 Story number 18 of The Toys of Peace by Saki This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Toys of Peace by Saki by H. H. Monroe Chapter 18 Mark Augustus Melokint was a novelist with a future, that is to say, a limited but increasing number of people read his book. And there seemed good reason to suppose that if he steadily continued to turn out novels year by year, a progressively increasing circle of readers would acquire the Melokint habit, and demand his works from the libraries and bookstalls. At the instigation of his publisher, he had discarded the baptismal Augustus and taken the front name of Mark. Women like a name that suggests someone strong and silent, able but unwilling to answer questions. Augustus merely suggests idle splendor, but such a name as Mark Melokint, besides being alliterative, conjures up a vision of someone strong and beautiful and good. A sort of blend of George Carpentet and the Reverend, uh, what's his name? One morning in December, Augustus sat in his writing room at work on the third chapter of his eighth novel. He had described at some length for the benefit of those who could not imagine it, what a rectory garden looks like in July. He was now engaged in describing at great length the feelings of a young girl, daughter of a long line of rectors and archdeacons, when she discovers for the first time that the postman is attractive. Their eyes met for a brief moment as he handed her two circulars in the fat-wrapper bound bulk of the East Essex News. Their eyes met for the nearest fraction of a second, yet nothing could ever be quite the same again. Cost what it might, she felt that she must speak, must break the intolerable, unreal silence that had fallen on them. How's your mother's rheumatism? She said. The author's labors were cut short by the sudden intrusion of a maid-servant. A gentleman to see you, sir," said the maid, handing a card with the name Caiaphas Dwealth inscribed on it, says it's important. Melokint hesitated and yielded. The importance of the visitor's mission was probably illusory, but he had never met anyone with the name Caiaphas before. It would be, at least, a new experience. Mr. Dwealth was a man of indefinite age, with his high, narrow forehead, cold gray eyes, and determined manner bespoke an unflinching purpose. He had a large book under his arm, and there seemed every probability that he had left a package of similar volumes in the hall. He took a seat before it had been offered him, placed the book on the table, and began to address Melokint in the manner of an open letter. You are a literary man, the author of several well-known books. I am engaged in a book at the present moment, rather busily engaged," said Melokint pointedly. Exactly, said the intruder, time with you is a commodity of considerable importance. Minutes even have their value. They have, agreed Melokint, looking at his watch. That, said Caiaphas, is why this book that I am introducing to your notice is not a book that you can afford to be without. Right here is indispensable for the writing man. It is no ordinary encyclopedia, or I should not trouble to show it to you. It is an inexhaustible mind of concise information. On the shelf at my elbow, said the author, I have a row of reference books that supply me with all the information I am likely to require. Here persisted the would-be salesman. You have it all in one compact volume, no matter what the subject may be which you wish to look up, or the fact you desire to verify. Right here gives you all that you want to know in the briefest and most enlightening form, historical reference for instance, career of John Hus let us say, here we are. Hus, John, celebrated religious reformer, born 1369, burned at Constance, the Emperor Sinkman universally blamed. If it had been burnt these days, everyone would have suspected the suffragates, observed Melokint. Poultry keeping now, resumed Caiaphas. That's a subject that might crop up in a novel dealing with English country life. Here we have all about it, the leghorn as egg producer, lack of maternal instinct in the Menorca, gapes in chickens its cause and cure, ducklings for the early market how fattened. There you see, there it all is, nothing lacking, except the maternal instinct in the Menorca, and you could hardly be expected to supply. Sporting records, that's important too. Now how many men, sporting men even, are there who can say offhand what horse won the Derby in any particular year. Now it's just the thing of that sort. My dear sir, interrupted Melokint, there are at least four men in my club who can not only tell me what horse won in any given year, but what horse ought to have won and why it didn't. If your book could supply a method for protecting one from information of that sort, it would do more than anything you have yet claimed for it. Geography, said Caiaphas unperturbably. That's a thing that a busy man writing at high pressure may easily make a slip over. Only the other day a well-known author read the Volga flow into the Black Sea instead of the Caspian. Now with this book, Hannah polished rosewood's stand, behind you there reposes a reliable and up-to-date Atlas, said Melokint, and now I must really ask you to be going. An Atlas, said Caiaphas, gives merely the chart of the river's course and indicates the principal towns that it passes. Right here, gives you the scenery, traffic, ferryboat charges, the prevalent types of fish, boatsmen slang terms, and hours of sailing of the principal river's streamings. It gives you... Melokint sat and watched the hard-featured, resolute, pityless salesman as he sat doggedly in the chair wherein he had installed himself, unflinchingly extolling the merits of his undesired wares. A spirit of wistful emulation took possession of the author. Why could he not live up to the cold-stern name he had adopted? Why must he sit here weakly and listen to this weary, unconvincing tirade? Why could he not be Mark Melokint for a few brief moments and meet this man on level terms? A sudden inspiration flashed across his eyes. Have you read my last book, The Cageless Linnet? He asked. I don't read novels, said Caiaphas Tursley. Oh, but you ought to read this one everyone ought to, exclaimed Melokint, fishing the book down from the shelf. Publish that six shillings you can have it at four and six. There is a bit in chapter five that I feel sure you would like, where Emma is alone in the birch cusp, waiting for Harold Huntingdon, that is the man her family want her to marry. She really wants to marry him too, but she does not discover that till chapter 15. Listen. Far as the eye could stretch, rolled the mauve and purple billows of heather lit up here and there, the glowing yellow of gorse and broom and edged round with the delicate grays and silver and green of the young birch trees. Tiny blue and brown butterflies fluttered above the fronds of heather, reveling in the sunlight and overhead. The larks were singing as only larks can sing. It was a day when all nature. And right here you have full information on all branches of nature study. He broke in the book agent with a tired note sounding in his voice for the first time. Forestry, insect life, bird migration, reclamation of wastelands, as I was saying, no man who has to deal with the varied interest of life. I wonder if you would care for one of my earlier books, The Reluctance of Lady Cullumton, said mellow Kent, hunting again through the bookshelf. Some people consider it my best novel. Here it is. I see there are one or two spots on the cover, so I won't ask more than three and nine pence for it. Do let me read you how it opens. Beatrice Lady Cullumton entered the long dimly lit drawing room, her eyes blazing with the hope that she gasped to be groundless, her lips trembling with a fear that she could not disguise. In her hand she carried a small fan, a fragile toy of lace and satin wood. Something snapped as she entered the room, she had crushed the fan into a dozen pieces. There, what do you think of that for an opening? It tells you at once that there's something afoot. Don't read novels, said Caiaphas sullenly. But just think what a resource they are, exclaimed the author. On long winter evenings, or perhaps when you are laid up with a strained ankle, a thing that might happen to anyone, or if you were staying in a house party with persistent weather and a stupid hostess and insufferably dull fellow guest, you would just make an excuse that you had letters to write, go to your room, light a cigarette and four, three and nine pence, you could plunge into the society of Beatrice Lady Cullumton and her set. No one ought to travel without one or two of my novels in their luggage as a standby. A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without Queenine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Melokins in his kit bag. Perhaps sensation is more in your line. I wonder if I've got a copy of the Python's kiss. Caiaphas did not wait to be tempted with selections from that thrilling work of fiction. With a muttered remark about having no time to waste on monkey-talk, he gathered up his slighted volume and departed. He made no audible reply to Melokins' cheerful, good morning, but the latter fancy that a look of respectful hatred flickered in the coal-grey eyes. Recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Sarkie The Hedgehog A mixed double of young people were contesting a game of lawn tennis at the Rectory Garden Party. For the past five and twenty years at least mixed doubles of young people had done exactly the same thing at about the same time of year. The young people changed and made way for others in the course of time, but very little else seemed to alter. The present players were sufficiently conscious of the social nature of the occasion to be concerned about their clothes and appearance, and sufficiently sport-loving to be keen on the game. Both their efforts and their appearance came under the fourfold scrutiny of a quartet of ladies sitting as official spectators on a bench immediately commanding the court. It was one of the accepted conditions of the Rectory Garden Party that four ladies who usually knew very little about tennis and a great deal about the players should sit at that particular spot and watch the game. It had also come to be almost a tradition that two ladies should be amiable and that the other two should be Mrs. Dole and Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. What a singularly unbecoming way Eva Joanlett has taken to doing her hair in, said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. It's ugly hair at the best of times, but she didn't make it look ridiculous as well. Someone ought to tell her. Eva Joanlett's hair might have escaped Mrs. Hatch-Mallard's condemnation if she could have forgotten the more glaring fact that Eva was