Killer Dolphin

Five Climax

Alleyn was not altogether unused to the theatrical scene or to theatrical people. He had been concerned in four police investigations in which actors had played—and “played” had been the operative word—leading roles. As a result of these cases he was sardonically regarded at the Yard as something of an expert on the species.

It was not entirely on this score, however, that he had been sent to The Dolphin. Some five years ago Mr. Vassily Conducis had been burgled in Drury Place. Alleyn had been sent in and had made a smartish catch and recovered the entire haul within twenty-four hours. Mr. Conducis was away at the time but on his return had asked Alleyn to call, probably with the idea of making a tangible acknowledgement. Possibly Alleyn’s manner had made him change his mind and substitute a number of singularly unsparkling congratulations delivered in a stifled tone from somewhere to the region of his epiglottis. Alleyn had left, uncharmed by Mr. Conducis.

Their next encounter was the result of a letter to Alleyn’s Great White Chief signed by Mr. Conducis and requesting advice and protection for the Shakespeare documents and glove.

“He’s asked for you, Rory,” the Great White Chief said. “No regard for your rank and status, of course. Very cool. In other respects, I suppose, you are the man for the job: what with your theatrical past and your dotage on the Bard. These damned objects seem to be worth the spoils of the Great Train Robbery. Tell him to buy protection from a reputable firm and leave us alone, by Heaven.”

“I’d be delighted.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re hell bent on getting a look at the things.”

“I’m not hell bent on getting another look at Conducis.”

“No? What’s wrong with him, apart from stinking of money?”

“Nothing, I daresay.”

“Well, you’d better find out when these things are going to be transferred and check up on the security. We don’t want another bloody Goya and worse on our hands.”

So Alleyn went to The Dolphin at nine o’clock on the morning of the opening performance.

The housing for the glove and letters was in a cavity made in the auditorium wall above the sunken landing which was, itself, three steps below the level of the circle foyer. In this wall was lodged a large steel safe, with convex plate glass replacing the outward side. The door of the safe, opposite this window, was reached from the back of the circle and concealed by a panel in the wall. Between the window and the exterior face of the wall were sliding steel doors, opened electrically by a switch at the back of the cavity. Concealed lighting came up when the doors were opened. Thus the glove and letters would be exposed to patrons on the stairs, the landing and, more distantly, in the foyer.

The safe was a make well enough known to Alleyn. It carried a five figure lock. This combination could be chosen by the purchaser. It was sometimes based on a key word and a very simple code. For instance, the numbers from one to zero might be placed under the letters of the alphabet from A to J and again from K to T and again from U to Z. Each number had therefore two and in the case of 1-6, three corresponding letters. Thus, if the key word was “night” the number of the combination would be 49780.

Jeremy had caused the steel safe to be lined with padded yellow silk. On its floor was a book-hinged unit covered with black velvet. It had a variable tilt and was large enough to display the glove and two documents. He had made a beautifully lettered legend which had been framed and would be hung below the wall cavity. During performances the sliding doors would be retracted and the plate glass window exposed.

Alleyn made a very thorough inspection and found the precautions rather more efficient than might have been expected. There were not, at large, many criminal virtuosi of the combination lock who would be equal to this one. It would have to be a cracksman’s job. An efficient burglar alarm had been installed and would go into action at the first attempt at entry into the theatre. Once the glove and documents were housed the safe would not be re-opened, the interior lighting and sliding doors in front of the glass panel being operated from a switch inside the wall cavity. He pointed out that one man on another man’s shoulders could effect a smash, snatch and grab and asked about watchmen. He was told that for as long as the objects were in the theatre, there would be a man on the landing. Jobbins, late Phipps Bros., was revealed in a brand new uniform. He was to be on duty from four up to midnight, when he would be relieved by a trained man from a security organization. Jobbins would sleep on the premises in an unused dressing-room and could be roused in case of need. A second man already on duty would take over at 8 A.M. and remain in the foyer until Jobbins returned at four. The burglar alarm would be switched on by Jobbins after the show when he locked up for the night.

Alleyn had been fully informed of these arrangements when Peregrine walked into the office. As they shook hands he saw the pallor and the shadows under the eyes and thought: “First night terrors, poor chap.”

“Mr. Alleyn’s had a look at our security measures,” Meyer said, “and thinks they’ll pass muster. He’s going to wait and see the treasure safely stored.” His telephone rang. “Excuse me.”

Alleyn said to Peregrine: “You’re all in the throes of every kind of preoccupation. Don’t pay any attention to me. If I may, while I’m waiting I’ll look at this enchanting theatre. What a superb job you’ve done.”

