“I’m not interested in your intercorporation finagling. What I’m interested in is who’s stealing copper that should go to munitions plants?”
Ryder made a placating gesture. “Maybe we can help you find out. It’s this way. Under mining law, the owner of a vein of ore at the surface owns it all the way underground — wherever it goes. Get that! Wherever the geological strata may lead. Now, in operations as big as the Bender Corporation’s, we’ve naturally worked all the veins that showed up in our shafts. We couldn’t go to the expense of tracing every one to the surface to see whether it originated on our property.”
“Most of them do, anyway,” Brann put in. “But this buzzard Loomis went around buying up ever foot of ground he could get title to. Now he’s suing us for enough money to start a mint, on the grounds that we’ve been mining ore from veins originating on his property. When I first saw you in my office tonight, I thought you were one of Loomis’s men.”
Garret made a mental reservation to the effect that Brann’s explanation of his attitude didn’t cover all the ground at all.
Ryder went on. “We’re going right ahead, turning out tonnage at top speed, because the country needs it. But the more we send to the surface, the worse off we are — in certain parts of the workings. On top of that, Loomis has bought up a lot of abandoned workings and is smelting down a lot of low-grade ore we never found profitable to work. What’s more, Ken thinks of Consolidated’s abandoned shafts open off our own stopes.”
“If I’m right,” the super growled, “they’re taking out a lot of high-grade Ajax ore, along with their own.”
Garret’s mind was racing. This angle might be the source of the stolen copper story. Suppose Loomis didn’t want to let the O.P.M. know how much copper his outfit was smelting for fear it would mean disclosure of where the ore actually came from?
Still, that left a few points to be cleared up. If Loomis had been bribing Darcy to help Consolidated with his knowledge of the Ajax shafts and tunnels, why had the timber boss fooled around with stealing a few bucks’ worth of old railroad iron? What had Brann meant by that peculiar gesture of washing off the beer glass mats? Maybe Garret could get those questions answered one at a time. He’d have a look at Consolidated Reclaimers first.
“This Allen Loomis — would he likely be at his office this time of night?”
“Every mine executive is putting in a sixty-hour week these days. I’ll go down there with you and find out,” Brann answered, moving toward the street door.
“Oh, no! No you don’t!” Ryder clapped a hand on his superintendent’s shoulder, swung him around. “You’d read the riot act to Loomis and undo all the negotiations with Consolidated backers that I’ve been working on over long distance tonight. Mr. Garret, I’ll run you down to their smelter. But I’d better not try to talk to Loomis with you, not unless you want us both to get bounced out.”
“Guess you’re right, C.J. Somebody’d get hurt if I went down there. I’ll stay here and wait for Bill Narriver.”
Ryder’s limousine was parked behind the timber truck. “Copper mining’s always been a dog-eat-dog sort of business, Garret. Loomis is only doing what others have done in the past. You don’t want to think too badly of him,” he said as they started.
“I don’t think anything about him, one way or the other,” Garret said brusquely, “until I’ve seen him.”
Five minutes later, under the towering stack of the Reclaimer’s smelter, he knew he’d been justified in not making a pre-judgment. For Allen Loomis sat on the other side of a chaste, mahogany desk in a handsome, paneled office and pointed the snout of an automatic at Bruce Garret’s middle.
“I know who you are.” The president kept an amiable smile on his pudgy, wax-skinned face. “I know all about you. You’re from Washington, all right. But you’re a stooge for Bender. Under the pretext of getting more copper out of Stope City, you’re going to try and help the big corporation take over the little orphan company I’ve worked all my life to build up. But you won’t get away with it, my friend! Ryder won’t get away with it, either. I’m giving you fair warning. I’ll turn my plant over to the government any time it needs it. But before I’ll let that chiseling bunch of Bender bandits force me to sell out, I’ll pin a few lead buttons on somebody’s vest!”
Garret made a gesture with his palm. “Put the gun away. You’ve been seeing too many melodramas.”
“No.” The pistol remained steady in Loomis’ hand. “In the old days the two-gun boys never tried to shoot you in the back at night — the way I was shot at, twice, the last week. Next time it happens, I’m aiming to do a little target work of my own.”
“Put it away,” Garret repeated. “The government hasn’t been gunning for you. For the time being, you can consider me as representing the government.”
Loomis’ smile broadened unpleasantly. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You wouldn’t be the first official to be — shall we say ‘impressed’ by the hundred-million-dollar capital of the Bender Corporation.”
Garret’s lips flattened against his teeth. “If you’re saying I’ve been bought off, I’ll slap the words down your throat! If I’d wanted to fill my pockets with that kind of dough, I wouldn’t have needed to come West.”
Loomis laid the gun down softly. “It won’t do you any good to come to me, at any rate. I can’t match Charlie Ryder at the game of palm-greasing.”
Garret held out his hand. “See any grease on that? What I get, I get from the O.P.M. Right now I’m supposed to be earning it by putting a stop to the theft of copper.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Loomis said shortly. “If you want to subpoena our records or swear out a search warrant to go through our reduction plant, that’s okay with us. Everything we do is according to Hoyle.”
Garret tried a shot in the dark. “If you don’t know anything about stolen copper, maybe you can steer me right on stolen iron.”
“Iron!” The pudgy man opened his eyes wide.
“You know, old scrap. Rails and stuff.”
Loomis pressed the switch of the interoffice communicating set on the corner of his desk. “Nels! Nels?”
A rumbling bass answered. “Want me, Mr. Loomis?”
“Step into the office a second, will you?” The president clicked the switch off, leaned back in his chair, clasping fat fingers over his paunch. “What makes you think anybody’s stealing old iron?”
“Just saw some that’s been stolen from Ajax, by a guy named Darcy. Know him?”
“I seem to recall the name. Maybe Nels Jarnstrom — he’s chief in our reduction plant — will remember him. Here’s Nels now.”
The man who came in was so gaunt his face seemed to be little more than sun-burned skin stretched tautly over jutting bones.
“Nels, this is Mr. Garret.”
“Howda do.” Jarnstrom made no movement to offer his hand.
“Mr. Garret’s with the Production Management Office. Out here to locate some missing copper.”
“Yuh? Who’s missing it?”
Garret said, “The men behind the automatic rifles and machine-guns.”
“Oh! I see.”
Loomis rocked gently in his swivel chair. “If he can’t find the copper, Nels, Mr. Garret might be willing to settle for some old scrap iron.”
Jarnstrom blinked stupidly. “Not much scrap around, the way the dealers have been buying it up.”
“I saw a little tonight.” Garret wondered at the smelterman’s apathy. “Old rails. Pinched from an Ajax spur track by a fellow named Darcy.”
The president stopped rocking. “Didn’t you tell me you were trying to hire a timber boss by that name, Nels?”