The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus Read Online Free PDF

and cartwheeled through the door before anyone could stop him.
    “We had better assist the poor boy!” said Bacchus, leading the way. “Malachi, you will remain here and protect Ophelia!”
    “What if it comes in, and we’re on our own?” said Malachi.
    “Coward!” accused Mr. Bacchus.
    “Me?” said Malachi. “Coward? Me? You insult me, sir. My dignity is affronted.” He put his nose into the air and climbed into the costume basket.
    “You’d better come with me then,” said Hero to Ophelia, and they stepped out into the windy night.
    Twice or three times around the caravan they stalked, encountering one another in the dark once or twice and seizing hold of each other, yelling:
    “I have it! I have it!” until they realized that it was not the disembodied Fish head at all. Hero helped Angelo to climb onto the roof, but there was nothing to be found. Not even a pool of slime where the creature had squatted. As for Thoth the Ibisbird, he had hidden his head under his wing and was standing frozen on one leg like a statue in the Duke de Medici’s gardens. There was nothing to be seen or heard, except the wind and the waste of the darkness.
    Suddenly, the caravan rocked more violently than ever, and from within came the sound of Malachi’s voice yelling, and the smashing of crockery. Everybody immediately rushed round to the door, but by the time they arrived, the noises had ceased. Cautiously, they peered in. Malachi was on the floor, wrapped up in a bundle of costumes, and the creature was sitting on his back. It was really not so fearsome when viewed the right way up. In fact, it was an orang-outang.
    “I’m Bathsheba,” she announced.
    “Are you the thing?” said Hero suspiciously. “Or it’s keeper?”
    “What thing?” asked Bathsheba.
    “On our roof,” said Domingo. “The gibbering Lion-Fish head with no body and a fin growing out of its skull.”
    “Yes!” replied Bathsheba.
    “You can’t be,” said Ophelia. “It had no neck.”
    “And an orange beard.” said Hero.
    So Bathsheba stood on her head, and everyone recognized the monstrosity. When inverted, the orang-outang became something horrid beyond imagining.
    “I apologise for the noise,” said Bathsheba. “But I really wasn’t quite sure where I landed.”
    “You fly?” said Domingo.
    “I was blown,” explained the ape. “The wind got under my parasol.”
    “Where do you come from?” asked Ophelia, breathless with awe.
    Bathsheba slowly looked from one person to the next and then said, very quietly: “Have you heard of Doctor Jozabiah Bentham of Houndsditch?”
    Bacchus’ face became terrible to look upon when that name was spoken. “Bentham, the son of a butcher?” he said, and the ape flinched as he accused her. “You are one of Bentham’s menagerie?”
    Malachi meanwhile, had disentangled himself from the costumes, and nodded knowingly. “He’s a Doctor of Philosophy,” he mused. “And they’re a dangerous breed.”
    “I’ve never heard of him,” said Angelo.
    “He owns another Travelling Circus,” explained Mr. Bacchus grimly. “The Theatre of Tears. And wherever it goes, it leaves melancholy behind it! Every act is neon-lit, so that the audience doesn’t miss a tear.”
    “And Bentham himself plays the cello at every performance,” added Bathsheba, “to ‘make the audience weep’. The Doctor says he’s proved by logic that people want perpetual misery. He put me in a little bird-cage and told me to look as imprisoned as possible.”
    “And did you?” asked Ophelia.
    “I tried,” said Bathsheba, “but I used to smirk. He hated that.”
    “Has he still got the rest of his Theatre with him?” said Bacchus.
    “Oh yes,” replied Bathsheba. “There’s Luther the wolf, Mud, Hole and Slug the acrobats, the Silver Clown who juggles broken mirrors with his hook and hand; and of course, the star of the Theatre of Tears, Medea, the bald snake-woman. It sends shivers through me to think of