Mrs. Dole's favourite niece. It would, perhaps, have been a more comfortable arrangement if Mrs. Hatch-Mallard and Mrs. Dole could have been asked to the Rectory on separate occasions, but there was only one garden party in the course of the year and neither lady could have been admitted from the list of invitations without hopelessly wrecking the social piece of the parish. How pretty the yew-trees look at this time of year! Interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler. What do you mean by this time of year? demanded Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. Yew-trees look beautiful at all times of the year. That is their great charm. Yew-trees never look anything but hideous under any circumstances or at any time of year, said Mrs. Dole, with the slow, emphatic relish of one who contradicts for the pleasure of the thing. They are only fit for graveyards and cemeteries. Mrs. Hatch-Mallard gave a sardonic snort, which, being translated, meant that there were some people who were better fitted for cemeteries than for garden parties. What is the score, please? asked the lady with the chinchilla voice. The desired information was given her by a young gentleman in spotless white flammals, and the general toilet effect suggested solicitude rather than anxiety. What an odious young cub Bertie Dixon has become, pronounced Mrs. Dole, remembering suddenly that Bertie was a favourite with Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. The young men of today are not what they used to be twenty years ago. Of course not, said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. Twenty years ago Bertie Dixon was just two years old, and you must expect some difference in appearance and manner and conversation between those two periods. Do you know, said Mrs. Dole confidentially, I shouldn't be surprised if that is intended to be clever. Have you any one interesting coming to stay with you, Mrs. Noobry? asked the chinchilla voice hastily. You generally have a house party at this time of year. I've got a most interesting woman coming, said Mrs. Noobry, who had been mutely struggling for some chance to turn the conversation into a safe channel. An old acquaintance of mine, Ada Bleak. What an ugly name, said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. She's descended from the de la Bleaks, an old Huguenot family of Tourenne, you know. There weren't any Huguenots in Tourenne, said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard, who thought she might safely dispute any fact that was three hundred years old. Well, anyhow she's coming to stay with me, continued Mrs. Noobry, bringing her story quickly down to the present day. She arrived this evening and she's highly clairvoyant, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, you know, and all that sort of thing. How very interesting, said the chinchilla voice. Exord is just the right place for her to come to, isn't it? There are supposed to be several ghosts there. That is why she was so anxious to come, said Mrs. Noobry. She put off another engagement in order to accept my invitation. She's had visions and dreams and all those sort of things that have come true in a most marvellous manner, but she's never actually seen a ghost and she's longing to have that experience. She belongs to that research society, you know. I expect you'll see the unhappy Lady Cullompton, the most famous of all the ex-wood-ghosts, said Mrs. Dole. My ancestor, you know, Sir Trevay's Cullompton, murdered his young bride in a fit of jealousy while they were on a visit to ex-wood. He strangled her in the stables with a stirrup leather just after they had come in from riding. And she's seen, sometimes, at dusk going about the lawns and the stable yard in a long green habit, moaning and trying to get the thong from round her throat. I shall be most interested to hear if your friend sees. I don't know why she should be expected to see a trashy, traditional apparition like the so-called Cullompton ghost that is only vouched for by housemaids and tipsy, stable boys when my uncle, who was the owner of ex-wood, committed suicide there under the most tragical circumstances and most certainly haunts the place. Mrs. Hatch Mallard has evidently never read Popple's county history, said Mrs. Dole icily, or she would know that the Cullompton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it. Oh, Popple! exclaimed Mrs. Hatch Mallard scornfully. Any rubbish-y old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed. Now my uncle's ghost was seen by a rural dean who was also a justice of the peace. I should think that would be good enough testimony for any one. Mrs. Norbury, I shall take it as a deliberate personal affront if your clairvoyant friend sees any other ghost except that of my uncle. I daresay she won't see anything at all. She never has yet, you know, said Mrs. Norbury, hopefully. It was a most unfortunate topic for me to have broached. She lamented afterwards to the owner of the chinchilla voice. Ex-wood belongs to Mrs. Hatch Mallard and we've only got it on a short lease. A nephew of hers has been wanting to live there for some time and if we offend her in any way she will refuse to renew the lease. I sometimes think these garden parties are a mistake. The Norbury has played bridge for the next three nights till nearly one o'clock. They did not care for the game but it reduced the time at their guest's disposal for undesirable ghostly visitations. Miss Fleek is not likely to be in a frame of mind to see ghosts, said Hugh Gohan Norbury. If she goes to bed with her brain a whirl with royal spades and no trumps and grand slams. I've talked to her for hours about Mrs. Hatch Mallard Uncle, said his wife, and pointed out the exact spot where he killed himself and invented all sorts of impressive details and I've found an old portrait of Lord John Russell and put it in her room and told her that it's supposed to be a picture of the uncle in middle age. If Ada does see a ghost at all it's certainly ought to be old Hatch Mallard's. At any rate we've done our best. The precautions were in vain. On the third morning of her stay Ada Bleek came down late to breakfast her eyes looking very tired but a blaze with excitement her hair done anyhow and a large brown volume hugged under her arm. I've seen something supernatural. She exclaimed and gave Mrs. Norbury a fervent kiss as though in gratitude for the opportunity afforded her. A ghost cried Mrs. Norbury. Not really. Really and unmistakably. Was it an oldish man in the dress of about fifty years ago? Asked Mrs. Norbury hopefully. Nothing of the sort said Ada. It was a white hedgehog. A white hedgehog! exclaimed both the Norbury's in tones of disconcerted astonishment. A huge white hedgehog with baleful yellow eyes said Ada. I was lying half asleep in bed when suddenly I felt a sensation as if something sinister and unaccountable passing through the room. I sat up and looked round and there under the window I saw an evil creeping thing a sort of monstrous hedgehog of a dirty white colour with black loathsome claws that clicked and scraped along the floor and narrow yellow eyes of indescribable evil. It slithered along for a yard or two always looking at me with its cruel hideous eyes. Then when it reached the second window which was open it clambered up the sill and vanished. I got up at once and went to the window. There wasn't a sign of it anywhere. Of course I knew it must be something from another world but it was not till I turned up Popple's chapter on local traditions that I realised what I had seen. She turned eagerly to the large brown volume and read Nicholas Harrison an old miser was hung at Batchford in 1763 for the murder of a farm lad who had accidentally discovered his secret horde. His ghost is supposed to traverse the countryside appearing sometimes as a white owl sometimes as a huge white hedgehog. I expect you read the Popple's story overnight and that made you think you saw a hedgehog when you were only half awake said Mrs Norbury, hazarding a conjecture that probably came very near the truth. Ada scouted the possibility of such a solution of her apparition. This must be hushed up said Mrs Norbury quickly. The servants hushed up exclaimed Ada indignantly. I'm writing a long report on it for the research society. It was then that Hugo Norbury who is not naturally a man of brilliant resource had one of the really useful inspirations of his life. It was very wicked of us, Miss Bleak, he said. But it would be a shame to let it go further. That white hedgehog is an old joke of ours. Stuffed albino, a hedgehog you know that my father brought home from Jamaica where they grow to enormous size. We hide it in the room with a string on it. Run one end of the string through the window. Then we pull it from below and it comes scraping along the floor just as you've described and finally jerks out of the window. Taken in heaps of people, they all read up Popple and think it's old Harry Nicholson's ghost. We always stop them from writing to the papers about it though. That would be carrying matters too far. Mrs. Hatch-Mallard renewed the lease in due course but Ada Bleak has never renewed her friendship. End of the Hedgehog Story number 20 of the Toys of Peace This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Martin Giesen The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Saki The Mapping Life These Mapping Terraces at the Zoological Gardens are a great improvement on the old style of wild beast cage, said Mrs. James Girtleberry putting down an illustrated paper. They have won the illusion of seeing the animals in their natural surroundings. I wonder how much of the illusion is passed on to the animals. That would depend on the animal, said her niece. A jungle fowl, for instance, would no doubt think its lawful jungle surroundings were faithfully reproduced if you gave it as a efficiency of wives, a goodly variety of seed food and ant eggs, a commodious bank of loose earth to dust itself in, a convenient roosting tree and a rival or two to make matters interesting. Of course there ought to be jungle cats and birds of prey and other agencies of sudden death to add to the illusion of liberty. But the bird's own imagination is capable of inventing those. Look how a domestic fowl would squawk an alarm note if a rock or wood pigeon passes over its run when it has chickens. You think then they really do have a sort of illusion if you give them space enough. In a few cases only. Nothing will make me believe that an acre or so of concrete enclosure will make up to a wolf or a tiger-cat for the range of night prowling that would belong to it in a wild state. Think of the dictionary of sound and scent and recollection that unfolds before a real wild beast as it comes out from its lair every evening with the knowledge that in