Immogen declined the offer of wine. “You know I love you, Xin, but I can’t give you more than thirty minutes.”


Xin sighed, with her usual overtones of melodrama. “Thirty minutes of love is all I deserve.” She set the bottle aside, and gestured to the table, upon which was a large wooden crate. It was covered in all sorts of paper stamps, inventory tags from various decades. The lid was held shut with a sloppy line of candle wax, thick blobs that feathered into strange tendrils like cobwebs, dull with age.


“This box, assumed to be lost, that contains wire-tape recordings of Kornelius Josef Aagesvent.”


Immogen’s inert expression was immediately flushed away with astonishment. “The Great Maestro?”


Xin nodded. “The very same.”


Immogen started recording images of the box on her phone. “This is a find. Have you listened to the recordings?”


“No, I haven’t broken the seal.”


“Hmm. Do you know what songs they are?”


Xin pointed to a strip of paper that was pasted on the outside. “This label says ‘Del limpiabotas’, ‘El bateo’, and ‘El año pasado por agua’.”


Immogen was astonished, again. “‘El año’?”


Xin nodded. “That’s what the manifest says.”


Immogen’s brow furrowed as she frowned in contemplation. “‘El año’ doesn’t have a baritone, much less a bass baritone.”


“None of those songs include a bass-baritone.”


Immogen put her phone away. “The Maestro was the greatest bass-baritone of his day!”


Xin nodded, curtly. “Undisputed.”


“Why would he even consider recording those songs?”


Xin smacked her dry lips; she was wishing she had poured herself some wine, however rude that would have been. “My only guess is that the Orpheum Theatre was eager to lure Aagesvent from his homeland for at least one season. But the Maestro would come dear, and the Orpheum’s biggest draws has always been zarzuela, a genre that is far friendlier to the tenors and the sopranos.  So, they re-scored some parts and managed to convince Aagesvent to sing them, which they recorded and then shipped back to the Orpheum, to play for the board and for the investors.”


“Goodness,” Immogen’s ears perked; this bizarre find was sounding more plausible. “And then they just buried these recordings?”


“My first assumption, since I always assume the worst, is that the quality of these arrangements is below the standards that Aagesvent would have deemed acceptable.”


“I’m finding it difficult to believe that anyone thought they could re-arrange the parts to be anywhere near acceptable. The Maestro’s projection alone was said to exceed ninety decibels…”


“Mm,” grunted Xin. “He’s on record as exceeding one-hundred-twenty. Anyway, the recordings certainly failed to impress the Orpheum’s board.”


Immogen’s tone was clearly excited. “To raise enough money to convince Aagesvent to expatriate to a theater half-way around the world, they would need to sound like the voice of God. Though if anyone could sound like God….”


Xin sighed. “You have no idea how tempted I would be to listen to these.”


“And yet you didn’t.”


“I need them to be mint! I need the money.”


Immogen smirked. “Well, while it’s certainly unique, it’s also highly implausible. Do you have provenance?”


“I do not.”


“Can you get provenance?”


“No,” Xin said flatly.


“Could I get provenance?”


“No,” Xin said even more flatly. “It’s stolen.”


“You’re not supposed to tell me that.”


“I wouldn’t have involved you at all if this were above board!”


Immogen let herself laugh. “How much did you steal from the Orpheum?”


Xin threw her hands. “Anything I could get that wasn’t stolen already! I gave those people some of my best years, and some of my best work. Frankly, the only reason they didn’t frame me for arson was because I didn’t go into work that last week. They probably would have locked the doors and lit me on fire.”


A long-time friend of the dragon, Immogen had learned that the tirades ended more quickly if one waited patiently for them to burn out.  After a measured pause, Immogen replied: “You deserved better.”


“I always deserve the best.” Xin rolled her eyes. She knew she was being humored, and she also knew that she loved to be humored. “But you’ve got a train to catch. Can you move this?


“You’re sure it hasn’t been opened before World War II?”


“Quite sure. Look, you can see the wax sealing around the edge. Who would even bother with wax in the age of plastics? I’m sure they used wax because glue wasn’t available, wartime rationing and all that.”


Immogen nodded. “That’s good. If the box hasn’t been opened, the materials inside won’t be contaminated by nuclear radiation.”


Xin couldn’t resist complicating things. “It still could be a forgery, if that forgery dates from between 1930 and 1960.”


“You’re not making this easier.”


“I’m never easy, no.”


Immogen was still intrigued. “Even so, a forgery from that period would still have significant value as a curio. Also, highly unlikely —it would be near-impossible to fake the Great Maestro’s voice. No, the problem is that opening it to check would break the seal and thus contaminate the chain of provenance even further. Which is a harder sell, but hardly an impossible sell. It would help to have some testimony that wasn’t a difficult, anonymous primadonna.”


Xin removed some letters from the end-table where the wine bottle sat. “These might help.”


Immogen fanned the yellow envelopes, to make sense of what she had in her hand. “The postmarks are from Satellite City.” She thumbed one of the letters, she squinted at the typewritten text. “My язык is rudimentary. Have you read these?”


Xin nodded. “It’s a series of letters asking for the return of various recordings. It’s worded very diplomatically — it doesn’t call out this package by name, but it doesn’t rule it out, either.”


Immogen nodded. She was feeling much more confident. While she was often eager to help Xin liquidate her more unusual assets, this was the first time that something genuinely valuable was in the offing. “That’s certainly a kind of provenance. I could do some research… any archives or articles that corroborate this adds value.”


“I’m not asking you to forge anything.”


Immogen snorted. “Good, because you’re not paying me to forge anything.”


Xin smirked. “But you would if I asked you?”


Immogen put the letters in her clutch. “Now that is something that I am not supposed to tell you.”

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