Killer Dolphin

THREE Party

“A year ago,” Peregrine thought, “I stood in this very spot on a February morning. The sun came out and gilded the stage tower of the injured Dolphin and I lusted after it. I thought of Adolphus Ruby and wished I was like him possessed. And here I am again, as the Lord’s my judge, a little jumped-up Cinderella-man in Mr. Ruby’s varnished boots.”

He looked at the restored caryatids, the bouncing cetaceans and their golden legend, and the immaculate white frontage and elegance of ironwork and he adored them all.

He thought: “Whatever happens, this is, so far, the best time of my life. Whatever happens I’ll look back at today, for instance, and say: ‘Oh that was the morning when I knew what’s meant by bliss.’ ”

While he stood there the man from Phipps Bros, came out of Phipps Passage.

“Morning, guvnor,” he said.

“Good morning, Jobbins.”

“Looks a treat, dunnit?”

“Lovely.”

“Ah. Different. From what it was when you took the plunge.”

“Yes: indeed.”

“Yus. You wouldn’t be looking for a watchman, I suppose? Now she’s near finished-like? Night or day. Any time?”

“I expect we shall want someone. Why? Do you know of a good man?”

“Self-praise, no recommendation’s what they say, ainnit?”

“Do you mean you’d take it on?”

“Not to deceive yer, guvnor, that was the idea. Dahn the Passage in our place, it’s too damp for me chubes, see? Somethink chronic. I got good references, guvnor. Plenty’d speak up for me. ’Ow’s it strike yer? Wiv a sickening thud or favourable?”

“Why,” said Peregrine. “Favourably, I believe.”

“Will you bear me in mind, then?”

“I’ll do that thing,” said Peregrine.

“Gor’ bless yer, guv,” said Jobbins and retired down Phipps Passage.

Peregrine crossed the lane and entered the portico of his theatre. He looked at the framed notice:

It hung immediately under the tattered Victorian playbill that he had seen on his first remarkable visit.

When the painters cleaned and resurfaced the façade Peregrine had made them work all round that precarious fragment without touching it. “It shall stay here,” he had said to Jeremy Jones, “as long as I do.”

He opened the front doors. They had new locks and the doors themselves had been stripped and scraped and restored to their original dignity.

The foyer was alive. It was being painted, gilded, polished and furbished. There were men on scaffolds, on long ladders, on pendant platforms. A great chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor. The two fat cherubim, washed and garnished, beamed upside-down into the resuscitated box-office.

Peregrine said good morning to the workmen and mounted the gently curving stairs.

There was still a flower-engraved looking-glass behind the bar, but now he advanced towards himself across shining mahogany, framed by brass. The bar was all golden syrup and molasses in colour. “Plain, serviceable, no tatt,” Peregrine muttered.

The renovations had been completed up here and soon a carpet would be laid. He and Jeremy and the young decorator had settled in the end for the classic crimson, white and gilt, and the panelling blossomed, Peregrine thought, with the glorious vulgarity of a damask rose. He crossed the foyer to a door inscribed management and went in.

The Dolphin was under the control of “Dolphin Theatres Incorporated.” This was a subsidiary of Consolidated Oils. It had been created, broadly speaking, by Mr. Greenslade, to encompass the development of The Dolphin project. Behind his new desk in the office sat Mr. Winter Meyer, an extremely able theatrical business manager. He had been wooed into the service by Mr. Greenslade upon Peregrine’s suggestion, after a number of interviews and, Peregrine felt sure, exhaustive inquiries. Throughout these preliminaries, Mr. Conducis had remained, as it were, the mere effluvium: far from anxious and so potent that a kind of plushy assurance seemed to permeate the last detail of renaissance in The Dolphin.

Mr. Meyer had now under his hand an entire scheme for promotion, presentation and maintenance embracing contracts with actors, designers, costumiers, front-of-house staff, stage-crew and press agents and the delicate manipulation of such elements as might be propitious to the general mana of the enterprise.

He was a short, pale and restless man with rich curly hair, who, in what little private life belonged to him, collected bric-a-brac.

“Good morning, Winty.”

“Perry,” said Mr. Meyer as a definitive statement rather than a greeting.

“And joy?”

Mr. Meyer lolled his head from side to side.

“Before I forget. Do we want a caretaker, watchman, day or night, stage-door keeper or any other lowly bod about the house?”

