‘What did you come up with, O Brainy One?’ they called out. ‘Tell us the great secret!’
‘The secret,’ announced The Grand High Witch triumphantly, ‘is an alarm-clock!’
‘An alarm-clock!’ they cried. ‘It's a stroke of genius!’
‘Of course it is,’ said The Grand High Witch.
‘You can set a tventy-four-hour alarm-clock today and at exactly nine o'clock tomorrow it vill go off.’
‘But we will need five million alarm-clocks!’ cried the audience. ‘We will need one for each child!’
‘Idiots!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘If you are vonting a steak, you do not cook the whole cow! It is the same vith alarm-clocks. Vun clock vill make enough for a thousand children. Here is vhat you do. You set your alarm-clock to go off at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Then you rrroast it in the oven until it is crrrisp and tender. Are you wrrriting this down?’
‘We are, Your Grandness, we are!’ they cried.
‘Next,’ said The Grand High Witch, ‘you take your boiled telescope and your frrried mouse-tails and your cooked mice and your rrroasted alarm-clock and all together you put them into the mixer. Then you mix them at full speed. This vill give you a nice thick paste. Vhile the mixer is still mixing you must add to it the yolk of vun grrruntle's egg.’
‘A gruntle's egg!’ cried the audience. ‘We shall do that!’
Underneath all the clamour that was going on I heard one witch in the back row saying to her neighbour, ‘I'm getting a bit old to go bird's nesting. Those ruddy gruntles always nest very high up.’
‘So you mix in the egg,’ The Grand High Witch went on, ‘and vun after the other you also mix in the following items: the claw of a crrrabcrrruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a grrrobblesqvirt and the tongue of a catsprrringer. I trust you are not having any trrrouble finding those.’
‘None at all!’ they cried out. ‘We will spear the blabbersnitch and trap the crabcruncher and shoot the grobblesquirt and catch the catspringer in his burrow!’
‘Excellent!’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘Vhen you have mixed everything together in the mixer, you vill have a most marvellous-looking grrreen liqvid. Put vun drop, just vun titchy droplet, of this liqvid into a chocolate or a sveet, and at nine o'clock the next morning the child who ate it vill turn into a mouse in tventy-six seconds! But vun vurd of vorning. Never increase the dose. Never put more than vun drrrop into each sveet or chocolate. And never give more than vun sweet or chocolate to each child. An overdose of Delayed Action Mouse-Maker vill mess up the timing of the alarm-clock and cause the child to turn into a mouse too early. A large overdose might even have an instant effect, and you vouldn't vont that, vould you? You vouldn't vont the children turning into mice rrright there in your sveet-shops. That vould give the game away. So be very carrreful! Do not overdose!’
Bruno Jenkins Disappears
The Grand High Witch was starting to talk again. ‘I am now going to prrrove to you,’ she said, ‘that this rrrecipe is vurrrking to perrrfection. You understand, of course, that you can set the alarm-clock to go off at any time you like. It does not have to be nine o'clock. So yesterday I am personally prrree-paring a small qvantity of the magic formula in order to give to you a public demonstration. But I am making vun small change in the rrrecipe. Before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock, I am setting it to go off, not at nine o'clock the next morning, but at half-past thrrree the next afternoon. Vhich means half-past thrrree this afternoon. And that,’ she said, glancing at her wrist-watch, ‘is in prrree-cisely seven minutes’ time!’
The audience of witches was listening intently, sensing that something dramatic was about to happen.
‘So vot am I doing yesterday vith this magic liqvid?’ asked The Grand High Witch. ‘I vill tell you vot I am doing. I am putting vun drrroplet of it into a very sqvishy chocolate bar and I am giving this bar to a rrree-pulsive smelly little boy who is hanging rrround the lobby of the hotel.’
The Grand High Witch paused. The audience remained silent, waiting for her to go on.
‘I votched this rrree-pulsive little brrrute gobbling up the sqvishy bar of chocolate and vhen he had finished, I said to him, “Vos that good?” He said it vos great. So I said to him, “Vould you like some more?” And he said, “Yes.” So I said, “I vill give you six more chocolate bars like that if you vill meet me in the Ballroom of this hotel at tventy-five-past thrr
ree tomorrow afternoon.” “Six bars!” cried this greedy little svine. “I'll be there! You bet I'll be there!”
‘So the stage is set!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘The prrroof of the pudding is about to begin! Do not forget that before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock yesterday, I am setting it for half-past thrrree today. It is now’ – she glanced again at her watch – ‘it is now exactly tventy-five minutes past thrrree and the nasty little stinker who vill be turning into a mouse in five minutes’ time should at this very moment be standing outside the doors!’
And by gum, she was absolutely right. The boy, whoever he might be, was already rattling the door-handle and banging on the doors with his fist.
‘Qvick!’ shrieked The Grand High Witch. ‘Put on your vigs! Put on your gloves! Put on your shoes!’
There was a great rustle and bustle of putting on wigs and gloves and shoes, and I saw The Grand High Witch herself reach for her face-mask and put it on over that revolting face of hers. It was astonishing how that mask transformed her. All of a sudden she became once again a rather pretty young lady.
‘Let me in!’ came the boy's voice from behind the doors. ‘Where are those chocolate bars you promised me? I'm here to collect! Dish them out!’
‘He is not only smelly, he is also grrreedy,’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘Rrree-moof the chains from the doors and let him come in.’ The extraordinary thing about the mask was that its lips moved quite naturally when she spoke. You really couldn't see it was a mask at all.
One of the witches leapt to her feet and unfastened the chains. She opened the two huge doors. Then I heard her saying, ‘Why hello, little man. How lovely to see you. You have come for your chocolate bars, have you not? They are all ready for you. Do come in.’
A small boy wearing a white T-shirt and grey shorts and gymshoes entered the room. I recognized him at once. He was called Bruno Jenkins and he was staying in the hotel with his parents. I didn't care for him. He was one of those boys who is always eating something whenever you meet him. Meet him in the hotel lobby and he is stuffing sponge cake into his mouth. Pass him in the corridor and he is fishing potato crisps out of a bag by the fistful. Catch sight of him in the hotel garden and he is wolfing a Dairy Milk Bar and has two more sticking out of his trouser-pocket. What's more, Bruno never stopped boasting about how his father made more money than my father and that they owned three cars. But worse than that, yesterday morning I had found him kneeling on the flagstones of the hotel terrace with a magnifying-glass in his hand. There was a column of ants marching across one of the flagstones and Bruno Jenkins was focusing the sun through his magnifying-glass and roasting the ants one by one. ‘I like watching them burn,’ he said. ‘That's horrible!’ I cried. ‘Stop doing it!’ ‘Let's see you stop me,’ he said. At that point I had pushed him with all my might and he had crashed sideways on to the flagstones. His magnifying-glass had splintered into many pieces and he had leapt up shrieking, ‘My father is going to get you for this!’ Then he had run off, presumably to find his wealthy dad. That was the last time I had seen Bruno Jenkins until now. I doubted very much that he was about to be turned into a mouse, although I must confess that I was secretly hoping it might happen. Either way, I didn't envy him being up there in front of all those witches.
‘Darling boy,’ cooed The Grand High Witch from up on the platform. ‘I have your chocolates all rrready for you. Do come up here firrrst and say hello to all these lovely ladies.’ Her voice was quite different now. It was soft and gentle and absolutely dripping with syrup.