Not five feet away from the tied-up-but-not-blindfolded person of Luigi Carnale, Cardinal Fornacaese, lecher and pedophile sans pareil.
“We’re not exactly sure when he croaked,” giggled Angela. “Couldn’t even place it to the hour.”
“We weren’t paying him any attention at all,” cackled Jenny.
Judge Rancor Jeffreys couldn’t have devised a better means of execution himself. Death by torture. Slow, horrible, lingering. Prolonged agony. Endless torment—especially that, endless torment.
Going to be a bit tricky for the Cardinal—sweet-talking his way through the pearly gates, that is. Likely to frown, the guardian angels, when they pondered the manner of his passing.
Bad enough for a Cardinal to die unshriven. But in his state! The Lord in His Heaven hath long decreed that Envy and Lust are mortal sins, each of them alone, not to speak of the two combined. And that’s what Cardinal Fornacaese died of—terminal Envy, complicated by Lust.
The whole affair turned out to have a number of beneficial side effects.
First, it got the Trio another raise from the Cruds. As soon as they sized up the situation, they raced to the Cruds with dire warnings of a plot by the Dark Duke—uncovered by perilous spy-type derring-do on their part!—to kidnap Cardinal Fornacaese. The authorities charged over to the Cardinal’s mansion to foil the plot. Alas, too late! The Cardinal gone! Never to be seen again! Mysterious, the whole thing, very mysterious. The servants were unable to shed any light on the situation. Even under the Inquisition, they could only babble about some unknown party of Inquisitors who had been in the presence of the Cardinal on his last known day on earth.
So the Trio—excellent timing those lads had, they calculated to the second when the servants would started babbling about Inquisitors—raced to the Cruds with the breathtaking news that they had just uncovered—through the most thrilling spy-type adventures!—the Dark Duke’s scheme, now well under way, to infiltrate the Inquisition with his agents. They got another raise. They even got a medal from the Angel Jimmy Jesus—unnamed and unmarked, of course, just a blank piece of metal. Very security-conscious, the Angel Jimmy Jesus. What was better yet, the Inquisition started inquisiting itself. Never quite the same, after that, the Inquisition in New Sfinctr.
At first, we were worried that things were going to get sticky for the Cat. The Cat wasn’t worried about it, of course. The woman didn’t worry about anything except finding Schrödinger. But the rest of us were fretting that she’d be arrested again, wandering around the streets like she insisted on doing. But our fears were unfounded. The porkers tried to arrest her, but Judge Rancor Jeffreys wouldn’t hear of it. Hadn’t he ordered the Cat immured? Yes. Hadn’t she been immured? Yes. Then that was that. Whoever this other woman was, she was—by definition—an impostor. The porkers tried to talk the Judge into opening up the Cat’s cell, just to make sure she was still there, but Jeffreys blew his stack at the idea. The whole point of immuration, don’t you see, is to wall away the criminal from the world forever and forever. What would be the point, if the authorities dug them up? So the porkers gave up, especially after the Judge ordered three of them hanged for attempting to undermine the law.
There was a downside, of course. There always is. For wouldn’t you know it but what Jenny and Angela had developed a taste for the fine life, staying in that swanky townhouse. So they started wheedling Greyboar into buying it.
“It’ll give you so much more fashionable a place to live, instead of that bear’s den you’ve got in the Flankn,” insisted Jenny.
“You’ll get more clients,” argued Angela. “Especially the ladies, who are afraid to go into the Thieves’ Quarter.”
“And it’d be great for us, too!”
“Much better location for our dress shop.”
“Much higher class of clientele.”
Of course, the little monsters didn’t try to wheedle me, they know better. But I wasn’t worried. Greyboar didn’t have the sense about money that I did, but he wasn’t a fool either—his grip was tight more ways than one.
Until the Cat stepped in. I swear, the big gorilla was an absolute patsy in the hands of that woman. Didn’t have any of the masculine firmness that I had in my dealings with Jenny and Angela.
All it took was for the Cat to stare at him with those telescope blue eyes and sneer: “What a cheapskate.” Two seconds later, Greyboar’s ordering me to spend our hard-earned money to buy the house! I couldn’t believe it! Of course, I knew better than to argue with him when he was in one of his the-Cat-wants-it moods.