Have you ever been out there? Miss Corning demanded.
Ive been out there, Campbell said. Ive just returned from there. I was out there yesterday. Im not a mining man, Miss Corning. Im an executive. I specialize in the supervision of real-estate investments. The mine activities were entirely out of my line. I told you that when you hired me.
As far as the real-estate activities are concerned, youll find that you have made a tidy profit under my management. As far as the Mojave Monarch is concerned, Ive been victimized and you have incurred a very substantial loss because of that. Im sorry, but I was so busy with real estate that I had to delegate the mining activities to the manager, Ken Lowry. The mine was in a field about which I knew virtually nothing.
The profits on the real estate which I have handled for you have been very substantial, and have more than offset any losses on the Mojave Monarch. I would like to discuss that matter with you in detail and not in front of an audience.
And as far as this young woman is concerned, this woman who was so anxious to get to your ears before I had an opportunity to say anything, I am very much afraid the books show that she has embezzled something over a hundred and sixty-one thousand dollars in cash. I have had the auditing department working all night and a very serious cash shortage has shown up. It shows a devilish ingenuity, as well as quite a familiarity with the affairs of the company.
All right, Mason said, now it comes out in the open. Youre accusing Susan Fisher of embezzling money from the corporation?
Im not making any accusations at the present time. Im simply reporting confidentially to my employer what the auditing department has uncovered as a result of all-night activity.
You consider yourself blameless in the matter? Mason asked.
Certainly.
Youre the executive manager of the business, you think that you have been working efficiently and yet it is only within the last twenty-four hours you have found out there is a shortage of something over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the company, and that the Mojave Monarch has been operated in such a way that Miss Corning has been swindled out of many thousands of dollars?
I dont have to answer those questions. I dont like the way you phrase them and I dont have to submit to cross-examination by you, Campbell said. For your information, my business management has netted something over three-quarters of a million dollars for Miss Corning. A man cant make profits in a business of that magnitude without having some areas of the business which are not given his undivided personal attention.
And in these areas of the business which have not been given your undivided personal attention, there have been shortages and swindles? Mason asked.
Ive told you I dont have to submit to your cross-examination.
Mason said, You accuse my client of embezzling and youll be submitting to my cross-examination, either here or in court.
By the time we get to court, Campbell said, Ill have the facts and figures so well established that even you cant alibi your client into the clear.
Mason said, For your information, Miss Corning, Mr. Campbell evidently kept a shoe box in his closet. This shoe box was crammed full of one-hundred-dollar bills. His seven-year-old son inadvertently picked up this shoe box and
And for your information, Miss Corning, Campbell interrupted, his voice raised in anger, thats a dastardly lie!
We can prove what Im saying, Mason said.
Only by the unsubstantiated word of your client, Campbell charged. That shoe box full of hundred-dollar bills was never seen by anybody except Susan Fisher.
Susan said, Your son brought the box in, Mr. Campbell. Wheres Carleton now?
Endicott Campbell said, Get this thing straight once and for all, all of you. My son is not going to be dragged into this. I am not going to have his emotions twisted and distorted against his father. Were going to leave my son out of this. He is not going to be interrogated by anyone.
I take it, Mason said, by that you mean you have taken steps to see that he cant be found.
I am acting in accordance with my conscientious convictions as his father. I am performing my duties as a parent.
In other words, Mason said, after we strip your speech of all its high-sounding talk about your duties as a parent, it comes down to the fact that Susan Fisher says your son gave her a shoe box belonging to you and that this shoe box was full of hundred-dollar bills. You say that that is a complete lie, that no one has seen the shoe box except Susan Fisher, and in order to establish your point you have put your son somewhere in hiding so that he cant be interrogated.
You are a lawyer, Campbell said. You can twist things around to suit your own purpose. I made the statement which I think Miss Corning will accept at face value.
All right, Amelia Corning said, I think Ive heard enough to get a pretty good picture of the situation. Ive given you and your client a chance to talk, Mr. Mason, and now Im going to give Mr. Campbell a chance to talk.
