viewer.’ He had not yet looked at Peregrine but he did so now, resentfully. ‘I warned you,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes,’ Peregrine said. ‘You did.’
‘Yes, well, thank you. But I’m sure –’
‘That will do. There has been gross negligence. Good morning.’ The voice was so changed, so brutally icy that Peregrine stared and the clerk drew back as if he’d been stung. They moved off.
The car’s heating system built up. By the time they had crossed the river Peregrine was a little less cold and beginning to feel drowsy. His host offered no further remarks. Once when Peregrine happened to look at the rear-vision glass on the passenger’s side he found he was being observed, apparently with extreme distaste. Or no. Almost with fear. He looked away quickly but out of the tail of his eye saw a gloved hand change the angle of the glass.
‘Oh well,’ he thought bemusedly, ‘I’m bigger and younger than he is. I suppose I can look after myself but how tricky it all is. Take away a man’s clothes, after all, and you make a monkey of him. What sort of public image will I present, fleeing down Park Lane in a gent’s mack and a fur rug, both the property of my pursuer?’
They were in Park Lane now and soon turned off into a side street and thence into the cul-de-sac called Drury Place. The car pulled up. The chauffeur got out and rang the bell of No.7. As he returned to the car, the house door was opened by a manservant.
Peregrine’s host said in a comparatively cheerful voice: ‘Not far to go. Up the steps and straight in.’
The chauffeur opened the door. ‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘shan’t be long, shall we?’
There really was nothing else for it. Three impeccable men, an errand boy and a tightly encased lady carrying a little dog, walked down the footpath.
Peregrine got out and instead of bolting into the house, made an entrance of it. He ascended the steps with deliberation leaving a trail of filthy footprints behind him and dragging his fur rug like a ceremonial train. The manservant stood aside.
‘Thank you,’ Peregrine said grandly. ‘I have fallen, as you see, into dirty water.’
‘Quite so, sir.’
‘Up to my neck.’
‘Very unfortunate, sir.’
‘For all concerned,’ said Peregrine.
His host had arrived.
‘First of all, of course, a bath,’ he was saying, ‘and something to defeat that shivering, Mawson?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘And then come and see me.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The man went upstairs. Peregrine’s host was now behaving in so normal a manner that he began to wonder if he himself had perhaps been bemused by his hideous experience. There was some talk of the efficacy of Epsom salts in a hot bath and of coffee laced with rum. Peregrine listened in a trance.
‘Do forgive me for bossing you about like this. You must be feeling ghastly and really, I do blame myself.’
‘By why?’
‘Yes, Mawson?’
‘If the gentleman will walk up, sir.’
‘Quite so. Quite so. Good.’
Peregrine walked up and was shown into a steaming and aromatic bathroom.
‘I thought pine, sir, would be appropriate,’ said Mawson. ‘I hope the temperature is as you like it. May I suggest a long, hot soak, sir?’
‘You may indeed,’ said Peregrine warmly.
‘Perhaps I may take your rug and coat. And shoes,’ said Mawson with an involuntary change of voice. ‘You will find a bath wrap on the rail and a hot rum and lemon within easy reach. If you would be good enough to ring, sir, when you are ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘To dress, sir.’
It seemed a waste of time to say: ‘In what?’ so Peregrine merely said ‘Thank you’ and Mawson said ‘Thank you’ and withdrew.
It was rapture beyond compare in the bath. Essence of pine. A lovely longhandled brush. Pine-smelling soap. And the hot rum and lemon. He left off shivering, soaped himself all over, including his head, scrubbed himself scarlet, submerged completely, rose, drank and tried to take a responsible view of the situation. In this he failed. Too much had occurred. He realized after a time that he was becoming light-headed and without at all fancying the idea took a hard-hitting cold shower. This restored him. Rough-dried and wrapped in a towelling bathrobe he rang the bell. He felt wonderful.
Mawson came and Peregrine said he would like to telephone for some clothes though when he thought about it he didn’t quite know where he would ring. Jeremy Jones with whom he shared a flat would certainly be out and it wasn’t the morning for their charlady. The Unicorn Theatre? Somebody would be there, of course, but who?
Mawson showed him to a bedroom where there was a telephone.
There were also clothes laid out on the bed. ‘I think they are approximately your size, sir. It is hoped that you will have no objection to making use of them in the meantime,’ said Mawson.
‘Yes, but look here –’
‘It will be much appreciated if you make use of them. Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘I – honestly – I –’
‘Mr Conducis sends his compliments, sir, and hopes you will join him in the library.’
Peregrine’s jaw dropped.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mawson neatly and withdrew.
Conducis? Conducis! It was as if Mawson had said ‘Mr Onassis’. Could this possibly be Mr Vassily Conducis? The more Peregrine thought about it the more he decided that it could. But what in the wide world would Mr Vassily Conducis be up to in a derelict theatre on the South Bank at half past ten in the morning when he ought to have been abominably lolling on his yacht in the Aegean? And what was he, Peregrine, up to in Mr Conducis’s house which (it now dawned upon him) was on a scale of insolently quiet grandeur such as he had never expected to encounter outside the sort of book which, in any case, he never read.
Peregrine looked round the room and felt he ought to curl his lip at it. After all he did read his New Statesman. He then looked at the clothes on the bed and found them to be on an equal footing with what, being a man of the theatre, he thought of as the décor. Absently, he picked up a gayish tie that was laid out beside a heavy silk shirt. ‘Charvet’ said the label. Where had he read of Charvet?
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he thought. He sat on the bed and dialled several numbers without success. The theatre didn’t answer. He put on the clothes and saw that though they were conservative in style he looked startlingly presentable