“We shall in a couple of days.”

Peregrine told him about Mr. Jobbins.

“All right,” said Mr. Meyer. “If the references are good. Now, it’s my turn. Are you fully cast?”

“Not quite. I’m hovering.”

“What do you think of Harry Grove?”

“As an actor?”

“Yes.”

“As an actor I think a lot of him.”

“Just as well. You’ve got him.”

“Winty, what the hell do you mean?”

“A directive, dear boy: or what amounts to it. From Head Office.”

“About W. Hartly Grove?”

“You’ll probably find something in your mail.”

Peregrine went to his desk. He was now very familiar with the look of Mr. Greenslade’s communications and hurriedly extracted the latest from the pile.

When Peregrine read this note he was visited by a sense of misgiving so acute as to be quite disproportionate to its cause. In no profession are personal introductions and dearboymanship more busily exploited than in the theatre. For an actor to get the ear of the casting authority through an introduction to régisseur or management is a commonplace manoeuvre. For a second or two, Peregrine wondered with dismay if he could possibly be moved by jealousy and if the power so strangely, so inexplicably put into his hands had perhaps already sown a detestable seed of corruption. But no, he thought, on consideration, there were grounds more relative than that for his reaction, and he turned to Meyer to find the latter watching him with a half-smile.

“I don’t like this,” Peregrine said.

“So I see, dear boy. May one know why?”

“Of course. I don’t like W. Hartly Grove’s reputation. I try to be madly impervious to gossip in the theatre and I don’t know that I believe what they say about Harry Grove.”

“What do they say?”

“Vaguely shady behaviour. I’ve directed him once and knew him before that. He taught voice production at my drama school and disappeared over a weekend. Undefined scandal. Most women find him attractive, I believe. I can’t say,” Peregrine added, rumpling up his hair, “that he did anything specifically objectionable in the later production and I must allow that personally I found him an amusing fellow. But apart from the two women in the company nobody liked him. They said they didn’t but you could see them eyeing him and knowing he eyed them.”

“This,” said Meyer, raising a letter that lay on his desk, “is practically an order. I suppose yours is, too.”

“Yes, blast it.”

“You’ve been given a fabulously free hand up to now, Perry. No business of mine, of course, dear boy, but frankly I’ve never seen anything like it. General management, director, author — the lot. Staggering.”

“I hope,” Peregrine said with a very direct look at his manager, “staggering though it may be, I got it on my reputation as a director and playwright. I believe I did. There is no other conceivable explanation, Winty.”

“No, no, old boy, of course not,” said Winter Meyer in a hurry.

“As for W. Hartly Grove, I suppose I can’t jib. As a matter of fact he would be well cast as Mr. W.H. It’s his sort of thing. But I don’t like it. My God,” Peregrine said, “haven’t I stuck my neck out far enough with Marcus Knight in the lead and liable to throw an average of three dirty great temperaments per rehearsal? What have I done to deserve Harry Grove as a bonus?”

“The Great Star’s shaping up for trouble already. He’s calling me twice a day to make difficulties over his contract.”

“Who’s winning?”

“I am,” said Winter Meyer. “So far.”

“Good for you.”

“I’m getting sick of it,” Meyer said. “Matter of fact it’s on my desk now.” He lifted a sheet of blotting paper and riffled the pages of the typewritten document he exposed. “Still,” he said, “he’s signed and he can’t get past that one. We almost had to provide an extra page for it. Take a gander.”

The enormous and completely illegible signature did indeed occupy a surprising area. Peregrine glanced at it and then looked more closely.

“I’ve seen that before,” he said. “It looks like a cyclone.”

“Once seen never forgotten.”

“I’ve seen it,” Peregrine said, “recently. Where, I wonder.”

Winter Meyer looked bored. “Did he sign your autograph book?” he asked bitterly.

“It was somewhere unexpected. Ah, well. Never mind. The fun will start with the first rehearsal. He’ll want me to rewrite his part, of course, adding great hunks of ham and corn and any amount of fat. It’s tricky enough as it is. Strictly speaking, a playwright shouldn’t direct his own stuff. He’s too tender with it. But it’s been done before and by the Lord I mean to do it again. Marco or no Marco. He looks like the Grafton portrait of Shakespeare. He’s got the voice of an angel and colossal prestige. He’s a brilliant actor and this is a part he can play. It’ll be a ding-dong go which of us wins but by heaven I’m game if he is.”

