Explosive Adventures by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

my office.”
    Billy followed Mr Gopal past the great bubblegum-making machines, all humming and whirring away in a most energetic fashion. It was all very interesting to see, but Billy was worried and could not enjoy himself as much as he would have liked.
    Mr Gopal showed Billy into his office and sat him down on a chair.

    “Here,” he said, taking a piece of bubblegum from a tray on his desk. “This is a piece of bubblegum, is it not?”
    “Yes,” said Billy, looking at the stick of Gopal’s Best.
    “I’d like you to unwrap it,” said Mr Gopal, passing the stick to Billy.“Then pop it in your mouth and chew hard.”
    Billy was rather puzzled, but did as he was told. He slipped the pink stick out of its silver paper and put it into his mouth. Then he began to chew. It tasted fine, and the smell – well, that was exactly the same as it always was.
    “Now,” said Mr Gopal. “I’d like you to blow a bubble. Just an ordinary bubble.”
    Billy moved the gum around his mouth, getting it to just the right place for blowing a bubble. Then he blew.
    He blew hard. Then he blew again. A moment or two later a small bit of gum popped out of his mouth, and a tiny,almost invisible bubble appeared. Then it burst – with a little pop, like a frog’s hiccup – and was gone.
    Billy sucked the gum back in. “I’ll try again,” he said. “That wasn’t very good.”
    “Oh dear,” said Mr Gopal, wringing his hands. “It won’t make any difference. You can try and try again, it’ll be the same. You won’t do any better than that.”
    Mr Gopal was right. Try as he might, Billy could not blow a proper bubble. There was something very badly wrong with the gum.
    “It’s hopeless,” said Mr Gopal. “The gum just isn’t the same as it used to be.”
    “But what’s gone wrong?” asked Billy, dropping the useless bubblegum into the bin. “Why won’t it work?”
    “It’s a very strange story,” said Mr Gopal. “Would you like me to tell you all about it?”
    “Yes,” said Billy, feeling very sorry for the dejected bubblegum manufacturer. “Maybe I can help.”
    So Mr Gopal told Billy about what had happened. And it was indeed a very strange tale – stranger than anything Billy had heard before.

2
    A Very Strange Story
    I got the recipe for my bubblegum from my father,” began Mr Gopal. “He was a very famous bubblegum manufacturer in his time – even more famous than I am. He lived in India, in a town called Bombay, which is a marvellous, exciting place, I can tell you.
    “He had a big bubblegum factory where he used to make a bubblegum called Bombay Best Bubbly. His business was a great success, but I’m sorry to say that one day a terrible fire burned the whole factory down – right to the ground. Nobody knew how it started, but it destroyed all my father’s property and he lost just about everything he had in this life. It even burned my father’s moustache off. It had been a wonderful moustache; now it was just a tiny, scorched line.
    “So from being a rich man, my father became a poor man. Fortunately, there were one or two possessions which hekept away from the factory, at home. These included an old black money box with two thousand rupees in it, and a small black book which he always hid under his pillow. That was about all.
    “I remember the day after the fire, when my father came back to the house and called me into the front room. He stood there, with his sad moustache, and his eyes all watering from the smoke.
    “‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘And I want to say something very important to you. You are my only child, Walter Alliwallah Pravindar Gopal, and you are all I am going to leave behind in the world. So I just want to say this to you.Remember that a Gopal is always a brave man – always – and there is nothing he is scared to do. Your grandfather, Sikrit Pal Praviwallah Gopal, was not even frightened of tigers and fought one with his bare hands when it attacked him. He bit