I will say that, Endicott Campbell said, I tried to humor my son yesterday morning. He had a shoe box which contained some of his treasures. I had a shoe box containing some dress shoes. I made some joking remark about a trade. He evidently took the shoe box containing the patent-leather shoes. He told me that he gave that shoe box to Susan Fisher. He said she put it in the safe, that he didnt get it back. That is the complete story of the shoe box. I know what was in that shoe box. It was a pair of dress shoes. I can show you the sales slip where they were purchased. Now if Miss Fisher will kindly produce the shoe box she claims was filled with money well see whats in it.
Amelia Corning said, The situation is quite clear. Somebody is lying. Now if you folks will retire Ill sit down and talk things over with Mr. Campbell. I take it, Mr. Campbell, you feel that youre able to substantiate some of the charges youve made?
Unfortunately, Campbell said, Sue Fisher has disposed of much of the documentary evidence. She says she turned it over to a woman who arrived here yesterday and impersonated you. If Miss Fisher had simply refrained from doing all of these things until I could have been given an opportunity as manager of the business to okay what she was doing, I feel that we would
I tried and tried to get you, Sue interrupted.
Well, you didnt try hard enough or in the right place, Campbell said. For your information I canceled a golf game in order to make a hurried trip to Mojave to check up on what was being done at that mine. You took it on yourself to turn over confidential company records to a perfect stranger. This is all very, very convenient for you, Miss Fisher. For my part, I think this impersonator was someone you dug up in a last-minute effort to so confuse the issues that you couldnt be convicted of the embezzlement.
All right, Mason said, youve made that as an accusation. Now let me ask you this, Mr. Campbell. Is there any reason why any person who was responsible for the embezzlement, whether it was Susan Fisher, John Doe, or Endicott Campbell, couldnt have very cleverly arranged this entire impersonation so that the documentary evidence of the embezzlement would disappear and the money would also disappear?
Campbell smiled frostily. So thats going to be the angle you use in your defense; a counter-offensive, eh? Well, Ill meet you on those grounds, Mr. Perry Mason, at the proper time and in the proper place. And right now Im going to make a confidential report to my employer and believe me, its going to be confidential.
You call up Miss Corning in an hour and youll find out your client wasnt as smart as she thought she was. Ive managed to get enough evidence in my hands to establish her duplicity.
Miss Corning said, You folks have all had a chance to let off steam. Ive heard Susan Fishers side of the case. Now Ill hear yours, Mr. Campbell. The rest of you, clear out!
Miss Corning said, You folks have all had a chance to let off steam. Ive heard Susan Fishers side of the case. Now Ill hear yours, Mr. Campbell. The rest of you, clear out!
Chapter 5
Out in the corridor Mason, Della Street, and Susan Fisher walked slowly towards the elevator.
Midway to the elevator Sue Fisher said, Mr. Mason, cant we do something to find Carleton? Hes had that English governess of his take the boy and go somewhere.
Mason said nothing until they had reached the elevator and the lawyer had punched the button. The boy, he said, didnt know what was in the shoe box, did he?
No, he just knew it was Daddys treasure.
And his daddy, Mason said, insists the treasure was a pair of dress shoes. So that isnt going to help us very much... Even if we recover the shoe box full of money you cant prove anything, because Endicott Campbell will swear that there was a pair of dress shoes in it when he let his son take the box. He cant help it if you threw the dress shoes into the trash and filled the box full of hundred-dollar bills, the result of your embezzlement.
Sue Fisher looked at him in dismay as the full significance of the situation dawned upon her. Well, she asked, what can we do?
That, Mason said, will depend very largely upon certain developments in the situation and on what kind of woman Miss Corning is.
She looks to me like someone who would be hard to fool, Susan Fisher said.
In that case, Mason pointed out, Endicott Campbell is probably having a handful of problems right now.
So we wait for something to... to turn up?
Mason gave her one of his warm smiles. You do, Sue, he said, but we are going to take steps which will encourage things to turn up. Theres a saying in the newspaper business that a good reporter makes his own luck and I think we are going out to make some luck.
Where?
Oh, various places.
Mojave? she asked.
I wouldnt be too surprised, Mason said.
Oh, Mr. Mason, can I go with you, please? Can I...?
The lawyer shook his head. We dont want you to do anything which could even be remotely considered as flight or avoiding questioning. You go right to your apartment and stay there. Stay by the telephone. If anything out of the ordinary happens, telephone Paul Drake at once.