a few minutes it will be hiding along to some distant hunting ground where all the joy and fury of the chase awaits it. Think of the crowded sensations of the brain when every rustle, every cry, every bent twig and every whiff across the nostrils means something. Something to do with life and death and dinner. Imagine the satisfaction of stealing down to your own particular drinking spot choosing your own particular tree to scrape your claws on finding your own particular bed of dried grass to roll on. Then in the place of all that but a concrete promenade which will be of exactly the same dimensions whether you race or crawl across it coated with stale unvarying scents and surrounded with cries and noises that have ceased to have the least meaning or interest. As a substitute for a narrow cage the new enclosures are excellent but I should think they are a poor imitation of a life of liberty. It's rather depressing to think that said Mrs. Guthelbury. They look so spacious and so natural but I suppose a good deal of what seems natural to us would be meaningless to a wild animal. That is where our superior powers of self-deception come in said the niece. We are able to live our unreal stupid little lives on our particular map in terrace and persuade ourselves that we really are untrammeled men and women leading a reasonable existence in a reasonable sphere. But good gracious exclaimed the aunt bouncing into an attitude of scandalised defence. We are leading reasonable existences. What on earth do you mean by tramples? We are merely trampled by the ordinary decent conventions of civilised society. We are trampled, said the niece, calmly and pitilessly by restrictions of income and opportunity and above all by lack of initiative. To some people a restricted income doesn't matter a bit. In fact it often seems to help as a means for getting a lot of reality out of life. I am sure there are men and women who do their shopping in little back streets of Paris buying four carrots and a shred of beef for their daily sustenance who lead a perfectly real and eventful existence. Lack of initiative is the thing that really cripples one and that is where you and I and Uncle James are so hopelessly shut in. We are just so many animals stuck down on a map in Terrace with this difference in our disfavour that the animals are there to be looked at while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer and if a wasp happens to sting one of us well that is the wasp's initiative, not ours. All we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice it is by indirect methods. If it happens to be a good flowering year for magnolias the neighbourhood observes have you seen the Gertlebury's magnolia? It is a perfect mass of flowers. And we go about telling people that there are fifty-seven blossoms as against thirty-nine the previous year. In Coronation year there were as many as sixty put in the aunt. Your uncle has kept a record for the last eight years. Doesn't it ever strike you? continued the niece relentlessly. But if we moved away from here or were blotted out of existence our local claim to fame would pass on automatically to whoever happened to take the house and garden. People would say to one another have you seen the Smith Jenkins's magnolia? It is a perfect mass of flowers. Or else Smith Jenkins tells me there won't be a single blossom on their magnolia this year. The east winds have turned all the buds black. Now if when we had gone people still associated our names with the magnolia tree no matter who temporarily possessed it if they said ah that's the tree on which the Gertlebury's hung their cook because she sent up the wrong kind of source with the asparagus. That would be something really due to our own initiative apart from anything east winds or magnolia vitality might have to say in the matter. She should never do such a thing said the aunt. The niece gave a reluctant sigh. I can't imagine it. She admitted. Of course she continued there are heaps of ways of leading a real existence without committing sensational deeds of violence. It's the dreadful little everyday acts of pretended importance to give the map in stamp to our life. It would be entertaining if it wasn't so pathetically tragic to hear Uncle James fuss in here in the morning and announce I must go down into the town and find out what the men are saying about Mexico. Matters are beginning to look serious there. Then he patters away into the town and talks in a highly serious voice to the tobacconist, incidentally buying an ounce of tobacco. Perhaps he meets one or two others of the world's thinkers and talks to them in a highly serious voice. Then he patters back here and announces with increased importance. I've just been talking to some men in the town about the condition of affairs in Mexico. They agree with the view that I have formed that things there will have to get worse before they get better. Of course nobody in the town cared in the least little bit what his views about Mexico were or whether he had any. The tobacconist wasn't even fluttered at his buying the ounce of tobacco. He knows that he purchases the same quantity of the same sort of tobacco every week. Uncle James might just as well have lain on his back in the garden and chatted to the lilac tree about the habits of caterpillars. I really will not listen to such things about your uncle. Protested Mrs. James Gertleberry angrily. My own case is just as bad and just as tragic, said the niece dispassionately. Nearly everything about me is conventional make-believe. I'm not a good dancer and no one could honestly call me good-looking. But when I go to one of our dull little local dances I'm conventionally supposed to have a heavenly time to attract the ardent homage of the local caterpillars and to go home with my head a whirl with pleasurable recollections. As a matter of fact I've merely put in some hours of indifferent dancing, drunk some badly made claret cup and listened to an enormous amount of laborious light conversation. A moonlight hen-stealing raid with the myriad curate would be infinitely more exciting. Imagine the pleasure of carrying off all those white menorcas that the chimpfords are always bragging about. When we had disposed of them we could give the proceeds to a charity so there would be nothing really wrong about it. But nothing of that sort lies within the mappined limits of my life. One of these days somebody dull and decorous and undistinguished will make himself agreeable to me at a tennis party as the saying is and all the dull old gossips of the neighbourhood will begin to ask when we are to be engaged. And at last we shall be engaged and people will give us battered dishes and blotting cases and framed pictures of young women feeding swans. Hello uncle, are you going out? I'm just going down to the town announced Mr. James Gertlebury with an air of some importance. I want to hear what people are saying about Albania. Affairs there are beginning to take on a very serious look. It's my opinion that we haven't seen the worst of things yet. In this he was probably right but there was nothing in the immediate or prospective condition of Albania to warrant Mrs. Gertlebury in bursting into tears. End of the mappined life. Story number 21 of The Toys of Peace This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Bill Mosley. The Toys of Peace. Short stories by Saki. Fate. Rex Dillet was nearly twenty-four almost good looking and quite penniless. His mother was supposed to make him some sort of an allowance out of what her creditors allowed her and Rex occasionally strayed into the ranks of those who earned fitful salaries as secretaries or companions to people who are unable to cope unaided with their correspondence or their leisure. For a few months he had been assistant editor and business manager of a paper devoted to fancy mice but the devotion had been all on one side and the paper disappeared with a certain dropness from club reading rooms and other haunts where it had made a gratuitous appearance. Still Rex lived with some air of comfort and well-being as one can live if one is born with a genius for that sort of thing and a kindly providence usually arranged that his weekend invitations coincided with the dates on which his one white dinner was in a laundry-returned condition of dazzling cleanness. He played most games badly and was shrewd enough to recognize the fact but he had developed a marvelously accurate judgment in estimating the play and chances of other people whether in a golf match, billiard handicap or croquet tournament. By dant of parading his opinion of such and such a player's superiority with a sufficient degree of youthful assertiveness he usually succeeded in provoking a wager at liberal odds and he looked to his weekend winnings to carry him through the financial embarrassments of his mid-week existence. The trouble was, as he confided to Clovis Sandgrail, that he never had enough available or even prospective cash at his command to enable him to fix the wager at a figure really worth winning. Some day he said, I shall come across a really safe thing, a bet that simply can't go astray and then I shall put it up for all I'm worth or rather for a good deal more than I'm worth if you sold me up to the last button. It would be awkward if it didn't happen to come off, said Clovis. It would be more than awkward, said Rex. It would be a tragedy. All the same. It would be extremely amusing to bring it off. Fancy awaking in the morning with about three hundred pounds standing to one's credit. I should go and clear out my hostess's pigeon loft before breakfast out of sheer good temper. Your hostess of the moment may have a pigeon loft, said Clovis. I always choose hostesses that have, said Rex. A pigeon loft is indicative of a careless, extravagant, genial disposition, such as I like to see around me. People who strew corn broadcast for a lot of feathered inanities that just sit about cooing and giving each other the glad eye in a lewis-quatorze manner are pretty certain to do you well. Young Strenet is coming down this afternoon, said Clovis, reflectively. I dare say you won't find it difficult to get him to back himself at billiards. He plays a pretty useful game, but he is not quite as good as he fancies he is. I know one member of the party who can walk round him, said Rex, softly, an alert look coming into his eyes. That cadaver is looking major who arrived last night. I've seen him play at St. Moritz. If I could get Strenet to lay odds on himself against the major, the money would be safe in my pocket. This looks like the good thing I've been watching and praying for. Don't be rash, counseled Clovis. Strenet may play up to his self-imagined form once in a blue moon. I intend to be rash, said Rex, quietly, and the look on his face corroborated his words. Are