Determined to unmask the four-flusher, Clara flung the door open, felt a sickening feeling. God help me, she moaned, seeing the stars in Bunny’s eyes, the way she clung to that rotten rat’s arm. That poor woman; she’s bewitched by that rotten Swine Gali. (Dear Clara; she meant Svengali. Away back she had seen the movie Trilby, where vile Svengali hypnotized poor Trilby. It had made a lasting impression.) God knows what awful stuff went on up there in the mountains.
But she had to act. She closed the door, waited until Tony put the luggage down, made her announcement. “By the way, Mr. Gregory,” she said in her best casual-like voice, “there was an important phone call for you.”
“A phone call?” he said, the barest quiver in his manly voice. “Who was it from?”
But Clara was watching Bunny, anxious to see how she was taking it. Bunny looked interested. Good, thought Clara, wait’ll she hears what’s coming. Clara stalled, playing it for all it was worth.
“Well,” demanded Tony, a little nastily. “Who called?”
“Someone named, ah, oh yeah, Big Mo. He said he was calling from Vegas. You’re to call him right away. He seemed upset. Here’s the number.” (She had kept the number for herself, just in case.) She handed him the slip of paper. He grabbed it, stuffed it in his shirt pocket. Clara looked at Bunny again. Ha, was that a cloud over the starry eyes? It sure was. And how was loverboy taking it? Not good, not good. He coughed a couple of times — seemed to have a frog stuck in his throat. Upset the old applecart, Clara gloated. Hit the road, you two-bit Casanova, you struck out. It looked that way.
“Vegas?” said Bunny, uncertainly, “would that be Las Vegas, darling? And who did you say called, Clara?”
“Big Mo,” enunciated Clara, loud and clear.
“What an odd name,” said Bunny, “and from Las Vegas. Would Mr. Mo be involved in gambling, darling?”
Of course not, gloated Clara, he’s that Chinese detective who solves all those mysteries. Isn’t that right, you four-flusher? But by then Tony was ready to wiggle.
“I’m afraid that the Big Mo person is involved in gambling, honey,” he confessed, a wan smile on his handsome countenance. “It’s, well, all families seem to have a black sheep; ours is Uncle Mike, my late father’s younger brother. Poor Uncle Mike can’t stop gambling, and he loses all too often. I’ll have to bail him out again, I’m afraid. I’ll phone this Big Mo person after we get settled.”
Poor Clara, outfoxed, for she could see that Bunny had bought that fairy tale hook, line, and sinker.
“Oh, darling,” Bunny gushed. “I might’ve known it would be something like that. You’re so compassionate.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Tony mumbled, taking care not to look at the housekeeper. Damn that nibnose, I gotta watch out for her.
Before the newlyweds went upstairs, Bunny told Clara they wouldn’t be dining out. “Could you whip up something light, Clara?”
Clara grunted that she could. On the way upstairs Bunny thought of something. “Darling, I thought your great-aunt was your last relative. Did you forget Uncle Mike?”
“No, I didn’t forget him,” Tony confessed, “but he’s the only one left and... well, I’m not too proud of him.”
“You shouldn’t say that, darling. Such people are to be pitied. It’s like a disease, gambling. People become addicted, the poor things.”
“I guess you’re right,” Tony said mournfully.
While Clara was in the kitchen tearing hell out of an innocent head of lettuce and Bunny was taking a shower, Tony crept downstairs, went into the den, locked the door, phoned Big Mo. And got an earful.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” demanded Mo. “How come you haven’t paid the markers? You wanta put the kibosh on the rest of us? There’s talk the casino’s gonna’ put a fifty thousand dollar limit on us premiums. Me and the fellows is damn disappointed in you, Tony, damn disappointed. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Tony had plenty to say. Did Mo and the fellows really believe that he would weasel out of the debt, allow his good name to be smeared to hell and gone? Hadn’t he paid every marker in the past? Tony went on like that until Big Mo interrupted.
“Yeah, yeah, get to the point. Are you gonna pay the marker or not?”
Of course he was. But he’d had a hell of a time finding a rich widow. Huh? Yeah he’d found one, married her. Rich? Loaded. But he’d only been married for two days and he hadn’t planned on hitting her up for the dough right away, but since Mo and the fellows seemed to be worried about him being a disgrace to the whole gaming industry, Mo could tell the casino it would be hearing from him no later than ten days from now.
Mo relayed that information to the casino manager, who said it was good news. It would be good to have Tony back.
Poor Midnight, he had another bad night. Clara, doing her best not to think of what was going on down below in the master bedroom, filled the cat in on the latest rotten development. The snake in the grass had slithered free, come up with a fake relative, the family black sheep, when it was as plain as the nose on your face that His Nibs was in hock to a syndicate. He owed big money. “And wait’ll he hits her up for dough and she tells him about the trust fund; can’t touch it. That’s not the worst.
“Her life insurance, it’s for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. And somehow he’ll sweet-talk her into telling him about it. And God help us when he does.”
“Meow (bad news?).”
“You can say that again.”
“Meow.”
Clara kept going, her grim, dire theme being that there was murder afoot. “You and me, Midnight,” she finally concluded, “are gonna keep our eyes on that rotten rat every second of the day. It’s up to us to keep that good, kindhearted — yeah, simpleminded — woman alive. Right?”
“Meow (you can count on me).” And when it came to crunch time, old Midnight came through with flying colors, almost losing the last of his allotted nine lives. It was a narrow squeak.
Now to the huge master bedroom on the second floor, around one thirty A.M., soft music wafting from an all-night radio station. Once again — more than once — Bunny had soared to heights far beyond anything ever attained by the Lapland Larkspur. (“A high flyer, soars far above the clouds.”)
Not totally exhausted but close, Tony — galvanized by the ominous words from Big Mo — changed the timetable. He couldn’t wait two weeks, even ten days; his good name was already being tarnished.
In a tender, husky, sexy voice — the same one that had caused women much more worldly than Bunny to rush to their checkbooks — Tony bewailed poor Uncle Mike’s distressing predicament. He’d phoned Big Mo, was shocked to learn that Uncle Mike had given markers totaling two hundred fifty thousand (the extra thirty thousand was to cover the interest, give him a stake to start anew).
He felt rotten, embarrassed as hell, to have to ask Bunny to lend him the money. “Just until the Singapore deal goes through, of course.” Uncle Mike had no one else to turn to, and Tony hated to see the family name smeared.
In “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” Aesop — another of those sage fellows; he flourished around 550 B.C. — wrote: “Appearances are deceiving.” The old boy would have chortled in patriarchal glee had he been around to see the delicious juxtaposition of his time-honored adage as Tony, the wolf, heard the horrifying news from Bunny, the pauper.
Calling Bunny a pauper was stretching it a bit, but as far as stunned Tony was concerned, she might as well have been on food stamps. Cuddled up to her divine Prince Charming, her pretty pink nightie in delightful dishabille, Bunny drifted between paradise and the bedroom as she answered Tony’s increasingly anguished questions in a sleepy, cooing voice.