This was unlike Peregrine’s idea of a plainclothes policeman. Alleyn had reached the door before he said: “I’ll show you round, sir.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. If I may just wander. You’re up to your neck, I’m sure.”

“On the contrary. Meyer is, but my problem,” Peregrine said, “is not having anything real to do. I’d like to show you The Dolphin.”

“Well, in that case—”

It was a comprehensive tour. Alleyn was so clearly interested and so surprisingly well-informed that Peregrine actually enjoyed himself. He found himself talking about the play and what he had tried to do with it and how it had been born of his first sight of Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove.

Alleyn knew about the terms of the will and about Joan Hart getting the wearing apparel. Indeed, Peregrine would have betted, Alleyn knew as much as he did about Shakespearean scholarship and was as familiar with the plays as he was himself.

For his part, Alleyn liked this strained, intelligent and modest young man. He hoped Peregrine had written and produced a good play. Alleyn asked one or two questions, and since he was a trained investigator and was personally attracted by the matter in hand, Peregrine found himself talking about his work with an ease that he would never have thought possible on a ten minutes’ acquaintance. He began to speak quickly and excitedly, his words tumbing over each other. His love of The Dolphin welled up into his voice.

“Shall we go backstage?” he said. “Or — wait a moment. I’ll take the Iron up and you can see Jeremy Jones’s set for the first act.”

He left Alleyn in the stalls, went through the pass-door, and sent up the elegantly painted fireproof curtain. He then moved onstage and faced the house. He had run up the pass-door passage very quickly and his blood pounded in his ears. Nervous exhaustion, wasn’t it called? He even felt a bit dizzy.

The cleaners upstairs had unshuttered a window and a shaft of sunlight struck down upon the stage. It was peopled by dancing motes.

“Is anything the matter?” an unusually deep voice asked quite close at hand. Alleyn had come down the centre aisle. Peregrine, dazzled, thought he was leaning on the rail of the orchestra well.

“No — I mean — no, nothing. It’s just that I was reminded of my first visit to The Dolphin.”

Was it because the reminder had been so abrupt or because over the last week Peregrine had eaten very little and slept hardly at all that he felt so monstrously unsure of himself. Alleyn wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a young man to turn any whiter in the face than Peregrine already was but somehow he now contrived to do so. He sat down on Jeremy’s Elizabethan dower chest and wiped his hand across his mouth. When he looked up Alleyn stood in front of him. “Just where the hole was,” Peregrine thought.

He said: “Do you know, underneath your feet there’s a little stone well with a door. It was there that the trap used to work. Up and down, you know, for Harlequin and Hamlet’s Ghost and I daresay for a Lupino or a Lane of that vintage. Or perhaps both. Oh dear.”

“Stay where you are for the moment. You’ve been overdoing things.”

“Do you think so? I don’t know. But I tell you what. Through all the years after the bomb that well gradually filled with stinking water and then one morning I nearly drowned in it.”

Alleyn listened to Peregrine’s voice going on and on and Peregrine listened to it, too, as if it belonged to someone else. He realized with complete detachment that for a year and three months some rather terrible notion about Mr. Conducis had been stuffed away at the back of the mind that was Peregrine. It had been, and still was, undefined and unacknowledged but because he was so tired and ravaged by anxiety it had almost come out to declare itself. He was very relieved to hear himself telling this unusual policeman exactly what had happened that morning. When he had related everything down to the last detail he said: “And it was all to be kept quiet, except for Jeremy Jones, so now I’ve broken faith, I suppose, and I couldn’t care, by and large, less. I feel better,” said Peregrine loudly.

“I must say you look several shades less green about the gills. You’ve half killed yourself over this production, haven’t you?”

“Well, one does, you know.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you up and down all those stairs. Where does that iron curtain work from? The Prompt side. Oh, yes, I see. Don’t move. I’ll do it. Dead against the union rules, I expect, but never mind.”

The fire curtain inched its way down. Alleyn glanced at his watch. Any time now the party from the museum should arrive.

He said: “That was an extraordinary encounter, I must say. But out of it — presumably — has grown all this: the theatre — your play. And now: tonight.”

“And now tonight. Oh God!”

“Would it be a good idea for you to go home and put your boots up for an hour or two?”

“No, thank you. I’m perfectly all right. Sorry to have behaved so oddly,” Peregrine said, rubbing his head. “I simply have no notion why I bored you with my saga. You won’t, I trust, tell Mr. Conducis.”

“I shall,” Alleyn said lightly, “preserve an absolute silence.”

“I can’t begin to explain what an odd man he is.”

“I have met Mr. Conducis.”

“Did you think him at all dotty? Or sinister? Or merely plutocratic?”

“I was quite unable to classify him.”

“When I asked him where he found the treasure he said: at sea. Just that: at sea. It sounded rum.”

