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. Welclass="underline" 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.