Explore "Big Foot" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There came from Sooper's backyard a "chicka-chick-bang!" which was fairly familiar to everybody who lived within a radius of one mile. The proprietor of the local picture house had once hired Sooper's bicycle to produce the effects in a great battle scene, and that was about the only time that the engine of Firefly (he called it The Hawk in those days) had been known to run without producing sounds suggestive of a trench raid.
Once a party of admirers had subscribed to buy him the latest and the most silent of machines; the presentation had been made in the presence of the Mayor, the Corporation and the local ministry. Sooper kept the machine for exactly a week, and then it disappeared. He told a thrilling story of it having been smashed up, but it is an open secret that he sold it by public auction, and out of the proceeds of the sale added an incubator to his poultry yard, a new coat of paint to Firefly, and a not inconsiderable sum to his account at Barclay's Bank.