“Not in the yacht Kalliope by any chance?”

“The yacht — Kalliope. Wait a moment — what is there about the yacht Kalliope?” Peregrine asked. He felt detached from his surroundings, garrulous and in an odd way rather comfortable but not quite sure that if he stood up he might not turn dizzy. “The yacht Kalliope,” he repeated.

“It was his private yacht and it was run down and split in two in a fog off Cape St. Vincent.”

“Now I remember. Good Lord—”

A commotion of voices broke out in the entrance.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that the treasure has arrived. Will you stay here for a breather? Or come and receive it?”

“I’ll come.”

When they reached the foyer, Emily and Jeremy Jones and the assistant from the museum had arrived. The assistant carried a metal case. Winter Meyer had run downstairs to meet them. They all went up to the office and the whole affair became rather formal and portentous. The assistant was introduced to everybody. He laid his metal case on Peregrine’s desk, unlocked and opened it and stood back.

“Perhaps,” he said, looking round the little group and settling on Peregrine, “we should have formal possession taken. If you will just examine the contents and accept them as being in good order.”

“Jeremy’s the expert,” Peregrine said. “He must know every stitch and stain on the glove by this time, I should think.”

“Indeed, yes,” said the assistant warmly. “Mr. Jones, then — will you?”

Jeremy said: “I’d love to.”

He removed the little desk from the case and laid it on the desk.

Peregrine caught Alleyn’s eye. “Stained, as you see,” he murmured, “with water. They say: sea-water.”

Jeremy opened the desk. His delicate, nicotine-stained fingers folded back the covering tissues and exposed the little wrinkled glove and two scraps of documents.

“There you are,” he said. “Shall I?”

“Please do.”

With great delicacy he lifted them from their housing and laid them on the desk.

“And this,” said the assistant pleasantly, “is when I bow myself out. Here is an official receipt, Mr. Meyer, if you will be good enough to sign it”

While Meyer was doing this Peregrine said to Alleyn: “Come and look.”

Alleyn moved forward. He noticed as he did so that Peregrine stationed himself beside Miss Emily Dunne, that there was a glint of fanaticism in the devouring stare that Jeremy Jones bent upon the glove, that Winter Meyer expanded as if he had some proprietary rights over it and that Emily Dunne appeared to unfold a little at the approach of Peregrine. Alleyn then stooped over the notes and the glove and wished that he could have been alone. There could, at such a moment, be too much anticipation, too much pumping up of appropriate reactions. The emotion the relics were expected to arouse was delicate, chancy and tenuous. It was not much good thinking: “But the Hand of Glory moved warmly across that paper and four centuries ago a small boy’s sick fist filled out that glove and somewhere between then and now a lady called M.E. wrote a tidy little memorandum for posterity,” Alleyn found himself wishing very heartily that Peregrine’s play would perform the miracle of awareness which would take the sense of death away from Shakespeare’s note and young Hamnet’s glove.

He looked up at Peregrine. “Thank you for letting me come so close,” he said.

“You must see them safely stowed.”

“If I may.”

Winter Meyer became expansive and a little fussy. Jeremy, after a hesitant glance, laid the treasure on Peregrine’s blotter. There was a discussion with the museum man about temperature and fire risks and then a procession of sorts formed up and they all went into the back of the circle, Jeremy carrying the blotter.

“On your right,” Meyer said unnecessarily.

The panel in the circle wall was opened and so was the door of the safe. Jeremy drew out the black velvet easel-shaped unit, tenderly disposed the glove upon its sloping surface and flanked the glove with the two documents.

“I hope the nap of the velvet will hold them,” he said. “I’ve tilted the surface like this to give a good view. Here goes.”

He gently pushed the unit into the safe.

“How do the front doors work?” he asked.

“On your left,” Meyer fussed. “On the inside surface of the wall. Shall I?”

“Please, Winty.”

Meyer slipped his fingers between the safe and the circle wall. Concealed lighting appeared and with a very slight whisper the steel panels on the far side slid back.

“Now!” he said. “Isn’t that quite something?”

“We can’t see from here, though, Winty,” Peregrine said. “Let’s go out and see.”

“I know,” Jeremy agreed. “Look, would you all go out and tell me if it works or if the background ought to be more tilted? Sort of spread yourselves.”

“ “Some to kill cankers in the moss-rose buds’?” Alleyn asked mildly.

Jeremy looked at him in a startled manner and then grinned.

“The Superintendent,” he said, “is making a nonsense of us. Emily, would you stay in the doorway, love, and be a liaison between me in the circle and the others outside?”

“Yes. All right.”

