She avoided his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where’s your aunt?”
“I don’t know. She’s uptown somewhere. I think she’s shopping.”
Cullens turned briefly to Mason, surveying the lawyer with swift appraisal. Then his incisive eyes swung back to Virginia Trent. A huge diamond on his left hand glittered in a coruscating arc as his hand grasped her shoulder. “Come on, Virgie,” he said, “out with it. What the devil’s the idea of running up to see a lawyer?”
She said in a thin, small voice, “I wanted to talk with him about Aunt Sarah.”
“And what about Sarah?”
“She’s been shoplifting.”
Cullens drew back and laughed. It was a deep-chested, jovial, booming laugh which seemed somehow to clarify the atmosphere. He turned, then, to Perry Mason, extended his hand and said, “You’re Mason. I’m Cullens. I’m glad to know you. Sorry to butt in this way, but it’s important.” He turned back to Virginia Trent. “Now, Virgie, come down to earth and give me the low-down. What’s happened to Mrs. Bedford’s diamonds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, who does?”
“Aunty, I guess.”
“All right, where is she?”
“I tell you, she’s been shoplifting.”
“More power to her,” Cullens said. “She’d make a grand shoplifter. I suppose George is on one of his bats?”
She nodded. Cullens said, “Mrs. Bedford telephoned me. She said she wanted her diamonds back. She’d tried to reach George on the telephone, and didn’t like the way she’d been talked to. She thought someone was giving her a run-around, so she called me. I knew right away what had happened. But i also knew that George would mail in the keys to his car and that your aunt would get into the vault and carry on the business. Now then, Lone Bedford has a customer who’s in the market for her stones. Naturally, she doesn’t want to lose the sale. She wants the stones and needs them now.”
Virginia Trent’s mouth became a firm, straight line. She raised her eyes defiantly and said, “I tell you, Aunt Sarah has been shoplifting. You laugh if you want to, but that happens to be the truth. If you want to know, you can ask Mr. Mason. While she’s had one of her spells, she’s taken Mrs. Bedford’s diamonds and hidden them.”
A perplexed frown appeared on Cullens’ forehead. “You’re not kidding me?” he asked, and then turned to Mason. At what he saw in the lawyer’s eyes, he said slowly, “Well, I’ll be damned!” He drew up a chair, selected a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, clipped off the end with a thin, gold knife and said to Virginia, “Tell me about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. “Aunt Sarah has been laboring under a terrific emotional strain. Also, I think she’s suffering from a fixation. However, we don’t need to go into that now. There are periods during which she has a complete lapse of memory. During those times she becomes a kleptomaniac, taking anything she can get her hands on. She was caught in a department store this noon, and I had to check out nearly every penny in my bank to keep her from going to jail.”
Cullens lit his cigar, studied the flaming match for a moment in thoughtful contemplation, then shook it out, and said, “When was the first time, Virgie?”
“This noon.”
“Were those the first symptoms?”
“Well, she went up to the office yesterday and had a dizzy spell and couldn’t remember anything which had happened for about half an hour. When she came to, she had a peculiar feeling of guilt, as though she’d murdered someone. I think that was when she took the Bedford gems and concealed them somewhere. She...”
Cullens’ diamond glittered as he raised his hand to take the cigar from his mouth. “Oh, bosh!” he said, “forget it. She’s no shoplifter. She’s trying to cover up for your uncle.”
“How do you mean?”
“When she went to the office yesterday,” Cullens said, “she found the Bedford diamonds were gone. Just between you and me, that’s the thing which has always worried her — that some day when your uncle starts on one of these benders he’ll forget that he has some stones in his pocket. Your aunt pulled this shoplifting stunt to fool you, and to fool me if it became necessary. She’s out looking for George right now.”
“I don’t think Aunty would do that,” Virginia Trent said.
Cullens said shortly, “You don’t really think she’d turn shoplifter, do you?”
“Well... well, I have the evidence of my own eyes.”
Cullens said, “All right. Let’s not argue about it. Let’s tell Lone Bedford what she’s up against.”
“Oh, we mustn’t tell her! No matter what happens, we must keep her from finding out...”
Cullens ignored her, to turn to the lawyer. “I’m sorry,” he said, “to have to handle things this way, Mr. Mason, but I think I’d better stay right here for the moment. This thing is important. It means quite a good deal to me. Those stones were worth twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars. My car’s down in front, a green convertible with the top down. Mrs. Bedford is waiting in the car. I wonder if it would be possible for you to have one of your girls...”
Mason turned to Della Street. “Go on down, Della,” he said. “Find Mrs. Bedford and bring her up.”
Virginia Trent said very firmly, “I don’t approve of this in the least. I don’t think Aunt Sarah would want it handled this way.”
“Well, I want it handled this way,” Cullens said, “and after all, I’m the one chiefly concerned. Remember, I’m the one who brought the stones in to your Uncle George in the first place.” He turned to Perry Mason. “If it’s a fair question, Mr. Mason, where do you stand in this?”
“I don’t stand,” Mason told him, grinning. “I’m sitting on the sidelines. It happens that I was present when Mrs. Breel staged what was apparently her first public demonstration of shoplifting. It also happens that it was a most edifying experience.”
Cullens grinned. “It would be. What happened?”
“Well,” Mason said reminiscently, “she carried it off remarkably well. And after that, she and her niece were good enough to join me at lunch. I hardly expected to hear any more of the matter, until Miss Trent came in to consult me. I haven’t, as yet, found out exactly what it is she wants me to do, but I felt you were entitled to an explanation. As nearly as I can tell, you’re getting it.”
Cullens turned to Virginia Trent. There was a flash of dislike in his eyes. “I suppose you wanted to duck out and leave me holding the sack, didn’t you?”
“Most certainly not!”
He laughed unpleasantly. “And it was Mason who insisted you should see me, wasn’t it?” She said nothing. “What did you want Mason to do?” he asked.
“I wanted him to locate Aunt Sarah for me, and to... well, to figure some way of stalling things along until we could find out where we stand.”
“We can find out where we stand without stalling things along,” Cullens said.
“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.”