Read The Brentford Triangle for Free Online Page A

deafening twang, and a great bolt of lightning burst forth, charring the walls and upturning the banks of pulsating equipment. There followed a moment or two of very extreme silence. Smoke hung heavily in the air, cables swung to and fro like smouldering leander vines and the general atmosphere of the place had more than the hint of the charnel house about it.
    At length, from beneath the fallen wreckage, something stirred. Slowly, and with much coughing, gasping and sighing, a blackened toothless figure rose painfully to his feet. He now lacked not only his upper set but also his eyebrows and sported a fetching, if somewhat bizarre, charcoal forelock. He kicked away the debris and fumbled about amidst the heaps of burned-out valves and twisted gubbins. “Ahs,” he said, suddenly wielding a smoke-veiled gauge into view, “success I thinks.”
    Something had come through, and by the measurement upon that gauge it was a relatively substantial, goodly few hundredweight of something.
    Norman wiped away a few loose eyelashes with a grimy knuckle, satisfied himself that there was no immediate danger of fire and sought his overcoat.
     
    Small Dave had finished his midday deliveries and was taking his usual short cut back from the Butts Estate towards the Flying Swan for a well deserved pint of Large. As he shuffled across the allotment, his size four feet kicking up little dusty explosions, he whistled a plaintive lament, the title of which he had long forgotten. He had not travelled twenty yards down the path, however, when he caught sight of something which made him halt in mid-pace and doubt that sanity which so many had previously doubted in him.
    Small Dave took off his cap and wiped it across his eyes. Was this a mirage, he wondered, or was he seeing things? Something overlarge and definitely out of place was grazing amongst his cabbages. It was a foul and scruffy-looking something of bulky proportion and it was emitting dismal grumbling sounds between great munches upon his prizewinning
Pringlea antiscorbutica
.
    Dave screwed up his eyes. Could this be the Sasquatch perhaps? Or the Surrey Puma? Possibly it was the giant feral torn, which, legend held, stalked the allotments by night. The postman drew cautiously nearer, keeping even lower to the ground than cruel fate had naturally decreed. Ahead of him the creature’s outline became more clearly defined and Small Dave knew that at least he was staring upon a beast of a known genus. Although this gave him little in the way of consolation.
    The thing was of the genus
Camelus bactrianus
. It was a camel!
    Small Dave’s thoughts all became a little confused at this moment. He was never very good when it came to a confrontation with the unexpected. Arriving with a six-inch letter to discover a five-inch letter-box was enough to set him foaming at the mouth. Now, a camel on the allotment, a camel that was eating his precious cabbages, that was a something quite in a class by itself.
    Dave’s first thought, naturally enough, was that the thing should be driven off without delay. His second was that it was a very large camel and that as a species camels are notoriously malevolent creatures, who do not take kindly to interference during meal times. His third was that they are also valuable and there would no doubt be a handsome reward for anyone who should return a stray.
    His fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh thoughts were loosely concerned with circuses, Romany showmen who were apt to snatch dwarves away for side-shows, an old Tod Browning movie he had once seen, and the rising cost of cabbages.
    Small Dave’s lower lip began to tremble and a look of complete imbecility spread over his gnomish countenance. He dithered a moment or two not knowing what to do, flapped his hands up and down as if in an attempt to gain flight, gave a great cry of despair, took to his heels and finally ran screaming from the allotment.
    He had not been gone but a moment or two when a soot-besmirched