The men filed out. Meyer crossed the circle foyer. Peregrine stood on the landing and the man from the museum a little below him. Alleyn strolled to the door, passed it and remained in the circle. He was conscious that none of these people except, of course, the museum man, was behaving in his or her customary manner but that each was screwed up to a degree of inward tension over which a stringent self-discipline was imposed. “And for them,” he thought, “this sort of thing occurs quite often, it’s a regular occupational hazard. They are seasoned troops and about to go into action.”

“It should be more tilted, Jer,” Peregrine’s voice was saying. “And the things’ll have to be higher up on the easel.”

The museum assistant, down on the first flight, said something nasal and indistinguishable.

“What’s he talking about?” Jeremy demanded.

“He says it doesn’t show much from down below but he supposes that is unavoidable,” said Emily.

“Wait a bit,” Jeremy reached inside the safe. “More tilt,” he said. “Oh, blast, it’s collapsed.”

“Can I help?” Emily asked.

“Not really. Tell them to stay where they are.”

Alleyn walked over to the safe. Jeremy Jones was on his knees gingerly smoothing out the glove and the documents on the velvet surface. “I’ll have to use beastly polythene and I hoped not,” he said crossly. He laid a sheet of it over the treasures and fastened it with black velvet-covered drawing pins. Then he replaced the easel in the safe at an almost vertical angle. There was a general shout of approval from the observers.

“They say: much joy,” Emily told him.

“Shall I shut the doors and all?”

“Yes.”

“Twiddle the thing and all?”

“Winty says yes.”

Jeremy shut the steel door and spun the lock.

“Now let’s look.”

He and Emily went out.

Alleyn came from the shadows, opened the wall panel and looked at the safe. It was well and truly locked. He shut the panel and turned to find that at a distance of about thirty feet down the passageway leading to the boxes, a boy stood with his hands in his pockets, watching him: a small boy, he thought at first, of about twelve, dressed in over-smart clothes.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “Where did you spring from?”

“That’s my problem,” said the boy. “Would you mind.”

Alleyn walked across to him. He was a pretty boy with big eyes and an impertinent, rather vicious mouth. “Would you mind!” he said again. “Who are you staring at? If it’s not a rude question?”

The consonants and vowels were given full attention.

“At you,” Alleyn said.

Peregrine’s voice outside on the landing asked: “Where’s Superintendent Alleyn?”

“Here!” Alleyn called. He turned to go.

“Aeoh, I beg pardon I’m sure,” said Trevor Vere. “You must be the bogey from the Yard. What could I have been thinking of! Manners.”

Alleyn went out to the front. He found that Marcus Knight and Destiny Meade had arrived and joined the company of viewers.

Above the sunken landing where the two flights of stairs came out was an illuminated peepshow. Yellow and black for the heraldic colours of a gentleman from Warwickshire, two scraps of faded writing and a small boy’s glove.

Jeremy fetched his framed legend from the office and fixed it in position underneath.

“Exactly right,” said the man from the museum. “I congratulate you, Mr. Jones. It couldn’t be better displayed.”

He put his receipt in his breast pocket and took his leave of them.

“It’s perfect, Jer,” said Peregrine.

Trevor Vere strolled across the landing and leaned gracefully on the balustrade.

“I reckon,” he observed at large, “any old duff could crack that peter with his eyes shut. Kid stakes.”

Peregrine said, “What are you doing here, Trevor? You’re not called.”

“I just looked in for my mail, Mr. Jay.”

“Why aren’t you at school?”

“I took one of my turns last night, Mr. Jay. They quite understand at school.”

“You’re not needed here. Much better go home and rest.”

“Yes; Mr. Jay.” A terribly winning smile illuminated Trevor’s photogenic face. “I wanted to wish you and the play and everybody the most fabulous luck. Mummy joins me.”

“Thank you. The time for that is later. Off you go.”

Trevor, still smiling, drifted downstairs.

“Dear little mannikin,” Jeremy said with venom.

Emily said: “Men and cameras, Winty, in the lane.”

“The press, darling,” Meyer said. “Shots of people looking at the glove. Destiny and Marcus are going to make a picture.”

“It won’t be all that easy to get a shot,” Knight pointed out, “with the things skied up there.”

“Should we have them down again?”

“I trust,” Jeremy said suddenly, “that somebody knows how to work the safe. I’ve locked it, you might remember.”

“Don’t worry,” said little Meyer, whose reaction to opening nights took the form of getting slightly above himself. “I know. It was all cooked up at the offices and Greenslade, of course, told me. Actually The Great Man himself suggested the type of code. It’s all done on a word. You see? You think of a word of five letters—”

Down below the front doors had opened to admit a number of people and two cameras.