“Fair enough,” said Meyer. “Live for ever, dear boy. Live for ever.”

They settled at their respective desks. Presently Peregrine’s buzzer rang and a young woman provided by the management and secreted in an auxiliary cubby-hole said: “Victoria and Albert for you, Mr. Jay.”

Peregrine refrained from saying: “Always available to Her Majesty and the Prince Consort.” He was too apprehensive. He said: “Oh yes. Right. Thank you,” and was put into communication with the expert

“Mr. Jay,” the expert said, “is this a convenient time for you to speak?”

“Certainly.”

“I thought it best to have a word with you. We will, of course, write formally with full reports for you to hand to your principal but I felt—really,” said the expert and his voice, Peregrine noticed with mounting excitement, was trembling, “really it is the most remarkable thing. I—well, to be brief with you, the writing in question has been exhaustively examined. It has been compared by three experts with the known signatures and they find enough coincidence to give the strongest presumption of identical authorship. They are perfectly satisfied as to the age of the cheveril and the writing materials and that apart from saltwater stains there has been no subsequent interference. In fact, my dear Mr. Jay, incredible as one might think it, the glove and the document actually seem to be what they purport to be.”

Peregrine said, “I’ve always felt this would happen and now I can’t believe it.”

“The question is: what is to be done with them?”

“You will keep them for the time being?”

“We are prepared to do so. We would very much like,” said the expert, and Peregrine caught the wraith of a chuckle in the receiver, “to keep them altogether. However! I think my principals will, after consultation, make an approach to—er—the owner. Through you, of course, and—I imagine this would be the correct proceeding—Mr. Greenslade.”

“Yes. And—no publicity?”

“Good God, no!” the expert exclaimed quite shrilly. “I should hope not. Imagine!” There was a long pause. “Have you any idea,” the expert said, “whenever he will contemplate selling?”

“No more than you have.”

“No. I see. Well: you will have the reports and a full statement from us within the next week. I—must confess—I—I have rung you up simply because I— in short—I am, as you obviously are, a devotee.”

“I’ve written a play about the glove,” Peregrine said impulsively. “We’re opening here with it.”

“Really? A play,” said the expert and his voice flattened.

“It isn’t cheek!” Peregrine shouted into the telephone. “In its way it’s a tribute. A play! Yes, a play.”

“Oh, please! Of course. Of course.”

“Well, thank you for telling me.”

“No, no.”

“Goodbye.”

“What? Oh, yes. Of course. Goodbye.”

Peregrine put down the receiver and found Winter Meyer staring at him.

“You’ll have to know about this, Winty,” he said. “But as you heard—no publicity. It concerns the Great Person, so that’s for sure. Further it must not go”

“All right. If you say so: not an inch.”

“Top secret?”

“Top secret, as you say. Word of honour.”

So Peregrine told him. When he had finished Meyer ran his white fingers through his black curls and lamented. “But listen, but listen, listen, listen. What material! What a talking line! The play’s about it. Listen: it’s called The Glove. We’ve got it. Greatest Shakespeare relic of all time. The Dolphin Glove. American offers. Letters to the papers: ‘Keep the Dolphin Glove in Shakespeare’s England.’ ‘New fabulous offer for Dolphin Glove!’ Public subscriptions. The lot! Ah, Perry, cherub, dear, dear Perry. All this lovely publicity and we should keep it secret!”

“It’s no good going on like that.”

“How do you expect me to go on? The Great Person must be handled over this one. He must be seen. He must be made to work. What makes him work? You’ve seen him. Look: he’s a financial wizard: he knows. He knows what’s good business. Listen: if this was handled right and we broke the whole story at the psychological moment: you know, with the publicity, the right kind of class publicity… Look—”

“Do pipe down,” Peregrine said.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

“I’ll tell you what my guess is, Winty. He’ll take it all back to his iron bosom and lock it away in his Louis-the-Somethingth bureau and that’s the last any of us will ever see of young Hamnet Shakespeare’s cheveril glove.”

In this assumption, however, Peregrine was entirely mistaken,

“But that’s all one,” Marcus Knight read in his beautiful voice. “Put it away somewhere. I shall not look at it again. Put it away.”

He laid his copy of Peregrine’s play down, and the six remaining members of the company followed his example. A little slap of typescripts ran round the table.

“Thank you,” Peregrine said. “That was a great help to me. It was well read.”