you all going to flock to the billiard room, asked Theresa Thundelford after dinner, with an air of some disapproval and a good deal of annoyance? I can't see what particular amusement you find in watching two men with little ivory balls about on a table. Oh, well, said her hostess, it's a way of passing the time, you know. A very poor way to my mind, said Mrs. Thundelford. Now I was going to have shown all of you the photographs I took in Venice last summer. You showed them to us last night, said Mrs. Gouvering Hastily. Those are the ones I took in Florence. These are quite a different lot. Oh, well, sometime tomorrow we can look at them. You can leave them down in the drawing room, and then everyone can have a look. I should prefer to show them when you are all gathered together, as I have quite a lot of explanatory remarks to make about Venetian art and architecture on the same lines as my remarks last night on the Florentine galleries. Also, there are some verses of mine that I should like to read you in the rebuilding of the Campanile, but, of course, if you all prefer to watch Major Latin and Mr. Strinnett knocking balls about on a table, they are both supposed to be first-rate players, said the hostess. I have yet to learn that my verses and my art coserie are of second-rate quality, said Mrs. Thundelford, with a servity. However, as you all seem bent on watching a silly game, there's no more to be said. I shall go upstairs and finish some writing. Later on, perhaps, I will come down and join you. To one at least of the onlookers, the game was anything but silly. It was absorbing, exciting, exasperating, nerve-stretching, and, finally, it grew to be tragic. The Major, with the St. Moritz reputation, was playing a long way below his form. Young Strinnett was playing slightly above his, and had all the luck of the game as well. From the very start the ball seemed possessed by a demon of contrariness. They trundled about complacently for one player. They would go nowhere for the other. A hundred and seventy, seventy-four, sang out the youth who was marking. In a game of two hundred and fifty up, it was an enormous lead to hold. Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from Dillet's face, and a hard white look take its place. How much have you go on? whispered Clovis. The other whispered the sum through dry, shaking lips. It was more than he or anyone connected with him that he could pay. He had done what he had said he would do. He had been rash. Two hundred and six, ninety-eight. Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another somewhere else, and another and another. The house seemed full of striking clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in. In another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager he had challenged. Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three. The game was as good as over. Rex was as good as done for. He longed desperately for the ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, or anything to happen that would put an end to that horrible rolling two and four of red and white ivory that was jostling him nearer and nearer to his doom. Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven. Rex opened his cigarette case. It was empty. That at least gave him a pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it. He would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game played out to the bitter end. He backed away from the circle of absorbed watchers and made his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a guest's name written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned in this part of the house, he could still hear the hateful click-click of the balls. If he waited for a few minutes longer, he would hear the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of congratulation that would hail Strenet's victory. On the alert tension of his nerves, there broke another sound. The aggressive, wrath-inducing breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The sound came from a room just at his elbow. A card on the door bore the announcement. Mrs. Thundleford. The door was just slightly ajar. Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art galleries. At her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading lamp. If fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of besides billiard matches. There are occasions when one must take one's fate in one's hands. Rex took the lamp in his. 237, 115. Strenet was at the table and the balls lay in good position for him. He had a choice of two fairly easy shots. A choice which he was never to decide. A sudden hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet sent every one flocking to the door. The boy crashed into the room, carrying in his arms the vociferous and somewhat disheveled Teresa Thundleford. Her clothing was certainly not a mass of flames as the more excitable members of the party afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the table cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were a light in a flickering, half-hearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on the billiard table for one breathless minute. The work of beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them with soda water siphons engrossed the energies of the entire company. It was lucky I was passing when it happened, panted Rex. Someone had better see to the room. I think the carpet is a light. As a matter of fact, the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had prevented any great damage being done, whether the victim or her surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most and had to be laid up for repairs. Perhaps it was not the best place to have chosen for the scene of salvage operations. But then, as Clovis remarked, when one is rushing about with a blazing woman in one's arms, one can't stop to think out exactly where one is going to put her. End of Fate Recording by Phil Mosley, Bernardo, Texas, USA. Story number 22 of The Toys of Peace. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bill Mosley. The Toys of Peace. Short Stories by Saki. The Bull. Tom Yorkfield had always regarded his half-brother Lawrence with a lazy instinct of dislike, toned down, as years went on, to a tolerant feeling of indifference. There was nothing very tangible to dislike him for. He was just a blood relation, with whom Tom had no single taste or interest in common, and with whom, at the same time, he had had no occasion for quarrel. Lawrence had left the farm early in life and had lived for a few years on a small sum of money left in by his mother. He had taken up painting as a profession and was reported to be doing fairly well at it, well enough at any rate, to keep body and soul together. He specialized in painting animals, and he was successful in finding a certain number of people to buy his pictures. Tom felt a comforting sense of assured superiority in contrasting his position with that of his half-brother. Lawrence was an artist's chap, just that and nothing more, though you might make it sound more important by calling him an animal painter. Tom was a farmer, not in a very big way, it was true, but the health-serie farm had been in the family for some generations, and it had a good reputation for the stock raised on it. Tom had done his best with the little capital at his command to maintain and improve the standard of his small herd of cattle. And in Clover Fairy, he had bred a bull, which was something rather better than any that his immediate neighbors could show. It would not have made a sensation in the judging ring at an important cattle show, but it was as vigorous, shapely and healthy a young animal as any small practical farmer could wish to possess. At the king's head on market days, Clover Fairy was very highly spoken of, and Yorkfield used to declare that he would not part with him for a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds is a lot of money in the small farming line, and probably anything over 80 would have tempted him. It was with some special pleasure that Tom took advantage of one of Lawrence's rare visits to the farm to lead him down to the enclosure where Clover Fairy kept solitary state. The grass widower of a grazing harem. Tom felt some of his old dislike for his half-brother revive him. The artist was becoming more languid in his manner, more unsuitably turned out in attire, and he seemed inclined to impart a slightly patronizing tone to his conversation. He took no heed of a flourishing potato crop, but waxed enthusiastic over a clump of yellow-flowering weed that stood in a corner by Gateway, which was rather galling to the owner of a really very well-weeded farm. Again, when he might have been duly complimentary about a group of fat black-faced lambs that simply quite allowed for admiration, he became eloquent over the foliage tints of an oak-copse on the hill opposite. But now he was being taken to inspect the crowning pride and glory of Helsary. However grudging he might be in his praises, however backward and niggeredly with his congratulations, he would have to see and acknowledge the many excellences of that redoubtable animal. Some weeks ago, while on a business journey to Taunton, Tom had been invited by his half-brother to visit a studio in that town, where Lawrence was exhibiting one of his pictures, a large canvas representing a bull standing knee-deep in some marshy ground. It had been good of its kind, no doubt, and Lawrence had seemed inordinately pleased with it. The best thing I have done yet, he had said, over and over again. And Tom had generously agreed that it was fairly lifelike. Now the man of pigments was going to be shown a real picture, a living model of strength and comeliness, a thing to feast the eyes on, a picture that exhibited new pose and action with every shifting minute, instead of standing glued into one unvarying attitude between the four walls of a frame. Tom unfastened a stout wooden door and led the way into a straw-bedded yard. Is he quiet? asked the artist, as a young bull with a curly red goat came inquiringly towards them. He's playful at times at Tom, leaving his half-brother to wonder whether the bull's ideas of play were of the catch-as-catch-can order. Lawrence made one or two perfunctory comments on the animal's appearance and asked a question or so as to his age in such-like details. Then he coolly turned the talk into another channel. Do you remember the picture I showed you at Taunton? He asked. Yes, but Tom. A white face bull standing in some slush. Don't admire those herpards much myself, bulky-looking brutes. Don't seem to have much life in them. Dare say they're easier to paint that way. Now this young beggar is on the move all the time. Aren't you fairy? I've sold that picture, said Lawrence, with considerable