“—and each letter stands for a figure. Mr. Conducis said he thought easily the most appropriate word would be—”

“Mr. Meyer.”

Winter Meyer stopped short and swung round. Alleyn moved out on the landing.

“Tell me,” he said. “How long has this safe been in position?”

“Some days. Three or four. Why?”

“Have you discussed the lock mechanism with your colleagues?”

“Well — I — well — I — only vaguely, you know, only vaguely.”

“Don’t you think that it might be quite a good idea if you kept your five-letter word to yourself?”

“Well I — well, we’re all — well—”

“It really is the normal practice, you know.”

“Yes — but we’re different. I mean — we’re all—”

“Just to persuade you,” Alleyn said, and wrote on the back of an envelope. “Is the combination one of these?”

Meyer looked at the envelope.

“Christ,” he said.

Alleyn said, “If I were you I’d get a less obvious code word and a new combination and keep them strictly under your Elizabethan bonnet. I seriously advise you to do this.” He took the envelope back, blacked out what he had written and put it in his breast pocket.

“You have visitors,” he said, amiably.

He waited while the pictures were taken and was not at all surprised when Trevor Vere reappeared, chatted shyly to the pressman whom he had instinctively recognized as the authority and ended up gravely contemplating the glove with Destiny Meade’s arm about him and his cheek against hers while lamps flashed and cameras clicked.

The picture, which was much the best taken that morning, appeared with the caption: Child player, Trevor Vere, with Destiny Meade, and the Shakespeare glove. “It makes me feel kinda funny like I want to cry,” says young Trevor.

Peregrine answered half-a-dozen extremely intelligent questions and for the rest of his life would never know in what words. He bowed and stood back. He saw himself doing it in the glass behind the bar: a tall, lank, terrified young man in tails. The doors were swung open and he heard the house rise with a strange composite whispering sound.

Mr. Conducis, who wore a number of orders, turned to him.

“I must wish you success,” he said.

“Sir — I can’t thank you—”

“Not at all. I must follow.”

Mr. Conducis was to sit in the Royal box.

Peregrine made for the left-hand doors into the circle.

“Every possible good luck,” a deep voice said.

He looked up and saw a grandee who turned out to be Superintendent Alleyn in a white tie with a lovely lady on his arm.

They had gone.

Peregrine heard the anthem through closed doors. He was the loneliest being on earth.

As the house settled he slipped into the circle and down to the box on the O.P. side. Jeremy was there.

“Here we go,” he said.

“Here we go.”

Six months later Peregrine put a letter down on the breakfast table and looked across at Jeremy.

“This is it,” he said.

“What?”

“The decision. Conducis is going to sell out. To an American collector.”

“My God!”

“Greenslade, as usual, breaks the news. The negotiations have reached a point where he thinks it appropriate to advise me there is every possibility that they will go through.”

The unbecoming mauvish-pink that belongs to red hair and freckles suffused Jeremy’s cheeks and mounted to his brow. “I tell you what,” he said. “This can’t happen. This can’t be allowed to happen. This man’s a monster.”

“It appears that the B.M. and the V. and A. have shot their bolts. So has the British syndicate that was set up.”

Jeremy raised the cry of the passionately committed artist against the rest of the world. “But why! He’s lousy with money. He’s got so much it must have stopped meaning anything. What’ll he do with this lot? Look, suppose he gives it away? So what! Let him give William Shakespeare’s handwriting and Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove away. Let him give them to Stratford or the V. and A. Let him give them to the nation. Fine. He’ll be made a bloody peer and good luck to him.”

“Let him do this and let him do that. He’ll do what he’s worked out for himself.”

“You’ll have to see him, Perry. After all he’s got a good thing out of you and The Dolphin. Capacity business for six months and booked out for weeks ahead. Small cast. Massive prestige. The lot.”

“And a company of Kilkenny cats as far as good relations are concerned?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know jolly well. Destiny waltzing over to Harry Grove. Gertrude and Marco reacting like furies.” Peregrine hesitated. “And so on,” he said.

“You mean me lusting after Destiny and getting nowhere? Don’t let it give you a moment’s pause. I make no trouble among the giants, I assure you.”

“I’m sorry, Jer.”

“No, no. Forget it. Just you wade in to Conducis.”

“I can’t.”

“For God’s sake! Why?”

“Jer, I’ve told you. He gives me the jim-jams. I owe him nothing and I don’t want to owe him anything. Still less do I want to go hat in hand asking for anything. Anything.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I might get it.”

“Well, if he’s not an old queer and you say you don’t believe he is, what the hell? You feel like I do about the glove and the letter. You say you do. That they ought to be here among Shakespeare’s people in his own city or country town—here. Well?”

