Dano suffered through the indignity of the bogus circulars, until someone handed him a copy of Circular Number Eleven.   Which he took upstairs to Fitzy, demanding to receive protection from the anonymous prankster.

“He’s got to be joking,” said Jayne Spelding, assuming that this was just another of Dano’s excuses to get out of working.

“Yeah, what the hell can Fitzy do to stop people writing bogus circulars?” asked Lori Perkins.   “He writes enough of them himself.”

They were both wrong, however.   A few minutes later Fitzy stormed into their working area, waving the fake circular around in front of him and demanding to know who was responsible for composing it.   When no one confessed he said, “Come on, own up, you can only make things worse for yourself by keeping quiet!”

“How can they make it worse for themselves if he doesn’t know who’s responsible?” thought Lori Perkins, glancing back toward Jayne Spelding, who raised her eyebrows in tacit agreement.

“Look come on … who’s responsible?” demanded Fitzy.   Then, as Stephen Stoller stood up and started to head toward the corridor outside the office, “Wait a minute, Steve.   No one’s going anywhere until we get to the bottom of this!”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it fast enough, if I’m not allowed to go to the men’s,” insisted Stoller, continuing on his way, to the obvious embarrassment of Fitzy.

Flushing red-faced as the others laughed at his expense, Fitzy slammed a fist down onto Lori Perkins’ desk and said, “It isn’t bloody funny!   Can’t you all see the damage these circulars could do to poor Dano’s reputation?”

“With a reputation like Dano’s, you’d think held be glad of anything that might help to damage it,” said Jayne Spelding, bringing snickers of agreement from everyone except Dano and Fitzy.

“Yeah,” agreed Lori, “and considering the way Dano loves to torment everyone else, you can’t expect us to be too upset if someone has decided to give him a little bit of his own back.”

“That isn’t the bloody point!” insisted Fitzy as the others murmured their agreement with Lori.   “The issue in hand is that poor, innocent Dano is being viciously maligned behind his back.”

“Poor, innocent Dano?” asked Jayne, incredulous.   Then, turning to face Dano, “Fitzy doesn’t know you very well, does he Dano?”

As the others burst into laughter at Dano’s expense, Melanie, who had been too terrified by Fitzy’s outbursts to speak until now, finally summoned up the courage to say, “Are we all having detention tonight, Fitzy?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” agreed Lori.   “All right boys and girls … hands on heads!”

They all put their hands on their heads, laughing riotously.   Fitzy glared at them in rage for a moment, then turned and stalked out of the office, almost colliding with Stephen Stoller who was returning to the office.

After Fitzy was safely out of hearing range, Lori said, “Simple Fitzy says, ‘Take your hands off you heads, boys and girls, and return to work!’”

Although she laughed with the others, Melanie’s mind was already onto other things.   Namely composing Dano James Circular number twelve.

It was as she was typing up the next circular a few days later, that Melanie was finally caught by Jayne Spelding.

“Are you going to turn me in to Fitzy?” asked Melanie, as Jayne leant over to read the half typed circular in the typewriter.

“Not if you let it go at this,” said Jayne.   “I know what a pain Dano can be with his practical jokes.”

Sighing from relief, Melanie tore the circular out of the typewriter, crumpled the paper and threw it into her rubbish bin.

After that Melanie and Dano continued to play pranks on each other for a few more months, but gradually the jokes started to taper out.   Fitzy had taken the fun out of the game, by his gross over-reaction to the harmless Dano James Circulars.   Besides Dano had started to lose heart in things.   Like all pranksters he had discovered that practical jokes aren’t funny when someone else is playing them on you.

THE END