“I pick my own partners,” Lowry said, “and I pick ’em carefully.”
“No, you don’t,” Della Street said. “Endicott Campbell picked you as a partner and he’s sold you a bill of goods. You’re his partner in this thing right now, just the same as though you were partners in a mining enterprise.”
“He isn’t any partner of mine,” Lowry said.
“That’s what you think,” Mason said. “Campbell came out here. He handed you a razzle-dazzle and told you not to talk and now you’re refusing to give out pertinent information — information that we’re entitled to, information that you should give out in order to protect yourself, to say nothing of this young woman.”
“Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” Lowry said. “This thing sort of gets me when you put it that way. I tell you, the guy isn’t my partner.”
“And I tell you he is,” Mason said. “He’s hypnotized you into a partnership. You’re playing right along with him. You’re following his instructions and doing exactly what he’s told you to do. You’re not his partner in a mine, you’re his partner in something that may be a criminal enterprise and the partnership may leave you in a lot of trouble.”
For the first time Lowry turned, took his eyes off his visitors, looked out through the windshield, down the long street.
“Why should I tell you anything?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t you?” Mason said. “Unless you have something to conceal. I’ll put it another way. Why should you go into partnership with Campbell just because he comes out and tells you what he wants you to do?”
“Because in a way I’m working for Campbell.”
“Following Campbell’s instructions?”
“Well, following instructions from headquarters.”
“And do you think Endicott Campbell is representing headquarters?”
“He said he was.”
Mason’s smile was enigmatic.
Lowry narrowed his eyes, took a deep breath. “All right,” he said, “I want to talk. I want to explain my position in this matter. But I promised Campbell I’d not tell you anything.”
“Then you did take Campbell as a partner,” Della Street said.
“For heaven’s sake, quit harping on that,” Lowry said irritably. “I tell you, the man isn’t my partner.”
Mason looked at Della Street, smiled and shook his head tolerantly.
Della Street said, “I’m sorry you can’t see it, Mr. Lowry.”
Lowry thought things over for a moment, then said, “All right, I’m going to tell you this much. I did some peculiar things but everything I did was the result of orders I received directly from Miss Corning.”
“Personally?” Mason asked.
“Over the long-distance telephone.”
“How many conversations?”
“Two.”
“From South America?”
“No. She called me up from Miami. She made two business trips up to the States and she called me personally.”
“You know her personally?” Mason asked.
“I’ve never met her.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “you listened to a voice on the telephone. The voice on the telephone told you to do certain things. Those things were highly irregular. Then a man whom you’ve never seen before comes out here and tells you not to discuss those things... It seems to me you’re rather a credulous individual, Mr. Lowry.”
“You mean that wasn’t Amelia Corning who was talking with me on the telephone?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “Furthermore, you don’t know. Let me ask you this: did Endicott Campbell tell you that a woman showed up yesterday who impersonated Amelia Corning?”
“Heavens, no!” Lowry said.
“Well, she did. If anyone is desperate enough to impersonate Amelia Corning in a personal interview, it certainly wouldn’t be hard to do it over long-distance telephone.”
Lowry thought things over.
“All right,” he said at length. “I’m not going to buy Endicott Campbell as my partner. I don’t like the guy. He’s a little too smooth and a little too slick. I guess you opened my eyes, Miss Street, when you asked me if I’d like to camp out in the desert with him. I wouldn’t share blankets with that guy on a bet. I don’t think I’d trust him.”
Mason said, “Now is a good time to get the situation clarified.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” Lowry said. “I was hired by a letter from Amelia Corning. She had taken over the Mojave Monarch. She’d bought all the mine — lock, stock, and barrel. She told me to go ahead and run it in accordance with her instructions.”
“What about the Corning Mining, Smelting & Investment Company?”
“That’s an affiliated enterprise,” Lowry said, “but I was working directly under Miss Corning and I was making reports to her... Well, we ran into trouble. The vein faulted on us and I didn’t know what to do. I wrote to her and she told me that she’d let the Los Angeles company give me instructions. Then the next day she called me up and said she’d changed her mind. She asked me what I thought about closing the mine up and I told her that I thought it was the only thing to do; that we might spend a fortune trying to find that vein.
“All right, she told me she’d let me know. Then she called me up a little later and told me that for tax purposes she couldn’t afford to have the mine closed. She told me she’d turned the thing over to the Corning Mining, Smelting & Investment Company with headquarters in Los Angeles; that I would write every month and send them figures on what the payroll would have been if the mine was going full blast; that as far as the books were concerned I’d be having twelve men on each of three eight-hour shifts working here, which would make a total of thirty-six employees. I was to tell the Los Angeles office how much money I wanted for this payroll, and they’d send me a check which I was to cash in one-hundred-dollar bills, deduct my salary, and then mail those hundred-dollar bills in to Los Angeles. In that way, she said, it was just a cash transaction and all she’d be out would be the employer’s liability insurance and incidental expenses, but as far as the books were concerned, for tax purposes it would show that the mine was still being operated... Now then, was that crooked?”
“What do you think?” Mason asked.
“That’s what bothers me,” Lowry said. “I followed instructions all right and did what she told me but I didn’t like doing it.”
“All right,” Mason said, “you sent the money to the Los Angeles company?”
“No. I sent the money to the Corning Affiliated Enterprises in Los Angeles. I sent it to a post office box there.”
“You sent it in the form of cash?”
“I just got that check cashed at the bank here in hundred-dollar bills. I’d deduct the amount of my salary, then wrap the rest of those hundred-dollar bills in a plain package. Now that’s the thing that I didn’t like about the whole business. She told me not to register the money, not to have it appear that there was anything of value in the shipment; to just wrap it up and send it parcel post to this Corning Affiliated Enterprises at the post office box.
“I’d get checks from the Corning Mining, Smelting & Investment Company to cover all operating expenses. Every two weeks I’d endorse the check and take it in to the bank here to be cashed.”
“Didn’t the bank know something was wrong?” Mason asked.
“What do you mean wrong?”
“Well, I mean, didn’t the bank think there was something unusual?”
“Sure the bank thought there was something unusual, but the bank wasn’t blowing the whistle. I told the bank that I was acting under direct orders from headquarters and... Well, the bank knows me.”
“You’ve lived here quite a while?”