Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

“Have you ever been out there?” Miss Corning demanded.

“I’ve been out there,” Campbell said. “I’ve just returned from there. I was out there yesterday. I’m not a mining man, Miss Corning. I’m 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, you’ll find that you have made a tidy profit under my management. As far as the Mojave Monarch is concerned, I’ve been victimized and you have incurred a very substantial loss because of that. I’m 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. You’re accusing Susan Fisher of embezzling money from the corporation?”

“I’m not making any accusations at the present time. I’m 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.”

“You’re 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 don’t have to answer those questions. I don’t like the way you phrase them and I don’t 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 can’t 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.

“I’ve told you I don’t have to submit to your cross-examination.”

Mason said, “You accuse my client of embezzling and you’ll be submitting to my cross-examination, either here or in court.”

“By the time we get to court,” Campbell said, “I’ll have the facts and figures so well established that even you can’t 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, “that’s a dastardly lie!”

“We can prove what I’m 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. Where’s 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. We’re 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 can’t 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 can’t 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 I’ve heard enough to get a pretty good picture of the situation. I’ve given you and your client a chance to talk, Mr. Mason, and now I’m 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 didn’t 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 we’ll see what’s in it.”

Amelia Corning said, “The situation is quite clear. Somebody is lying. Now if you folks will retire I’ll sit down and talk things over with Mr. Campbell. I take it, Mr. Campbell, you feel that you’re able to substantiate some of the charges you’ve 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t be convicted of the embezzlement.”

“All right,” Mason said, “you’ve 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, couldn’t 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 that’s going to be the angle you use in your defense; a counter-offensive, eh? Well, I’ll meet you on those grounds, Mr. Perry Mason, at the proper time and in the proper place. And right now I’m going to make a confidential report to my employer and believe me, it’s going to be confidential.