He gave a kind of stifled cry and started up the stairs.

“Just a moment, sir. If you please.”

“The glove,” Peregrine said. “The letters and the glove. I must see. I must look.”

The Sergeant was beside him. A great hand closed without undue force round his upper arm.

“All right, sir. All right. But you can’t go up there yet, you know. You join your young lady and the sick kiddy. And if you’re referring to the contents of that glassed-in cabinet up there, I can tell you right away. It’s been opened from the back and they seem to have gone.”

Peregrine let out an incoherent cry and blundered into the stalls to tell Emily.

For him and for Emily the next half-hour was one of frustration, confusion and despair. They had to collect themselves and give statements to the Sergeant who entered them at an even pace in his notebook. Peregrine talked about hours and duties and who ought to be informed and Mr. Greenslade and Mr. Conducis, and he stared at the Sergeant’s enormous forefinger, flattened across the image of a crown on a blue cover. Peregrine didn’t know who Jobbin’s next-of-kin might be. He said, as if that would help: “He was a nice chap. He was a bit of a character. A nice chap.”

The theatre continually acquired more police: plainclothes, unhurried men, the most authoritative of whom was referred to by the Sergeant as the Div-Super and addressed as Mr. Gibson. Peregrine and Emily heard him taking a statement from Hawkins, who cried very much and said it wasn’t a fair go.

The ambulance came. Peregrine and Emily stood by while Trevor, the whites of his eyes showing under his heavy lashes and his breathing very heavy, was gently examined. A doctor appeared: the divisional-surgeon, Peregrine heard someone say. Mr. Gibson asked him if there was any chance of a return to consciousness and he said something about Trevor being deeply concussed.

“He’s got broken ribs and a broken right leg,” he said, “and an unbroken bruise on his jaw. It’s a wonder he’s alive. We won’t know about the extent of internal injuries until we’ve had a look-see,” said the divisional-surgeon. “Get him into St. Terence’s at once.” He turned to Peregrine. “Would you know the next-of-kin?”

Peregrine was about to say: “Only too well,” but checked himself. “Yes,” he said, “his mother.”

“Would you have the address?” asked Mr. Gibson. “And the telephone number.”

“In the office. Upstairs. No, wait a moment. I’ve a cast list in my pocketbook. Here it is: Mrs. Blewitt.”

“Perhaps you’d be so kind as to ring her, Mr. Jay.

She ought to be told at once. What’s the matter, Mr. Jay?”

“She meets him, usually. At the top of the lane. I— Oh God, poor Jobbins told me that. I wonder what she did when Trevor didn’t turn up. You’d have thought she’d have come to the theatre.”

“Can we get this boy away?” asked the divisional-surgeon crisply.

“O.K., Doc. You better go with them,” Mr. Gibson said to the constable who had stayed by Trevor. “Keep your ears open. Anything. Whisper. Anything. Don’t let some starched battleaxe push you about. We want to know what hit him. Don’t leave him, now.”

Mr. Gibson had a piece of chalk in his hand. He ran it round Trevor’s little heap of a body, grinding it into the carpet. “O.K.,” he said and Trevor was taken away.

The divisional-surgeon said he’d take a look-see at the body and went off with the Sergeant. Superintendent Gibson was about to accompany them when Peregrine and Emily, who had been in consultation, said: “Er—” and he turned back.

“Yes, Mr. Jay? Miss Dunne? Was there something?”

“It’s just,” Emily said, “—we wondered if you knew that Mr. Roderick Alleyn—I mean Superintendent Alleyn—supervised the installation of the things that were in the wall-safe. The things that have been stolen.”

“Rory Alleyn!” the Superintendent ejaculated. “Is that so? Now, why was that, I wonder?”

Peregrine explained. “I think,” he said finally, “that Mr. Vassily Conducis, who owns the things—”

“So I understand.”

“—asked Mr. Alleyn to do it as a special favour. Mr. Alleyn was very much interested in the things.”

“He would be. Well, thank you,” said Mr. Gibson rather heavily. “And now, if you’d phone this Mrs. Blewitt. Lives in my Division, I see. Close to our headquarters. If she can’t get transport to the hospital tell her, if you please, that we’ll lay something on. No, wait on. Second thoughts. I’ll send a policewoman round from the station if one’s available. Less of a shock.”

“Shouldn’t we ring her up—just to warn her someone’s coming?” Emily asked. “Should I offer to go?”

Mr. Gibson stared at her and said that he thought on the whole it would be better if Peregrine and Emily remained in the theatre a little longer, but, yes, they could telephone to Mrs. Blewitt after he himself had made one or two little calls. He padded off—not fast, not slow—towards the foyer. Peregrine and Emily talked disjointedly. After some minutes they heard sounds of new arrivals by the main entrance and of Superintendent Gibson greeting them.

“None of this is real,” Emily said presently.

“Are you exhausted?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I ought to tell Greenslade,” Peregrine ejaculated. “He ought to be told, good God!”

“And Mr. Conducis? After all, it’s his affair.”

“Greenslade can tackle that one. Emily, are you in a muddle like me? I can’t get on top of this. Jobbins. That appalling kid. Shakespeare’s note and the glove. All broken or destroyed or stolen. Isn’t it beastly, all of it? What are human beings? What’s the thing that makes monsters of us all?”

“It’s out of our country. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“No, but we act it. It’s our raw material. Murder. Violence. Theft. Sexual greed. They’re commonplace to us. We do our Stanislavsky over them. We search out motives and associated experiences. We try to think our way into Macbeth or Othello or a witch-hunt or an Inquisitor or a killer-doctor at Auschwitz and sometimes we think we’ve succeeded. But confront us with the thing itself! It’s as if a tractor had rolled over us. We’re nothing. Superintendent Gibson is there instead to put it all on a sensible, factual basis.”

“Good luck to him,” said Emily rather desperately.

“Good luck? You think? All right, if you say so.”

“Perhaps I can now ring up Mrs. Blewitt.”

“I’ll come with you.”

The foyer was brilliantly lit and there were voices and movement upstairs where Jobbins lay. Cameramen’s lamps flashed and grotesquely reminded Peregrine of the opening night of his play. Superintendent Gibson’s voice and that of the divisional-surgeon were clearly distinguishable. There was also a new rather comfortable voice. Downstairs, a constable stood in front of the main doors. Peregrine told him that Mr. Gibson had said they might use the telephone, and the constable replied pleasantly that it would be quite all right he was sure.

Peregrine watched Emily dial the number and wait with the receiver to her ear. How pale she was. Her hair was the kind that goes into a mist after it has been out in the rain and her wide mouth drooped at the corners like a child’s. He could hear the buzzer ringing, on and on. Emily had just shaken her head at him when the telephone quacked angrily. She spoke for some time, evidently to no avail and at last hung up.

“A man,” she said. “A landlord, I should think. He was livid. He says Mrs. Blewitt went to a party after her show and didn’t meet Trevor tonight. He says she’s ‘flat out to it’ and nothing would rouse her. So he hung up.”

“The policewoman will have to cope. I’d better rouse Greenslade, I suppose. He lives at some godawful place in the stockbrokers’ belt. Here goes.”

Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Greenslade had a bedside telephone. She could be heard, querulous and half asleep, in the background. Mr. Greenslade said: “Shut up, darling. Very well, Jay, I’ll come down. Does Alleyn know?”