THE CASE OF THE MOTH-EATEN MINK – Erle Stanley Gardner

Perry Mason and Della Street were in the middle of a rare steak when the mink coat appeared in the hands of a puzzled restaurant proprietor. The Coat belonged, he said, to a waitress who had just run out on him. A waitress who owns a mink coat, and goes off leaving it behind, is puzzling enough, and when Perry Mason examined the mink he decided there was more than a moth-eaten patch to meet the eye-particularly when the cops arrived.

That was the beginning of one of the world-famous lawyer’s most astonishing cases of murder and retribution.