Free The Third-Class Genie by Robert Leeson

the home team this season.
    That evening, though, before he went to bed, he had a sudden disturbing thought. Ginger Wallace must still be brooding over last week’s defeat. He might do nothing at school, but on the other hand he might well lay an ambush in Boner’s Street. Alec had no intention of changing his route home from school. He was going to go home through Boner’s Street and the Tank, and Ginger Wallace should not be allowed to interfere with that.
    He called up Abu for the last time that day and placed the problem before him. Abu pondered for a moment, then said:
    “Rest assured, O Alec, sleep in peace. Tomorrow thy troubles will vanish like snow in the desert.”

Chapter Nine

A BU IN H IGH S PIRITS
    S CHOOL WAS QUIET and peaceful that week. There was no sign of Ginger Wallace; it seemed his mother had kept him home. For the first day or two Spotty Sam went about boasting that Wallace couldn’t take it, but after a while no one thought it was funny.
    Alec felt distinctly triumphal with five pound coins in his back pocket and his trusty can in his inside pocket. He bought himself a new pair of trainers, and though his mother might have been a bit suspicious, she wasn’t complaining. He found a copy of
Treasure Island
in the second-hand paperback shop and bought that. But, otherwise, like Biggs after the Great Train Robbery, he lay low and kept off the big spending. He didn’t want awkward questions about the source of his wealth. Apart from which he had a sneaking feeling that he hadn’t got Abu the Instant Genie programmed right yet. There was an art to this magic can business.
    Eulalia Wallace was at school, but looking grim. She passed Alec without laughing or making a face and this rather irritated him, though he tried not to show it. In the schoolyard at break times the soldiery figure of Monty Cartwright was to be seen, keeping an eye on things. Quarrels and grudges tended to fade and people passed the time in proving games of poker and brag in quiet corners. Life was so quiet that, by the middle of the week, Alec was beginning to be a trifle bored.
    On Thursday it rained and at lunchtime Alec felt he should pay an overdue visit to the club which Mr Jameson ran in the science laboratory. As he drifted in, a small group of Year Eights were watching the installation of a new pair of hamsters in one of the cages. The last pair were rumoured to be roaming the central heating pipes, coming out at night to feed off samples of homework books.
    There was a weird smell about the place. At least there was a new weird smell. Alec’s nose traced it to the back of the lab where three Year Twelves were busy with a complicated apparatus of tubes and retorts, all hissing and bubbling. Mr Jameson greeted him like a long-lost friend. A little too hearty, Alec thought, as though he’d been in the Antarctic for several years. But he didn’t mind. Mr Jameson’s mickey-taking was different somehow from Tweedy Harris’s sarcasm.
    Half an hour passed pleasantly and the other kids were drifting away. Alec took his chance to get Mr Jameson on his own and asked him,
    “Sir, is it possible to make things materialize and dematerialize?” He had to struggle with the last word, but Mr Jameson waited.
    “Well, matter can change from solid to liquid, liquid to gas, can’t it? And if the gas is colourless, you could say it disappears, but it’s still there in another form.”
    “No sir, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking, like, say,” Alec paused for a moment, “the story about Aladdin’s lamp and the genie who made money appear and lifted up palaces and shot them across the world.”
    “Hm. Well, I suppose our space rockets are just as fantastic. When a rocket lands it comes so quickly it appears out of nowhere. They say that one of the worst things about the V-2 rockets during the Second World War was that they just landed, without warning.”
    “But, sir. Do you think things could be made to