Killer Dolphin

When they had cleared away they returned to the window-seat and watched the Thames darken and the lights come up on Bankside. Peregrine began to think how much he wanted to make love to Emily. He watched her and talked less and less. Presently he closed his hand over hers. Emily turned her hand, gave his fingers a brief matter-of-fact squeeze and then withdrew.

“I’m having a lovely time,” she said, “but I’m not going to stay very late. It takes ages to get back to Hampstead.”

“But I’ll drive you. Jeremy hasn’t taken the car. It lives in a little yard round the corner.”

“Well, that’ll be grand. But I still won’t stay very late.”

“I’d like you to stay forever and a day.”

“That sounds like a theme song from a rather twee musical.”

“Emily: have you got a young man?”

“No.”

“Do you have a waiting list, at all?”

“No, Peregrine.”

“No preferential booking?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Are you ever so non-wanton?”

“Ever so.”

“Well,” he sighed, “it’s original, of course.”

“It’s not meant to madden and inflame.”

“That was what I feared. Well, O.K. I’ll turn up the lights and show you my photographs.”

“You jolly well do,” said Emily.

So they looked at Peregrine’s and Jeremy’s scrap-books and talked interminable theatre shop and presently Emily stood up and said now she must go.

Peregrine helped her into her coat with rather a perfunctory air and banged round the flat getting his own coat and shutting drawers.

When he came back and found Emily with her hands in her pockets looking out of the window he said loudly: “All the same, it’s scarcely fair to have cloudy hair and a husky voice and your sort of face and body and intelligence and not even think about being provocative.”

“I do apologize.”

“I suppose I can’t just give you ‘a single famished kiss’?”

“All right,” said Emily. “But not too famished.”

“Emily!” Peregrine muttered and became, to his astonishment, breathless.

When they arrived at her flat in Hampstead she thanked him again for her party and he kissed her again but lightly this time. “For my own peace of mind,” he said. “Dear Emily, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, dear Peregrine.”

“Do you know something?”

“What?”

“We open a fortnight tonight.”

BLISS FOR BARDOLITERS

STAGGERING DISCOVERY

Absolutely Priceless Say Experts

MYSTERY GLOVE

WHO FOUND IT?

Dolphin Discovery

FIND OF FOUR CENTURIES

NO FAKING SAY EGG-HEADS

Shakespeare’s Dying Son

“IN HIS OWN WRITE”

BARD’S HAND AND NO KIDDING

Inspires Playwright Jay

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

Exhaustive tests have satisfied the most distinguished scholars and experts of the authenticity…

GLOVE-LETTER-SENSATION

“It’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,” says tall, gangling playwright Peregrine Jay.

WHO OWNS THE DOLPHIN GLOVE?

WE GIVE YOU ONE GUESS

“No Comment” — Conducis

FABULOUS OFFER FROM U.S.A.

AMAZING DEVELOPMENTS

DOLPHIN GLOVE MYSTERY

Spokesman for Conducis Says No Decision on Sale. May Go to States.

COMING EVENTS

The restored Dolphin Theatre on Bankside will open on Thursday with a new play, The Glove, written and directed by Peregrine Jay and inspired, it is generally understood, by the momentous discovery of…

OPENING TOMORROW

At The Dolphin. Bankside. Under Royal Patronage. The Glove by Peregrine Jay. The Dolphin Glove with Documents will be on view in the foyer. Completely sold out for the next four weeks. Waiting list now open.

“You’ve been so very obliging,” Jeremy Jones said to the learned young assistant at the museum, “letting us have access to the glove and take up so much of your time, that Miss Du

“That’s very nice of you. I shall be most interested.”

“They’re only stage-props, you know,” Jeremy said, opening a cardboard box. “But I’ve taken a little more trouble than usual because the front row of the stalls will be comparing them to the real thing.”

“And because it was a labour of love,” Emily said. “Mostly that, Jeremy, now, wasn’t it?”

“Well, perhaps. There you are.”

He turned back a piece of old silk and exposed the gloves lying neatly, side by side. The assistant bent over them. “I should think the front row of the stalls will be perfectly satisfied,” he said. “They are really very good copies. Accurate in the broad essentials and beautifully worked. Where did you get your materials?”

“From stock. A thread of silk here, a seed-pearl there. Most of it’s false, of course. The sequins are Victorian, as you see.”

“They fill the bill quite well, however, at a distance. I hope you never feel tempted,” the assistant said with pedantic archness, “to go in for antiquarian forgery, Mr. Jones. You’d be much too successful.”

“To me,” Jeremy said, “it seems a singularly revolting form of chicanery.”

“Good. I understand that a car will be sent here to collect the glove tomorrow. I am to deliver it at the theatre and to see it safely housed. I believe you have designed the setting. Perhaps you would call in here and we can go together. I would prefer to have someone with me. U

“I will be delighted to come,” said Jeremy.

“There is to be an observer at the theatre, I understand, to witness the procedure and inspect the safety precautions. Somebody from the police, I think it is.”

“So I hear,” said Jeremy. “I’m glad to know they are being careful.”

The Malaise of First Night Nerves had gripped Peregrine, not tragically and aesthetically by the throat but, as is its habit, shamefully in the guts.

At half past six on Thursday morning he caught sight of himself in the bathroom shaving-glass. He saw, with revulsion, a long, livid face, pinched up into untimely wrinkles and strange dun-coloured pouches. The stubbled jaw sagged and the lips were pallid. There was a general suggestion of repulsive pig-headedness and a terrible dearth of charm.

The final dress-rehearsal had ended five hours ago. In fourteen hours the curtain would rise and in twenty-four hours he would be quivering under the lash of the morning critics.

“Oh God, God, why, why have I done this fearful thing.”

Every prospect of the coming day and night was of an excursion with Torquemada: the hours when there was nothing to do were as baleful as those when he would be occupied. He would order flowers, send telegrams, receive telegrams, answer telephone calls. He would prowl to and fro and up and down all alone in his lovely theatre, unable to rest, unable to think coherently, and when he met anybody—Winty Meyer or the stage-director or the S.M. or some hellish gossip hound—he would be cool and detached. At intervals he would take great nauseating swigs from a bottle of viscous white medicine.

He tried going back to bed but hated it. After a time he got up, shaved his awful face, bathed, dressed, suddenly was invaded by a profound inertia and sleepiness, lay down and was instantly possessed of a compulsion to walk.