He sighed and wiped his mouth on his tie.

'Who seconds the application?'

'Commander Bradshaw.'

'And who vouches for Miss Next?'

'I do.'

'Good. Repeat the oath of the BookWorld.' Primed by Miss Havisham, I repeated:

'I swear by the Great Panjandrum that I shall uphold the rules of Jurisfiction, protect the BookWorld and defend every fictioneer, no matter how poorly written, against oppression. I shall not shirk from my duty, nor use my knowledge or position for personal gain. Secrets entrusted to me by the Council of Genres or Text Grand Central must remain secret within the service, and I will do all I can to maintain the power of storytelling within the minds and hearts of the readers.'

'That'll do,' said the small man, taking another bite of his biscuit. 'Sign here, here and – er – here. And you have to witness it, Miss Havisham.'

I signed where he indicated in the large ledger, noting as I did so that the last Jurisfiction agent to have signed was Beatrice. He snapped the book shut after Miss Havisham had witnessed my signature.

'Good. Here's your badge.'

He handed over a shiny Jurisfiction badge with my name and number engraved below the colourful logo. It could get me into any book I wanted without question – even Poe if I so chose, although it wasn't recommended.

'Now if you'll excuse me,' said the bureaucrat, looking at his watch, 'I'm very busy. These forms have to be processed in under a month.'

We returned to the elevator and Miss Havisham pressed the twenty-sixth sub-basement button. We were going back into the Well.

'Good,' she said. 'Now that's out of the way we can get on. Perkins and Mathias we can safely say were murdered; Snell might as well have been. We are still waiting for Godot and someone tried to kill you with an exploding hat. As an apprentice you have limited powers; as a full member of Jurisfiction you can do a lot more. You must be on your guard!'

'But why?'

'Because I don't want you dead and if you know what's good for you, neither do you.'

'No, I mean why is someone trying to kill me?'

'I wish I knew.'

'Let's suppose,' I said, 'that Deane isn't just missing – that he may have been murdered. Is there a link between Perkins, Deane, Mathias and myself?'

'None that I can think of,' said Miss Havisham after a great deal of thought, 'but if we consider that Mathias may have been killed because he was a witness, and that one of your Outlander friends may be trying to kill you, then that narrows the list to Perkins and Deane. And there is a link between those two.'

'Yes?'

'Harris Tweed, myself, Perkins and Deane were all given an UltraWord™ book to test.'

'I didn't know that.'