He turned back a piece of old silk and exposed the gloves lying neatly, side by side. The assistant bent over them. ‘I should think the front row of the stalls will be perfectly satisfied,’ he said. ‘They are really very good copies. Accurate in the broad essentials and beautifully worked. Where did you get your materials?’

‘From stock. A thread of silk here, a seed-pearl there. Most of it’s false, of course. The sequins are Victorian, as you see.’

‘They fill the bill quite well, however, at a distance. I hope you never feel tempted,’ the assistant said with pedantic archness, ‘to go in for antiquarian forgery, Mr Jones. You’d be much too successful.’

‘To me,’ Jeremy said, ‘it seems a singularly revolting form of chicanery.’

‘Good. I understand that a car will be sent here to collect the glove tomorrow. I am to deliver it at the theatre and to see it safely housed. I believe you have designed the setting. Perhaps you would call in here and we can go together. I would prefer to have someone with me. Unnecessarily particular, I dare say, but there’s been so much publicity.’

‘I will be delighted to come,’ said Jeremy.

‘There is to be an observer at the theatre I understand, to witness the procedure and inspect the safety precautions. Somebody from the police, I think it is.’

‘So I hear,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’m glad to know they are being careful.’

VII

The malaise of First Night Nerves had gripped Peregrine, not tragically and aesthetically by the throat but, as is its habit, shamefully in the guts.

At half past six on Thursday morning, he caught sight of himself in the bathroom shaving-glass. He saw, with revulsion, a long, livid face, pinched up into untimely wrinkles and strange dun-coloured pouches. The stubbled jaw sagged and the lips were pallid. There was a general suggestion of repulsive pig-headedness and a terrible dearth of charm.

The final dress-rehearsal had ended five hours ago. In fourteen hours the curtain would rise and in twenty-four hours he would be quivering under the lash of the morning critics.

‘O God, God, why, why have I done this fearful thing!’

Every prospect of the coming day and night was of an excursion with Torquemada; the hours when there was nothing to do were as baleful as those when he would be occupied. He would order flowers, send telegrams, receive telegrams, answer telephone calls. He would prowl to and fro and up and down all alone in his lovely theatre, unable to rest, unable to think coherently and when he met anybody – Winty Morris or the stage director or the SM or some hellish gossip hound – he would be cool and detached. At intervals he would take great nauseating swigs from a bottle of viscous white medicine.