Killer Dolphin (2 page)

He walked towards the Paris Bar.

A man with a shaded face moved toward him.

“Euh!” Peregrine said in his throat. He stopped and so did the man. He could not have told how many heart thuds passed before he saw it was himself.

The bar was backed by a sheet of looking-glass.

Peregrine had recently given up smoking. If he had now had access to a cigarette he would have devoured it. Instead, he whistled, and the sound in that muffled place was so lacking in resonance, so dull, that he fell silent and crossed the foyer to the nearest door into the auditorium. There were two, one on each side of the sunken half-landing. He passed into the circle.

The first impression was dramatic. He had forgotten about the bomb damage. A long shaft of sunlight from a gap in the roof of the stage-house took him by surprise. It produced the effect of a wartime blitz drawing in charcoal and, like a spotlight, found its mark on the empty stage. There, in a pool of mild sunlight, stood a broken chair still waiting, Peregrine thought, for one of Mr. Ruby’s very own actors. Behind the chair lay a black patch that looked as if a paint pot had been upset on the stage. It took Peregrine a moment or two to realize that this must be the hole the clerk had talked about. It was difficult to see it distinctly through the shaft of light.

Against this one note of brilliance the rest of the house looked black. It was in the classic horseshoe form and must have seated, Peregrine thought, about five hundred. He saw that the chairs had little iron trimmings above their plushy backs and that there were four boxes. A loop of fringe dangled from the top of the proscenium and this was all that could be seen of the curtain.

Peregrine moved round the circle and entered the O.P. box, which stank. He backed out of it, opened a door in the circle wall and found an iron stair leading to the stage.

He climbed down. Even these iron steps were muffled with dust and they gave out a half-choked clang as if he were soft-pedaling them.

Now he was onstage, as a man of the theatre should be, and at once he felt much easier—exhilarated even, as if some kind of authority had passed to him by right of entry. He peered through the shaft of sunshine which he saw was dense with motes that floated, danced and veered in response to his own movement. He walked into it, stood by the broken chair and faced the auditorium. Quite dazzled and bemused by the strange tricks of light, he saw the front of the house as something insubstantial and could easily people it with Mr. Ruby’s patrons. Beavers, bonnets, ulsters, shawls. A flutter of programmes. Rows of pale discs that were faces. “Oh, wonderful!” Peregrine thought, and in order to embrace it all, took a pace backward.

To fall without warning, even by the height of a single step, is disturbing. To fall, as he did, now, by his height and the length of his arms into cold, stinking water is monstrous, nightmarish, like a small death. For a moment he only knew that he had been physically insulted. He stared into the shaft of light with its madly jerking molecules, felt wood slip under his gloved fingers and tightened his grip. At the same time he was disgustingly invaded, saturated up to the collarbone in icy stagnant water. He hung at arm’s length.

“Oh God!” Peregrine thought. “Why aren’t I a bloody Bond? Why can’t I make my bloody arms hitch me up? Oh God, don’t let me drown in this unspeakable muck. Oh God, let me keep my head.”

Well, of course, he thought, his hands and arms didn’t have to support his entire weight. Eleven stone. He was buoyed up by whatever he had fallen into. What? A dressing-room turned into a well for surface water? Better not speculate. Better explore. He moved his legs and dreadful ambiguous waves lapped up to his chin. He could find nothing firm with his feet. He thought: “How long can I hang on like this?” And a line of words floated in: “
How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot
?”

What
should
he do? Perhaps a frog-like upward thing? Try it and at least gain a better finger hold? He tried it: he kicked at the water, pulled and clawed at the stage. For a moment he thought he had gained, but his palms slid back, scraping on the edge and sucking back his soaked gloves. He was again suspended. The clerk? If he could hang on, would the clerk send someone to find out why he hadn’t returned the keys? When?
When
? Why in God’s name had he shaken off the man with the oil can from Phipps Bros.? Jobbins. Suppose he were to yell? Was there indeed a broken window where tramps crept in? He took a deep breath and, being thus inflated, rose a little in the water. He yelled.

“Hullo! Hullo! Jobbins!”

His voice was silly and uncannily stifled. Deflated, he sank to his former disgusting level.

