Then the truculent expression vanished from his face as suddenly as it had come there, and he let out a shrill joyful war-cry.
"Here she is, Tom," he whooped. "Here's Cookie!"
The lights dimmed as he was speaking, giving focus to the single spotlight that picked up the bulbous figure of Cookie as she advanced to the front of the dais.
Her face was wide open in the big hearty jolly beam that she wore to work. Throwing inaudible answers back to the barrage of cheers and whistling that greeted her, she maneuvered her hips around the piano and settled them on the piano stool. Her plowman's hands pounded over the keyboard; and the Saint leaned back and prepared himself for another parade of her merchandise.
"Good evening, everybody," she blared when she could be heard: "Here we are again, with a load of those songs your mothers never taught you. Tonight we'll try and top them all — as usual. Hold on to your pants, boys, and let's go!"
She went.
It was a performance much like the one that Simon had heard the night before; only much more so. She took sex into the sewer and brought it out again, dripping. She introduced verses and adlibs of the kind that are normally featured only at stag smokers of the rowdiest kind. But through it all she glowed with that great gargoyle joviality that made her everybody's broadminded big sister; and to the audience she had, much as the USO would have disapproved and the YMCA would have turned pale with horror, it was colossal. They hooted and roared and clapped and beat upon the tables, demanding more and more until her coarse homely face was glistening with the energy she was pouring out. And in key with his adopted character, and to make sure of retaining the esteem of Patrick Hogan, the Saint's enthusiasm was as vociferous as any.
It went on for a full threequarters of an hour before Cookie gave up, and then Simon suspected that her principal reason was plain exhaustion. He realised that she was a leech for applause: she soaked it up like a sponge, it fed and warmed her, and she gave it back like a kind of transformed incandescence. But even her extravagant stamina had its limit.
"That's all for now," she gasped. "You've worn me down to a shadow." There was a howl of laughter. "Come back tomorrow night, and I'll try to do better."
She stepped down off the platform, to be hand-shaken and slapped on the back by a surge of admirers as the lights went up again.