“I can’t go pleading again. I did try, remember, when he came to The Dolphin. I made a big song and dance and got slapped right down for my trouble. I won’t do it again.”

Jeremy now lost his temper.

“Then, by God, I will,” he shouted.

“You won’t get an interview.”

“I’ll stage a sit-down on his steps.”

“Shall you carry a banner?”

“If necessary I’ll carry a sledgehammer.”

This was so startlingly in accord with Emily’s half-joking prediction that Peregrine said loudly: “For the Lord’s sake pipe down. That’s a damn silly sort of thing to say and you know it.”

They had both lost their tempers and shouted foolishly at each other. An all-day and very superior help was now in their employment and they had to quiet down when she came in. They walked about their refurnished and admirably decorated studio, smoking their pipes and not looking at each other. Peregrine began to feel remorseful. He himself was so far in love with Emily Dunne and had been given such moderate encouragement that he sympathized with Jeremy in his bondage and yet thought what a disaster it was for him to succumb to Destiny. They were, in common with most men of their age, rather owlish in their affairs of the heart and a good deal less sophisticated than their conversation seemed to suggest.

Presently Jeremy halted in his walk and said:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Look. I have been a morsel precipitate.”

Pregrine said: “Not at all, Jer.”

“Yes. I don’t really envisage a sit-down strike.”

“No?”

“No.” Jeremy looked fixedly at his friend. “On the whole,” he said, and there was a curious undertone in his voice, “I believe it would be a superfluous exercise.”

“You do! But—well really, I do not understand you.”

“Think no more of it.”

“Very well,” said the astonished Peregrine. “I might as well mention that the things are to be removed from the safe on this day week and will be replaced by a blown-up photograph. Greenslade is sending two men from the office to take delivery.”

“Where are they to go?”

“He says for the time being to safe storage at his offices. They’ll probably be sold by private treaty but if they are put up at Sotheby’s the result will be the same. The client’s hell bent on getting them.”

Jeremy burst out laughing.

“I think you must be mad,” said Peregrine.

The night before the Shakespeare relics were to be removed from The Dolphin Theatre was warm and very still with a feeling of thunder in the air which, late in the evening, came to fulfillment. During the third act, at an uncannily appropriate moment a great clap and clatter broke out in the heavens and directly over the theatre.

”Going too far with the thunder-sheet up there,” Meyer said to Peregrine, who was having a drink with him in the office.

There were several formidable outbreaks followed by the characteristic downpour. Peregrine went out to the circle foyer. Jobbins was at his post on the half-landing under the treasure.

Peregrine listened at the double doors into the circle and could just hear his own dialogue spoken by strange disembodied voices. He glanced at his watch. Half past ten. On time.

“Goodnight, Jobbins,” he said and went downstairs. Cars, already waiting in Wharfingers Lane, glistened in the downpour. He could hear the sound of water hitting water on the ebony night tide. The stalls attendant stood by to open the doors. Peregrine slipped in to the back of the house. There was a man of Stratford, his head bent over his sonnet: sitting in the bow window of a house in Warwickshire. The scratch of his quill on parchment could be clearly heard as the curtain came down.

Seven curtains and they could easily have taken more. One or two women in the back row were crying. They blew their noses, got rid of their handkerchiefs and clapped.

Peregrine went out quickly. The rain stopped as he ran down the side alleyway to the stage-door. A light cue had been missed and he wanted a word with the stage-director.

When he had had it he stood where he was and listened absently to the familiar sounds of voices and movement in the dressing-rooms and front-of-house. Because of the treasure a systematic search of the theatre was conducted after each performance, and he had seen to it that this was thoroughly performed. He could hear the staff talking as they moved about the stalls and circle and spread their dust sheets. The assistant stage-manager organized the backstage procedure. When this was completed he and the stagecrew left. A trickle of backstage visitors came through and groped their alien way out. How incongruous they always seemed.

Destiny was entertaining in her dressing-room. He could hear Harry Grove’s light impertinent laughter and the ejaculations of the guests. Gertrude Bracey and, a little later, Marcus Knight appeared, each of them looking furious. Peregrine advised them to go through the front of the house and thus avoid the puddles and overflowing gutters in the stage-door alleyway.

They edged through the pass-door and down the stairs into the stalls. There seemed to be a kind of wary alliance between them. Peregrine thought they probably went into little indignation huddles over Destiny and Harry Grove.

Charles Random, quiet and detached as usual, left by the stage-door and then Emily came out.

“Hullo,” she said, “are you benighted?”

“I’m waiting for you. Would you come and have supper at that new bistro near the top of Wharfingers Lane? ‘The Younger Dolphin’ it’s artily called. It’s got an extension license till twelve for its little tiny opening thing and its asked me to look in. Do come, Emily.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’d be proud.”

