Trevor could be, as Alleyn put it, bent at the waist. He had been so bent and was propped up in a sitting position in his private room. A bed-tray on legs was arranged across his stomach, ready for any offerings that might be forthcoming. His condition had markedly improved and he was inclined, though still feebly, to throw his weight about.

The private room was small but there was a hospital screen in one corner of it and behind the screen, secreted there before Trevor was wheeled in, sat Inspector Fox, his large, decent feet concealed by Trevor’s suitcase. Alleyn occupied the bedside chair.

On receiving assurances from Alleyn that the police were not on his tracks Trevor repeated, with more fluency, his previous account of his antics in the deserted auditorium, but he would not or could not carry the recital beyond the point when he was in the circle and heard a distant telephone ring. ‘I don’t remember another thing,’ he said importantly. ‘I’ve blacked out. I was concussed. The doc says I was very badly concussed. Here! Where did I fall, Super? What’s the story?’

‘You fell into the stalls.’

‘Would you mind!’

‘True.’

‘Into the stalls! Cripes! Why?’

‘That’s what I want to find out.’

Trevor looked sideways. ‘Did old Henry Jobbins lay into me?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Or Chas Random?’

A knowledgeable look: a disfigured look of veiled gratification, perhaps, appeared like a blemish on Trevor’s page-boy face. He giggled.

‘He was wild with me, Chas was. Listen: Chas had it in for me, Super, really he did. I got that camp’s goat, actually, good and proper.’

Alleyn listened and absently noted how underlying cockney seeped up through superimposed drama academy. Behind carefully turned vowel and consonant jibed a Southwark urchin. ‘Goo’ un’ pro-per,’ Trevor was really saying, however classy the delivery.

‘Some of the company are coming in to see you,’ Alleyn said. ‘They may only stay for a minute or two but they’d like to say hallo.’

‘I’d be pleased,’ Trevor graciously admitted. He was extremely complacent.

Alleyn watched him and talked to him for a little while longer and then, conscious of making a decision that might turn out most lamentably, he said:

‘Look here, young Trevor, I’m going to ask you to help me in a very tricky and important business. If you don’t like the suggestion you needn’t have anything to do with it. On the other hand –’

He paused. Trevor gave him a sharp look.

‘Nothing comes to the dumb,’ he said. ‘What seems to be the trouble? Come on and give.’

Ten minutes later his visitors began to arrive, ushered in by Peregrine Jay. ‘Just tell them,’ Alleyn had said, ‘that he’d like to see them for a few minutes and arrange the timetable. You can pen them in the waiting-room at the end of the corridor.’

They brought presents.