‘You may indeed,’ said Peregrine warmly.
‘Perhaps I may take your rug and coat. And shoes,’ said Mawson with an involuntary change of voice. ‘You will find a bath wrap on the rail and a hot rum and lemon within easy reach. If you would be good enough to ring, sir, when you are ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘To dress, sir.’
It seemed a waste of time to say: ‘In what?’ so Peregrine merely said ‘Thank you’ and Mawson said ‘Thank you’ and withdrew.
It was rapture beyond compare in the bath. Essence of pine. A lovely longhandled brush. Pine-smelling soap. And the hot rum and lemon. He left off shivering, soaped himself all over, including his head, scrubbed himself scarlet, submerged completely, rose, drank and tried to take a responsible view of the situation. In this he failed. Too much had occurred. He realized after a time that he was becoming light-headed and without at all fancying the idea took a hard-hitting cold shower. This restored him. Rough-dried and wrapped in a towelling bathrobe he rang the bell. He felt wonderful.
Mawson came and Peregrine said he would like to telephone for some clothes though when he thought about it he didn’t quite know where he would ring. Jeremy Jones with whom he shared a flat would certainly be out and it wasn’t the morning for their charlady. The Unicorn Theatre? Somebody would be there, of course, but who?
Mawson showed him to a bedroom where there was a telephone.
There were also clothes laid out on the bed. ‘I think they are approximately your size, sir. It is hoped that you will have no objection to making use of them in the meantime,’ said Mawson.
‘Yes, but look here –’
‘It will be much appreciated if you make use of them. Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘I – honestly – I –’
‘Mr Conducis sends his compliments, sir, and hopes you will join him in the library.’
Peregrine’s jaw dropped.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mawson neatly and withdrew.
Conducis? Conducis! It was as if Mawson had said ‘Mr Onassis’. Could this possibly be Mr Vassily Conducis? The more Peregrine thought about it the more he decided that it could. But what in the wide world would Mr Vassily Conducis be up to in a derelict theatre on the South Bank at half past ten in the morning when he ought to have been abominably lolling on his yacht in the Aegean? And what was he, Peregrine, up to in Mr Conducis’s house which (it now dawned upon him) was on a scale of insolently quiet grandeur such as he had never expected to encounter outside the sort of book which, in any case, he never read.
Peregrine looked round the room and felt he ought to curl his lip at it. After all he did read his New Statesman. He then looked at the clothes on the bed and found them to be on an equal footing with what, being a man of the theatre, he thought of as the décor. Absently, he picked up a gayish tie that was laid out beside a heavy silk shirt. ‘Charvet’ said the label. Where had he read of Charvet?
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he thought. He sat on the bed and dialled several numbers without success. The theatre didn’t answer. He put on the clothes and saw that though they were conservative in style he looked startlingly presentable in them. Even the shoes fitted.
He rehearsed a short speech and went downstairs where he found Mawson waiting for him.
He said: ‘Did you say: Mr Conducis?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Vassily Conducis. Will you step this way, sir?’
Mr Conducis stood in front of his library fire and Peregrine wondered how on earth he had failed to recognize a face that had been so widely publicized with, it was reported, such determined opposition from its owner. Mr Conducis had an olive, indeed a swarthy complexion and unexpectedly pale eyes. These were merely facial adjuncts and might, Peregrine afterwards thought, have been mass produced for all the speculation they inspired. The mouth, however, was disturbing, being, or so Peregrine thought, both ruthless and vulnerable. The chin was heavy. Mr Conducis had curly black hair going predictably grey at the temples. He looked, by and large, enormously expensive.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Yes. Come in.’ His voice was a light tenor. Was there a faintly foreign inflection? A slight lisp, perhaps.
As Peregrine approached, Mr Conducis looked fixedly at his guest’s hands.
‘You are well?’ he asked. ‘Recovered?’
‘Yes, indeed. I can’t thank you enough, sir. As for – well, as for lending me these things – I really do feel –!’
‘Do they fit?’
‘Yes. Very well.’
‘That is all that is necessary.’
‘Except that after all they are yours,’ Peregrine said and tried a light laugh in order not to sound pompous.
‘I have told you. I am responsible. You might –’ Mr Conducis’s voice faded but his lips soundlessly completed the sentence: ‘– have been drowned.’
‘But honestly, sir!’ Peregrine launched himself on his little speech. ‘You’ve saved my life, you know. I would have just hung on by my fingers until they gave out and then – and then – well, finally and disgustingly drowned as you say.’
Almost soundlessly Mr Conducis said: ‘I should have blamed myself.’
‘But why on earth! For a hole in The Dolphin stage?’
‘It is my property.’
‘Oh,’ Peregrine ejaculated before he could stop himself, ‘how splendid!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I mean: how splendid to own it. It’s such an adorable little playhouse.’
Mr Conducis looked at him without expression. ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘Splendid? Adorable? You make a study of theatres, perhaps?’
‘Not really. I mean I’m not an expert. Good lord, no! But I earn my living in theatres and I am enormously attracted by old ones.’
‘Yes. Will you join me in a drink?’ Mr Conducis said in his wooden manner. ‘I am sure you will.’ He moved to a tray on a sidetable.
‘Your man has already given me a very strong and wonderfully restoring hot rum and lemon.’
‘I am sure that you will have another. The ingredients are here.’
‘A very small one, please,’ Peregrine said. There was a singing sensation in his veins and a slight thrumming in his ears but he still felt wonderful. Mr Conducis busied himself at the tray. He returned with a steaming and aromatic tumbler for Peregrine and something that he had poured out of a jug for himself. Could it be barley water?
‘Shall we sit down,’ he suggested. When they had done so he gave Peregrine a hurried, blank glance and said: ‘You wonder why I was at the theatre, perhaps. There is some question of demolishing it and building on the site. An idea that I have been turning over for some time. I wanted to refresh my memory. The agents told my man you were there.’ He put two fingers in a waistcoat pocket and Peregrine saw his own card had been withdrawn. It looked incredibly grubby.
‘You – you’re going to pull it down?’ he said and heard a horribly false jauntiness in his own unsteady voice. He took a pull at his rum. It was extremely strong.
‘You dislike the proposal,’ Mr Conducis observed, making it a statement rather than a question. ‘Have you any reason other than a general interest in such buildings?’
If Peregrine had been absolutely sober and dressed in his own clothes it is probable that he would have mumbled something ineffectual and somehow