He had disturbed more than water when he tried his leap. An anonymous soft object bobbed against his chin. The stench was outrageous. I can’t, he thought, I can’t stay like this. Already his fingers had grown cold and his arms were racked. Presently—soon—he would no longer feel the edge, he would only feel pain and his fingers would slip away. And what then? Float on his back in this unspeakable water and gradually freeze? He concentrated on his hands, tipping his head back to look up the length of his stretched arms at them. The details of his predicament now declared themselves: the pull on his pectoral muscles, on his biceps and forearms, and the terrible strain on his gloved fingers. The creeping obscenity of the water! He hung on for some incalculable age and realized that he was coming to a crisis when his body would no longer be controllable. Something must be done. Now. Another attempt? If there were anything solid to push against Suppose, after all, his feet were only a few inches from the bottom? But what bottom? The floor of a dressing-room? An understage passage? A boxed-in trap? He stretched his feet and touched nothing. The water rose to his mouth. He flexed his legs, kicked, hauled on the edge and bobbed upwards. The auditorium appeared. If he could get his elbows on the edge. No.

But at the moment when the confusion of circle and stalls shot up before his eyes, he had heard a sound that he recognized, a protracted groan, and at the penultimate second, he had seen—what? a splinter of light? And heard? Somebody cough.

“Hi!” Peregrine shouted. “Here! Quick! Help!”

He sank and hung again by his fingers. But someone was coming through the house. Muffled steps on the rags of carpet

“Here! Come here, will you? Onstage.”

The steps halted.

“Look here! I say! Look, for God’s sake come up. I've fallen through the stage. I’ll drown. Why don’t you answer, whoever you are?”

The footsteps started again. A door opened nearby. Pass-door in the Prompt-side box, he thought. Steps up. Now: crossing the stage. Now.

“Who are you?” Peregrine said. “Look out. Look out for the hole.
Look out for my hands. I’ve got gloves on. Don’t tread on my hands.
Help me out of this. But look out. And say something.”

He flung his head back and stared into the shaft of light. Hands covered his hands and then closed about his wrists. At the same time heavy shoulders and a head wearing a hat came as a black silhouette between him and the light. He stared into a face he could not distinguish.

“It doesn’t need much,” he chattered, “if you could just give me a heave I can do it.”

The head was withdrawn. The hands changed their grip. At last the man spoke.

“Very well,” said a voice. “Now.”

He gave his last frog leap, was heaved up, was sprawled across the edge and had crawled back on the stage to the feet of the man. He saw beautiful shoes, sharp trouser ends and the edge of a fine overcoat. He was shivering from head to foot.

“Thank you,” he said. “I couldn’t be more grateful. My God, how I stink.”

He got to his feet.

The man was, he thought, about sixty years old. Peregrine could see his face now. It was extremely pale. He wore a bowler hat and was impeccably dressed.

“You are Mr. Peregrine Jay, I think,” said the man. His voice was toneless, educated and negative.

“Yes—I—I?”

“The people at the estate agents told me. You should have a bath and change. My car is outside.”

“I can’t get into anyone’s car in this state. I’m very sorry, sir,” Peregrine said. His teeth were going like castanets. “You’re awfully kind but—”

“Wait a moment. Or no. Come to the front of the theatre.”

In answer to a gesture, Peregrine walked through the pass-door down into the house and was followed. Stagnant water poured off him. It ran out of his gloved finger-tips and squelched and spurted in his shoes. He went through a box and along a passage and came into the foyer. “Please stay here. I shall only be a moment,” said his rescuer.

He went into the portico, leaving the door open. Out in Wharfingers Lane Peregrine saw a Daimler with a chauffeur. He began to jump and thrash his arms. Water splashed out of him and clouds of dust settled upon his drenched clothes. The man returned with the chauffeur, who carried a fur rug and a heavy mackintosh.

“I suggest you strip and put this on and wrap the rug round you,” the man said. He stretched out his arms as if he were actually thinking of laying hands on Peregrine. He seemed to be suspended between attraction and repulsion. He looked, it struck Peregrine, as if he were making some kind of appeal. “Let me—” he said.

“But, sir, you can’t. I’m disgusting.”

“Please.”

“No, no—really.”

