“It’s a present,” Emily said. “It was meant, under less ghastly circs, to celebrate The Dolphin’s first six months. I thought I’d get it suitably framed but then I decided to give it to you now to cheer you up a little.”

Peregrine began kissing her very industriously.

“Hi!” she said. “Steady.”

“Where, you darling love, did you get it?”

“Charlie Random told me about it. He’d seen it in one of his prowls in a print shop off Long Acre. Isn’t he odd? He didn’t seem to want it himself. He goes in for nothing later than 1815, he said. So, I got it.”

“It’s not a print, by Heaven, it’s an original. It’s a Phiz original, Emmy. Oh we shall frame it so beautifully and hang it—” He stopped for a second. “Hang it,” he said, “in the best possible place. Gosh, won’t it send old Jer sky high!”

“Where is he?”

Peregrine said, “He had a thing to do. He ought to be back by now. Emily, I couldn’t have ever imagined myself telling anybody what I’m going to tell you so it’s a sort of compliment. Do you know what Jer did?”

And he told Emily about Jeremy and the glove.

“He must have been demented,” she said flatly.

“I know. And what Alleyn’s decided to do about him, who can tell? You don’t sound as flabbergasted as I expected.”

“Don’t I? No, well—I’m not altogether. When we were making the props Jeremy used to talk incessantly about the glove. He’s got a real fixation on the ownership business, hasn’t he? It really is almost a kink, don’t you feel? Harry was saying something the other day about after all the value of those kinds of jobs was purely artificial and fundamentally rather silly. If he was trying to get a rise out of Jeremy, he certainly succeeded. Jeremy was livid. I thought there’d be a punch-up before we were through. Perry, what’s the matter? Have I been beastly?”

“No, no. Of course not.”

“I have,” she said contritely. “He’s your great friend and I’ve been talking about him as if he’s a specimen. I am sorry.”

“You needn’t be. I know what he’s like. Only I do wish he hadn’t done this.”

Peregrine walked over to the window and stared across the river towards The Dolphin. Last night, he thought, only sixteen hours ago, in that darkened house, a grotesque overcoat had moved in and out of shadow. Last night— He looked down into the street below. There from the direction of the bridge came a ginger head, thrust forward above heavy shoulders and adorned, like a classic ewer, with a pair of outstanding ears.

“Here he comes,” Peregrine said. “They haven’t run him in as yet, it seems.”

“I’ll take myself off.”

“No, you don’t. I’ve got to drop this stuff at the Yard. Come with me. We’ll take the car and I’ll run you home.”

“Haven’t you got things you ought to do? Telephonings and fussings? What about Trevor?”

“I’ve done that. No change. Big trouble with Mum. Compensation. It’s Greenslade’s and Winty’s headache, thank God. We want to do what’s right and a tidy bit more but she’s out for the earth.”

“Oh dear.”

“Here’s Jer.”

He came in looking chilled and rather sickly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you had—oh hullo, Em.”

“Hullo, Jer.”

“I’ve told her,” Peregrine said.

“Thank you very much.”

“There’s no need to take it grandly, is there?”

“Jeremy, you needn’t mind my knowing. Truly.”

“I don’t in the least mind,” he said in a high voice. “No doubt you’ll both be surprised to learn I’ve been released with a blackguarding that would scour the hide off an alligator.”

“Surprised and delighted,” Peregrine said. “Where’s the loot?”

“At the Yard.”

Jeremy stood with his hands in his pockets as if waiting for something irritating to occur.

“Do you want the car, Jer? I’m going to the Yard now,” Peregrine said and explained why. Jeremy remarked that Peregrine was welcome to the car and added that he was evidently quite the white-haired Trusty of the Establishment. He stood in the middle of the room and watched them go.

“He is in a rage?” Emily said as they went to the car.

“I don’t know what he’s in but he’s bloody lucky it’s not the lock-up. Come on.”

Alleyn put down Peregrine’s report and gave it a definitive slap. “It’s useful, Fox,” he said. “You’d better read it.”

He dropped it on the desk before his colleague, filled his pipe and strolled over to the window. Like Peregrine Jay, an hour earlier, he looked down at the Thames and he thought how closely this case clung to the river, as if it had been washed up by the incoming tide and left high-and-dry for their inspection. Henry Jobbins of Phipps Passage was a waterside character if ever there was one. Peregrine Jay and Jeremy Jones were not far east along the Embankment. Opposite them The Dolphin pushed up its stage-house and flagstaff with a traditional flourish on Bankside. Behind Tabard Lane in the Borough lurked Mrs. Blewitt while her terrible Trevor, still on the South Bank, languished in St. Terence’s. And as if to top it off, he thought idly, here we are at the Yard, hard by the river.

“But with Conducis,” Alleyn muttered, “we move west and, I suspect, a good deal further away than Mayf air.”

He looked at Fox who, with eyebrows raised high above his spectacles in his stuffy reading-expression, concerned himself with Peregrine’s report.

The telephone rang and Fox reached for it “Super’s room,” he said. “Yes? I’ll just see.”

He laid his great palm across the mouthpiece. “It’s Miss Destiny Meade,” he said, “for you.”

“Is it, by gum! What’s she up to, I wonder. All right. I’d better.”

“Look,” cried Destiny when he had answered. “I know you’re a kind, kind man.”

“Do you?” Alleyn said. “How?”

“I have a sixth sense about people. Now, you won’t laugh at me, will you? Promise.”

“I’ve no inclination to do so, believe me.”

“And you won’t slap me back? You’ll come and have a delicious little dinky at six, or even earlier or whenever it suits, and tell me I’m being as stupid as an owl. Now, do, do, do, do, do. Please, please, please.”

“Miss Meade,” Alleyn said, “it’s extremely kind of you but I’m on duty and I’m afraid I can’t.”

“On duty! But you’ve been on duty all day. That’s worse than being an actor and you can’t possibly mean it.”

“Have you thought of something that may concern this case?”

“It concerns me,” she cried and he could imagine how widely her eyes opened at the telephone.

“Perhaps if you would just say what it is,” Alleyn suggested. He looked across at Fox who, with his spectacles halfway down his nose, blankly contemplated his superior and listened at the other telephone. Alleyn crossed his eyes and protruded his tongue.

“—I can’t really, not on the telephone. It’s too complicated. Look — I’m sure you’re up to your ears and not for the wide, wide world—” The lovely voice moved unexpectedly into its higher and less mellifluous register. “I’m nervous,” it said rapidly. “I’m afraid. I’m terrified. I’m being threatened.” Alleyn heard a distant bang and a male voice. Destiny Meade whispered in his ear, “Please come. Please come.” Her receiver clicked and the dialling tone set in.

“Now who in Melpomene’s dear name,” Alleyn said, “does that lovely lady think she’s leading down the garden path? Or is she? By gum, if she is,” he said, “she’s going to get such a tap on the temperament as hasn’t come her way since she hit the headlines. When are we due with Conducis? Five o’clock. It’s now half past two. Find us a car, Br’er Fox, we’re off to Cheyne Walk.”

Fifteen minutes later they were shown into Miss Destiny Meade’s drawing-room.

It was sumptuous to a degree and in maddeningly good taste: an affair of mushroom-coloured curtains, dashes of Schiaparelli pink, dull satin, Severes plaques and an unusual number of orchids. In the middle of it all was Destiny, wearing a heavy sleeveless sheath with a mink collar: and not at all pleased to see Inspector Fox.