complacency in his voice. Have you, said Tom? Glad to hear it, I'm sure. Hope you're pleased with what you got for it. I got three hundred pounds for it, said Lawrence. Tom turned towards him with a slowly rising flush of anger in his face. Three hundred pounds, under the most favorable market conditions that he could imagine his prized clover fairy, could hardly fetch a hundred. Yet here was a piece of varnished canvas painted by his half-brother, selling for three times that sum. It was a cruel insult that went home with all the more force because it emphasized the triumph of the patronizing self-satisfied Lawrence. The young farmer had meant to put his relative just a little out of conceit with himself by displaying the jewel of his possessions, and now the tables were turned and his valued beast was made to look cheap and insignificant beside the price paid for a mere picture. It was so monstrously unjust. The painting would never be anything more than a dexterous piece of counterfeit life, while clover fairy was the real thing, a monarch in his little world, a personality in the countryside. After he was dead even, he would still be something of a personality. His descendants would graze in those valley meadows and hillside pastures. They would fill stall and buyer and milking shed. Their good red coats would speckle the landscape and crowd the marketplace. Man would note a promising heifer or a well-proportioned steer and say, ah, that one comes of good old clover fairy's stock. All that time the picture would be hanging, lifeless and unchanging beneath its dust and varnish, a chattel that ceased to mean anything if you chose to turn it with its back to the wall. These thoughts chased themselves angrily through Tom Yorkfield's mind, but he could not put them into words. When he gave tongue to his feelings, he put matters bluntly and harshly. Some soft-witted fools may like to throw away three hundred pounds on a bit of paintwork. Can't say as I envy them their taste. I'd rather have the real thing than a picture of it. He nodded towards the young bull that was alternately staring at them with nose held high and lowering its horns with a half playful, half impatient shake of the head. Lawrence laughed and laughed of irritating, indulgent amusement. I don't think the purchaser of my bit of paintwork, as you call it, would indeed worry about having thrown his money away. As I get to be better known and recognized, my pictures will go up in value. That particular one will probably fetch four hundred in a sale room five or six years hence. Pictures aren't a bad investment, if you know enough, to pick out the work of the right men. Now you can't say your precious bull is going to get more valuable the longer you keep him. He'll have his little day, and then if you go on keeping him, he'll come down at last to a few shillings worth of hoofs and hide, just at a time, perhaps, when my bull is being bought for a big sum for some important picture gallery. It was too much. The united force of truth and slander and insult put over heavy a strain on Tom Yorkfield's powers of restraint. In his right hand he held a useful oak cudgel. With his left he made a grab at the loose collar of Lawrence's canary-colored silk shirt. Lawrence was not a fighting man. The fear of physical violence threw him off his balance as completely as overmastering indignation had thrown Tom off his, and thus he came to pass that Clover Fairy was regaled with the unprecedented sight of a human being scutting and squawking across the enclosure, like the hen that would persist in trying to establish a nesting place in the manger. In another crowded happy moment the bull was trying to jerk Lawrence over his left shoulder, to prod him in the ribs while still in the air, and to kneel on him when he reached the ground. It was only the vigorous intervention of Tom that induced him to relinquish the last item of his program. Tom, devotedly and ungrudgingly, nursed his half-brother to a complete recovery from his injuries, which consisted of nothing more serious than a dislocated shoulder, a broken rib or two, and a little nervous prostration. After all, there was no further occasion for Rancor in the young farmer's mind. Lawrence's bull might sell for 300 or for 600 and be admired by thousands in some big picture gallery, but it would never toss a man over one shoulder and catch him a jab in the ribs before he had fallen on the other side. That was Clover Fairy's noteworthy achievement which could never be taken away from it. Lawrence continues to be popular as an animal artist, but his subjects are always kittens or fawns or lambkins. Never Bulls. End of The Bull. Recording by Bill Mosley Bernardo, Texas USA Story number 23 of The Toys of Peace This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Asterix The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Saki Mulvera The Olympic Toy Emporium occupied a conspicuous frontage in an important West End Street. It was happily named Toy Emporium because one would never have dreamed of recording it, the familiar and yet pulse-quickening name of Toy Shop. There was an air of cold splendor and elaborate failure about the wares that were set out in its ample windows. They were the sort of toys that a tired shop assistant displays and explains at Christmas time to exclamatory parents and bored, silent children. The animal toys look more like natural history models than the comfortable, sympathetic companions that one would wish at a certain age to take to bed with one and to smuggle into the bathroom. The mechanical toys incessantly did things that no one would want a toy to do more than half a dozen times in its lifetime. It was a merciful reflection that in any right-minded nursery the lifetime would certainly be short. Prominent among the elegantly dressed dolls that filled an entire section of the window frontage was a large hobble-skirted lady in a confection of peach-coloured velvet, elaborately set off with leopard-skin accessories if one may use such a conveniently comprehensive word in describing an intricate feminine toilette. She lacked nothing that is to be found in a carefully detailed fashion plate. In fact, she might be said to have something more than the average fashion plate female possessors. In place of a vacant expressionless stare she had character in her face. It must be admitted that it was indeed character, cold, hostile, inquisitorial, with a sinister lowering of one eyebrow and a merciless hardness about the corners of the mouth. One might have imagined histories about her by the hour, histories in which unworthy ambition, the desire for money, and an entire absence of all decent feeling would play a conspicuous part. As a matter of fact she was not without her judges and biographers even in this shot window stage of her career. Emmeline, aged nine and Burt, aged seven had halted on the way from their obscure back-street to the ministered water of St. James' Park and were critically examining the hobble-skirted doll and dissecting her character in no very tolerant spirit. There is probably a latent enmity between the necessarily undeclared and the unnecessarily overdressed, but a little kindness and good fellowship on the part of the latter will often change the sentiment to admiring devotion. If the lady in peach-coloured velvet and leopard-skin had worn a pleasant expression in addition to her other elaborate furnishings, Emmeline at least might have respected and even loved her. As it was she gave her a horrible reputation based chiefly on a second-hand knowledge of gilded depravity derived from the conversation of those who were skilled in the art of novelette-reading. Burt filled in a few damaging details from his own limited imagination. She's a bad lot, that one is, declared Emmeline after a long, unfriendly stare. Her husband ate her. He knocks her a bad, said Burt with enthusiasm. No, he don't, because he's dead. He poisoned him slow and gradual so that nobody didn't know. Now she wants to marry a lord with eeps and eeps of money. He's got a wife already but she's going to poison her too. She's a bad lot, said Burt with growing hostility. Her mother ate her and she's afraid of her too because she's got a sarcastic tongue, always talking sarcasm she is. She's greedy too. She's going, she eats her own share and her little girls, as well, although the little girl is delicate. She had a little boy once, said Burt but she pushed him into the water when nobody wasn't looking. Now she didn't, said Emmeline. She sent him away to be kept by poor people so her husband wouldn't know where he was. They ill treat him something cruel. What's her name? asked Burt thinking that it was time that so interesting a personality should be labelled. Erneim? said Emmeline, thinking hard. Erneim's Mulvera. It was as near as she could get to the name of an adventurist who figured prominently in a cinema drama. There was silence for a moment while the possibilities of the name were turned over in the children's minds. Those clothes she's got aren't paid for and never won't be, said Emmeline. She thinks she'll get the rich lord to pay for them, but he won't. He's given her jewels, hundreds of pounds worth. He won't pay for the clothes, said Burt, with conviction. Evidently there was some limit to the weak good nature of wealthy lords. At that moment a motor carriage with liveried servants drew up at the Emporium entrance. A large lady with penetrating and rather hurried manner of talking went out, followed slowly and sulkily by a small boy who had a very black skull on his face and a very white sailor suit over the rest of him. The lady was continuing an argument which had probably commenced in Portman Square. Now, Victor, you ought to come in and buy a nice doll for your cousin Bertha. She gave you a beautiful box of soldiers on your birthday and you must give her a present on hers. Bertha is a fat little fool, said Victor, in a voice that was as loud as his mother's and had more assurance in it. Victor, you are not to say such things. Bertha is not a fool and she is not in the least fat. You are to come in and choose a doll for her. The couple passed into the shop out of view and hearing of the two backstreet children. My, he is in a wicked temper, exclaimed Emmeline, but both she and Bertha were inclined to side with him against the absent Bertha, who was doubtless as fat and foolish as he had described her to be. I want to see some dolls, said the mother of Victor to the nearest assistant. It's for a little girl of eleven. A fat little girl of eleven, added Victor, by way of supplementary information. Victor, if you say such rude things about your cousin, you shall go to bed the moment of having any tea. This is one of the newest things we have in dolls, said the assistant, removing a hobble-skirted figure in peach-coloured