'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. I spoke to the Cat and he said that no one has entered the book, so we can only assume that the novel was penetrated through the literary interpretation of Dublin – which gives us several thousand suspects. I surmise 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, which no one ever 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 bookzoology 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.

'Looks like you're it!' enthused the Bellman, writing a note on his clipboard. 'Item six. As you recall, David and Catriona Balfour were Boojummed a few weeks back. Because there can't be much Kidnapped and Catriona without them and Robert Louis Stevenson remains a popular author, the Council of Genres has licensed a pair of A-4 Generics to take their place. They'll be given unlimited access to all Stevenson's books, and I want you all to make them feel welcome.'

There was a murmuring from the collected agents.

'Yes,' said the Bellman with a resigned air, 'I know they'll never be exactly the same but with a bit of luck we should be okay; no one in the Outland noticed when David Copperfield was replaced, now, did they?'

No one said anything.