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.”