“How lovely!” Peregrine exclaimed. “And it’s stopped raining, I think. Wait a jiffy and I’ll see.”

He ran to the stage-door. Water still dripped from the gutters in the alleyway but the stars shone overhead. Destiny and her smart friends came out, making a great to-do. When she saw Peregrine she stopped them all and introduced him. They said things like: “Absolutely riveting” and “Loved your play” and “Heaven.” They made off, warning each other about the puddles. Harry Grove said: “I’ll go on, then, and fetch it, if you really want me to. See you later, angel.”

“Don’t be too long, now,” Destiny called after him. Peregrine heard Harry’s sports car start up.

Peregrine told the stage-door keeper he could shut up shop and go. He returned to Emily. As he walked towards the darkened set he was aware of a slight movement and thought it must have been the pass-door into front-of-house. As if somebody had just gone through and softly closed it. A backstage draught no doubt.

Emily was on the set. It was shut in by the fire curtain and lit only by a dim infiltration from a working lamp backstage: a dark, warm, still place.

“I always think it feels so strange,” she said, “after we’ve left it to itself. As if it’s got a life of its own. Always waiting for us.”

“Another kind of reality?”

“Yes. A more impressive kind. You can almost imagine it breathes.”

A soughing movement of air up in the grill gave momentary confirmation of Emily’s fancy.

“Come on,” Peregrine said. “It’s a fine starry night and no distance at all to the top of Wharfingers Lane.” He had taken her arm and was guiding her to the pass-door when they both heard a thud.

They stood still and asked each other: “What was that?”

“Front-of-house?” Emily said.

“Yes. Winty or someone, I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t they all have gone?”

“I’d have thought so.”

“What was it? The noise?”

Peregrine said, “It sounded like a seat flapping up.”

“Yes. It did sound like that”

“Wait a bit.”

“Where are you going?” she said anxiously.

“Not far. Just to have a look.”

“All right.”

He opened the pass-door. The little twisting stair was in darkness but he had a torch in his pocket. Steps led down to the stalls box and up from where he stood to the box in the circle. He went down and then out into the stalls. They were in darkness. He flapped a seat down and let it spring back. That was the sound.

Peregrine called: “Hullo. Anyone there?” but his voice fell dead in an upholstered silence.

He flashed his torch across walls and shrouded seats. He walked up the new central aisle and into the foyer. It was deserted and dimly lit and the street doors were shut. Peregrine called up the stairs.

“Jobbins.”

“Eh?” Jobbins’s voice said. “That you, guv? Anything up?”

“I heard a seat flap. In front.”

“Didjer, guv?”

Jobbins appeared on the stairs. He wore an extremely loud brown, black and white checked overcoat, a woollen cap and carpet slippers.

“Good Lord!” Peregrine ejaculated. “Are you going to the Dogs or Ally Pally or what? Where’s your brown bowler?”

“You again, guv?” Jobbins wheezed. “I’d of ’eld back me quick change if I’d known. Pardon the dishy-bill. Present from a toff this ’ere coat is and very welcome. Gets chilly,” he said, descending, “between nah and the witching ar, when my relief comes in. What’s this abaht a seat?”

Peregrine explained. To his astonishment Jobbins pushed the doors open, strode into the auditorium and uttered in a sort of hoarse bellow—

“Nah then. Out of it. Come on. You ’eard.”

Silence.

Then Emily’s voice sounding worried and lonely: “What goes on?” She had groped her way down into the house.

“It’s all right,” Peregrine shouted. “Won’t be long.” And to Jobbins: “What does go on. You sound as if you’re used to this.”

“Which I am,” Jobbins sourly endorsed. “It’s that perishing child-wonder, that’s what it is. ’E done it before and ’e’ll do it again and once too often.”

“Done what?”

“ ’Angs abaht. ’Is mum plays the steel guitar in a caff see, acrost the river. She knocks off at eleven and ’er ’earts-delight sallies forth to greet ’er at the top of the lane. And ’e fills in the gap, buggering rhand and theyater trying to make out ’e’s a robber or a spectrum. ’E knows full well I can’t leave me post so ’e ’ides isself in various dark regions. ‘ ’Ands up,’ ’e yells. ‘Stick ’em up,’ ’e ’owls, and crawls under the seats making noises like ’e’s bein’ strangulated which ’e will be if ever I lay me ’ands on ’im. Innit marvellous?”

From somewhere backstage a single plangent sound rang out and faded. It was followed by an eldritch screech of laughter, a catcall and a loud slam.

“There ’e goes,” said Jobbins and flung an ejaculation of startling obscenity into the auditorium.

