“Two bloody hours,” he screeched in a tortured voice, “two bloody hours puffing and blowing and fanning the bloody thing! Then I see it, then I bloody see it!”

“You do?” said Neville.

“The vents man, where are the bloody vents?”

Neville shrugged. He had no idea.

“I’ll tell you where the bloody vents are, I’ll bloody tell you!” The line of Neville’s mouth was beginning to curl itself into an awful lopsided smirk. With great difficulty he controlled it. “On the top, that’s where the bloody vents are!”

Neville said, “Surely that can’t be right.”

“Can’t be right? I’ll say it can’t be bloody right, some bastard has built the barbeque upside down!”

Neville clamped his hand over his mouth. Young Master Robert raised the half-pint pot in a charred fist and poured the whisky down his throat.

“What shall we do then?” asked Neville fighting a losing battle against hilarity. “Call it off, eh?”

“Call it off? Not on your bloody life, no, I’ve fixed it, fixed it proper I bloody have, gave it what it bloody needed. Proper Molotov cocktail, got vents now it has, I’ll tell you.”

“Oh good,” said Neville, “no damage done then.”

Young Master Robert turned on the part-time barman a bitter glance. “I warn you,” he stammered, “I bloody warn you!” It was then that he realized the bar was empty. “Here!” he said. “Where is everybody?”

Neville moved uneasily in his chaps. The young master fixed him with a manic stare. Mandy watched his fingers tightening about the handle of the half-pint pot. She stepped between the two men. “Come on Bobby,” she said, “let’s ’ave a look at them burns, can’t ’ave you getting an infection can we?” With a comforting but firm hand she led the blackened barbequeist away to the ladies.

Neville could contain himself no longer. He clutched at his stomach, rolled his eyes and fell into fits of laughter. Sandra was giggling behind her hand but she leant over to the part-time barman and whispered hoarsely, “You wanna watch that little bastard, he can put the poison in for you.”

“Thank you,” said Neville, and the two of them collapsed into further convulsions. Suddenly there was a sound at the bar door. The smiles froze on their lips for it was at this exact moment that the Lone Ranger chose to make his appearance.

He was quite a short Ranger as it happened, and somewhat stout. Neville immediately recognized the man in the mask to be none other than Wally Woods, Brentford’s pre-eminent purveyor of wet fish. Wally stood a moment, magnificently framed in the doorway, considering the empty bar with a cold cod-eye of suspicion. For one terrible second Neville thought he was about to change his mind and make off into the sunset in the manner much practised in the Old West. “What’ll it be, stranger?” he said hurriedly.

Wally squared his rounded shoulders and swaggered to the bar, accompanied by the distinctive smell of halibut oil which never left his person come rain, hail or high water. “Give me two fingers of Old Snakebelly,” he said manfully.

During the half hour that followed, the Flying Swan began slowly to fill. In dribs and drabs they came, some looking sheepish and muffled in heavy overcoats, despite the mildness of the season, others strutting through the doorway as if they had been cowboys all their lives. Three Mavericks had begun an illegal-looking game of poker at a corner table, and no less than six gunfights had already broken out.

Neville loaded another case of old Snakebelly on to the counter. Young Master Robert returned from the Ladies, a satisfied expression upon his face, which was a battleground of sticking plaster. Mandy was wearing her bustle on back to front. Two more Rangers arrived, swelling their ranks to eight. “What is this, a bloody convention?” asked one. Old Pete arrived wearing a Superman costume. “They were right out of Lone Rangers,” he explained.

A few stalwart professionals were sticking to their regular beverages, but most were taking advantage of the cut-price liquor and tossing back large measures of Old Snakebelly, which was proving to have the effect generally expected of white man’s firewater.

The last of the Lone Rangers rounded the corners at either end of the Ealing Road and strode towards the Flying Swan. One was of Irish descent, the other a well-known local personality who had but several hours before come within one horse of winning £250,000. The two caught sight of one another when they were but twenty yards apiece from the saloon bar door. Both stopped. The Lone Pooley blinked in surprise. The Lone Omally’s face took on a look of perplexity. Surely, he thought, this is some trick of the light, some temperature inversion or mirror image. Possibly by the merest of chances he had stepped through a warp in the time-space continuum and was confronting his own doppleganger. A similar thought had entered the Lone Pooley’s mind.

They strode forward, each in perfect synchronization with his twin. The Lone Pooley made a motion towards his gunbelt, his double did likewise. But for these two lone figures, the street was deserted. The sun was setting behind the gasometers and the long and similar shadows of the two masked gunmen stretched out across the pavement and up the side walls of the tiny terraced houses.

It was a sight to make Zane Grey reach for his ballpoint, or Sergio Leone send out for another fifty foot of standard eight. Closer and closer stalked the Rangers, their jaws set into attitudes of determination and their thumbs wedged into the silver buckles of their respective gunbelts.

They stopped once more.

The street was silent but for the sounds of western jollity issuing from the saloon bar. A flock of pigeons rippled up from their perch atop one of the flatblocks and came to rest upon the roof of the church hall. A solitary dog loped across the street and vanished into an alleyway.

The Rangers stared at one another unblinking. “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” said the Lone Omally.

“Slap leather, hombre,” said the Lone Pooley, reaching for his sixguns. It would be a long reach, for they were back in his rooms upon the kitchen table where he had been polishing them. “Oh bugger it,” said the Lone Pooley. Guffawing, the Ranger twins entered the Flying Swan.

“Cor look,” said Mandy, “there’s two more of ’em.”

“My god,” cried Pooley, “ten Lone Rangers and not a Tonto between the lot of us.”

“Two shots of good Old Snakebelly please, Miss,” said Omally, ogling the extra barstaff. Mandy did the honours, and on accepting Omally’s exact coinage pocketed it away in some impossible place in her scanty costume. “A woman after my own heart,” smiled the man from the Emerald Isle.

Things were beginning to hot up at the Flying Swan. Old Pete was at the piano, rattling out “I Wish I Was in Dixie” upon the moribund instrument. Young Chips was howling off-key as usual. A fight had broken out among the Mavericks and Neville was flourishing his knobkerry, yet seeming strangely reluctant to make a move from behind the bar.

Young Master Robert raised his hands to make an announcement. Being ill-acquainted with the manners and customs of Brentford he was ignored to a man.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he bawled, the visible areas of his face turning purple, “if I might have your attention.”

Neville brought the knobkerry down on to the polished bar counter with a resounding crash. There was a brief silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” roared the Young Master, his high voice echoing grotesquely about the silent bar, “ladies and gentlemen I…” but it was no good, the temporary silence was over as swiftly as it had begun and the rumblings of half-drunken converse, the jingling chords of the complaining piano and the general rowdiness resumed with a vengeance.

“Time gentlemen PLEASE,” cried Neville, which silenced them once and for all.