"If you kill everyone, no one will be able to recognize you as an absolute master, right?" reasoned Willy, shrewdly.
The boy"s stiff face stretched out in a cold smile. "I had thought about this too. So it was that on the night of the thirty-first of October about seven hundred years ago I held a great banquet. The room was set up as you see now, and the guests of honor were the prefects of the seven provinces of my realm.
“Dinner was not served right away. We talked for a long time about death and as we went on with this subject my guests became more taciturn and restless. I found myself alone speaking, while they, unable to get up and run away, listened to me with increasing anguish.
“Finally, after two hours spent in this way, shadows with human features came out of their rigid and