velvet from the window. Leopard skin, toque and stole, the latest fashion. You won't get anything newer than that, anywhere. It's an exclusive design. Look! whispered Emmeline outside. They've been and took Mulvera. There was a mingling of excitement and a certain sense of bereavement in her mind. She would have liked to gaze at that embodiment of overdressed depravity for just a little longer. I suspect she's going away in a carriage to marry the rich lord, hazarded Burt. She's up to no good, said Emmeline vaguely. Inside the shop the purchase of the doll had been decided on. It's a beautiful doll, and Bertha will be delighted with it, asserted the mother of Victor loudly. Oh, very well, said Victor, sulkily. You needn't have it stuck into a box and wait an hour while it's being done up into a parcel. I'll take it as it is, and we can go round to Manchester Square and give it to Bertha and get the thing done with. That will save me the trouble of writing for dear Bertha with Victor's love on a bit of paper. Very well, said his mother. We can go to Manchester Square on our way home. You must wish her many happy turns of tomorrow and give her the doll. I won't let the little beast kiss me, stipulated Victor. His mother said nothing. Victor had not been half as troublesome as she had anticipated. When he chose he could really be dreadfully naughty. Emmeline and Burt were just moving away from the window when Morvera made her exit from the shop very carefully in Victor's arms. A look of sinister triumph seemed to glow in her hard inquisitorial face. As for Victor, a certain scornful serenity had replaced the earlier scowls. He had evidently accepted defeat with a contemptuous good-great. The tall lady gave a direction to the footman and settled herself in the carriage. The little figure in the white sailor suit clambered in beside her, still carefully holding the elegantly garbed doll. The car had to be backed a few yards in the process of turning. Very steltily, very gently, very mercilessly Victor sent Morvera flying over his shoulder so that she fell into the road just behind the retrogressing wheel. With a soft, pleasant-sounding scrunch the car went over the prostrate form. Then it moved forward again with another scrunch. The carriage moved off and left Bert and Emmeline gazing in scared delight at a sorry massive petrol-smeared velvet, sawdust, and leopard-skin, which was all that remained of the hateful Morvera. They gave a shrill cheer and then raced away shuddering from the scene of so much rapidly enacted tragedy. Later that afternoon, when they were engaged in the pursuit of minnows by the waterside in St. James's Park, and in a solemn undertone to Bert, I've been thinking do you know who he was? He was a little boy what she'd sent away to live with poor folks. He come back and done that. End of Morvera Recording by Asterix For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by David Lewis Richardson The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Saki Shock Tactics On a late spring afternoon, Ella McCarthy sat on a green-painted chair in Kensington Gardens staring listlessly at an uninteresting stretch of park landscape. That blossomed suddenly into tropical radiance as an expected figure appeared in the middle distance. Hello! Bertie! she exclaimed sedately when the figure arrived at the painted chair that was the nearest neighbour to her own and dropped into it eagerly yet with a certain due regard for the set of its trousers. Hasn't it been a perfect spring afternoon? The statement was a distinctive untruth as far as Ella's own feelings were concerned until the arrival of Bertie the afternoon had been anything but perfect. Bertie made a suitable reply in which a questioning note seemed to hover. Thank you ever so much for those lovely handkerchiefs, said Ella, answering the unspoken question. They were just what I'd been wanting. There's only one thing to my pleasure in your gift, she added, with a pout. What was that? asked Bertie anxiously, fearful that perhaps he had chosen a size of handkerchief that was not within the correct feminine limit. I should have liked to have written and thanked you for them as soon as I got them, said Ella. And Bertie's sky clouded at once. You know what mother is, he protested. She opens all my letters and if she found I'd been given presents to anyone, there'd have been something to talk about for the next fortnight. Surely at the age of twenty, began Ella, I'm not twenty till September, interrupted Bertie. At the age of nineteen years and eight months, persisted Ella, you might be allowed to keep your correspondence private to yourself. I ought to be, but things aren't always what they ought to be. Mother opens every letter that comes into the house, whoever it's for. My sisters and I have made rouse about it time and again, but she goes on doing it. I'd find a way to stop her if I were in your place," said Ella valiantly, and Bertie felt that the glamour of his anxiously deliberated present had faded away in the disagreeable restriction that hedged around its acknowledgement. Is anything the matter? Asked Bertie's friend Clovis when they met that evening at the swimming-barth. Asked, said Bertie, and when you wear a look of tragic gloom in a swimming-barth, said Clovis, it's especially noticeable from the fact that you're wearing very little else. Didn't she like the handkerchiefs? Bertie explained the situation. It is rather galling, you know, he added, when a girl has a lot of things she wants to write to you and can't send a letter except by some roundabout underhand way. One never realises one's blessings while one enjoys them, said Clovis. Now, I have to spend a considerable amount of ingenuity in venting excuses for not having written to people. It's not a joking matter," said Bertie resentfully. You wouldn't find it funny if your mother opened all your letters. The funny thing to me is that you should let her do it. I can't stop it, I've argued about it. You haven't used the right kind of argument, I expect. Now, if every time one of your letters opened you lay on your back on the dining table during dinner and how to fit. Or rouse the entire family in the middle of the night to hear you recite one of Blake's poems of innocence. You would get a far more respectful hearing for your future protests. People yield more consideration to a mutilated mealtime or a broken night's rest than ever they would to a broken heart. Oh, dry up, said Bertie crossily, inconsistently splashing Clovis from head to foot as he plunged into the water. It was a day or two after the conversation in the swimming bath that a letter addressed to Bertie Hissant slid into the letterbox at his home and thence into the hands of his mother. Mrs. Hissant was one of those empty-minded individuals to whom other people's affairs are perpetually interesting. The more private they are intended to be the more acute is the interest they arouse. She would have opened this particular letter in any case, the fact that it was marked private, and diffused a delicate but penetrating aroma merely caused her to open it with headlong haste rather than, matter of course, deliberation. The harvest of sensation that rewarded her was beyond all expectations. Bertie, carissimo, it began, I wonder if you will have the nerve to do it. It will take some nerve, too. Don't forget the jewels. They are a detail, but details interest me. Yours as ever, cloutilde. Your mother must not know of my existence. If questioned swear you have never heard of me. For years Mrs. Hissant had searched Bertie's correspondence diligently for traces of possible dissipation or youthful entanglements and at last the suspicions that had stimulated her inquisitorial zeal were justified by this one splendid hall that anyone wearing the exotic name cloutilde should write to Bertie under the incriminating announcement as ever was sufficiently electrifying without the astounding allusion to the jewels. Mrs. Hissant could recall novels and dramas wherein jewels played an exciting and commanding role and here under her own roof before her very eyes as it were her own son was carrying on an intrigue in which jewels were merely an interesting detail. Bertie was not due home for another hour but his sisters were available for the immediate unburdening of a scandal laden mind. Bertie is in the toils of an adventurous, she screamed. She mis- cloutilde, she added as if she thought they had better know the worst at once. There are occasions when more harm than good is done by shielding young girls from a knowledge of the more deplorable realities of life. By the time Bertie arrived his mother had discussed every possible and improbable conjecture as to his guilty secret. The girls limited themselves to the opinion that their brother had been weak rather than wicked. Who is cloutilde? was the question that confronted Bertie almost before he had got into the hall. His denial of any knowledge of such a person was met with an outburst of bitter laughter. How well you have learned your lesson exclaimed Mrs. Hisante. But satire gave way to furious indignation when she realized that Bertie did not intend to throw any further light on her discovery. You shan't have any dinner till you've confessed everything. She stormed. Bertie's reply took the form of hastily collecting material for an impromptu banquet from the larder and locking himself into his bedroom. His mother made frequent visits to the locked door and shouted a succession of interrogations with the persistence of one who thinks that if you ask a question often enough an answer will eventually result. Bertie did nothing to encourage the supposition. An hour had passed in fruitless one-sided palaver when another letter addressed to Bertie and marked private made its appearance in the letterbox. Mrs. Hisante pounced on it with the enthusiasm of a cat that has missed its mouse and to whom a second has been unexpectedly vouchsafed. If she hoped for further disclosures assuredly she was not disappointed. So you have really done it, the letter abruptly commenced. Poor Dagmar, now she has done for I almost pity her. You did it very well, you wicked boy. The servants all think it was suicide and there will be no fuss. Better not touch the jewels till after the inquest. Glottiled! Anything that Mrs. Hisante had previously done in the way of outcry was easily surpassed as she raced upstairs and beat frantically at her son's door. Miserable boy, what have you done to Dagmar? It's Dagmar now, is it? He snapped. It will be Geraldine next. Let it should come to this after all my efforts to keep you at home of an evening. Sobbed Mrs. Hisante. It's no use trying to hide things from me. Glottiled's letter betrays everything. Does it betray who she is? Asked Bertie. I've heard so much about her. I should like to know something