Shayne twisted the crank to open the window and let in a little fresh air. Towne was engrossed with the papers from Lance Bayliss’s briefcase. Shayne leaned on the low windowsill and lit a cigarette. It was very quiet there on the hillside above the city, inside the big stone house set off from its neighbors by a thick box hedge.
Shayne smoked quietly for a time, and then asked without turning his head, “Are you satisfied it’s what I promised you?”
“There’s enough evidence to put Carter and Holden behind bars the rest of their lives,” Towne told him exultantly. “I don’t know how you dug this up, Shayne, but-”
“That doesn’t matter.” Shayne turned slowly. “Is it worth ten grand?”
“It’s an outrageous holdup for me to pay you for this,” Towne asserted angrily. “You could be jailed for trying to withhold this from the government.”
Shayne nodded calmly, but his eyes held a dangerous glint. He dropped his right hand toward the gun sagging in his coat pocket and drawled, “You’re not thinking of backing out, are you?”
“I never back out of a bargain,” Towne said stiffly. He reached into his pocket for the envelope, tossed it toward Shayne. The detective caught it in his left hand. He opened it and took out the bills, fingered them lovingly while he counted the total.
“Okay,” he said finally, straightening and replacing them in the envelope. He put the envelope in his left coat pocket and remained lounging back against the sill of the open window. “Now let’s start talking about something important.”
“I haven’t anything else to discuss with you.” Towne half turned away from him.
“We’ve got lots to talk about,” Shayne corrected him gently. “Like the price of domestic silver — and the Plata Azul mine in Mexico.”
Towne’s wide shoulders stiffened. He turned slowly, and his eyes were murderous. “What do you know about the Plata Azul?”
“Practically everything,” Shayne assured him. “When Cochrane was murdered last night, we found a telegram in his pocket from an attorney in Mexico City stating that title to the mine passed to a certain Senora Telgucado twenty-five years ago on the death of her husband — to be passed on to his heirs.”
“Interesting,” sneered Towne, “but hardly relevant.”
“I think it is,” Shayne insisted. “You see, I visited the marriage-license bureau this morning and confirmed a hunch. You and the widow of Senor Telgucado were married less than twenty-four years ago.”
“It’s a matter of record,” Towne shrugged.
“But Carmela is almost thirty years old. That makes her your stepdaughter.”
“Suppose she is my stepdaughter? I adopted her legally soon after we were married.” Towne’s voice was edged but restrained.
“She’s still her father’s legal heir,” Shayne argued.
“The Plata Azul mine legally reverted to her on her mother’s death.”
“Perhaps it did.” Towne seemed uninterested. “While you were investigating my private affairs, you might have gone further to learn that I’ve been pouring money into that property for years without any returns. I was doing it for Carmela,” he added, “hoping I could make a real strike and turn her over something worth while.”
“Without her knowledge?”
“I’ve kept it for a surprise,” Towne said stiffly. “What’s your interest in it?”
“I’m interested in its proximity to the border — and the fact that Mexican silver is worth only half the price of domestic silver — plus the fact that Josiah Riley was fired from your employ ten years ago after reporting your vein in the Big Bend pinched out.”
Towne’s face was slowly being drained of color. “How do you figure those add up?”
“They add up to fraud,” Shayne told him pleasantly, “when you consider the stamp mill you set up at the Plata Azul ten years ago, your ownership of a smelter here in El Paso where your Big Bend ore is processed, your revolutionary method of mining the Lone Star with steam shovels, and the fact that you went all out ten years ago to prevent Carmela from marrying the only man she ever wanted to marry.”
“What do you know about the Lone Star mine?” Towne snarled.
“Everything. I paid the mine a visit last night, Towne. I know the shaft is abandoned, and for years you’ve been scooping up the mountainside to get bulk to load into cars on top of refined ore you’ve been smuggling over the border from the Plata Azul. By shipping it to your own smelter here, you’ve been able to hoodwink the government into paying you the double price for domestic silver. Not only that, but every ounce of it came from the Mexican mine actually owned by Carmela, and you’ve defrauded her out of a fortune during these ten years.”
Towne stood very straight and very still in front of Shayne. “You sound very sure of your facts.”
“It’s the only answer that comes out right,” Shayne said wearily. “It’s tough, isn’t it, after you got rid of Jack Barton and Neil Cochrane after they had discovered the truth? You thought your secret was safe. And now, by God, here’s another guy popping up to plague you!”
Towne moved aside and sat down heavily in front of the liquor cabinet by the fireplace. He opened it and withdrew the tequila bottle they had drunk from last night. He poured himself a drink with a steady hand and asked, “What do you mean about Barton and Cochrane?”
Shayne glanced out the window into the sunlight. “After killing two men, it must be tough to learn your secret still isn’t safe.” He took a step forward away from the window.
Jefferson Towne stopped his glass two inches from his lips. He said stonily, “I paid Jack Barton, and I was prepared to meet Cochrane’s price. I told him so yesterday afternoon. I can also afford to pay you off. How much?” He put the glass to his lips and drank.
Shayne shook his head and said mockingly, “Don’t kid me, Towne. I know how your mind works. Josiah Riley inadvertently tipped me off with an old border proverb: ‘Los muertos no hablan.’ You know it’s cheaper to kill a man than to pay blackmail. The dead don’t talk. That’s the only sure way to shut up a blackmailer. That’s why you killed Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon — and Cochrane last night.”
Towne set his empty glass down. “Very interesting, except that you overlook a couple of facts. Jack Barton is in California spending the ten thousand I paid him — and I was in bed last night when Lance Bayliss shot Cochrane with Carmela’s pistol.”
Shayne shook his head. “Jack Barton never left for California. You bought a ticket and had someone get on the bus, just to make things look right if anyone checked up. And you drew the ten grand out of your bank and put one of them in the letter you had Jack write his parents before you killed him. But you should have had him address the envelope before you killed him, Towne. A man doesn’t forget his own address, but you forgot to put South in front of the Vine Street number. That one mistake is what cooked your goose. The delay in the delivery of that letter sent the Bartons to Dyer with the whole story when they thought the unidentified body from the river was Jack.”
“But it wasn’t Barton!” Towne exploded. “They said so themselves after looking at him.”
“Of course it wasn’t. You weren’t dumb enough to kill a blackmailer and throw his body in the river and hope to get away with it. You thought you were safe because Jack Barton was already buried in an unmarked grave in the Fort Bliss military cemetery.”
Towne hunched lower in his chair. His face was livid, and his eyes were becoming mad. He leaned forward to tap an uneasy tattoo on the edge of the liquor cabinet. He said, “I don’t know which one of us is crazy.”
“You were,” Shayne told him cheerfully, “to think you could get away with it. Though you almost did — until I thought about comparing the fingerprints of the body from the river with those taken from Jimmie Delray when he enlisted under the name of James Brown. Then I realized that you had put the soldier’s uniform on Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon and-”