At 3:17 PM this afternoon, Norah Fell placed a small pencil mark beside the figure 180,200 in the red ledger she has kept at the Bellvue Theatre box office for the past five weeks. She closed the ledger, placed both hands flat on the counter, and sat quite still for approximately fifteen seconds.

Then she walked to the rehearsal room, where her father was blocking Act IV with the cast, and said: “We’re there.”

The Bellvue Theatre has raised 180,200 florins — two hundred above the 180,000-florin target for fly tower repairs that have been the condition of the theatre’s survival since January. Thurston Brothers of Caldwell, the theatrical engineering firm that has held the repair contract in provisional abeyance since 17 March, have been notified. Work begins 2 May. The Lamplighter’s Oath opens 10 April.

The final surge came in the manner that has characterised this entire campaign: not through a single grand gesture, but through the accumulation of small ones.

Thirty-seven individual donations arrived between Wednesday evening and this afternoon. The Bobington Polytechnic delivered a staff and student collection of 1,200 florins, gathered over three days in a campaign organised by the engineering faculty’s social committee. The crew of the Thornhill Star — Captain Morris Aldgate and seven others — sent 800 florins from a whip-round among ferry workers, with a note reading: “From one old vessel to another.”

The Docklands Workers’ Association contributed 1,000 florins. Patrick Seldon delivered the cheque himself, in work boots, at 11:15 AM. He did not stay for tea.

And then there was the envelope.

It arrived some time overnight — slipped beneath the theatre’s front door, discovered by Norah Fell when she opened at nine. Inside: a cheque for 500 florins, drawn on a Millhaven branch, and a card bearing five words in a careful, old-fashioned hand: “For old things that work.”

The signatory was Desmond Quirke.

Quirke, who is 79 and lives in Millhaven, spent two days last week repairing the Municipal Chamber clock after its first silence in 153 years. He turned a phosphor-bronze bushing on a watchmaker’s lathe and wrote 14 pages of maintenance instructions. He does not, as a rule, make public gestures.

Augustin Fell, the theatre’s owner-director, was reached by telephone at 4 PM. He had returned to his office after Norah’s announcement and had been sitting there, according to the stage manager, doing nothing in particular.

“I am going to say something that will sound ungrateful,” Fell said, “but it is the most grateful thing I can think of. We are now exactly where we should be: broke, and with a play to put on.”

He paused. “One hundred and seventy-one people gave money to keep this theatre standing. That number is more important than the amount.”

The total of 171 individual donations — processed entirely by Norah Fell, who is 19 and has staffed the box office alone since the campaign began — ranges from the 14 florins and 60 centimes collected in a decorated biscuit tin by 23 pupils of Marchmont Street Primary School to Ruben Glass’s 20,000-florin contribution at the benefit night on 15 March.

Thomas Ashworth, who plays Edmund Vale, was in costume for a technical run when the news reached the rehearsal room. He is reported to have said: “Right. Let’s get back to work.”

Nessa Holloway, who plays Clara, said nothing at all, but was seen afterwards sitting on the stage steps, holding her script, smiling.

The Lamplighter’s Oath opens on 10 April. Three hundred and sixty seats remain available. The box office is open.