Free MASQUES OF SATAN by Reggie Oliver Page B

of the stuff on the yellow soil beneath its body and great splashes of it on the mouse’s white fur. One could just see the faces of the two moles peeping out from a dense belt of undergrowth to one side.
    The final glass case depicted a courtroom, presided over by an owl judge. Other participants were all rodents of one kind or another. The white mouse, his coat still faintly stained with blood, stood in the spike-hedged dock between two burly ferret policemen. A rat in a wig was interrogating one of the moles, whose head was just visible above the wooden sides of the witness box. The entire jury was composed of rats and, as if to confirm the inevitable outcome of the trial, I noticed that a small square of black cloth already reposed upon the owl’s flat head.
    ‘I thought these would amuse you,’ said Mrs de Walter, who was standing behind me. I started. In my absorption I had quite forgotten her presence. Amused was not the word, but I was held by a morbid fascination. These scenes with their lurid subject matter and their dusty gallows humour, were redolent of long-forgotten illustrated books and savage Victorian childhoods.
    ‘Ah! But you haven’t seen behind the curtain, have you?’ said Mrs de Walter with a dreadful attempt at a roguish smile. It was then that I became very much afraid. I can only account for the suddenness of my panic by the fact that uneasiness had built it up inside me over the course of the afternoon, that it had reached a critical mass, and was now in danger of erupting into sheer terror. One thought dominated — I must not see behind the curtain — and yet, at the same time, I knew I could not look away. Mrs de Walter appeared to take all this in, but she showed neither concern with, nor indifference to, my state of mind, only a kind of intense curiosity. She bent down and looked directly into my eyes.
    ‘I wonder if you should see this one. It might shock you.’ She approached the curtain and put one hand on it so that in an instant she could pull it aside. There was a pause before she asked me a question.
    ‘Are you by any chance a pious sort of a boy?’
    For several seconds I simply could not grasp what she meant. Of course I understood the word ‘pious’. It was the name of a recent Pope; monks in the Middle Ages were pious; but I had never heard it applied to a living human being, let alone myself. I said I didn’t know. She smiled.
    ‘All right,’ she said, ‘the tiniest peep, then,’ and she flicked aside the curtain. It was only a few seconds before she released the curtain and all was hidden again, but my impressions, though fragmentary, were all the more vivid for that.
    It was a glass case like the others, but the scene within it was very different. I remember the painted background of a lurid and stormy sky, torn apart by zigzags of lightening. Against them the three crosses on a grey mound stood out strongly. I cannot say too much, but it was my impression that the three toads had been still alive when they were nailed to the wood.
    I can remember nothing after that until Mrs de Walter and I found ourselves on the terrace again. I saw a table strewn with little glasses and open bottles full of strange coloured liquids. Mr de Walter and my parents appeared to be having a lively discussion about race.
    ‘I’ve knocked about the world a bit in my time,’ de Walter was saying, ‘and I’ve met all sorts, I can tell you. And of all the peoples I have met, the best, for all their faults, are the English. ’Fraid so. Modesty forbids and all that, but facts is facts. Next best are the Germans. Now, I know what you’re going to say, and I’d agree, your bad German is a Hun of the first water — dammit, I should know! — but your good German is a gentleman. Your Frenchie is an arrogant swine; your Arab is a rogue, but at least he’s an honest rogue, unlike your Turk. Don’t waste your time with the Swiss: they all have the mentalities of small town