He looked round the table. Destiny Meade’s enormous black eyes were fixed upon him with the determined adulation of some mixed-up and sexy mediaeval saint. This meant, as he knew, nothing. Catching his eye, she raised her fingers to her lips and then in slow motion extended them to him.

“Darling Perry,” she murmured in her celebrated hoarse voice, “what can we say? It’s all too much. Too much.” She made an appealing helpless little gesture to the company at large. They responded with suitable if ambiguous noises.

“My dear Peregrine,” Marcus Knight said (and Peregrine thought: “His voice is like no other actor’s”), “I like it. I see great possibilities. I saw them as soon as I read the play. Naturally, that was why I accepted the role. My opinion, I promise you, is unchanged. I look forward with interest to creating this part.” Royalty could not have been more gracious.

“I’m so glad, Marco,” Peregrine said.

Trevor Vere, whose age, professionally, was eleven, winked abominably across the table at Miss Emily Dunne, who disregarded him. She did not try to catch Peregrine’s eye and seemed to be disregardful of her companions. He thought that perhaps she really had been moved.

W. Hartly Grove leaned back in his chair with some elegance. His fingers tapped the typescript. His knuckles, Peregrine absently noted, were like those of a Regency prizefighter. His eyebrows were raised and a faint smile hung about his mouth. He was a blond man, very comely, with light blue eyes, set far apart, and an indefinable expression of impertinence. “I think it’s fabulous,” he said. “And I like my Mr. W.H.”

Gertrude Bracey, patting her hair and settling her shoulders, said: “I am right, aren’t I, Perry? Ann Hathaway shouldn’t be played unsympathetically. I mean: definitely not a bitch?”

Peregrine thought: “Trouble with this one: I foresee trouble.”

He said cautiously: “She’s had a raw deal, of course.”

Charles Random said: “I wonder what Joan Hart did with the gloves?” and gave Peregrine a shock.

“But there weren’t any gloves, really,” Destiny Meade said, “were there, darling? Or were there? Is it historical?”

“No, no, love,” Charles Random said. “I was talking inside the play. Or out of wishful thinking. I’m sorry.”

Marcus Knight gave him a look that said it was not usual for secondary parts to offer gratuitous observations round the conference table. Random, who was a very pale young man, reddened. He was to play Dr. Hall in the first act

“I see,” Destiny said. “So, I mean there weren’t really any gloves? In Stratford or anywhere real?”

Peregrine looked at her and marvelled. She was lovely beyond compare and as simple as a sheep. The planes of her face might have been carved by an angel. Her eyes were wells of beauty. Her mouth, when it broke into a smile, would turn a man’s heart over and, although she was possessed of more than her fair share of commonsense, professional cunning and instinctive technique, her brain took one idea at a time and reduced each to the comprehension level of a baby. If she were to walk out on any given stage and stand in the least advantageous place on it in a contemptible lack of light and with nothing to say, she would draw all eyes. At this very moment, fully aware of her basic foolishness, Marcus Knight, W. Hardy Grove and, Peregrine observed with dismay, Jeremy Jones, all stared at her with the solemn awareness that was her habitual tribute, while Gertrude Bracey looked at her with something very like impotent fury.

The moment had come when Peregrine must launch himself into one of those pre-production pep-talks upon which a company sets a certain amount of store. More, however, was expected of him, now, than the usual helping of “We’re all going to love this, so let’s get cracking” sort of thing. For once he felt a full validity in his own words when he clasped his hands over his play and said: “This is a great occasion for me.” He waited for a second and then, abandoning everything he had so carefully planned, went on. “It’s a great occasion for me because it marks the rebirth of an entrancing playhouse: something I’d longed for and dreamed of and never, never thought to see. And then: to be given the job I have been given of shaping the policy and directing the productions and—as a final and incredible bon-bouche—the invitation to open with my own play. I do hope you’ll believe me when I say all this makes me feel not only immensely proud but extremely surprised and—although it’s not a common or even appropriate emotion in a director-playwright—very humble.

