Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy by A. F. Harrold

put the letters back as neatly as he could and continued looking round the room.
    The cupboards were filled with saucepans and tins cans and crockery and all the usual stuff you find in a kitchen, none of which was of any use to him. That was more time wasted. He looked at the clock above the sink. The hands had moved round faster than he expected. He’d have to be even quicker now, searching the rest of the caravan.
    The last place to look, in the kitchen, was a big old trunk pushed up against the far wall. When Fizz managed to get the heavy lid up he found it empty except for some old black rag rugs.
    Or at least that’s what Fizz thought they were at first.
    When he looked closer and lifted one of the ‘rugs’ up it seemed to be made of long black thick hairs, like a wig.
    Growing up in the circus he had seen plenty of wigs, but never one quite like this.
    For one thing it was long and pretty raggedy, but odder than that was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any way to put it on your head. Normally the top of a wig is a bit like an elastic shower cap: it goes on your head like a hat and the hair hangs down. But this wig didn’t have anything like that. Instead all the hair was threaded onto a sort of semi-circle of thin material, which had a hole in it. How was that supposed to stay on? he thought.
     

     
    And then slowly his brain caught up. The semi-circle was a little tacky to the touch. Not sticky now , but it gave him the idea that it had been sticky before , and then it all fell into place. This wasn’t a wig of head hair, or not the head hair you normally found on a wig. It was a beard. A fake beard that someone stuck on their chin. The hole was obviously for the mouth.
    Of all the things Fizz had thought about them, he’d never suspected that the Barboozuls weren’t actual bearded people. Never mind all the robbing and breaking and poisoning he reckoned they’d done, which was bad enough, of course, but pretending to have beards . . . Why, that really was the last straw. (No wonder Wystan insisted they eat on their own, if their beards might fall off at any moment.)
    With that he decided once and for all that he really didn’t like these people. (A trick is one thing, but lying is something quite different.)
    As he stood there looking at the beard he heard the door to the caravan open.
    He’d been so involved with his thoughts that he hadn’t remembered to keep an eye out. His search of the caravan had really only just begun and they were back already.
    For a moment Fizz froze.
    There is almost absolutely no way you can sensibly explain to someone why you’re in their house when they come back unexpectedly. Especially if you’re going through their stuff at the time (even if you are doing it for good reasons). So Fizz did the only thing he could think of, which was to hide.
    He jumped into the trunk and gently lowered the lid.
    ‘What a stupid little man,’ said a voice that was clearly Lady Barboozul’s.
    Although she wasn’t actually shouting, it sounded to Fizz, even through the wooden sides of the trunk, as if she were angry.
    Lord Barboozul said something back, but Fizz couldn’t make out the words.
    ‘Quite so,’ she replied. ‘Writing notes one moment and forgetting about them the next. His brain is addled. And to think he’s in charge of the whole show. It’s amazing it runs at all.’
    Again Lord Barboozul mumbled something back.
    ‘Oh, ha, ha,’ Lady Barboozul said. ‘Well, after today there won’t be much of a circus left. The ring will be practically empty tonight. The audience will be bored . And we’ll be able to write it all off. Job done!’
    Wow. This was exactly what Fizz needed to hear. If he could get all this down on tape, then he’d have the evidence he needed to show the Ringmaster that his new star act wasn’t all they were cracked up to be.
    If only he had a tape recorder.
    And wasn’t trapped in a trunk with a bunch of dusty beard-wigs.
    Lord