Fizzlebert Stump (4 page)

‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Fizz asked.

‘Oh no. Not at all. I’ve mostly worked it out. I lift my hat, turn it over, hold it away from me, run my hand over it and woosh! A pillar of flame bursts ten feet into the air. Spectacular! It’s basically the same as the Brewster’s Backfiring Blaster-Bomb, but on a larger scale. Only,’ he added, ‘I must remember to do the fire trick
after
I’ve pulled the rabbit out. Otherwise . . .’

‘It’s cooked rabbit for dinner?’ Fizz asked mischievously.

‘No, no!’ Dr Surprise squeaked in a pretend frenzy. ‘You nasty boy. How dare you suggest such a thing? I couldn’t eat Flopples. She’s been a friend to me for more years than I can count on one hand.’

‘Six years?’ Fizz suggested, knowing that Dr Surprise always counted with his fingers.

‘No, more years than I can count on my left hand.’

‘Ah, five years then?’

‘Yes. For five years Flopples and I have been best friends, comrades in magic, associates in otherworldliness. She has helped my shows soar to their great heights and no one can take that away from her.’

Flopples, as you’ll have realised, was the rabbit that Dr Surprise pulled from his hat halfway through the show. You might also be wondering what happened to the missing finger on his left hand, but all I’ll say about that is: be
very
careful if ever you try training a rabbit with a carrot that’s too short.

They discussed this new trick for a while before Fizz started asking Dr Surprise about hypnotism. (He always asked Dr Surprise about hypnotism because it was Fizz’s favourite bit of the Doctor’s show.) It seemed the Wars of the Roses had been completely forgotten.

Hypnotism is the art of putting someone into a ‘state of suggestion’. That means that they’ll do whatever you ask them to, even if it’s something quite silly, like hopping on one leg or pretending to be a cat or even pretending to be a cat that’s hopping on one leg. That’s exactly the sort of thing that makes an audience laugh nervously (it’s very funny, just so long as it’s not you that’s been hypnotised).

Fizz had seen the show many times. He’d watched Dr Surprise slowly and steadily swing his pocket watch to and fro and laughed at how the perfectly ordinary normal boring people out of the audience would do what he said. It looked so simple. ‘Just concentrate on my watch,’ he would say, ‘you are getting sleepy,’ and they’d answer and say, ‘I am getting sleepy.’ And then he’d say, ‘When I count to ten you will obey only my voice.’ And then he would count up to ten and the person would say, ‘Yes, Master,’ (he always asked them to call him ‘Master’ because it was scary and scary is good for business). Then he would say, ‘When I snap my fingers you will wake up and remember nothing of what has happened.’ And after he’d had them pretend to be dogs and jump through hoops or pretend to be chickens and scratch at the sawdust looking for grain, he’d snap his fingers and they’d say, ‘Have you started yet?’ not realising that he had not only started but also finished, and they’d go and sit back down thinking nothing had happened, until their friends told them all about it later on.

Fizz thought it was brilliant and funny and also a bit scary, and he’d been badgering Dr Surprise to teach him the trick for months, but the Doctor was very careful about not revealing all of his secrets.

‘Go on,’ Fizz said today.

‘No, I cannot reveal my powers to you, Fizzlebert Stump. They bring me a great responsibility and I must keep them hidden, for fear they might fall into the wrong hands of some evildoer.’

‘Oh, go on, it’s only me.’

‘No. I cannot. Now, I think, this lesson is over. Look, it is almost eleven o’clock. I must begin rehearsing the new trick.’

‘Setting fire to your hat?’

‘Yes. So, you’d best run along.’

‘Okay,’ Fizz said. ‘Bye then.’

But Fizz lingered in the Doctor’s doorway, one foot on the steps and fresh air already in his lungs. And there he paused, just for a moment. He had wanted to ask Dr Surprise for some advice, but had forgotten until now. It was only when leaving the caravan that he’d picked up the book he’d found the night before and had remembered. But Dr Surprise wanted to be getting on with his new trick, and Fizz didn’t want to delay him any longer.

As he hesitated, the Doctor raised a finger in the air with a mysterious flourish, and said, ‘Wait! I sense that there is something you wish to ask me, yes?’

‘Well . . .’ Fizz said.

But before he could ask his question Dr Surprise spoke again.

‘You want to know about that book? Yes? Am I right?’

‘Wow,’ said Fizz, quite amazed. ‘How on earth did you know that?’

‘Well . . .’ said the Doctor, smiling widely under his tiny moustache.

(Of course, Fizz shouldn’t have been surprised at all. I mean, he knew that Dr Surprise was a mind reader. But also, he might have noticed that he had been clutching the book and lingering as if to say, ‘I want to say something about this, but I’m not sure I should’. (I’m just saying, it’s worth remembering that it doesn’t always take a mind reader to read a mind.))

Fizzlebert told him the story of how he’d found the book, though he didn’t mention about how the kids had taken the mickey out of him before running away laughing.