The man walked away. His hands were clasped behind him. Peregrine saw, with a kind of fuddled astonishment, that they were trembling. “My God!” Peregrine thought. “This is a morning and a half. I’d better get out of this one pretty smartly but how the hell—”

“Let me give you a hand, sir,” said the chauffeur to Peregrine. “You’re that cold, aren’t you?”

“I can manage. If only I could wash.”

“Never mind, sir. That’s the idea. Leave them there, sir. I’ll attend to them. Better keep your shoes on, hadn’t you? The coat’ll be a bit of help and the rug’s warm. Ready sir?”

“If I could just have a taxi, I wouldn’t be such an infernal nuisance.”

His rescuer turned and looked, not fully at him but at his shoulder. “I beg you to come,” he said.

Greatly worried by the extravagance of the phrase Peregrine said no more.

The chauffeur went ahead quickly and opened the doors of the car. Peregrine saw that newspaper had been spread over the floor and back seat.

“Please go,” his rescuer said, “I’ll follow.”

Peregrine shambled across the portico and jumped in at the back. The lining of the mackintosh stuck to his body. He hitched the rug around him and tried to clench his chattering jaw.

A boy’s voice in the street called, “Hey, look! Look at that bloke.” The caretaker from Phipps Bros, had appeared at the top of his alley and stared into the car. One or two people stopped and pointed Peregrine out to each other.

As his master crossed the portico the chauffeur locked the theatre doors. Holding Peregrine’s unspeakable clothes at arm’s length he put them in the boot of the car and got into the driver’s seat. In another moment they were moving up Wharfingers Lane.

His rescuer did not turn his head or speak. Peregrine waited for a moment or two and then, controlling his voice with some success, said, “I’m giving you far too much trouble.”

“No.”

“If—if you would be so very kind as to drop me at The Unicorn Theatre I think I could—”

Still without turning his head the man said with extreme formality, “I really do beg that you will allow me to—” he stopped for an unaccountably long time and then said loudly “—to rescue you. I mean to take you to my house and set you right. I shall be most upset otherwise. Dreadfully upset.”

Now he turned and Peregrine had never seen an odder look in anyone’s face. It was an expression almost, he thought, of despair.

“I am responsible,” said his extraordinary host. “Unless you allow me to make amends I shall—I shall feel—very guilty.”

“
Responsible
? But—”

“It will not take very long, I hope. Drury Place.”

“Oh Lord!” Peregrine thought. “What poshery.” He wondered, suddenly, if perhaps the all too obvious explanation was the wrong one and if his rescuer was a slightly demented gentleman and the chauffeur his keeper.

“I really don’t see, sir—” he began, but an inaudible conversation was taking place in the front seat.

“Certainly, sir,” said the chauffeur and drew up outside the estate agents. He pulled the keys out of his pocket as he entered. In a moment or two the clerk’s face appeared looking anxiously and crossly over the painted lower pane of his window. He disappeared and in a moment came running out and round to the passenger’s side.

“Well, sir,” he obsequiously gabbled, “I'm sure I’m very sorry this has occurred. Very regrettable, I’m sure. But as I was saying to your driver, sir, I did warn the viewer.” He had not yet looked at Peregrine but he did so now, resentfully. “I warned you,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” Peregrine said. “You did.”

“Yes, well, thank you. But I’m sure—”

“That will do. There has been gross negligence. Good morning.” The voice was so changed, so brutally icy that Peregrine stared and the clerk drew back as if he’d been stung. They moved off.

The car’s heating system built up. By the time they had crossed the river Peregrine was a little less cold and beginning to feel drowsy. His host offered no further remarks. Once when Peregrine happened to look at the rear-vision glass on the passenger’s side he found he was being observed, apparently with extreme distaste. Or no. Almost with fear. He looked away quickly but out of the tail of his eye saw a gloved hand change the angle of the glass.

“Oh, well,” he thought bemusedly, “I’m bigger and. younger than he is. I suppose I can look after myself, but how tricky it all is. Take away a man’s clothes, after all, and you make a monkey of him. What sort of public image will I present, fleeing down Park Lane in a gent’s mac and a fur rug, both the property of my pursuer?”

They were in Park Lane now and soon turned off into a side street and thence into the cul-de-sac called Drury Place. The car pulled up. The chauffeur got out and rang the bell of No. 7. As he returned to the car, the house door was opened by a manservant.