'That fat villain!' exclaimed Harry Wharton as Bob Cherry walked into Study No. 9. 'I had a study feed in the cupboard for tiffin and Bunter must have waltzed off with it somewhere.'
'Who else would, but that podgy pirate?' said Bob Cherry absently.
'I'll spiflicate him. I – I'll . . .' Words failed the captain of the Remove.
'Never mind Bunter now,' said Bob. 'Look, Harry, I've been doing some thinking and I think you'd better sit down. What I have to tell you may take some getting down.
'Go on then, fathead,' said Watson encouragingly, 'What is the result of your deliberations, my dear Holmes?'
'Look, it's winter time, coming up to Christmas, right?'
'Well, what about it?' Harry replied.
'Just hear me out,' said Bob, thoughtfully. 'At Christmas the five of us chums are spending the hols at Wharton Lodge and odds are that Bunter will somehow wedge himself in uninvited, won't he?'
'I suppose so,' laughed the Remove captain. 'But we can hardly kick him out at Christmas, can we?'
'No, like we were lumbered with him the Christmas before that and the year before and so on, even when sometimes we've stayed with Mauly at Mauleverer Towers.'
'Well yes, I suppose you're right,' agreed Harry, 'but what's your point?'
'I haven't finished yet,' continued Cherry.
'How about this summer when we went cruising on Bunter's uncle's yacht?'
'Yes,' agreed Wharton, 'and the fat villaion neglected to tell us that his uncle was charging us as fare paying passengers!'
'We should have known the pernicious porker wasn't standing treat for us,' Bob replied.
'Anyway, my point is that when we went on Bunter's cruise we were in the Remove, that is the Lower Fourth. When we returned, instead of going up into Prout's Fifth form, we were still in Quelch's Remove. What do you make of that?'
'Well, I don't know,' said Harry puzzledly, 'I don't know quite how these things work. I suppose the school know what they're doing.'
'Alright then, last summer we went to Brazil to meet Mauly's brother and if you remember he didn't turn up because he had been kidnapped.'
'Yes of course I remember. Bunter wedged himself in there too. What about it?'
'Same thing. Went out in the Lower Fourth, back to Greyfriars. Still in the Lower Fourth!'
'Yes I agree it does seem a bit odd. Still, I'm sure there must be a logical explanation.'
'Ok,' continued Bob, 'How about this? Who was on the throne when you first came to Greyfriars?'
'Oh, I don't know. I really can't remember.'
'I'll tell you,' persisted Cherry, 'It was Edward Vll. Who's the monarch now?'
'Elizabeth ll of course,' snapped Harry.
'Who is Edward Vll's great grand-daughter. And remember, like me, you went straight into the Remove when you arrived at Greyfriars.'
'But what you're saying is impossible. I doesn't make sense.'
'Don't you see, Harry? Other people go to school then leave, get a job, get married, grow older, but we stay the same, no matter what.'
'Look at this,' continued Cherry, ''Apparently this writer-johnny called Frank Richards has been writing this chronicle about Greyfriars for years.'
He flung a dog-eared orange magazine on the table in front of the Remove Captain. It was the very first issue of a weekly called 'The Magnet'. Wharton glanced through it.
'Well I'm dashed,' he exclaimed, 'It's the story of when I first came to Greyfriars.'
'Take a look at the date,' Bob insisted.
'1908! But that's impossible.'
'Now take a look at this.' Cherry showed him a hardback book entitled 'Billy Bunter in Brazil'. 'See the publication date?'
Wharton looked at the publication details. '1961. But that's this year!'
'Exactly! We've been in the Remove for 53 years.'
'I say you fellows, look at this,' came a loud interruption from Billy Bunter himself.
'Where's our grub?' demanded Harry Wharton.
'Why is it that when grub's missing, fellows always think it's me that pinched it? Well, I can jolly well tell you, I know nothing at all about your plum cake or the pork pie or any of the other stuff. Besides, there wasn't much in the cupboard, nothing to make a fuss about.'
'What do you think of this?' continued the fat owl thrusting a newspaper before the eyes of the other two Removites.
'Seems this fellow called Richards who's been writing about us for donkey's years is in quite a bad way and isn't expected to last the night. I must say I find it hard to feel sympathy for a chap who makes a really decent fellow out to be fat and lazy and unscrupulous. Dashed cheek I call it.
'Here, I say you fellows, you look a bit pale, as if you were going to fade away any minute. Hee-hee-hee/ I – I say you're – you're d-disappearing. Oh lor, I don't feel that rum myself. Oh crikey.'
Bunter too vanished and soon the whole school was deserted. It was the end of an era for the school that never really existed, only in imagination.