Dangerous Inheritance by Dennis Wheatley

what the abolition of segregation leads to, inevitably. If you have nigger kids schooling with whites, by the time they’re teenagers some of them are certain to start necking.’
    â€˜Douglas is not a nigger. And even if he were he would still be a human being with the same instincts, feelings and aspirations as you and me.’
    â€˜About that I don’t agree. The psychology of blacks and whites is entirely different, and although he’s not a negro he is an Asiatic; so his mind is utterly unlike ours.’
    â€˜You’re talking nonsense, Truss. If one could change the colour of his skin he would pass anywhere as an English gentleman.’
    â€˜Pass maybe. But that’s not the point. His mental processes are different, and the colour of his skin is the outward sign of that. A line has got to be drawn somewhere, and that line is colour.’
    â€˜You are for Apartheid, then; like those beastly whites in South Africa?’
    â€˜What’s so terrible about that?’
    â€˜Sakes alive, honey! It’s unthinkable.’
    â€˜Well, this isn’t the States, and if I choose to dance with Douglas you can’t stop me.’
    â€˜I know; I know. But don’t you see that for any white girl to become familiar with a coloured man is letting the side down? Give them an inch and they’ll take an mile. Thats just what we’re up against. As long as they were regarded as inferiors, which they are, everything was all right, and they were perfectly content. But in recent times so many misguided people have encouraged them to think they are as good as us that they are gettingthe bit between their teeth and demanding what they call their “rights”.’
    â€˜They are their “rights”,’ replied Fleur angrily. ‘The right of every human being to be regarded as the equal of all others. Anyway, until you are prepared to treat Douglas as your equal you needn’t expect to sleep with me again.’
    â€˜Oh come, honey. You’re not going to lock your door against me tonight. I want you, and want you bad.’
    â€˜I am. But not for that reason.’
    â€˜Then why, if I do my best to forget the colour of his skin?’
    â€˜For a perfectly good feminine one which you ought to be old enough to guess,’ Fleur replied. And, turning, she walked rapidly away.
    On thinking the matter over Truss derived a sop of comfort from the thought that, after all, this was Corfu, not Charleston nor, for that matter, anywhere else in the States where a girl of good family seen dancing with a coloured man would have been ostracised by her acquaintances. He then decided that if he was to regain Fleur’s goodwill he must swallow the prejudice with which he had been brought up and make himself pleasant to the Sinhalese; so the following morning he suggested that they should take Douglas in to see the town.
    On this occasion they went into the Metropolis, as the Greek Orthodox Cathedral is called, in which is enshrined the body of St. Theodora; then into the Church of St. Spyridion, Corfu’s patron saint, whose body lies there in a great silver sarcophagus. Both buildings were rich with paintings in elaborately carved gilt frames, mosaics, ikons and chandeliers; and moving sedately about were numerous black-robed priests wearing their high, flat-crowned hats and with their hands clasped in front of them.
    In St. Spyridion one of the priests gave them a smiling greeting and showed them round, then told them the story of the saint. His birthplace had been Cyprus and he had performed a miracle while attending the famous Council of Nicaea. He had died in the year 350 and a hundred and one years later, on sweet-smelling odours emanating from his grave, his body had been exhumed and installed in his church at Timython. WhenCyprus fell to the Saracens the saint’s body had been secretly conveyed to Constantinople, but that city also fell in 1453.
    A priest