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That must have been the only bad seat in the house, though. The Baghdad was one of those rather large night clubs that managed, in spite of its size, to maintain an intimate sort of atmosphere. Don’t ask me how they do it; if I knew I’d chuck my present racket and go to work putting architects out of business. The old Show Boat, back in Washington, used to be that kind of joint back in the early sixties. It didn’t matter how many people they packed in there, Charlie Byrd was still sitting right there in your lap playing funky-butt guitar, and the fact made the club world-famous. There’s got to be a secret to it somehow.

I’d started off on scotch that evening saw no reason to change my poison. The maitre d’ and I were good friends by now, though, and he was gracious enough to do me a little favor after my drink had been delivered. He slipped an envelope to the star of the show before she went on. A large bill wrapped around the envelope helped. Then I settled back into the most comfortable position my ribs would allow me and looked around at the crowd.

It was a money sort of place. So much so that I found myself wondering why it was operating in Hong Kong, where the night life runs on the stuffy side as Far Eastern places go. It’d have fit nicely in a weirdo town like Macao, where high-priced mistresses of executives can drop six-figure sums — and that’s in American dollars — at the gaming tables without causing even a minor stir. You can name your own example of extreme conduct and Vegas is the minor leagues beside it But Hong Kong?

Anyhow, the place was, as Fredericks used to put it, Port Out, Starboard Home: Posh. Lush. Expertly art-directed in every detail, with even the lighting — the one place where your average club begins to look cheesy between shows — totally controlled. Soft spots of color here and there. A feeling of space between the tables even when you knew that the place was packed. A feeling of hush when you knew the place was loud. And, from the look of the crowd — old British power, new Chinese money, and lots and lots of both — it was paying off nicely.

I was just thinking of another scotch when I saw her.

She was standing in front of my table, dressed in a floor-length cape that hid absolutely everything but that face. I’d have known her in a moment. The face was not something you’d forget easily, even if it’d changed expressions from the somewhat theatrical smile on the face in the picture to the chill immobility of the delicate mask before me. No, I’ve got that wrong. The face was cold. The eyes were brown, long-lashed, and almond-shaped, and they weren’t cold at all. They were puzzled, vulnerable, hurt...

“Mr. Carter?” The voice was low and musical.

“Yes,” I said. I got up. She stopped me along the way with one lovely tanned hand, sat me back down again gently. There was electricity in that touch. “I...”

“No,” she said. “Please. I have to go on in a moment. The picture. Where did you get it?” Looking down, I could see her two hands now, peeping out of the robe. They held the envelope in which I’d stuffed the photo of her and Meyer and my message: Please. I have to see you about this. Nick Carter.

“Can we talk afterwards?” I said.

“Now.” There was an agitation in those slim fingers that her face failed to betray. “I... I have to know.”

“Ah,” I said. “I think you know the news I have for you. You know it from the fact that I’m here, with the picture. You do, don’t you?” I looked hard into those eyes. They filmed over for a second, then she regained control.

“Y-yes,” she said. “I think I do. Hermann would not have parted with that picture while he was alive.”

“We understand each other,” I said. “I have to talk to you. You may be in grave danger.”

“Yes,” she said. The hands were white-knuckled under their tan. “I... Mr. Carter, I am thinking Can I trust him? Can I...” The eyes bored into mine again. “I mean... you may be one of them...”

“If I am I’m in worse trouble than you seem to be. I killed two of them this evening. That is, if we’re talking about the same people.” Thank God for the funny acoustics, I was thinking. It wouldn’t do to broadcast this conversation. “What’s the matter?” I went on. I touched the back of one of her hands and got that same electric shock again. “Are they after you, too? Have they found out about you, too?”

“I... Mr. Carter, I’m being followed. Someone was behind my cab, all the way here. I’m frightened.”

“Let me do something about that, please.”

“I... oh, if only...” Her hand gripped mine inside the dark sleeve. “Please. Can I trust you?”

I gripped her hand. She’d changed the position of her hand, though, and my grip came down on her in a funny sort of way. It was a kind of variant of the so-called “soul” handshake American blacks borrowed from the Africans. I don’t know why I did it. I hadn’t done that in years.

To my surprise her eyes widened; her mouth opened; her left hand flew to the cape over her heart, pressing it down against her, nicely outlining for me a majestically rounded pair of soft breasts beneath the dark cloth.

And she returned my funny handshake.

And she smiled. And the smile was so much worth waiting for that I wondered what I had done to trigger it. And the soft voice said, “Good, good — now I know. Mr. Carter. Please come to my dressing room immediately after the performance. Please. And thank you, thank you so much.”

She pulled away. I tried to rise again; but she pushed me back gently with that lovely hand. The hand brushed softly against my cheek as she bent low to whisper to me: “Enjoy the show...”

And then she was gone.

The show began by stages. It gave me plenty of time to be confused... and to wonder what the devil she’d meant. “Now I know.” Know what? And from a silly in-joke handshake?

The music came up little by little. And little by little, quiet as the music was, the low murmur of the audience quieted down to let it through. Somehow, the attention of the crowd came, despite all the odds, to focus itself on the strange and unique ambience of the place. Relax and enjoy it, I told myself. I stopped thinking and settled into it.

It was a recording. Of whom I had no idea. And the lights slowly went down, so slowly somebody must have rigged up a mechanical dimmer: no human hand could turn a handle that slowly, that gradually. Dim light... dimmer... a ghostly dusk... darkness...

The bass note went into a crescendo. Not slowly. Quickly. It became deafening. You could barely hear the other sound above it. It approached the pain threshold; throbbed... and then went silent.

It echoed in my head. I’d thought I was relaxed, enjoying things. Now I found my hand gripping the edge of the table like a vise. And, ribs or no, I sat up nice and straight, like everyone else in the place.

The next sound was a single, long, wavering line of music by a single finger picking it out on a synthesizer keyboard. Only in addition to the sound it made there was the bright, cold, laserlike beam of blue light, cutting across the stage. A second line joined it; the Moog had multiple manuals, then. This time a beam of reddish light cut across the stage from another angle, pulsing as the music pulsed, following the vagrant line of the tune its maker played. A third — blinding white, with an icy and compassionless tune to match — joined the two, again from a new angle. I wondered where the lights were coming from...

Then came the real blast of percussion.

The Moog synthesizer can do nearly every sound in the orchestra — except the vibrato of the string section. It can also duplicate anything the rock and roll band can do. And when the lightning-like flashes of pure white light started socking through the rapier-like thrusts of the three colored lights, the decibel count of the synthesizer’s pedal keyboard jacked the odds up, up, and out of sight. The manuals rose to meet it. The room pulsed with an unholy loudness of sound. And the space on the little stage pulsed with it — red, white, blue, and blinding flashes of white. The darkness in between was as violent as the flashes of light had been.