Killer Dolphin (13 page)

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?”