“What was the society called, Mr. Maundrell?” asked a new member with unusual intrepidity.
“Its name,” replied the white-headed actor simply, “I shall not divulge. It was not, however, altogether unconnected with the Pink Men of the Blue Mountains. We used to sit, we who were initiated, in a circle. We met to discuss the business of the society. Oh, we were the observed of all observers, I can assure you. Our society was extensive. It had its offshoots in foreign lands. Well, we at these meetings used to sit round a barrel—a great big barrel, which had a hole in the top. The barrel was not merely an ornament, for through the hole in the top we threw any scraps and odds and ends we did not want. Bits of tobacco, bread, marrow bones, the dregs of our glasses—anything and everything went into the barrel. And so it happened, as the barrel became fuller and fuller, strange animals made their appearance—animals of peculiar shape and form crawled out of the barrel and would attempt to escape across the floor. But we were on their tracks. We saw them. We headed them off with our sticks, and we chased them back again to the place where they had been born and bred. We poked them in, sir, with our sticks.”
Mr. Maundrell emitted a placid chuckle at this reminiscence.
“A good many members of this club,” whispered Malim to me, “would have gone back into that barrel.”
A bell sounded. “That’s for the second part to begin,” said Malim.
We herded back along the passage. A voice cried, “Be seated, please, gentlemen.”
At the far end of the room was a table for the chairman and the committee, and to the left stood a piano. Everyone had now sat down except the chairman, who was apparently not in the room. There was a pause. Then a man from the audience whooped sharply and clambered over the table and into the place of the chairman. He tapped twice with the mallet. “Get out of that chair,” yelled various voices.
“Gentlemen,” said the man in the chair. A howl of execration went up, and simultaneously the door was flung open. A double file of white-robed Druids came, chanting, into the room.
The Druids carried in with them a small portable tree which they proceeded to set upright. The chant now became extremely topical. Each Druid sang a verse in turn, while his fellow Druids danced a stately measure round the tree. As the verse was being sung, an imitation granite altar was hastily erected.
The man in the chair, who had so far smoked a cigarette in silence, now tapped again with his mallet. “Gentlemen,” he observed.