“It might have been more politic to behave as if I took it all as a matter of course and no more than my due, but I’d rather, at the outset, and probably for the last time, say that I can’t get over my good fortune. I’m not the first dramatist to have a bash at the man from Warwickshire and I’m sure I won’t be the last. In this piece I’ve— well, you’ve seen, I hope, what I’ve tried to do. Show the sort of combustion that built up in that unique personality: the terrifying sensuality that lies beyond the utterly unsentimental lyricism — gilded flies under daisies pied and violets blue. His only release, his only relief, you might say, has been his love for the boy Hamnet. It’s his son’s death that brings about the frightful explosion in his own personality, and the moment when Rosaline (I have always believed the Dark Lady was a Rosaline) pulls Hamnet’s glove on her hand is the climax of the entire action. The physical intrusion and his consent to it brings him to the condition that spewed up Timon of Athens and was seared out of him by his own disgust. I’ve tried to suggest that for such a man the only possible release is through his work. He would like to be an Antony to Rosalind’s Cleopatra, but between himself and that sort of surrender stands his genius. And—incidentally—the hard-headed bourgeois of Stratford which also, he is.”

Peregrine hesitated. Had he said anything? Was it any good trying to take it further? No.

“I won’t elaborate,” he said. “I can only hope that we’ll find out what it’s all about as we work together.” He felt the abrupt upsurge of warmth that is peculiarly of the theatre.

“I hope, too, very much,” he said, “that we’re going to agree together. It’s a great thing to be starting a playhouse on its way. They say dolphins are intelligent and gregarious creatures. Let us be good Dolphins and perform well together. Bless you all.”

They responded at once and all blessed him in return and for the occasion, at least, felt uplifted and stimulated and, in themselves, vaguely noble.

“And now,” he said, “let’s look at Jeremy Jones’s sets and then it’ll be almost time to drink a health to our enterprise. This is a great day.”

Following the reading there was a small party, thrown by the Management and thrown with a good deal of quiet splendour. It was held in the circle foyer with the bar in full array. The barman wore a snowy white shirt, flamboyant waistcoat and gold albert. There was a pot-boy with his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders like the one in Our Mutual Friend. The waiters were conventionally dressed but with a slight Victorian emphasis. Champagne in brass-bound ice buckets stood along the mahogany bar and the flowers, exclusively, were crimson roses set in fern leaves.

Mr. Greenslade was the host. Apart from the company, Jeremy, Winter Meyer, the publicity agents and the stage-director and his assistant, there were six personages of startling importance from the worlds of theatre, finance, the press and what Mr. Meyer, wide-eyed, described as “the sort you can’t, socially speaking, look any higher than.” From a remark let fall by Mr. Greenslade, Peregrine was led to suppose that behind their presence could be discerned the figure of Mr. Conducis who, of course, did not attend. Indeed it was clear from the conversation of the most exalted of these guests that Mr. Conducis was perfectly well known to be the presiding genius of The Dolphin.

“A new departure for V.M.C.,” this personage said. “We were all astonished.” (Who were “we”?) “Still, like the rest of us, one supposes, he must have his toys.”

Peregrine wondered if it would have been possible for him to have heard a more innocently offensive comment.

“It’s a matter of life and death to us,” he said. The personage looked at him with amusement.

“Is it really?” he said. “Well, yes. I can see that it is. I hope all goes well. But I am still surprised by the turn of V.M.C.’s fancy. I didn’t think he had any fancies.”

“I don’t really know him,” said Peregrine.

“Which of us does?” the personage rejoined. “He’s a legend in his own lifetime and the remarkable thing about that is: the legend is perfectly accurate.” Well content with this aphorism he chuckled and passed superbly on, leaving an aftermath of cigar, champagne and the very best unguents for the Man.

“If I were to become as fabulously rich as that,” Peregrine wondered, “would I turn into just such another? Can it be avoided?”

He found himself alongside Emily Dunne, who helped in Jeremy’s shop and was to play Joan Hart in The Glove. She had got the part by audition and on her performance, which Peregrine had seen, of Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

She had a pale face with dark eyes and a welcoming mouth. He thought she looked very intelligent and liked her voice, which was deepish.

“Have you got some champagne?” asked Peregrine. “And would you like something to eat?”

“Yes and no, thank you,” said Emily. “It’s a wonderful play. I can’t get over my luck, being in it. And I can’t get over The Dolphin, either.”

“I thought you looked as if you were quite enjoying it. You read Joan exactly right. One wants to feel it’s a pity she’s Will’s sister because she’s the only kind of woman who would ever suit him as a wife.”

“I think before they were both married she probably let him in by a side-window when he came home to Henley Street in the early hours after a night on the tiles.”

