William The Outlaw Read Online Free PDF Page A

the habit of repeating their effects.
Moreover, the motor boat experiment had not been so successful as to warrant its repetition.
    Suddenly Ginger’s face lit up.
    ‘I know!’ he said, ‘let’s show Joan him . . . you know, him what we saw last night – with the dead body—’
    Joan’s eyes grew round with horror.
    ‘It wasn’t a dead body,’ said Douglas impatiently, ‘it was a skeleton.’
    ‘That’s the same as a dead body,’ said Ginger pugnaciously, ‘it was a body , wasn’t it? an’ now it’s dead.’
    ‘Yes, but it’s bones ,’ protested Douglas.
    ‘Well, a body’s bones, isn’t it?’ said Ginger.
    But here Joan interrupted. ‘Oh, what is it, where is it?’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘it sounds awful. ’
    Her horror satisfied them completely. With Joan you could always be so pleasantly sure that your effects would come off.
    ‘Come on,’ said William briskly assuming his air of Master of the Ceremonies, ‘we’ll show him you. We c’n get through the hole in the hedge ’n creep up to the
window through the bushes without him seein’ us at all.’
    They got through the hole in the hedge and crept up to the window through the bushes. William, as Master of the Ceremonies, had an uneasy suspicion that in the cold morning
light both man and room might look perfectly normal, that the ghostly effect of the night before might have vanished completely. But the suspicions proved to be groundless. The room looked, if
possible, even more uncanny than it had done. And Mr Galileo Simpkins still pottered about it happily in his black dressing gown and skull cap (it was a costume in which he rather fancied himself).
Mr Galileo Simpkins liked his nice large downstairs lab and felt very happy in it. As he stirred an experiment in a little crucible he sang softly to himself from sheer good spirits. He was quite
unaware of the Outlaws watching his every movement with eager interest from the bushes outside the window. It was Ginger who saw and pointed out to the others the shelf at the back of the room on
which stood a row of bottles containing wizened frogs in some sort of liquid.
    Aghast, they crept away.
    ‘Well, I’m cert’n that’s what he’s goin’ to do,’ said Douglas as soon as they reached the road, ‘he’s goin’ to blow up all the
world. He’s jus’ mixin’ up the stuff to do it with.’
    ‘Well, I still think he might be jus’ an ornery sort of man doin’ ornery chemistry,’ said Henry.
    ‘What about the dead body, then?’ said Ginger.
    ‘An’ what about frogs an’ things shut up in bottles an’ things?’ said William.
    Then Joan spoke.
    ‘He’s a wizard,’ she said, ‘of course he’s a wizard.’
    William treated this suggestion with derision.
    ‘A wizard,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Soppy fairytale stuff! Course he’s not. There aren’t any!’
    But Joan was not crushed.
    ‘There are , William,’ she said solemnly, ‘I know there are.’
    ‘ How d’you know there are?’ said William incredulously.
    ‘And what about the dead body?’ said Ginger with the air of one bringing forward an unanswerable objection.
    ‘The skeleton,’ corrected Douglas.
    ‘It’s someone he’s turned into a skeleton, of course,’ said Joan firmly.
    ‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ commented William again with scorn. Joan bore his reproof meekly but clung to her point with feminine pertinacity.
    ‘It’s not , William. It’s true. I know it’s true.’
    There was certainly something convincing about her earnestness though the Outlaws were determined not to be convinced by it.
    ‘No,’ said Douglas very firmly. ‘He’s a blower up, that’s what he is. He’s goin’ to blow up all the world.’
    ‘What about the frogs in bottles?’ said Henry.
    ‘They’re people he’s turned into frogs,’ said Joan.
    The frogs certainly seemed to fit into Joan’s theory better than they fitted into Douglas’s. Joan pursued her advantage. ‘And didn’t you hear