"I am relieved to hear that," she said. "May I assume your policy will remain unchanged, and make note of this for the rest of the legal staff and other consortium officials?"

Such an innocent-sounding question, to have so many teeth in it I answered cautiously: "You can assume I'll do my best to keep your parchments safe and confidential. I'm not in a position to make promises about where they'll be at any given moment."

"Your response is not altogether satisfactory," she said.

Too bad, I thought. Out loud, I said, "Counselor, I'm afraid it's the best I can do, given my own responsibilities and oaths." Let her make something of that.

My phone imp reproduced a sigh. Maybe I wasn't the only one who thought I was having a bad day. Colleen Pfeiffer said, "I will transmit what you say, Inspector Fisher.

Thank you for your time."

I'd just reached for the fumigants report - I still hadn't had the chance to let our access spirit finish looking at it - when the phone yarped again. I took in vain the names of several Christian saints in whose intercession I don't believe.

Then I lifted the handset It was, after all, part of my job, even if I was growing ever more convinced I wasn't going to get around to any other parts today. No, you're wrong - it wasn't another lawyer. It was the owner of Slow Jinn Fizz, an excitable fellow named Ramzan Durani. I'd noted that as one of the smaller companies that used the Devonshire dump; evidently it wasn't big enough to keep lawyers on staff just to sic them on people. But the owner had the same concerns the woman from Demondyne and the fellow from the Devonshire Land Management Consortium had had. For some reason or other, I began to suspect a trend.

Then I found myself with another irate proprietor trying to scream in my ear, this one a certain Jorge Vasquez, who ran an outfit called Chocolate Weasel. I tried to distract him by asking - out of genuine curiosity, I assure you - just what Chocolate Weasel did, but he was in no mood to be distracted. He seemed sure every secret he had was about to be published in the dailies and put out over the ethemet.