“Yes, of course she did. How right you are. Do you like cocktail parties?”

“Not really, but I always hope I will.”

“Tve given that up, even.”

“Do you know, when I was playing at The Mermaid over a year ago, I used to look across the river to The Dolphin, and then one day I walked over Blackfriars Bridge and stood in Wharfingers Lane and stared at it. And then an old, old stagehand I knew told me his father had been on the curtain there in the days of Adolphus Ruby. I got a sort of thing about it. I found a book in a sixpenny rack called The Buskin and the Boards. It was published in 1860 and it’s all about contemporary theatres and actors. Terribly badly written, you know, but there are some good pictures and The Dolphin’s one of the best.”

“Do let me see it.”

“Of course.”

“I had a thing about The Dolphin, too. What a pity we didn’t meet in Wharfingers Lane,” said Peregrine. “Do you like Jeremy’s models? Let’s go and look at them.”

They were placed about the foyer and were tactfully lit. Jeremy had been very intelligent: the sets made single uncomplicated gestures and were light and strong-looking and beautifully balanced. Peregrine and Emily had examined them at some length when it came to him that he should be moving among the guests. Emily seemed to be visited by the same notion. She said: “I think Marcus Knight is wanting to catch your eye. He looks a bit portentous to me.”

“Gosh! So he does. Thank you.”

As he edged through the party towards Marcus Knight, Peregrine thought: “That’s a pleasing girl.”

Knight received him with an air that seemed to be compounded of graciousness and overtones of huff. He was the centre of a group: Winter Meyer, Mrs. Greenslade, who acted as hostess and was beautifully dressed and excessively poised, Destiny Meade and one of the personages, who wore an expansive air of having acquired her.

“Ah, Perry, dear boy,” Marcus Knight said, raising his glass to salute. “I wondered if I should manage to have a word with you. Do forgive me,” he said jollily to the group. “If I don’t fasten my hooks in him now he’ll escape me altogether.” Somewhat, Peregrine thought, to her astonishment, Knight kissed Mrs. Greenslade’s hand. “Lovely, lovely party,” he said and moved away. Peregrine saw Mrs. Greenslade open her eyes very widely for a fraction of a second at the personage. “We’re amusing her,” he thought sourly.

“Perry,” Knight said, taking him by the elbow. “May we have a long, long talk about your wonderful play? And I mean that, dear boy. Your wonderful play.”

“Thank you, Marco.”

“Not here, of course,” Knight said, waving his disengaged hand, “not now. But soon. And, in the meantime, a thought.”

“Oops!” Peregrine thought. “Here we go.”

“Just a thought. I throw it out for what it’s worth. Don’t you feel — and I’m speaking absolutely disinterestedly — don’t you feel that in your Act Two, dear Perry, you keep Will Shakespeare offstage for rather a long time? I mean, having built up this tremendous tension—”

Peregrine listened to the celebrated voice and as he listened he looked at the really beautiful face with its noble brow and delicate bone structure. He watched the mouth and thought how markedly an exaggerated dip in the bow of the upper lip resembled that of the Droushout engraving and the so-called Grafton portrait. “I must put up with him,” Peregrine thought. “He’s got the prestige, he’s got the looks and his voice is like no other voice. God give me strength.”

“I’ll think very carefully about it, Marco,” he said and he knew that Knight knew he was going to do nothing of the sort. Knight, in a grand seignorial manner, clapped him on the shoulder. “We shall agree,” he cried, “like birds in their little nest.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Peregrine.

“One other thing, dear boy, and this is your private ear.” He steered Peregrine by the elbow into a corridor leading off to the boxes. “I find with some surprise,” he said, muting the exquisite voice, “that we are to have W. Hartly Grove in our company.”

“I thought he read Mr. W.H. quite well, didn’t you?”

“I could scarcely bring myself to listen,” said Knight.

“Oh,” Peregrine said coolly. “Why?”

“My dear man, do you know anything at all about Mr. Harry Grove?”

“Only that he is a reasonably good actor. Marco,” Peregrine said, “don’t let’s start any anti-Grove thing. For your information, and I’d be terribly grateful if you’d treat this as strictly—very strictly, Marco—between ourselves, I’ve had no hand in this piece of casting. It was done at the desire of the Management. They have been generous to a degree in every other respect and even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have opposed them.”

“You had this person thrust upon you?”

