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.’
III
The expert folded his hands and leant 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 saltwater 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, spectography 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 E. M. 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.’
‘I shouldn’t build on it,’ the expert said drily.
‘Of course not.’
‘Has Mr Conducis said anything about their value? I mean – even if there’s only a remote chance they will be worth – well, I can’t begin to say what their monetary value might be but I know what we’d feel about it, here.’
Peregrine and the expert eyed each other for a moment or two. ‘I suppose,’ Peregrine said, ‘he’s thought of that but I must say he’s behaved pretty casually over it.’
‘Well, we shan’t,’ said the expert. ‘I’ll give you your receipt and ask you to stay and see the things safely stowed.’
He stooped for a moment over the little, dead wrinkled glove. ‘If it were true!’ he murmured.
‘I know, I know,’ Peregrine cried. ‘It’s frightening to think what would happen. The avid attention, the passionate greed for possession.’
‘There’s been murder done for less,’ said the expert lightly.
IV
Five weeks later Peregrine, looking rather white about the gills and brownish under the eyes, wrote the last word of his play and underneath it: ‘Curtain.’ That night he read it to Jeremy who thought well of it.
There had been no word from Mr Greenslade. The stage-house of The Dolphin could still be seen on Bankside. Jeremy had asked at the estate agents for permission to view and had been told that the theatre was no longer in their hands and they believed had been withdrawn from the market. Their manner was stuffy.
From time to time the two young men talked about The Dolphin but a veil of unreality seemed to have fallen between Peregrine and his strange interlude: so much so that he sometimes almost felt as if he had invented it.
In an interim report on the glove and documents, the museum had said that preliminary tests had given no evidence of spurious inks or paper and so far nothing inconsistent