“I’ll get that little bastard,” Peregrine said. He foolishly made a dash for the treble-locked doors into the portico.

“You’ll never catch ’im, guv,” Jobbins said. His voice had almost vanished with excessive vocal exercise. “ ’E’ll be ’alf-way up the lane and going strong. His mum meets ’im at the top when she’s sober.”

“I’ll have the hide off him tomorrow,” Peregrine said. “All right, Jobbins. I’ll see you’re not pestered again. And anyway as far as the treasure is concerned this is your last watch.”

“That’s right, sir. Positively the last appearance in this epoch-making role.”

“Goodnight again.”

“Goodnight, guv. Best of British luck.”

Peregrine went into the stalls. “Emily!” he called. “Where are you, my poor girl?”

“Here,” Emily said, coming up the aisle.

“Did you see the little swine?”

“No. I was in front. He came down from the circle. I could hear him on the steps.”

Peregrine looked at his watch. Five past eleven. He took her arm. “Let’s forget him,” he said, “and sling our hooks. We’ve wasted ages. They shut at midnight. Come on.”

They slammed the stage-door behind them. The night was still fine and quite warm. They climbed Wharfingers Lane and went in under the illuminated sign of the new bistro: the younger dolphin.

It was crowded, noisy and extremely dark. The two waiters were dressed as fishermen in tight jeans, striped jumpers and jelly bag caps. A bas-relief of a dolphin wearing a mortar-board was lit from below.

As their eyes adjusted to the gloom they saw that Destiny and her three audience friends were established at a table under the dolphin and had the air of slumming. Destiny waggled her fingers at them and made faces to indicate that she couldn’t imagine why she was there.

They ate grilled sole, drank lager, danced together on a pocket-handkerchief and greatly enjoyed themselves. Presently Destiny and her friends left. As they passed Emily and Peregrine, she said: “Darlings! we thought we would but oh, no, no.” They went away talking loudly about what they would have to eat when they got to Destiny’s flat in Chelsea. At ten to twelve Peregrine said: “Emily: why are you so stand-offish in the elder Dolphin and so come-toish in the younger one?”

“Partly because of your prestige and anyway I’m not all that oncoming, even here.”

“Yes, you are. You are when we’re dancing. Not at first but suddenly, about ten minutes ago.”

“I’m having fun and I’m obliged to you for providing it.”

“Do you at all fancy me?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Don’t say it brightly like that: it’s insufferable.”

“Sorry.”

“And what do you mean, my prestige. Are you afraid people like Gertie, for example, will say you’re having an advantageous carry-on with the author-producer?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How bloody silly. ‘They say. What say they? Let them say.’ ”

“That aphorism was coined by a murdering cad.”

“What of it? Emily: I find you more attractive than any of my former girls. Now, don’t flush up and bridle. I know you’re not my girl, in actual fact. Emily,” Peregrine shouted against a screaming crescendo from the saxophonist, “Emily, listen to me. I believe I love you.”

The little band had crashed to its climax and was silent. Peregrine’s declaration rang out as a solo performance.

“After that,” Emily said, “I almost think we had better ask for the bill, don’t you?”

Peregrine was so put out that he did so. They left The Younger Dolphin assuring the anxious proprietor that they would certainly return.

Their plan had been to stroll over to Blackfriars, pick up Peregrine’s and Jeremy’s car and drive to Hampstead.

They walked out of The Younger Dolphin into a deluge.

Neither of them had a mackintosh or an umbrella. They huddled in the entrance and discussed the likelihood of raising a cab. Peregrine went back and telephoned a radio-taxi number to be told nothing would be available for at least twenty minutes. When he rejoined Emily the rain had eased off a little.

“I tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got a gamp and a mac in the office. Let’s run down the hill, beat Jobbins up and collect them. Look, it’s almost stopped.”

“Come on, then.”

“Mind you don’t slip.”

Hand in hand they ran wildly and noisily down Wharfingers Lane. They reached the turning at the bottom, rounded the corner and pulled up outside The Dolphin. They laughed and were exhilarated.

“Listen!” Emily exclaimed. “Peregrine, listen. Somebody else is running in the rain.”

“It’s someone in the stage-door alley.”

“So it is.”

The other runner’s footsteps rang out louder and louder on the wet cobblestones. He came out of the alley into the lane and his face was open-mouthed like a gargoyle.

He saw them and he flung himself upon Peregrine, pawed at his coat and jabbered into his face. It was the night watchman who relieved Jobbins.

“For Gawsake!” he said. “Oh, my Gawd, Mr. Jay, for Gawsake.”

“What the devil’s the matter? What is it? What’s happened!”

“Murder,” the man said, and his lips flabbered over the word. “That’s what happened, Mr. Jay. Murder.”