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Broxden slipped the photo back into the desk drawer and slid it closed with a click. The he turned on his heel and hurried out of the office. I downed my drink - a waste, really, of such a fine spirit - then grabbed my hat and scurried after him. The little bug ended up in one of my pockets, for no reason I could have articulated at the time. Just as well, as it turned out. "Where are we going?" I asked, as I caught up with Broxden. "Machany Fordun is about to appear on stage," he said, "I don't like to miss a performance, especially at a time like this." "Who's Machany Fordun?" I asked. "My fiancé. The lady in the photograph," Broxden replied, his eyes suddenly shining, "And my star singer." "Ah." That was much clearer. The attractive female in the picture was important to Broxden, both in a professional and a personal kind of way. It seemed somebody wanted something - despite the absence of a blackmail note or something of that nature - and getting pictures of Fordun in the altogether was part of the game-plan. Still trailing Broxden, I emerged into the auditorium where the compere had just appeared in front of the stage curtains to announce "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome on stage: Miss Machany Fordun!" The music from the band swelled and blared while the noise in the rest of the room sank to an expectant hush. All eyes were on the stage, even Broxden's, who must have seen this act dozens of times before. The curtains suddenly parted and a vision stepped forward, accompanied by a torrent of howls and cheers and applause from the audience, enough to drown out the band for a few moments. Fordun stepped forward, her extravagantly lovely form set off to great advantage by the feathers-and-sequins creation I had seen in the photograph only a few minutes before. She waited just long enough for the raw edge to have been taken off the applause then, with a barely perceptible glance at the bandleader, she launched into her opening number. She really could sing, too. She had a great gutsy voice which could bash out classic numbers like a charm, songs familiar to the audience, probably, but to which she managed to add an extra twist of her own. The repertoire had been well-chosen too: almost all upbeat, bouncy numbers where a few suggestively vampy wriggles and a sultry blown kiss could do all the work of getting the overwhelmingly male audience entirely worked up. The crowd loved it, judging by the avalanche of wolf-whistles, cheers and applause than accompanied the end of each number. I was, I fully admit it, completely mesmerised by the performance. Somehow, she managed to project herself so tantalisingly close that I almost felt that I was on the stage with her, rather than stood near the back of the room. Broxden felt it too: he couldn't have taken his eyes off her for a moment if his life had depended on it. She reached the end of the set, resisted the temptation to perform more than one encore and then bowed out with the crowd still howling for more when the curtain finally closed. There was, I felt sure, a collective hush in the room for a second, then the buzz of conversation resumed even louder than before.
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Part 5