“Good,” carried on the Bellman, consulting his clipboard. “Item four. Text Grand Central have reported several attempted incursions from the Outland. Nothing serious, but enough to generate a few ripples in the Ficto-Outland barrier. Miss Havisham, didn’t you report that an Outlander company was doing some research into entering fiction?”

It was true. Goliath had been attempting entry into the BookWorld for many years but with little success; all they had managed to do was extract a stodgy gunge from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese. Uncle Mycroft had sought refuge in the Sherlock Holmes series to avoid them.

“It was called the Something Company,” replied Havisham thoughtfully.

“Goliath,” I told her. “It’s called the Goliath Corporation.”

“Goliath. That was it. I had a look round while I was retrieving Miss Next’s TravelBook.”

“Do you think their technology is that far advanced?” asked the Bellman.

“No. They’re still a long way away. They’d been trying to send an unmanned probe into The Listeners, but from what I saw, with little success.”

“Okay,” replied the Bellman, “we’ll keep an eye on them. What was their name again?”

“Goliath,” I said.

He made a note.

“Item five. All of the punctuation has been stolen from the final chapter of Ulysses. Probably about five hundred assorted full stops, commas, apostrophes and colons.” He paused for a moment. “Vern, weren’t you doing some work on this?”

“Indeed,” replied the squire, stepping forward and opening a notebook, “we noticed the theft two days ago. To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses—you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, where no one noticed? Well, this theft was noted, but initial reports show that readers are regarding the lack of punctuation as not a cataclysmic error but the mark of a great genius, so we’ve got some breathing space.”

“Are we sure it was a thief?” asked Beatrice. “Couldn’t it just be grammasites?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Perkins, who had made book-zoology into something closely resembling a science. “Punctusauroids are pretty rare, and to make off with so many punctuations you would need a flock of several hundred. Also, I don’t think they would have left the last full stop—that looks to me like a mischievous thief.”

“Okay,” said the Bellman, “so what are we to do?”

“The only ready market for stolen punctuation is in the Well.”

“Hmm,” mused the Bellman. “A Jurisfiction agent down there is about as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. We need someone to go undercover. Any volunteers?”

“It’s my case,” said Vernham Deane. “I’ll go. That is—if no one thinks themselves better qualified.”

There was silence.