BILLY BUNTER'S Big Top Page 1 of 97 - Friardale

BILLY BUNTER’S Big Top
He did not retreat, as a nervous man might have done. If this was some fool
playing ghost to startle unsuspecting pedestrians on a lonely, dark path, Mr.
Quelch was the man to deal with him. He had a stick under his arm and he
grasped it and strode straight at the ghostly figure.
‘Who are you?’ he thundered.
‘Oh, dear!’
The ghostly figure backed off.
Mr. Quelch followed it up angrily. He remembered that he had put his electric
torch in his pocket before starting, and he jerked it out with his left hand and
flashed on the light.
Then he jumped almost clear of the ground in his amazement.
The light gleamed on a bald head, a podgy face that was clean-shaven, and a
short, stout figure in a bathing-suit, wrapped round with a large, flowing
bathing-towel.
Mr. Quelch gazed at it almost in stupefaction.
‘Oh!’ gasped the figure.
It bounded back.
‘Bless my soul! It is some lunatic!’ exclaimed Mr. Quelch aghast. ‘Upon my
word! Stand back! Keep off! I shall strike you with this stick if you approach
me! Go!’
Holding the electric torch in his left hand, Mr. Quelch brandished the stick with
his right. Though not a nervous man in any way, he could not help being
alarmed at this strange unnerving apparition. A man who walked about a
common at night, dressed in a bathing-towel, could scarcely be anything but a
lunatic—perhaps a dangerous maniac!
But if the man was a dangerous maniac, he was daunted by the Remove
master’s firm front. He showed no desire to come out. All his desire, evidently,
was for retreat.
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