“If you like to put it that way.”

“You should have refused.”

“I had no valid reason for doing so. It is a good piece of casting. I beg you, Marco, not to raise a rumpus at the outset. Time enough when anything happens to justify it.”

For a moment he wondered if Knight was going to produce a temperament then and there and throw in his part. But Peregrine felt sure Knight had a great desire to play Will Shakespeare and although, in the shadowy passage, he could see the danger signal of mounting purple in the oval face, the usual outburst did not follow this phenomenon.

Instead Knight said: “Listen. You think I am unreasonable. Allow me to tell you, Perry—”

“I don’t want to listen to gossip, Marco.”

“Gossip! My God! Anyone who accuses me of gossip does me an injury I won’t stomach. Gossip! Let me tell you I know for a fact that Harry Grove—” The carpet was heavy and they had heard no sound of an approach. The worst would have happened if Peregrine had not seen a shadow move across the gilt panelling. He closed his hand round Knight’s arm and stopped him.

“What are you two up to, may I ask?” said Harry Grove. “Scandalmongering?”

He had a light, bantering way with him and a boldish stare that was somehow very far from being offensive. “Perry,” he said, “this is an enchanting theatre. I want to explore, I want to see everything. Why don’t we have a bacchanal and go in Doric procession through and about the house, tossing down great bumpers of champagne and chanting some madly improper hymn? Led, of course, by our great, great star. Or should it be by Mr. and Mrs. Greensleeves?”

He made his preposterous suggestion so quaintly that in spite of himself and out of sheer nerves Peregrine burst out laughing. Knight said, “Excuse me,” with a good deal of ostentation and walked off.

“ ‘It is offended,’ ” Grove said. “ ‘See, it stalks away.’ It dislikes me, you know. Intensely.”

“In that case don’t exasperate it, Harry.”

“Me? You think better not? Rather tempting though, I must say. Still, you’re quite right, of course. Apart from everything else, I can’t afford to. Mr. Greengage might give me the sack,” Grove said with one of his bold looks at Peregrine.

“If he didn’t, I might. Do behave prettily, Harry, And I must get back into the scrum.”

“I shall do everything that is expected of me, Perry dear. I nearly always do.”

Peregrine wondered if there was a menacing note behind this apparently frank undertaking.

When he returned to the foyer it was to find that the party had attained its apogee. Its component bodies had almost all reached points farthest removed from their normal behaviour. Everybody was now obliged to scream if he or she wished to be heard and almost everybody would have been glad to sit down. The personages were clustered together in a flushed galaxy and the theatre people excitedly shouted shop. Mrs. Greenslade could be seen saying something to her husband and Peregrine was sure it was to the effect that she felt it was time their guests began to go away. It would be best, Peregrine thought, if Destiny Meade and Marcus Knight were to give a lead. They were together on the outskirts and Peregrine knew, as certainly as if he had been beside them, that Knight was angrily telling Destiny how he felt about W. Hartly Grove. She gazed at him with her look of hypersensitive and at the same time sexy understanding but every now and then her eyes swivelled a little and always in the same direction. There was a slightly furtive air about this manoeuvre.

Peregrine turned to discover what could be thus attracting her attention and there, in the entrance to the passage, stood Harry Grove with wide-open eyes and a cheerful smile, staring at her. “Damn,” thought Peregrine. “Now what?”

Emily Dunne, Charles Random and Gertie Bracey were all talking to Jeremy Jones. Jeremy’s crest of red hair bobbed up and down and he waved his glass recklessly. He threw back his head and his roar of laughter could be heard above the general din. As he always laughed a great deal when he was about to fall in love, Peregrine wondered if he was attracted by Emily and hoped he was not. It could hardly be Gertie. Perhaps he was merely plastered.

But no. Jeremy’s green and rather prominent gaze was directed over the heads of his group and was undoubtedly fixed upon Destiny Meade.

“He couldn’t be such an ass,” Peregrine thought uneasily. “Or could he?”

His awareness of undefined hazards were not at all abated when he turned his attention to Gertie Bracey. He began, in fact, to feel as if he stood in a field of fiercely concentrated shafts of criss-cross searchlights. Like searchlights, the glances of his company wandered, interlaced, selected and darted. There, for example, was Gertie with her rather hatchet-jawed intensity stabbing her beam at Harry Grove. Peregrine recollected, with a jolt, that somebody had told him they had been lovers and were now breaking up. He had paid no attention to this rumour. Supposing it was true, would this be one more personality problem on his plate?

