een on my hands and knees with one eye glued to the crack. I don't know how long I had been there but it seemed like for ever. The worst part of it was not being allowed to cough or make a sound, and knowing that if I did, I was as good as dead. And all the way through, I was living in constant terror that one of the witches in the back row was going to get a whiff of my presence through those special nose-holes of hers.
My only hope, as I saw it, was the fact that I hadn't washed for days. That and the never-ending excitement and clapping and shouting that was going on in the room. The witches were thinking of nothing except The Grand High Witch up there on the platform and her great plan for wiping out all the children of England. They certainly weren't sniffing around for a child in the room. In their wildest dreams (if witches have dreams), that would never have occurred to any of them. I kept still and prayed.
The Grand High Witch's dreadful gloating song was over now, and the audience was clapping madly and shouting, ‘Brilliant! Sensational! Marvellous! You are a genius, O Brainy One! It is a thrilling invention, this Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! It is a winner! And the beauty of it is that the teachers will be the ones who bump off the stinking little children! It won't be us doing it! We shall never be caught!’
‘Vitches are never caught!’ snapped The Grand High Witch. ‘Attention now! I vont everybody's attention for I am about to be telling you vot you must do to prepare Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker!’
Suddenly there came a great gasp from the audience. This was followed by a hubbub of shrieking and yelling, and I saw many of the witches leaping to their feet and pointing at the platform and crying out, ‘Mice! Mice! Mice! She's done it to show us! The Brainy One has turned two children into mice and there they are!’
I looked towards the platform. The mice were there all right, two of them, running around near The Grand High Witch's skirts.
But these were not field mice or house mice or wood mice or harvest mice. They were white mice! I recognized them immediately as being my own little William and Mary!
‘Mice!’ shouted the audience. ‘Our leader has made mice to appear out of nowhere! Get the mouse-traps! Fetch the cheese!’
I saw The Grand High Witch peering down at the floor and staring with obvious puzzlement at William and Mary. She bent lower to get a closer look. Then she straightened up and shouted, ‘Qviet!’
The audience became silent and sat down.
‘These mice are nothing to do vith me!’ she shouted. ‘These mice are pet mice! These mice are qvite obviously belonging to some rrreepellent little child in the hotel! A boy it vill be for a certainty because girls are not keeping pet mice!’
‘A boy!’ cried the witches. ‘A filthy smelly little boy! We'll swipe him! We'll swizzle him! We'll have his tripes for breakfast!’
‘Silence!’ shouted The Grand High Witch, raising her hands. ‘You know perrrfectly vell you must do nothing to drrraw attention to yourselves vhile you are living in the hotel! Let us by all means get rrrid of this evil-smelling little sqvirt, but vee must do it as qvietly as possible, for are vee not all of us the most rrree-spectable ladies of the Rrroyal Society for the Prrree-vention of Crrruelty to Children?’
‘What do you suggest then, O Brainy One?’ they cried out. ‘How shall we dispose of this small pile of filth?’
They're talking about me, I thought. These females are actually talking about how to kill me. I began to sweat.
‘Whoever he is, he is not important,’ announced The Grand High Witch. ‘Leave him to me. I shall smell him out and turn him into a mackerel and have him dished up for supper.’
‘Bravo!’ cried the witches. ‘Cut off his head and chop off his tail and fry him in hot butter!’
You can imagine that none of this was making me feel very comfortable. William and Mary were still running around on the platform, and I saw The Grand High Witch aim a swift running kick at William. She caught him right on the point of her toe and sent him flying. She did the same to Mary. Her aim was extraordinary. She would have made a great football player. Both mice crashed against the wall, and for a few moments they lay stunned. Then they got to their feet and scampered away.
‘Attention again!’ The Grand High Witch was shouting. ‘I vill now give to you the rrrecipe for concocting Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! Get out pencils and paper.’
Handbags were opened all over the room and notebooks were fished out.
‘Give us the recipe, O Brainy One!’ cried the audience impatiently. ‘Tell us the secret.’
‘First,’ said The Grand High Witch, ‘I had to find something that vould cause the children to become very small very qvickly.’
‘And what was that?’ cried the audience.
‘That part vos simple,’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘All you have to do if you are vishing to make a child very small is to look at him through the wrrrong end of a telescope.’
‘She's a wonder!’ cried the audience. ‘Who else would have thought of a thing like that?’
‘So you take the wrrrong end of a telescope,’ continued The Grand High Witch, ‘and you boil it until it gets soft.’
‘How long does that take?’ they asked her.
‘Tventy-vun hours of boiling,’ answered The Grand High Witch. ‘And vhile this is going on, you take exactly forty-five brrrown mice and you chop off their tails vith a carving-knife and you fry the tails in hair-oil until they are nice and crrrisp.’
‘What do we do with all those mice who have had their tails chopped off?’ asked the audience.
‘You simmer them in frog-juice for vun hour,’ came the answer. ‘But listen to me. So far I have only given you the easy part of the rrrecipe. The rrreally difficult problem is to put in something that vill have a genuine delayed action rrree-sult, something that can be eaten by children on a certain day but vhich vill not start vurrrking on them until nine o'clock the next morning vhen they arrive at school.’