Going Postal полностью

‘Poor Crispin came to see me the night before he died,’ said Gilt, as calmly as six inches of snow. ‘Babbled about, oh, all sorts of wild things. They hardly bear repeating. I think he believed people were after him. He did however insist on pressing a small ledger on me. Needless to say, it is safely locked away.’

The room fell silent, its silence made deeper and hotter by a number of desperate men thinking hard and fast. They were, by their own standards, honest men, in that they only did what they knew or suspected that everyone else did and there was never any visible blood, but just now they were men far out on a frozen sea who’d just heard the ice creak.

‘I strongly suspect that it’ll be a bit less than two hundred thousand,’ said Gilt. ‘Pony would be a fool if he didn’t leave a margin.’

‘You didn’t warn us about this, Readier,’ said Stowley resentfully.

Gilt waved his hands. ‘We must speculate to accumulate!’ he said. ‘The Post Office? Trickery and sleight of hand. Oh, von Lipwig is an ideas man, but that’s all he is. He’s made a splash, but he’s not got the stamina for the long haul. Yet as it turns out he will do us a favour. Perhaps we have been… a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! Spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars—’

‘Several hundred?’ said Greenyham.

Gilt waved him into silence, and continued: ‘—several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission.’

An awed silence followed.

‘And thus we bounce back,’ said Gilt.

‘But you said several hundr—’

Gilt sighed. ‘I said that,’ he said. ‘Trust me. It’s a game, gentlemen, and a good player is one who can turn a bad situation to their advantage. I have brought you this far, haven’t I? A little cash and the right attitude will take us the rest of the way. I’m sure you can find some more money,’ he added, ‘from somewhere it won’t be missed.’

This wasn’t silence. It went beyond silence.

‘What are you suggesting?’ said Nutmeg.

‘Embezzlement, theft, breach of trust, misappropriation of funds… people can be so harsh,’ said Gilt. He threw open his arms again and a big friendly smile emerged like the sun breaking through storm clouds. ‘Gentlemen! I understand! Money was made to work, to move, to grow, not to be locked up in some vault. Poor Mr Horsefry, I believe, did not really understand that. So much on his mind, poor fellow. But we… we are businessmen. We understand these things, my friends.’

He surveyed the faces of men who now knew that they were riding a tiger. It had been a good ride up until a week or so ago. It wasn’t a case of not being able to get off. They could get off. That was not the problem. The problem was that the tiger knew where they lived.

Poor Mr Horsefry… there had been rumours. In fact they were completely unsubstantiated rumours, because Mr Gryle had been excessively good at his job when pigeons weren’t involved, had moved like a shadow with claws and, while he’d left a faint scent, it had been masked by the blood. In the nose of a werewolf, blood trumps everything. But rumour rose in the streets of Ankh-Morpork like mist from a midden.

And then it occurred to one or two of the board that the jovial ‘my friends’ in the mouth of Reacher Gilt, so generous with his invitations, his little tips, his advice and his champagne, was beginning, in its harmonics and overtones, to sound just like the word ‘pal’ in the mouth of a man in an alley who was offering cosmetic surgery with a broken bottle in exchange for not being given any money. On the other hand, they’d been safe so far; maybe it was worth following the tiger to the kill. Better to follow at the beast’s heel than be its prey…

‘And now I realize that I am inexcusably keeping you from your beds,’ said Gilt. ‘Good night to you, gentlemen. You may safely leave everything to me. Igor!’

‘Yeth, marthter,’ said Igor, behind him.

‘Do see these gentlemen out, and ask Mr Pony to come in.’

Gilt watched them go with a smile of satisfaction, which became a bright and happy face when Pony was ushered in.

The interview with the engineer went like this:

‘Mr Pony,’ said Gilt, ‘I am very pleased to tell you that the Board, impressed by your dedication and the hard work you have been putting in, have voted unanimously to increase your salary by five hundred dollars a year.’

Pony brightened up. ‘Thank you very much, sir. That will certainly come in—’