‘This travelling mendicant told me that he was a dealer in ghosts. That he travelled the country, removing ghosts from premises where they were unwanted, then relocating them to places where other people wished for their installation. Places such as inns. Where having a ghost draws in the punters. Like I said, okay?’

‘And so you purchased a ghost from this mendicant?’ asked Mr Rune.

‘We bartered,’ said Fangio. ‘And fair exchange is no robbery.’

‘And now you are saddled with Gusset?’

Hugo Rune eyed Gusset the Clown.

Gusset the Clown eyed the Magus.

‘I was done,’ said Fangio. ‘I asked for a nice grey lady who would waft about in a see-through nightgown. But instead I got an annoying invisible pain-in-the-bottom that troubles my beer and my crisps.’

‘Then I must deal with it,’ said Hugo Rune.

The ghost clown glared him daggers.

And then something happened. Something so unexpected and so utterly terrible that all those who witnessed it happen now speak of it only in whispers and cross themselves when they do.

A custard pie materialised in the right hand of the ghostly clown. A custard pie that materialised so all might behold it. And this custard pie was hurled with a horrible force.

And struck home in the face of Hugo Rune.

I had never seen such outrage on the face of Hugo Rune.

What face that could be seen beneath the pie.

He rose to an improbable height and as the crowd pressed back and collectively ducked, all painfully aware of the atrocity that had just been committed and fearing to be caught in the crossfire from the retribution that must surely follow, he threw his great arms wide then clapped his hands together.

A bolt of blue fire blazed out from these hands towards the grinning clown. And surely this bolt would have hit its mark, had it not been for the clown’s inhuman reactions.

The phantom flan-flinger (for such was this pie) stepped nimbly aside. Big shoes and all, but light on his feet, he neatly dodged that bolt.

Not so, however, the lady in the straw hat, who had been playing the steel pan as we entered the bar. She dissolved, along with her pan, and vanished into the ether.

‘Ooooh!’ went the crowd and cowered even lower and some now sought likewise to vanish.

Hugo Rune spoke secret words and the flung flan vanished away.

‘So,’ said he to the nimble clown, ‘a fight is what you want.’

The ethereal funster cocked his painted head upon one side, reached to his left ear and seemingly removed from it a tiny megaphone. This he put to his smiley mouth and whispered through the small end.

The words he whispered appeared through the big end of this tiny megaphone. They literally appeared in the air before him, there to be read by all. Except perhaps those who were cowering behind the otherwise invisible clown, for to them the words would have been back to front and therefore somewhat difficult to read. So to speak.

Or to explain. Clearly.

I read the words as they duly appeared and these were the words that I read:

Mr Hugo Rune, Magus, Grand Wazoo of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Sprout, Twelfth Dan Master in the Deadly Art of Dim Mak, reinventor of the ocarina, Best-Dressed Man of Nineteen Thirty-Three, explorer, swords-man, big-game hunter, this year’s winner of the Brentford Inter-Pub Jumping-Out Competition, guru unto gurus, Lord of the Dance and King of the Wild Frontier. I salute you. I apologise and worship you as the God-like being you are.

‘How exactly did he do that?’ I asked Hugo Rune.

‘The megaphone did it, not he,’ replied the mage, ‘and not as he might have wished it.’

For the ghost clown was now beating at his megaphone and shaking it all about.

‘I felt he must make some verbal amends for the outrage he visited upon my person,’ Mr Rune continued. ‘Verbal for now, physical for the future.’

The ghost clown now shouted into the megaphone. He was definitely shouting, although his words could not be heard. But only seen, as they appeared in written form.

I didn’t say those things, you knave, you pompous ape.

‘Enough,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Will you depart these premises of your own accord? Or must I be forced to punish you horribly before I hoik you out upon your greasy ear?’

You sham mountebank. I’ll have your liver and lights.

‘The hoiking it is, then. Hand me the Zo Zo gun, Rizla.’

Hold hard there, came forth the words and hovered in the air. Hold hard there and parley a while.

‘What have we to speak of?’ asked the Magus.

You clearly possess some small skills in the Magickal Artes. Perhaps you might wish to become my acolyte that I might train you further.

I flinched at this, but Mr Rune remained calm. So cool indeed was he that had he been a fridge, he would surely have been in need of defrosting, because the icebox unit at the top would have got all frozen up with great big lumps and-

‘Calm your thoughts, my dear Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘This fellow interests me, slightly. Tell me, Mr Gusset, how did you come to be here?’

The clown did scratchings at his toupeed topknot, his squirty flower revolved.

I was deceived, were the words that appeared. Deceived and conveyed to this hovel.

‘I’ll have you know I keep a clean and tidy house,’ complained Fangio. Who now appeared to be the only living person present in the bar, besides myself and Mr Rune. ‘And I bartered fairly. Although what exactly that MP3 Player I bartered with actually does, I have no idea.’

I looked at Mr Rune.

And he looked back at me.

‘Not good,’ I said. ‘A loose end there, I think.’

And Mr Rune nodded. ‘But another must be tied here first,’ said he. And addressing the clownish bogeyman he asked, ‘Deceived by whom?’

One of your kind, came words in the air. But he is a greater wizard than you. One who can command such as myself. And such as me fear no man living, but I have fear of him.

‘Intriguing,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And would you care, or indeed dare, to speak the name of this mighty wizard?’

You’ll know it soon enough.

‘Then so mote it be.’ And Hugo Rune interlaced his fingers and did knuckle-crackings. ‘And so it is time for us to say farewell. My companion and myself have a free lunch that needs taking. And as for you, there is always something roasting down below.’ And he spoke these final two words with heavy emphasis. Then flung forth his force.

The clown did duckings and divings too and Fangio lost his dartboard.

And now the clown flung more than just flans, and beams of mystical energy criss-crossed the saloon bar like searchlights in the Blitz. And many explosions flared around and about and I ducked down for cover.

Fangio howled and ‘rued the day’ and called for an end to hostilities. But the Magus and the manky clown were fiercely battling it out. I peeped from beneath our specially reserved table, where I had taken to hiding, and watched in awe as this item and that levitated from the pigskin valise and bombarded the unwholesome prankster.

The unwholesome prankster retaliated with further flans, which hissed and bubbled as they struck walls, as if they were of noxious acid.

Then suddenly things went white all around and I became confused. There seemed to be white and whirlingness to every side of me. And then I became aware that this white and whirlingness was the ball of string that I had seen Mr Rune deposit into the heavy pigskin valise. And Mr Rune was now wearing the gardening gloves and the ball of string had extended itself and was wrapped all about the horrible clown, from throat to great big shoes, much in the way that a mummy might be, if wrapped not in linen but string.

The clown was struggling, but to no avail, and Mr Rune was smiling.