Of course there was a catch, as the seven yachtsmen she married found out. With all her wonderful equipment, Lili was a mixed-up kid. She was a hopelessly incurable gambler, and she was hipped on diamonds. And the two things didn’t seem to go together. Let the psychologists explain it, but the fact is money didn’t mean a thing to her. She could drop ten grand at the roulette wheel and yawn like a lady. Diamonds were another story. Let her temporarily mislay a single chip from her jewel box and she went into hysterics. Her press agent swore that she checked her inventory every night before going to bed like a kid casing his marbles.
Naturally, Lili’s collection was the target of every itch-fingers out of the jug. But Lili was no pushover. When it came to her diamonds, she was like Javert in the sewers of Paris; she never gave up. The police were kept busy. They didn’t mind. With La Minx on the broadcasting end of a complaint, every cop with a front porch and asthma felt like No-Hips Lancelot, the Terror of the Underworld.
Lili’s favorite gambling hell, while it lasted, was Paradise Gardens. Those were the days when New York was wide open and everything went, usually before you could come back for more. Paradise Gardens had a longer run than most. It operated behind a frowsy old brownstone front off Fifth Avenue, in the Frolicking Fifties.
The ceiling was a menace to healthy eyesight, with its glittering stars and sequinned angels; you swallowed your buffalo steaks and cougar juice among tropical flowers under papier-mâché trees with wax apples tied onto them; and you were served by tired ex-showgirltype waitresses wearing imitation fig leaves. So it was a relief to go upstairs where there was no mullarkey about gardens or Edens — just nice business decor and green baize-covered tables at which the management allowed you to lose your shirt or bra, as the case might be.
On this particular evening Lili Minx, being between husbands, was alone. She drifted in, pale and perfect in white velvet and ermine, unapproachable as the nearest star and tasty-looking as a charlotte russe. On each little pink ear glowed a cold green fire, like a radioactive pea, La Minx’s only jewelry tonight. They were the famous mumtaz green-diamond earrings, once the property of Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, which had been clipped to Lili’s lobes by the trembling hands of an Iraqi millionaire, who was running hard at the time in the sixth race of La Minx Handicap. Lili prized her green diamonds at least as highly as the ears to which they were attached.
Everything stopped as Lili posed in the archway for her usual moment of tribute; then life went on, and Lili bought a stack of hundred-dollar chips at the cashier’s cage and made for the roulette table.
An hour later, her second stack was in the croupier’s bank. Lili laughed and drifted toward the ladies’ lounge. No one spoke to her.
The trim French maid in the lounge came forward swiftly. “Madame has the headache?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps a cold compress?”
“Please.”
Lili lay down on a chaise longue and closed her eyes. At the cool touch of the wrapped ice bag on her forehead she bestowed a smile. The maid adjusted the pillow about her head deftly, in sympathetic silence. It was quiet in the deserted lounge, and Lili floated off into her own world of dreams.
She awoke a few minutes later, put the ice bag aside, and rose from the chaise. The maid had discreetly vanished. Lili went to a vanity and sat down to fix her hair...
And at that exact moment the gambling rooms of Paradise Gardens went berserk. Women shrieked, their escorts scuttled about like trapped crabs, the housemen struggled with their nefarious tools, and the massive door gave way under the axheads of the police.
“Hold it!” An elderly man with a gray mustache hopped nimbly onto a crap table and held up his arms for silence. “I’m Inspector Queen of police headquarters on special gambling detail. This is a raid, ladies and gentlemen. No sense trying to make a break; every exit is covered. Now if you’ll all please line up along the walls while these officers get going—”
And that was when Lili Minx burst from the ladies’ lounge like one of the Furies, screaming, “My diamond earrings! I been robbed!”
So immediately what had begun as a gambling raid turned into a robbery investigation. La Minx was in top form, and Inspector Queen did her bidding as meekly as a rookie cop. She had often enough disturbed his dreams, too.
As the axes rose and fell and the equipment flew apart, the Inspector was crooning, “Now don’t you worry your pretty head, Miss Minx. We’ll find your earrings—”
“And that creep of a maid!” stormed La Minx. “She’s the only one who touched me, Inspector Queen. I want that maid clobbered, too!”
“She can’t get away, Lili,” soothed the Inspector, patting the lovely hand. “We’ve had the Paradise surrounded for an hour, getting set for the jump, and not a soul got out. So she has to be here... Well, Velie?” he barked, as the big Sergeant came loping from the ladies’ lounge, furtively feeling his tie. “Where is the woman?”
“Right here,” said Sergeant Velie, looking at Lili like a homesick Newfoundland. And he thrust into Inspector Queen’s hands, blindly, a maid’s uniform, a starched cap and apron, a pair of high-heeled shoes, two sheer stockings, and a wig. “Dumped in the broom closet.”
“What does this mean?” cried Lili, staring at the wig.
“Why, it’s Harry the Actor,” said the Inspector, pleased. “A clever character at female impersonation, Lili — he’s made his finest hauls as a French maid. So Harry’s tried it on you, as he? You just wait here, my dear,” and the Inspector began to march along the lineup like a small gray Fate, followed by La Minx, who waited for no one.
“And here he is,” said the Inspector cheerily, stopping before a short slender man with boyish cheeks which were very pale at the moment. “Tough luck, Harry — about the raid, I mean. Suppose we try this on for size, shall we?” and he clapped the wig on the little man’s head.
“That’s the one,” said Lili Minx in a throbbing voice, and the little man turned a shade paler. She stepped up to him and looked deep into his eyes. “You give me back my diamond earrings, or—” She mentioned several alternatives.
“Get her away from me, get her out of here,” quavered Harry the Actor in his girlish treble, trying to burrow into the wall.
“Search him, Velie,” said Inspector Queen sternly.
A half hour later, in the manager’s office, with the drapes drawn before the window, Harry the Actor stood shivering. On the desk lay his clothes and everything taken from his person — a wallet containing several hundred dollars, a pocketful of loose change, a ball of hard candy, a yellow pencil, a racing form, a pair of battered old dice, a crumpled cigarette pack and a booklet of matches, a tiny vial of French perfume, a lipstick, a compact, a handkerchief smeared with make-up and a box of Kiss-Mee, the Magic Breath-Sweetener. Everything in parts had been disassembled. The cigarettes had been shredded. The hard candy had been smashed. Harry’s clothing had been gone over stitch by stitch. His shoes had been tapped for hidden compartments. His mouth and hair had been probed. Various other indignities had been visited upon his person. Even the maid’s outfit had been examined.
And no green-diamond earrings.
“All right,” muttered the Inspector, “get dressed.”