Trick or Treat Read Online Free PDF Page B

engulfing three ham rolls and a couple of leftover muffins with his can of Coke. Coke! At that hour! The boy has the digestion of an ostrich. ‘They don’t use neat flour. All their stuff comes in mixtures. Just upend it into the mixer and add water, yeast included. There was only this one guy Eddie there to mind the machines. Don’t reckon he knows a thing about bread.’ There was a pause as he chewed briefly and cut himself a doorstop of bread and cheese. ‘He scammed me ten for bringing the sack, said he’d be in deep shit if the boss came in at nine and found the rye mix not started.’
    ‘And you told him the flour was iffy?’
    Jason widened his eyes in an affectation of innocence which verged on the extreme. ‘Yeah, Boss, I told him. Twice. I said, “Don’t use that stuff, it’s shitty”, and he said, “Thanks”, and gave me the money and I came back.’
    ‘Well, we can’t do any more than that. We told him and he’s in charge. If the boss doesn’t come in until nine...’ I said with a certain complacency, noting that it was now getting on for five thirty and we had better get cracking on the rye or we wouldn’t make the new order. ‘Nothing more that we can do. Is our rye all right?’
    Jason had anticipated me and produced a teaspoonful of the new flour. I sniffed and tasted. Perfect. Sour and silky.
    ‘Then prime the mixers, Jason, we’re making bread,’ I announced.
    ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ he grinned around his last mouthful. ‘Captain?’
    ‘Yes, Midshipman?’
    ‘Do I get to keep the ten?’
    ‘You carried the flour,’ I said, getting out of my chair. ‘You keep the fee.’
    ‘Aye, sir!’ he said, and we sprang into action.

C HA PTER THRE E
    Morning came. It was one of those Melbourne spring morn ings which make everyone long to be somewhere else: in the country, by the sea, sitting on a suitable mountain. Sunrise was as pink and soft as Jason’s raspberry icing, with delicate blues behind and above and streaks of pure gold which John Martin could have used for The Plains of Heaven . I stood in my lane gazing at the sky as the Mouse Police bounced back inside for a little snooze, smelling of tuna scraps and uninterested in aesthetics.
    Calico Alley was empty. I could see all the way to the steps which lead up into the arcade. Yet someone was singing, quite near, a song about wassailing. The voice was a clear, honey-sweet tenor: ‘God bless the master of this house and the mistress also/And all the little children that round the table go...’
    I listened until it faded away. Someone walking along Schmutter Alley or Flinders Lane, perhaps, caught in one of those odd inner city soundscapes which make St Paul’s whispering gallery so famous. Nice. Very nice. And my day was
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    further improved by the scent of cooking rye bread and the appearance of my most glamorous neighbour, Mrs Dawson. She was wearing a rough silk leisure suit which was a sonnet in burnt umber and carrying her terracotta coloured jacket and the umbrella without which spring in Melbourne is a very soggy thing.
    ‘Spring,’ she observed with a smile.
    ‘For the moment,’ I agreed.
    ‘I met our witch and a few friends in the Flagstaff Gardens,’ she told me. ‘Dancing in a ring.’
    ‘Must be a solstice or a festival or something,’ I replied. ‘Er . . . clothed?’
    ‘Completely,’ she said.
    This was a relief. Meroe was a solitary amongst witches, not belonging to any coven. If she was dancing with others it meant some occult celebration was in the offing and most Wicca ceremonies are carried out skyclad, which struck me as unwise in the Flagstaff Gardens at dawn, or indeed at any time.
    ‘Rye bread,’ said Mrs Dawson with as much greed as a refined lady should exhibit at dawn in an alley.
    ‘I can only spare one loaf,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a special order. And it nearly didn’t happen at all.’
    While I was fetching and wrapping a loaf of the first batch of bread I told her about Jason’s