Peregrine helped her into her coat with rather a perfunctory air and banged round the flat getting his own coat and shutting drawers.

When he came back and found Emily with her hands in her pockets looking out of the window he said loudly: ‘All the same, it’s scarcely fair to have cloudy hair and a husky voice and your sort of face and body and intelligence and not even think about being provocative.’

‘I do apologize.’

‘I suppose I can’t just give you “a single famished kiss”?’

‘All right,’ said Emily. ‘But not too famished.’

‘Emily!’ Peregrine muttered and became, to his astonishment, breathless.

When they arrived at her flat in Hampstead she thanked him again for her party and he kissed her again but lightly this time. ‘For my own peace of mind,’ he said. ‘Dear Emily, good night.’

‘Good night, dear Peregrine.’

‘Do you know something?’

‘What?’

‘We open a fortnight tonight.’

V

BLISS FOR BARDOLATERS

STAGGERING DISCOVERY ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS SAY EXPERTS

MYSTERY GLOVE

WHO FOUND IT? DOLPHIN DISCOVERY

FIND OF FOUR CENTURIES

NO FAKING SAY EGG-HEADS SHAKESPEARE’S DYING SON

IN HIS OWN WRITE

BARD’S HAND AND NO KIDDING INSPIRES PLAYWRIGHT JAY

Important Discovery

Exhaustive tests have satisfied the most distinguished scholars and experts of the authenticity –

Glove – Letter – Sensation

‘It’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,’ says tall, gangling playwright, Peregrine Jay.

WHO OWNS THE DOLPHIN GLOVE?

WE GIVE YOU ONE GUESS ‘NO COMMENT’ – CONDUCIS

FABULOUS OFFER FROM USA

AMAZING DEVELOPMENTS

DOLPHIN GLOVE MYSTERY

Spokesman for Conducis says No Decision on Sale. May go to States.

Coming Events

The restored Dolphin Theatre on Bankside will open on Thursday with a new play: The Glove, written and directed by Peregrine Jay and inspired, it is generally understood, by the momentous discovery of –

Opening Tomorrow

At The Dolphin. Bankside. Under Royal Patronage. The Glove by Peregrine Jay. The Dolphin Glove with Documents will be on view in the foyer. Completely sold out for the next four weeks. Waiting list now open.

VI

‘You’ve been so very obliging,’ Jeremy Jones said to the learned young assistant at the museum, ‘letting us have access to the glove and take up so much of your time, that Miss Dunne suggested you might like to see the finished copies.’

‘That’s very nice of you. I shall be most interested.’

‘They’re only stage-props, you know,’ Jeremy said, opening a cardboard box. ‘But I’ve taken a little more trouble than usual because the front row of the stalls will be comparing them to the real thing.’

‘And because it was a labour of love,’ Emily said. ‘Mostly that, Jeremy, now, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, perhaps. There you are.’