The Witches Read online

  ‘That is not true!’ cried Mr Stringer.

  ‘You had better get the rat-catcher in at once,’ my grandmother said, ‘before I report you to the Public Health Authorities. I expect there's rats scuttling all over the kitchen floor and stealing the food off the shelves and jumping in and out of the soup!’

  ‘Never!’ cried Mr Stringer.

  ‘No wonder my breakfast toast was all nibbled round the edges this morning,’ my grandmother went on relentlessly. ‘No wonder it had a nasty ratty taste. If you're not careful, the Health people will be ordering the entire hotel to be closed before everyone gets typhoid fever.’

  ‘You are not being serious, madam,’ Mr Stringer said.

  ‘I was never more serious in my life,’ my grandmother said. ‘Are you or are you not going to allow my grandson to keep his white mice in his room?’

  The Manager knew when he was beaten. ‘May I suggest a compromise, madam?’ he said. ‘I will permit him to keep them in his room as long as they are never allowed out of the cage. How's that?’

  ‘That will suit us very well,’ my grandmother said, and she stood up and marched out of the room with me behind her.

  There is no way you can train mice inside a cage. Yet I dared not let them out because the chambermaid was spying on me all the time. She had a key to my door and she kept bursting in at all hours, trying to catch me with the mice out of the cage. She told me that the first mouse to break the rules would be drowned in a bucket of water by the hall-porter.

  I decided to seek a safer place where I could carry on with the training. There must surely be an empty room in this enormous hotel. I put one mouse into each trouser-pocket and wandered downstairs in search of a secret spot.

  The ground floor of the hotel was a maze of public rooms, all of them named in gold letters on the doors. I wandered through ‘The Lounge’ and ‘The Smoking-Room’ and ‘The Card-Room’ and ‘The Reading-Room’ and ‘The Drawing-Room’. None of them was empty. I went down a long wide corridor and at the end of it I came to ‘The Ballroom’. There were double-doors leading into it, and in front of the doors there was a large notice-board on a stand. The notice on the board said,

  RSPCC MEETING

  STRICTLY PRIVATE

  THIS ROOM IS RESERVED

  FOR THE

  ANNUAL MEETING

  OF

  THE ROYAL SOCIETY

  FOR THE PREVENTION

  OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN

  The double-doors into the room were open. I peeped in. It was a colossal room. There were rows and rows of chairs, all facing a platform. The chairs were painted gold and they had little red cushions on the seats. But there was not a soul in sight.

  I sidled cautiously into the room. What a lovely secret silent place it was. The meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children must have taken place earlier in the day, and now they had all gone home. Even if they hadn't, even if they did suddenly come pouring in, they would be wonderful kind people who would look with favour upon a young mouse-trainer going about his business.

  At the back of the room there was a large folding screen with Chinese dragons painted on it. I decided, just to be on the safe side, to go behind this screen and do my training there. I wasn't a bit frightened of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children people, but there was always a chance that Mr Stringer, the Manager, might pop his head round the door. If he did and if he saw the mice, the poor things would be in the hall-porter's bucket of water before I could shout stop.

  I tiptoed to the back of the room and settled myself on the thick green carpet behind the big screen. What a splendid place this was! Ideal for mouse-training! I took William and Mary out of my trouser-pockets. They sat beside me on the carpet, quiet and well-behaved.

  The trick I was going to teach them today was tight-rope walking. It is not all that difficult to train an intelligent mouse to be an expert tight-rope walker provided you know exactly how to go about it. First, you must have a piece of string. I had that. Then you must have some good cake. A fine currant cake is the favourite food of white mice. They are dotty about it. I had brought with me a rock cake which I had pocketed while having tea with Grandmamma the day before.

  Now here's what you do. You stretch the string tight between your two hands, but you start by keeping it very short, only about three inches. You put the mouse on your right hand and a little piece of cake on your left hand. The mouse is therefore only three inches away from the cake. He can see it and he can smell it. His whiskers twitch with excitement. He can almost reach the cake by leaning forward, but not quite. He only has to take two steps along the string to reach this tasty morsel. He ventures forward, one paw on the string, then the other. If the mouse has a good sense of balance, and most of them have, he will get across easily. I started with William. He walked the string without a moment's hesitation. I let him have a quick nibble of the cake just to whet his appetite. Then I put him back on my right hand.

  This time I lengthened the string. I made it about six inches long. William knew what to do now. With superb balance, he walked step by step along the string until he reached the cake. He was rewarded with another nibble.

  Quite soon, William was walking a twenty-four-inch tight-rope (or rather tight-string) from one hand to the other to reach the cake. It was wonderful to watch him. He was enjoying himself tremendously. I was careful to hold the string near the carpet so that if he did lose his balance, he wouldn't have far to fall. But he never fell. William was obviously a natural acrobat, a great tight-rope-walking mouse.

  Now it was Mary's turn. I put William on the carpet beside me and rewarded him with some extra crumbs and a currant. Then I started going through the same routine all over again with Mary. My blinding ambition, you see, my dream of dreams, was to become one day the owner of a White Mouse Circus. I would have a small stage with red curtains in front of it, and when the curtains were drawn apart, the audience would see my world-famous performing mice walking on tight-ropes, swinging from trapezes, turning somersaults in the air, bouncing on trampolines and all the rest of it. I would have white mice riding on white rats, and the rats would gallop furiously round and round the stage.

  I was beginning to picture myself travelling first-class all over the globe with my Famous White Mouse Circus, and performing before all the crowned heads of Europe.

  I was about halfway through Mary's training when suddenly I heard voices outside the Ballroom door. The sound grew louder. It swelled into a great babble of speech from many throats. I recognized the voice of the awful Hotel Manager, Mr Stringer.

  Help, I thought.

  But thank heavens for the huge screen.

  I crouched behind it and peered through the crack between two of the folding sections. I could see the entire length and width of the Ballroom without anyone seeing me.

  ‘Well, ladies, I am sure you will be quite comfortable in here,’ Mr Stringer's voice was saying. Then in through the double-doors he marched, black tail-coat and all, spreading his arms wide as he ushered in a great flock of ladies. ‘If there is anything we can do for you, do not hesitate to let me know,’ he went on. ‘Tea will be served for all of you on the Sunshine Terrace after you have concluded your meeting.’ With that, he bowed and scraped himself out of the room as a vast herd of ladies from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children came streaming in. They wore pretty clothes and all of them had hats on their heads.

  The Meeting

  Now that the Manager had gone, I was not particularly alarmed. What better than to be imprisoned in a room full of these splendid ladies? If I ever got talking to them, I might even suggest that they come and do a bit of cruelty-to-children preventing at my school. We could certainly use them there.

  In they came, talking their heads off. They began milling round and choosing their seats, and there was a whole lot of stuff like, ‘Come and sit next to me, Millie dear,’ and ‘Oh, hel-lo, Beatrice! I haven't seen you since the last meeting! Wh