about her home life. Seriously, if you go on like this I shall fetch her doctor. I've often enough been preached out about nothing. But I've never had an imaginary harem dragged into the discussion. All these letters, imaginary! Mrs. Hisante. What about the jewels and Dagmar and the theory of suicide? No solution of these problems was forthcoming through the bedroom door. But the last post of the evening produced another letter for Bertie. And its contents brought Mrs. Hisante. That enlightenment which had already dawned on her son. Dear Bertie! It ran. I hope I haven't distracted your brain because I've been sending in the name of a fictitious Glottiled. You told me the other day that the servants or somebody at your home tampered with your letters. So I thought I would give anyone that opened them something exciting to read. A shock might do them good. Yours, Clovis Songrail. Mrs. Hisante knew Clovis slightly and was rather afraid of him. It was not difficult to read between the lines of successful hoax. In a chastened mood she rapped once more at Bertie's door. A letter from Mr. Songrail. It's all been a stupid hoax. He wrote those other letters. Why? Where are you going? Bertie had opened the door. He had on his hat and overcoat. I'm going for a doctor to come and see if anything's the matter with you. Of course it was all a hoax. But no person in his right mind believed all that rubbish about murder, suicide and jewels. You've been making enough noise to bring the house down for the last hour or two. But what was I to think of those letters? Wimpered Mrs. Hisante. I should have known what to think of them, said Bertie. If you choose to excite yourself over other people's correspondence it's your own fault. Anyhow, I'm going for a doctor. It was Bertie's great opportunity and he knew it. His mother was conscious of the fact that she would look rather ridiculous if the story got about. She was willing to pay hush money. I'll never open your letters again. She promised. And Clovis had no more devoted slave than Bertie Hisante. End of Shock Tactics Reading by David Lewis Richardson Lancashire England Story number 25 of The Toys of Peace This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Jenny The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Saki The Seven Cream Jugs I suppose we shall never see Wilfred Pigeon Coat here now that he has become heir to the Barnet Sea and to a lot of money. He served Mrs. Peter Pigeon Coat regretfully to her husband. Well, we can hardly expect to, he replied, seeing that we always choked him off from coming to see us when he was a prospective nobody. I don't think I've set eyes on him since he was a boy of 12. There was a reason for not wanting to encourage his acquaintanceship, said Mrs. Peter. With that notorious failing of his, he was not the sort of person one wanted in one's house. Well, the failing still exists, doesn't it? said the husband. Or, do you suppose a reform of character is entailed along with the estate? Oh, of course. There is still that drawback, admitted the wife. But one would like to make the acquaintance of the future head of the family if only out of mere curiosity. Besides, cynicism is an apart. His being rich will make a difference in the way people will look at his failing. When a man is absolutely wealthy, not merely well-to-do, all suspicion of started motive naturally disappears. The thing becomes merely a tiresome melody. Wilfred Pigeon Coat had suddenly become heir to his uncle. Sarah Wilfred Pigeon Coat on the death of his cousin, Major Wilfred Pigeon Coat after effects of a polo accident. A Wilfred Pigeon Coat had covered himself with honors in the course of Malbrose campaigns and the name Wilfred had been above his mal weakness in the family ever since. The new heir to the family dignity and estates was a young man of about 5 and 20 who was known more by reputation than by person to a wide circle of cousins and kinsfolk and the reputation was an unpleasant one. The numerous other Wilfrids in the family were distinguished one from another chiefly by the names of their residences or professions as Wilfred of Hubble Down and young Wilfred the Gunner. But this particular scion was known by the ignominious and expressive label of Wilfred this nature. From his late school days onward he had been possessed by an acute and obstinate form in Romania. He had the acquisitive instinct of the collector without any of the collector's discrimination anything that was smaller and more portable than a sideboard and above the value of 9 pens had an irresistible attraction to him provided that it fulfilled the necessary condition of belonging to someone else. On the rare occasions when he was included in a country house party it was usual as a member of the family to make a friendly inquisition through his baggage and the eve of his departure to see if he had backed up by mistake anyone else's property. The search usually produced a large and varied yield. This is funny said Peter Pigeon go to his wife some half hour after their conversation. Here's a telegram from Wilfred saying he's passing through here in his motor and would like to stop his respects. Can't stay for the night if it doesn't inconvenience us. Signed, Wilfred Pigeon must be this nature. None of the others have a motor. I suppose he's bringing us a present for the silver wedding. Good gracious said Mrs. Peter as thoughts struck her. This is rather an awkward time to have a person with disfailing in the house. Although silver presents set out in the drawing room and others coming by every post I hardly know what we've got and what are still to come. We can't lock them all up. He sure to want to see them. We must keep a sharp look out. That's all said Peter reassuringly. But this practice kleptomaniacs are so clever said his wife apprehensively and it will be so awkward if he suspects that we're watching him. Awkwardness was indeed the prevailing note that evening when the passing traveler was entertained. The talk fitted nervously and hurriedly from one impersonal topic to another. The guest had none of the furtive half apologetic air that his cousins had rather expected to find. He was polite, well assured and perhaps just a little inclined to put on one side. His hosts on the other hand were in an easy manner and might have been the hallmark of conscious depravity. In the drawing room after dinner their nervousness and awkwardness increased. Oh, we haven't shown you the silver wedding presents said Mrs. Peter suddenly as though struck by a brilliant idea for entertaining the guest. Here they all are. Such nice, useful gifts a few duplicates of course. Seven cream jugs put in Peter. Yes. Isn't it annoying? Went on Mrs. Peter. Seven of them. We feel that we must live on cream for the rest of our lives. Of course, some of them can be changed. Wilfred occupied himself chiefly with such of the gifts as were of antique interest carrying one or two of them over to the lamp to examine their marks. The anxiety of the hosts at these moments resembled the solicitude of a cat whose newly born kittens are being handed round for inspection. Let me see. Did you give me back the mustard pot? It's place here, pipe Mrs. Peter. Sorry. I put it down by the claree jug said Wilfred busy with another object. Oh, just let me have the sugar sifter again. Asked Mrs. Peter dogged determination showing her nervousness. I must label it who it comes from before I forget. Vigilance was not completely crowned with a sense of victory. After they had said good night to their visitor, Mrs. Peter expressed her conviction that he had taken something. I fancy by his manner that there was something up corroborated her husband. Do you miss anything? Mrs. Peter hastily counted her way of gifts. I can only make it 34. I think it should be 35. She announced. I can't remember if 35 includes the Archdeacon's crew at stand that hasn't arrived yet. How on earth are we to know? Said Peter. The mean pig hasn't brought us a present and I'm hanged if he shall carry one off. Tomorrow, when he's having his path said Mrs. Peter excitedly. He's sure to leave his keys somewhere and we can go through his sport mantle. It's the only thing to do. On the morrow, an alert watch was kept by the conspirators behind half closed doors and when Wilfred, clad in a gorgeous bathrobe, had made his way to the bathroom, there was a swift and furtive rush by two excited individuals towards the principal guest chamber. Mrs. Peter kept guard outside while her husband first made a hurried and successful search for the keys and then plunged at the portmanteau with the air of a disagreeably consensuous customs official. The quest was a brief one. A silver cream jug lay embedded in the folds of some sefiri shirts. The cunning brute said Mrs. Peter. He took a cream jug because there were so many. He thought one wouldn't be missed. Quick, slide down with it and put it back among the others. Wilfred was clad in coming down to breakfast and his manner showed plainly that something was amiss. It's an unpleasant thing to have to say. He blurted out presently. But I'm afraid you must have a thief among your servants. Something's been taken out of my portmanteau. It was a little present from my mother and myself for your silver wedding. I should have given it to you last night after dinner. Only it happened to be a cream jug and you seemed annoyed at having so many duplicates. So I felt rather awkward about giving you another. I thought I'd get a change for something else and now it's gone. Did you say it was from your mother and yourself? Asked Mr. and Mrs. Peter almost in the unison. This nature had been an orphan this many years. Yes, my mother's at Cairo just now and she wrote to me at Dresden to try and get you something quaint and pretty in the old silver line. And I pitched on this cream jug. Both the pigeon coats had turned deadly pale. The mention of Dresden had thrown a sudden light on the situation. It was Wilfred the Attaché, a very superior young man who readily came within their social horizon whom they had been entertaining and aware in the supposed characters of Wilfred this nature. Lady Ernestine Pigeon Coat, his mother, moved in circles which were entirely beyond their compass or ambitions. And the son would probably one day be an ambassador. And they had rifled and spoiled his portmanteau. Husband and wife looked bluntly and desperately at one another. It was Mrs. Peter who arrived first at an inspiration. How dreadful to think! There are thieves in the house. We keep the drawing room locked up at night of course. But anything might be carried off while we are at breakfast. She rose and went out hurriedly as though to assure herself that the drawing room was not being stripped of its silverware. And returned a moment later bearing a cream jug in her hands. There are eight