weakly. ‘No one in their right mind would—’

‘He said we’d only win one dollar for every eight we bet, sir, but we reckoned—’

Moist shot upright. ‘Eight to one odds on ?’ he shouted. ‘The bookies think I’m going to win ? How much are you all betting?’

‘Er… about one thousand two hundred dollars at the last count, sir. Is that—’

Pigeons rose from the roof at the sound of Moist von Lipwig’s scream.

‘Fetch Mr Groat right now !’

It was a terrible thing to see guile on the face of Mr Groat. The old man tapped the side of his nose.

‘You’re the man that got money out o’ a bunch of gods, sir!’ he said, grinning happily.

‘Yes,’ said Moist desperately. ‘But supposing I - I just did that with a trick… ’

‘Damn good trick, sir,’ the old man cackled. ‘Damn good. A man who could trick money out of the gods’d be capable of anything, I should think!’

‘Mr Groat, there is no way a coach can get to Genua faster than a clacks message. It’s two thousand miles!’

‘Yes, I realize you’ve got to say that, sir. Walls have ears, sir. Mum’s the word. But we all had a talk, and we reckoned you’ve been very good to us, sir, you really believe in the Post Office, sir, so we thought: it’s time to put our money in our mouth, sir!’ said Groat, and now there was a touch of defiance.

Moist gaped once or twice. ‘You mean “where your mouth is”?’

‘You’re the man who knows a trick or three, sir! The way you just went into the newspaper office and said, we’ll race you! Reacher Gilt walked right into your trap, sir!’

Glass into diamond, thought Moist. He sighed. ‘All right, Mr Groat. Thank you. Eight to one on, eh?’

‘We were lucky to get it, sir. They went up to ten to one on, then they closed the books. All they’re accepting now is bets on how you’ll win, sir.’

Moist perked up a little. ‘Any good ideas?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a one-dollar flutter on “by dropping fire from the sky”, sir. Er… you wouldn’t like to give me a hint, p’raps?’

‘Please go and get on with your work, Mr Groat,’ said Moist severely.

‘Yessir, of course, sir, sorry I asked, sir,’ said Groat, and crabbed off.

Moist put his head in his hands.

I wonder if it’s like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you’ll die falling.

How could people be so stupid? They seemed to cling to ignorance because it smelled familiar. Reacher Gilt sighed.

He had an office in the Tump Tower. He didn’t like it much, because the whole place shook to the movement of the semaphore, but it was necessary for the look of the thing. It did have an unrivalled view of the city, though. And the site alone was worth what they’d paid for the Trunk.