Free Killer Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh Page B

girl.”
    Knight received him with an air that seemed to be compounded of graciousness and overtones of huff. He was the centre of a group: Winter Meyer, Mrs. Greenslade, who acted as hostess and was beautifully dressed and excessively poised, Destiny Meade and one of the personages, who wore an expansive air of having acquired her.
    “Ah, Perry, dear boy,” Marcus Knight said, raising his glass to salute. “I wondered if I should manage to have a word with you. Do forgive me,” he said jollily to the group. “If I don’t fasten my hooks in him now he’ll escape me altogether.” Somewhat, Peregrine thought, to her astonishment, Knight kissed Mrs. Greenslade’s hand. “Lovely, lovely party,” he said and moved away. Peregrine saw Mrs. Greenslade open her eyes very widely for a fraction of a second at the personage. “We’re amusing her,” he thought sourly.
    “Perry,” Knight said, taking him by the elbow. “May we have a long, long talk about your wonderful play? And I mean that, dear boy. Your
wonderful
play.”
    “Thank you, Marco.”
    “Not here, of course,” Knight said, waving his disengaged hand, “not now. But soon. And, in the meantime, a thought.”
    “Oops!” Peregrine thought. “Here we go.”
    “Just a thought. I throw it out for what it’s worth. Don’t you feel — and I’m speaking absolutely disinterestedly — don’t you feel that in your Act Two,
dear
Perry, you keep Will Shakespeare offstage for
rather
a long time? I mean, having built up this tremendous tension—”
    Peregrine listened to the celebrated voice and as he listened he looked at the really beautiful face with its noble brow and delicate bone structure. He watched the mouth and thought how markedly an exaggerated dip in the bow of the upper lip resembled that of the Droushout engraving and the so-called Grafton portrait. “I must put up with him,” Peregrine thought. “He’s got the prestige, he’s got the looks and his voice is like no other voice. God give me strength.”
    “I’ll think very carefully about it, Marco,” he said and he knew that Knight knew he was going to do nothing of the sort. Knight, in a grand seignorial manner, clapped him on the shoulder. “We shall agree,” he cried, “like birds in their little nest.”
    “I’m sure of it,” said Peregrine.
    “One other thing, dear boy, and this is your private ear.” He steered Peregrine by the elbow into a corridor leading off to the boxes. “I find with some surprise,” he said, muting the exquisite voice, “that we are to have W. Hartly Grove in our company.”
    “I thought he read Mr. W.H. quite well, didn’t you?”
    “I could scarcely bring myself to listen,” said Knight.
    “Oh,” Peregrine said coolly. “Why?”
    “My dear man, do you know anything at all about Mr. Harry Grove?”
    “Only that he is a reasonably good actor. Marco,” Peregrine said, “don’t let’s start any anti-Grove thing. For your information, and I’d be terribly grateful if you’d treat this as strictly—very strictly, Marco—between ourselves, I’ve had no hand in this piece of casting. It was done at the desire of the Management. They have been generous to a degree in every other respect and even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have opposed them.”
    “You had this person
thrust
upon you?”
    “If you like to put it that way.”
    “You should have refused.”
    “I had no valid reason for doing so. It is a good piece of casting. I beg you, Marco, not to raise a rumpus at the outset. Time enough when anything happens to justify it.”
    For a moment he wondered if Knight was going to produce a temperament then and there and throw in his part. But Peregrine felt sure Knight had a great desire to play Will Shakespeare and although, in the shadowy passage, he could see the danger signal of mounting purple in the oval face, the usual outburst did not follow this phenomenon.
    Instead Knight said: “Listen. You think I am unreasonable. Allow