‘Well, let me see,’ Dr Surprise said, taking the book from him. ‘Ah, look. Do you know what this is?’

He had opened the front cover and there pasted inside the book was a flap of paper with two columns of dates stamped in blue ink. Fizz had wondered about that earlier, but didn’t know quite what to make of it.

‘This is a library book. You see these dates? They tell you when the book has to be taken back.’

‘Taken back where?’

‘Back to the library.’

‘What’s a library?’ asked Fizz.

(Now, of course
you
know what a library is, and you’re probably thinking that
everyone
knows what a library is, but you have to remember that Fizzlebert had grown up in a travelling circus. He had never lived anywhere long enough to learn about a library, let alone to join one and borrow books. So please don’t think him stupid for not knowing. I mean, I bet you don’t know what a
corde pareille
is, but Fizz did. (It’s a circus act in which the performer does spectacular graceful astonishing acrobatic things on a rope that hangs straight down from the highest point of the Big Top.) So now you know, and now Fizz is learning about libraries. Everyone’s learnt something. What a very useful book this is.)

‘It’s a place where books are kept,’ said the Doctor, explaining about the library. ‘You say you only met the boy whose book this was briefly? And you don’t know where he is now? Well, there’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?’

‘Is there?’

‘Yes. This book is due back tomorrow and if it isn’t returned to the library your new friend will be in trouble.’

‘In trouble?’

‘Oh yes. It’s a serious thing having a book out too long.’

‘Is it?’

‘Oh yes. Very serious indeed. What if someone else wants to read this? What would happen then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No. And neither do I. Very serious.’

‘What can we do?’

‘
We
do nothing, Fizzlebert. I have a trick to practise.
You
, on the other hand, should take this book back.’

‘Back to the boy who . . .?’

‘No. You said you don’t know where he is. No, you’ll have to take it back to the library for him. Do a good deed.’

Fizz didn’t like the idea of getting the boy into trouble, even if he had been mean. That wouldn’t really be fair and although he was unhappy, he didn’t want to be nasty. So, yes, he thought, he would take it back, but . . .

‘But, Dr Surprise, I don’t know where this library is either.’

‘Ah, that’s easy,’ the Doctor said. ‘Look, the address is written in the book and it’s not very far at all.’

The two of them climbed down from the caravan and walked to the edge of the circus tents.

Dr Surprise pointed to the other side of the park.

‘You see there, just round the duck pond and up that path?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, through those trees is a little road and the library is the building just on the right. It’s a five-minute walk from here.’

‘So, it’s past the duck pond, up the path through the trees and you say it’s just on the right?’ Fizz repeated. ‘How will I know which one’s the library?’

‘It will say “Library” over the door in big letters. Be full of books. You can’t miss it. Just go in and give the book back. That’s all you have to do.’

‘That’s all I have to do?’

‘That’s all. It won’t take you more than ten minutes all told. But first . . .’

‘First?’ asked Fizz.

‘You’d best tell your parents where you’re going. We don’t want you getting in trouble, do we?’

Before Fizz could answer Dr Surprise spun on his rabbit-slippered heel and headed off back to his caravan where his new trick was waiting to be tried out.

Fizzlebert began walking across the park, down past the duck pond and towards the trees on the far side behind which hid this library place. The tails of his frock-coat fluttered as he walked and the cool breeze of the late summer morning ruffled his red hair like the hand of an over-friendly aunt.

He looked back at the circus once. All the tents and caravans and lorries looked so small next to the enormous Big Top with its orange and yellow stripes shining bright in the morning sun.

For just a second he wondered whether he should do as Dr Surprise said, and go and tell his parents, but his mum was wearing her clown face now and she would just crack another stupid joke if he tried to tell her anything, and the last time he saw his dad he’d been trying to work out how a man could lift a horse.

Fizz had tried telling his dad things before, but he usually became distracted and dropped whatever it was he was lifting. Fizz didn’t fancy being responsible for his dad dropping a horse. (The woman in charge of the horses (Miss Tremble) was the sort of person who cried when one of her horses had its hair cut. Who knew how she’d react if the strongman dropped one of her prize ponies. Fizz didn’t want to find out.)

‘Anyway,’ he said to himself, ‘I’ll only be ten minutes. They won’t mind me popping out for that long.’

Of course, Fizzlebert’s parents didn’t mind him popping out, but only because they didn’t know about it. By the time Dr Surprise had set fire to his hat a few times he’d almost completely forgotten the morning’s lessons, and besides he
had
told Fizz to tell his parents, so it wasn’t his fault, was it?

Hang on, what wasn’t his fault? Fizzlebert is just taking a book to the library and coming straight back, isn’t he? We’ve all done that, haven’t we? It’s easy. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter Four

in which a librarian is encountered and in which death robots from Mars make a brief appearance

Fizzlebert was about to push open the door to the library when it opened all by itself. It trundled to one side and waited for him to step through. To Fizz this was unusual. Circus tents don’t have automatic doors and neither do caravans. He was startled, but he wasn’t scared.