cream jugs now instead of seven. She cried. This one wasn't there before. What a curious trick of memory! Mr. Wilfred, you must have slipped downstairs with it last night and put it there before we lock up. And forgotten all about having done it in the morning. One's mind often plays one little tricks like that. Said Mr. Peter with desperate heartiness. Only the other day I went into the town to pay a bill and went in again next day having clean forgotten that I... It is certainly the jug I bought for you, said Wilfred, looking closely at it. It was in my part-mantau when I got my bathrobe out this morning before going to my bath. And it was not there when I unlocked the part-mantau on my return. Someone had taken it while I was away from the room. The pigeon coats had turned paler than ever. Mrs. Peter had a final inspiration. He had made a smelling salt, dear. She said to her husband, I think they're in the dressing room. Peter dashed out of the room with glad relief. He had lived so long during the last few minutes that a golden wedding seemed within measurable distance. Mrs. Peter turned to her guest with confidential kindness. A diplomat like you will know how to treat this as if it hadn't happened. Peter's little weakness transcends the family. Good Lord! Do you mean to say he's a kleptomaniac? Like Gawson's nature? Oh, not exactly, said Mrs. Peter anxiously to whitewash her husband a little grayer than she was painting him. He would never touch anything he found lying about. He can't resist making a raid on things that are locked up. The doctors have a special name for it. He must have bounced on your portmanteau the moment you went to your bath and taken the first thing he came across. Of course he had no motive for taking a cream jug. We've already got seven as you know. Not of course that we don't value the kind of gift you and your mother hush, here's Peter coming. Mrs. Peter broke off in some confusion and tripped out to meet her husband in the hall. It's alright she whispered to him. I've explained everything. Don't say anything more about it. Brave little woman said Peter with a gasp of relief. I could never have done it. Diplomatic reticence does not necessarily extend to family affairs. Peter Pigeon Cote was never able to understand why Mrs. Consuelo Van Bolion who stayed with them in the spring always carried two very obvious stool cases with her to the bathroom explaining them to anyone who should chance to meet in the corridor as her manicure and face massage set. End of The Seven Cream Jugs recorded by Jenny Boys of Peace Short Stories by Sackie The Occasional Garden Don't talk to me about gardens said Eleanor Rapsley. Which means of course that I want you to listen to me for an hour or so while I talk about nothing else. What a nice sized garden you've got. People said to us when we first moved here. What I suppose they meant to say was what a nice sized site for a garden we've got. As a matter of fact the size is all against it. It's too large to be ignored all together and treated as a yard and it's too small to keep giraffes in. You see if we could keep giraffes or reindeer or some other species of browsing animal there we could explain the general absence of vegetation by a reference to the fauna of the garden. You can't have warpity and Darwin tulips you know so we didn't put down any bulbs last year. As it is we haven't got the warpity and the Darwin tulips haven't survived the fact that most of the cats of the neighborhood hold a parliament in the centre of the tulip bed. That rather forlorn looking strip that we intended to be a border of alternating geranium and spirea has been utilized by the cat parliament as a division lobby. Snap divisions seem to have been rather frequent of late. Far more frequent than the likely to be. I shouldn't object so much to ordinary cats but I do complain of having a congress of vegetarian cats in my garden. They must be vegetarians my dear because whatever ravages they may commit among the sweet pea seedlings they never seem to touch the sparrows. There are always just as many adult sparrows in the garden on Saturday as they were on Monday. Not to mention newly fledged additions. There seems to have been an irreconcilable difference of opinion between sparrows and providence since the beginning of time as to whether a crocus looks best standing upright with its roots in the earth or in a recumbent posture with its stem neatly severed. The sparrows always have the last word in the matter at least in our garden they do. I fancy that providence must have originally intended to bring in an amending act or whatever it's called providing either for a less destructive sparrow or a more indestructible crocus. The one consoling point about our garden is that it's not visible from the drawing-room or the smoking-room so unless people are dining or lunching with us they can't spy out the nakedness of the land. That is why I am so furious with Gwenda Puddington who has practically forced herself on me for lunch on Wednesday next. She heard me offering the pole-coat girl lunch if she was up-shopping on that day and of course she asked if she might come too. She is only coming to gloat over my bedraggled and flowerless borders until sing the praises of her own detestably over-cultivated garden. I'm sick of being told that it's the envy of the neighbourhood. It's like everything else that belongs to her. Her car, her dinner parties, even her headaches they are all superlative. No one else ever had anything like them. When her eldest child was confirmed it was such a sensational event according to her account of it that one almost expected questions to be asked about it in the House of Commons and now she's coming on purpose to stare at my few miserable pansies and the gaps in my sweet pea-borrow and to give me a glowing full-length description of the rare and sumptuous blooms found. My dear Eleanor! said the Baroness, you would save yourself all this heart-burning in a lot of gardener's bills not to mention sparrow anxieties simply by paying an annual subscription to the O-O-S-A. Never heard of it said Eleanor. What is it? The occasional oasis supply association. Said the Baroness, this is exactly like yours. Cases of backyards that are no practical use for gardening purposes but are required to blossom into decorative scenic backgrounds at stated intervals when a lunch and all dinner parties is contemplated. Supposing for instance you have people coming to lunch at one-thirty you just ring up the association at about ten o'clock the same morning and say, lunch garden. That is all the trouble you have to take. It is carpeted with a strip of velvety turf with a hedge of lilac or red may or whatever happens to be in season as a background, one or two cherry trees and blossom and clumps of heavily flowered rhododendrons filling in the odd corners. In the foreground you have a blaze of carnations or surely poppies or tiger lilies in full bloom. As soon as the lunch is over and your guests have departed the garden departs also and all the cats in Christendom are in your yard without causing you a moment of anxiety. If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something of that sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are ordering the garden and you get an old world pluscence with clipped ewe hedges and a sundial and hollyhocks and perhaps a mulberry tree and borders of sweet Williams and canterbury bells and an old fashioned beehive or two tucked away in a corner those are the ordinary lines of supply and production on to takes but by paying a few guineas a year extra you are entitled to its emergency E-O-N service. What on earth is an E-O-N service? It's just a conventional signal to indicate special cases like the incursion of Gwenda Portington. It means you've got some one coming to lunch or dinner whose garden is alleged to be the envy of the neighbourhood. Yes, exclaimed Eleanor with some excitement, and what happens then? Something that sounds like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate darmin' trees, lemon groves in hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble basined fountains in which chestnut and white pond herons step daintily amid exotic water lilies while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated to produce a background for an open-air Russian ballet. In point of fact, it is merely the background to your luncheon party. If there is any kick left in Gwenda Portington, or however your E-O-N guest of the moment may be, just mention carelessly that for climbing Poutella is the only one in England since the one at Chatsworth died last winter. There isn't such a thing as a climbing Poutella, but Gwenda Portington and her kind don't usually know one flower from another without prompting. Quick, said Eleanor, the address of the association. Gwenda Portington did not enjoy her lunch. It was a simple yet elegant meal, excellently cooked and daintily served, but the pecan sauce of her own conversation was notably lacking. She had prepared a long succession of eulogistic comments on the wonders of her town garden, with its unrivaled effects of horticultural magnificence, and, behold, her theme was shut in on every side by the luxuriant hedge of Siberian berberies that formed a glowing background to Eleanor's bewildering fragment of fairyland, the pomegranate and lemon trees, the terraced fountain, where golden carp slithered and wriggled amid the roots of gorgeous, huge irises, the banked masses of exotic blooms, the pagoda-like enclosure where Japanese sand badgers disported themselves. All these contributed to take away Gwenda's appetite and moderate her desire to talk about gardening matters. I can't say I admired the climbing Poutella. She observed shortly. And, anyway, it's not the only one of its kind in England, I happen to know of one in Hampshire. How gardening is going out of fashion, I suppose people haven't the time for it nowadays. All together it was quite one of Eleanor's most successful lunch and parties. It was distinctly an unforeseen catastrophe that Gwenda should have burst in on the household four days later at lunchtime and made her way unbidden at home. I thought I must tell you that my lane has had a watercolour sketch accepted by the latent talent Art Guild. It's to be exhibited at their summer exhibition at the Hackney Gallery. It will be the sensation of the moment in the art world. Hello? What on earth has happened to your garden? It's not there. Suffragates said Eleanor promptly. Didn't you hear about it? They broke in and made hay in minutes. I was so heartbroken at the havoc that I had the whole place cleared out. I shall have it laid out again on rather more elaborate lines. That, she said to the Baroness afterwards, is what I call having an emergency brain. End of The Occasional Garden by Sackie.