“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.