"If it waren't foh her powdah
And her stohe bought hair.
The man Ah love
Would not have gone nowhere--"

Listen for the tom-tom behind the hurrah. Watch for the torches of Kypris
and Corinth behind the glare of the tungstens. This is the immemorial
bacchanal lurching through the kaleidoscope of the centuries. Pan with a
bootlegger's grin and a checked suit. Dionysius with a saxophone to his
lips. And the dance of Paphos called now the shimmie.

Listen and watch and through the tumult, rising like a strange incense
from the smear of bodies, tables and waiters, will come the curious thing
that is never contained in the vice reports. The gleam of the devil
himself--the echo of some mystic cymbal note.

Later the music will let out a tinny blaze of sound. Men and women will
press together and a pack of bodies will sway on the dance floor. The
tungstens will go out and the spotlight will throw colors--green, purple,
lavender, blue, violet--and as the scene grows darker and the colors
revolve a howl will fill the place. But on the dance floor a silence will
fasten itself over the swaying bodies and there will be only the sound of
feet pushing. The silence of a ritual--faces stiffened, eyes rolling--a
rigid embrace of men and women creeping cunningly among the revolving
colors and the whiplike rhythms of the jazz band.

* * * * *

"Lost souls," says the vice reports, and the vice reports speak with a