The Them instinctively looked down at the grubby, dirt-covered chalk beneath their feet.
"How come they know everything?" said Pepper.
"They just have to listen, right?" hazarded Adam. "They just have to sit in their tunnels and listen. You know what hearin' teachers have. They can hear a whisper right across the room."
"My granny used to put a glass against the wall," said Brian. "She said it was disgustin', the way she could hear everything that went on next door."
"And these tunnels go everywhere, do they?" said Pepper, still staring at the ground.
"All over the world," said Adam firmly.
"Must of took a long time," said Pepper doubtfully. "You remember when we tried digging that tunnel out in the field, we were at it all afternoon, and you had to scrunch up to get all in."
"Yes, but they've been doin' it for millions of years. You can do really good tunnels if you've got millions of years."
"I thought the Tibetans were conquered by the Chinese and the Daily Llama had to go to India," said Wensleydale, but without much conviction. Wensleydale read his father's newspaper every evening, but the prosaic everydayness of the world always seemed to melt under the powerhouse of Adam's explanations.
"I bet they're down there now," said Adam, ignoring this. "They'd be all over the place by now. Sitting underground and listenin'."
They looked at one another.
"If we dug down quickly—" said Brian. Pepper, who was a lot quicker on the uptake, groaned.
"What'd you have to go an' say that for?" said Adam. "Fat lot of good us trying to surprise them now, isn't it, with you shoutin' out something like that. I was just thinkin' we could dig down, an' you jus' have to go an' warn 'em!"
"I don't think they'd dig all those tunnels," said Wensleydale doggedly. "It doesn't make any sense. Tibet's hundreds of miles away."
"Oh, yes. Oh, yes. An' I s'pose you know more about it than Madame Blatvatatatsky?" sniffed Adam.
"Now, if I was a Tibetan," said Wensleydale, in a reasonable tone of voice, "I'd just dig straight down to the hollow bit in the middle and then run around the inside and dig straight up where I wanted to be."
They gave this due consideration.
"You've got to admit that's more sensible than tunnels," said Pepper.
"Yes, well, I expect that's what they do," said Adam. "They'd be bound to of thought of something as simple as that."
Brian stared dreamily at the sky, while his finger probed the contents of one ear.
"Funny, reely," he said. "You spend your whole life goin' to school and learnin' stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there's all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin', that's what I want to know."
There was a chorus of agreement.
Then they went out and played Charles Fort and the Atlantisans versus the Ancient Masters of Tibet, but the Tibetters claimed that using mystic ancient lasers was cheating.
There was a time when witchfinders were respected, although it didn't last very long.
Matthew Hopkins, for example, the Witchfinder General, found witches all over the east of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, charging each town and village nine pence a witch for every one he discovered.
That was the trouble. Witchfinders didn't get paid by the hour. Any witchfinder who spent a week examining the local crones and then told the mayor, "Well done, not a pointy hat among the lot of them," would get fulsome thanks, a bowl of soup and a meaningful goodbye.
So in order to turn a profit Hopkins had to find a remarkable number of witches. This made him more than a little unpopular with the village councils, and he was himself hanged as a witch by an East Anglian village who had sensibly realized that they could cut their overheads by eliminating the middleman.
It is thought by many that Hopkins was the last Witchfinder General.
In this they would, strictly speaking, be correct. Possibly not in the way they imagine, however. The Witchfinder Army marched on, just slightly more quietly.
There is no longer a real Witchfinder General.
Nor is there a Witchfinder Colonel, a Witchfinder Major, a Witchfinder Captain, or even a Witchfinder Lieutenant (the last one was killed falling out of a very tall tree in Caterham, in 1933, while attempting to get a better view of something he believed was a satanic orgy of the most degenerate persuasion, but was, in fact, the Caterham and Whyteleafe Market Traders' Association annual dinner and dance).
There is, however, a Witchfinder Sergeant.
There is also, now, a Witchfinder Private. His name is Newton Pulsifer.
It was the advertisement that got him, in the Gazette, between a fridge for sale and a litter of not-exactly dalmatians:
JOIN THE PROFESSIONALS. PART TIME ASSISTANT REQUIRED TO COMBAT THE FORCES OF DARKNESS. UNIFORM, BASIC TRAINING PROVIDED. FIELD PROMOTION CERTAIN. BE A MAN!
In his lunch hour he phoned the number at the bottom of the ad. A woman answered.
"Hello," he began, tentatively. "I saw your advert."
"Which one, love?"
"Er, the one in the paper."
"Right, love. Well, Madame Tracy Draws Aside the Veil every afternoon except Thursdays. Parties welcome. When would you be wanting to Explore the Mysteries, love?"
Newton hesitated. "The advert says 'Join the Professionals,'" he said. "It didn't mention Madame Tracy."
"That'll be Mister Shadwell you'll be wanting, then. Just a sec, I'll see if he's in."
Later, when he was on nodding terms with Madame Tracy, Newt learned that if he had mentioned the other ad, the one in the magazine, Madame Tracy would have been available for strict discipline and intimate massage every evening except Thursdays. There was yet another ad in a phone box somewhere. When, much later, Newt asked her what this one involved, she said "Thursdays." Eventually there was the sound of feet in uncarpeted hallways, a deep coughing, and a voice the color of an old raincoat rumbled:
"Aye?"
"I read your advert. 'Join the professionals.' I wanted to know a bit more about it."
"Aye. There's many as would like to know more about it, an' there's many…" the voice trailed off impressively, then crashed back to full volume, "… there's many as WOULDN'T."
"Oh," squeaked Newton.
"What's your name, lad?"
"Newton. Newton Pulsifer."
"LUCIFER? What's that you say? Are ye of the Spawn of Darkness, a tempting beguiling creature from the pit, wanton limbs steaming from the fleshpots of Hades, in tortured and lubricious thrall to your stygian and hellish masters?"
"That's Pulsifer," explained Newton. "With a P. I don't know about the other stuff, but we come from Surrey."
The voice on the phone sounded vaguely disappointed.
"Oh. Aye. Well, then. Pulsifer. Pulsifer. I've seen that name afore, maybe?"