“Or am I,” he wondered, “getting some kind of director’s neurosis? Do I merely imagine that Jeremy eyes Destiny and Destiny and Harry ogle each other and Gertie glares hell’s fury at Harry and Marcus has his paw on Destiny and that’s why he resents Harry? Or is it all an unexpected back-kick from the Conducis champagne?”

He edged round to Destiny and suggested that perhaps they ought to make a break and that people were waiting for a lead from her and Marcus. This pleased both of them. They collected themselves as they did offstage before a big entrance and, with the expertise of rugby halfbacks, took advantage of a gap and swept through it to Mrs. Greenslade.

Peregrine ran straight into their child actor, Master Trevor Vere, and his mama, who was a dreadful lady called Mrs. Blewitt. She had to be asked and it was God’s mercy that she seemed to be comparatively sober. She was dressed in a black satin shift with emerald fringe and she wore a very strange green toque on her pale corn hair. Trevor, in the classic tradition of infant phenomena, was youthfully got up in some sort of contemporary equivalent of a Fauntleroy suit. There were overtones of the Mod. His hair was waved back from his rather pretty face and he wore a flowing cravat. Peregrine knew that Trevor was not as old as his manner and his face suggested because he came under the legal restrictions imposed upon child performers. It was therefore lucky in more ways than one that he died early in the first act.

Mrs. Blewitt smiled and smiled at Peregrine with the deadly knowingness of the professional mum and Trevor linked his arm in hers and smiled, too. There are many extremely nice children in the professional theatre. They have been well brought up by excellent parents. But none of these had been available to play Hamnet Shakespeare and Trevor, it had to be faced, was talented to an unusual degree. He had made a great hit on cinema in a biblical epic as the Infant Samuel.

“Mrs. Blewitt,” said Peregrine.

“I was just hoping for a chance to say how much we appreciate the compliment,” said Mrs. Blewitt with an air of conspiracy. “It’s not a big role, of course, not like Trev’s accustomed to. Trev’s accustomed to leading child-juves, Mr. Jay. We was offered—”

It went on predictably for some time. Trevor, it appeared, had developed a heart condition. Nothing, Mrs. Blewitt hurriedly assured Peregrine, to worry about really because Trev would never let a show down, never, but the doctor under whom Trev was and under whom she herself was—a monstrous picture presented itself—had advised against another big, emotionally exhausting role—

“Why bring that up, Mummy?” Trevor piped with one of his atrocious winks at Peregrine. Peregrine excused himself, saying that they must all be getting along, mustn’t they, and he wanted to catch Miss Dunne before she left.

This was true. He had thought it would be pleasant to take Emily back to their studio for supper with him and Jeremy. Before he could get to her he was trapped by Gertrude Bracey.

She said: “Have you seen Harry anywhere?”

“I saw him a minute or two ago. I think perhaps he’s gone.”

“I think perhaps you’re right,” she said with such venom that Peregrine blinked. He saw that Gertrude’s mouth was unsteady. Her eyes were not quite in focus and were blurred with tears.

“Shall I see if I can find him?” he offered.

“God, no,” she said. “I know better than that, I hope, thank you very much.” She seemed to make a painful effort to present a more conventional front. “It doesn’t matter two hoots, darling,” she said. “It was nothing. Fabulous party. Can’t wait to begin work. I see great things in poor Ann, you know.”

She walked over to the balustrade and looked down into the lower foyer which was populous with departing guests. She was not entirely steady on her pins, he thought. The last pair of personages was going downstairs and of the company only Charles Random and Gertrude remained. She leaned over the balustrade, holding to it with both hands. If she was looking for Harry Grove, Peregrine thought, she hadn’t found him. With an uncoordinated swing she turned, flapped a long black glove at Peregrine and plunged downstairs. Almost certainly she had not said goodbye to her host and hostess but, on the whole, perhaps that was just as well. He wondered if he ought to put her in a taxi but heard Charles Random shout: “Hi, Gertie love. Give you a lift?”

Jeremy was waiting for him but Emily Dunne had gone. Almost everybody had gone. His spirits plummeted abysmally. Unpredictably, his heart was in his boots.

He went up to Mrs. Greenslade with extended hand.

“Wonderful,” he said. “How can we thank you.”