Mr. Greenslade looked up at Peregrine. “That was, in fact, your suggestion?”
“Yes. Yes. It was. Except that I hate the word culture.”
“Mr. Jay, I don’t know if you are at all informed about Mr. Conducis’s interests.”
“I—no—I only know he’s—he’s—”
“Extremely wealthy and something of a recluse?” Mr. Greenslade suggested with a slight, practiced smile.
“Yes.”
“Yes.” Mr. Greenslade removed his spectacles and placed them delicately in the centre of his writing pad.
Peregrine thought he must be going to make some profound revelation about his principal. Instead he merely said “Quite” again and after a dignified silence asked Peregrine if he would be good enough to tell him something about himself. His schooling, for example, and later career. He was extremely calm in making this request.
Peregrine said he had been born and educated in New Zealand, had come to England on a drama bursary and had remained there.
“I am aware, of course, of your success in the theatrical field,” said Mr. Greenslade and Peregrine supposed that he had been making some kind of confidential inquiries.
“Mr. Jay,” said Mr. Greenslade, “I am instructed to make you an offer. It is, you may think, a little precipitant: Mr. Conducis is a man of quick decisions. It is this. Mr. Conducis is prepared to consider the rehabilitation of the theatre, subject, of course, to favourable opinions from an architect and from building authorities and to the granting of necessary permits. He will finance this undertaking. On one condition.” Mr. Greenslade paused.
“On one condition?” Peregrine repeated in a voice that cracked like an adolescent’s.
“Exactly. It is this. That you yourself will undertake the working management of The Dolphin. Mr. Conducis offers you, upon terms to be arrived at, the post of organizing the running of the theatre, planning its artistic policy, engaging the company and directing the productions. You would be given a free hand to do this within certain limits ot expenditure which would be set down in this contract I shall be glad to hear what your reactions are to this, at its present stage, necessarily tentative proposal.”
Peregrine suppressed a frightening inclination towards giving himself over to manic laughter. He looked for a moment into Mr. Greenslade’s shrewd and well-insulated face and he said: “It would be ridiculous of me to pretend that I am anything but astonished and delighted.”
“Are you?” Mr. Greenslade rejoined. “Good. In that case I shall proceed with the preliminary investigations. I, by the way, am the solicitor for a number of Mr. Conducis’s interests. If and when it comes to drawing up contracts I presume I should negotiate with your agents?”
“Yes. They are—”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Greenslade. “Messrs. Slade and Oppinger, I believe?”
“Yes,” said Peregrine, wondering if at any stage of his tipsy rhapsody he had mentioned them to Mr. Conducis and rather concluding that he hadn’t.
“There is one other matter.” Mr. Greenslade opened a drawer in his desk and with an uncanny re-enacting of his principal’s gestures on the previous morning, withdrew from it the small Victorian writing-desk. “You are already familiar with the contents, I understand, and expressed some anxiety about their authenticity.”
“I said I wished they could be shown to an expert.”
“Quite. Mr. Conducis has taken your point, Mr. Jay, and wonders if you yourself would be so obliging as to act for him in this respect.”
Peregrine, in a kind of trance, said: “Are the glove and documents insured?”
“They are covered by a general policy, but they have not been specifically insured since their value is unknown.”
“I feel the responsibility would be—”
“I appreciate your hesitation and I may say I put the point to Mr. Conducis. He still wishes me to ask you to undertake this mission.”
There was a short silence.
“Sir,” said Peregrine, “why is Mr. Conducis doing all this? Why is he giving me at least the chance of undertaking such fantastically responsible jobs? What possible motive can he have? I hope,” Peregrine continued with a forthrightness that became him very well, “that I’m not such an ass as to suppose I can have made an impression in the least degree commensurable with the proposals you’ve put before me and I—I—” He felt himself reddening and ran out of words.
Mr. Greenslade had watched him, he thought with renewed attention. He now lifted his spectacles with both hands, held them poised daintily over his blotter and said, apparently to them: “A reasonable query.”
“Well—I hope so.”
“And one which I am unable to answer.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I will,” said Mr. Greenslade, evenly, “be frank with you, Mr. Jay. I am at a loss to know why Mr. Conducis is taking this action. If, however, I have interpreted your misgivings correctly I can assure you they are misplaced.” Suddenly, almost dramatically, Mr. Greenslade became human, good-tempered and coarse. “He’s not that way inclined,” he said and laid down his spectacles.
“I’m extremely glad to hear it.”
“You will undertake the commission?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Splendid.”
The expert folded his hands and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” he said, “I think we may say with certainty this is a glove of late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century workmanship. It has, at some time, been exposed to salt-water but not extensively. One might surmise that it was protected. The little desk is very much stained. Upon the letters H.S. inside the gauntlet I am unable to give an authoritative opinion but could, of course, obtain one. As for these two really rather startling documents: they can be examined and submitted to a number of tests—Infra-red, spectrography and so on—not in my province, you know. If they’ve been concocted it will certainly be discovered.”
“Would you tell me how I can get the full treatment for them?”
“Oh, I think we could arrange that, you know. But we would want written permission from the owner, full insurance and so on. You’ve told me nothing, so far, of the history, have you?”
“No,” Peregrine said. “But I will. With this proviso, if you don’t mind: the owner, or rather his solicitor on his behalf, has given me permission to disclose his name to you on your undertaking to keep it to yourself until you have come to a conclusion about these things. He has a—an almost morbid dread of publicity which you’ll understand, I think, when you learn who he is.”
The expert looked very steadily at Peregrine. After a considerable silence he said: “Very well. I am prepared to treat the matter confidentially as far as your principal’s name is concerned.”
“He is Mr. Vassily Conducis.”
“Good God.”
“Quite,” said Peregrine, doing a Greenslade. “I shall now tell you as much as is known of the history. Here goes.”
And he did in considerable detail.
The expert listened in a startled manner.
“Really, very odd,” he said when Peregrine had finished.
“I assure you I’m not making it up.”
“No, no. I’m sure. I’ve heard of Conducis, of course. Who hasn’t? You do realize what a—what a really flabbergasting thing this would be if it turned out to be genuine?”
“I can think of nothing else. I mean: there they lie—a child’s glove and a letter asking one to suppose that on a summer’s morning in the year 1596 a master-craftsman of Stratford made a pair of gloves and gave them to his grandson, who wore them for a day and then—”
“Grief filled the room up of an absent child?”
“Yes. And a long time afterwards—twenty years—the father made his will—I wonder he didn’t chuck in a ghastly pun—Will’s Will—don’t you? And he left his apparel to his sister Joan Hart. And for her information wrote that note there. I mean—his hand moved across that bit of paper. If it’s genuine. And then two centuries go by and somebody called M.E. puts the glove and paper in a Victorian desk with the information that her great-great-grandmother had them from J. Hart and her grandmother insisted they were the Poet’s. It could have been Joan Hart. She died in 1664.”