They were still there, though, two on each side of the portico. They finished at their waists, petering out with grimy discretion in pastrycook’s scrolls. They supported with their sooty heads and arms a lovely wrought-iron balcony and although there were occasional gaps in their plaster foliations they were still in pretty good trim. Peregrine’s envious thoughts restored, too, the elegant sign supported above the portico by two prancing cetaceous mammals, and regilded its lettering: the dolphin theatre.

For a minute or two he looked at it from the far side of the lane. The sun shone brightly now. River, shipping and wet roofs reflected it and the cobblestones in front of the theatre began to send up a thin vapour. A sweep of seagulls broke into atmospheric background noises and a barge honked.

Peregrine crossed the wet little street and entered the portico.

It was stuck over with old bills including the agents’ notice which had evidently been there for a very long time and was torn and discoloured. “This Valuable Commercial Site,” it said.

“In that case,” Peregrine wondered, “why hasn’t it been sold? Why has no forward-looking commercial enterprise snapped up the Valuable Site and sent The Dolphin Theatre crashing about its own ears?”

There were other moribund bills. “Sensational!” one of them proclaimed but the remainder was gone and it was anybody’s guess what sensation it had once recommended. “Go home——” was chalked across one of the doors but somebody had rubbed out the rest of the legend and substituted graffiti of a more or less predictable kind. It was all very dismal.

But as Peregrine approached the doors he found, on the frontage itself, high up and well protected, the tatter of a playbill. It was the kind of thing that patrons of the Players Theatre cherish and Kensington art shops turn into lampshades.