“But they don’t have any toes; Grandmamma.”
“I know they don’t, my darling, but please go on.”
So then I told my grandmother about the Delayed Action Mouse-Maker, and when I came to the bit about turning all the children of England into mice, she actually leapt out of her chair shouting, “I knew it! I knew they were brewing up something tremendous!”
“We’ve got to stop them,” I said.
She turned and stared at me. “You can’t stop witches,” she said. “Just look at the power that terrible Grand High Witch has in her eyes alone! She could kill any of us at any time with those white-hot sparks of hers! You saw it yourself!”
“Even so, Grandmamma, we’ve still got to stop her from turning all the children of England into mice.”
“You haven’t quite finished,” she said. “Tell me about Bruno. How did they get him?”
So I described how Bruno Jenkins had come in and how I had actually seen him with my own eyes being shrunk into a mouse. My grandmother looked at Bruno who was guzzling away in the bowl of bananas.
“Does he never stop eating?” she asked.
“Never,” I said. “Can you explain something to me, Grandmamma?”
“I’ll try,” she said. She reached out and lifted me off the table and put me on her lap. Very gently, she began stroking the soft fur along my back. It felt nice. “What is it you want to ask me, my darling?” she said.
“The thing I don’t understand”, I said, “is how Bruno and I are still able to talk and think just as we did before.”
“It’s quite simple,” my grandmother said. “All they’ve done is to shrink you and give you four legs and a furry coat, but they haven’t been able to change you into a one hundred per cent mouse. You are still yourself in everything except your appearance. You’ve still got your own mind and your own brain and your own voice, and thank goodness for that.”
“So I’m not really an ordinary mouse at all,” I said. “I’m a sort of mouse-person.”
“Quite right,” she said. “You are a human in mouse’s clothing. You are very special.”
We sat there in silence for a few moments while my grandmother went on stroking me very gently with one finger and puffing her cigar with the other hand. The only sound in the room was made by Bruno as he attacked the bananas in the bowl. But I wasn’t doing nothing as I lay there on her lap. I was thinking like mad. My brain was whizzing as it had never whizzed before.
“Grandmamma,” I said. “I may have a bit of an idea.”
“Yes, my darling. What is it?”
“The Grand High Witch told them her room was number 454. Right?”
“Right,” she said.
“Well, my room is number 554. Mine, 554, is on the fifth floor, so hers, 454, will be on the fourth floor.”
“That is correct,” my grandmother said.
“Then don’t you think it’s possible that room 454 is directly underneath room 554?”
“That’s more than likely,” she said. “These modern hotels are all built like boxes of bricks. But what if it is?”
“Would you please take me out on to my balcony so I can look down,” I said.
All the rooms in the Hotel Magnificent had small private balconies. My grandmother carried me through into my own bedroom and out on to my balcony. We both peered down to the balcony immediately below.
“Now if that is her room,” I said, “then I’ll bet I could climb down there somehow and get in.”
“And get caught all over again,” my grandmother said. “I won’t allow it.”
“At this moment,” I said, “all the witches are down on the Sunshine Terrace having tea with the Manager. The Grand High Witch probably won’t be back until six o’clock or just before. That’s when she’s going to dish out supplies of that foul formula to the ancient ones who are too old to climb trees after gruntles’ eggs.”
“And what if you did manage to get into her room?” my grandmother said. “What then?”
“Then I should try to find the place where she keeps her supply of Delayed Action Mouse-Maker, and if I succeeded then I would steal one bottle of it and bring it back here.”