“That’s what you think,” she told him. “You’re saving your own bacon at the expense of Uncle George’s reputation. Mrs. Bedford will claim he’s stolen the stones and... and it’ll be an awful mess.”
Cullens said, “You don’t know Lone Bedford. She’s a good scout. She can take it. What we’re interested in is finding those stones.”
“Well, I don’t know just how you think you’re going to go about it,” Virginia Trent said.
“Neither do I,” Cullens said affably — “yet.”
Della Street’s rapid heels sounded in the corridor. She unlatched the door of Mason’s private office, and escorted a woman in the thirties through the doorway. “This,” she announced, “is Mrs. Bedford.”
“Come on in, Lone,” Cullens said, without getting up. “Have a chair and make yourself at home. This is Perry Mason, the lawyer. Your diamonds have gone bye-bye.”
For a moment, Mrs. Bedford stood in the doorway, surveying the occupants of the room with dark, languid eyes. Slightly heavier than Della Street, she possessed an attractive figure, which showed to advantage through a rust-colored frilled blouse and gray tailored suit. Her hat matched her blouse, as did her slippers, whose high heels served to emphasize her short foot with its high instep. She crossed over toward a chair, paused for a moment as she saw Mason’s open cigarette case, raised her eyebrows in a gesture of silent interrogation, and, at his nod, helped herself to a cigarette. She leaned forward for his light, then went over to the chair and said, “Well, now that’s something. Tell me about it, Aussie.”
“I can’t tell you much until I get the details,” Cullens said. “I’m getting them now — or trying to. George Trent is just what I told you, one of the best gem men in the country. His work is dependable and reasonable. He’s thoroughly honest. He has one vice, and only one vice. He’s a periodical drunkard. When he gets drunk, he gambles, but he does even that methodically. He puts all of the gems in the vault, leaves himself a limited amount of money in his pocket, mails in his car keys, and then goes out and gets drunk and gambles. When he loses his money, so he can’t buy any more liquor, he sobers up, comes home and goes back to work. This time, he seems to have inadvertently taken your stones with him. I gave them to him Saturday afternoon. He started his drink Saturday night. That, my dear, is the bad news in a nutshell.”
She inhaled a deep drag from the cigarette, exhaled the smoke in twin streams through appreciative, distended nostrils. “Why the lawyer?” she asked, jerking her head toward Perry Mason.
Cullens laughed. “Virginia Trent, over here — George’s niece — thinks that her Aunt Sarah has become suddenly seized with kleptomania. She thinks the aunt took the stones while her mind was a blank and did something with them.”