‘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for permission to view and had been told that the theatre was no longer in their hands and they believed had been withdrawn from the market.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 with their supposed antiquity had been discovered. An expert on the handwriting of ancient documents, at present in America, would be consulted on his return. If his report was favourable, Peregrine gathered, a conference of authorities would be called.

‘Well,’ Jeremy said, ‘they haven’t laughed it out of court, evidently.’

‘Evidently.’