Rourke stopped scribbling. He cocked a worried eye at Shayne, but the redheaded detective was wholly unperturbed.
“That’s right. You described the dress when you reported the kidnap note.” Painter was beginning to breathe more easily, and his manner began to assume its normal aggressiveness. His slim padded shoulders strutted as he whirled upon Shayne. “How about it, Shamus? How are you going to get around Mr. Stallings’s positive identification of her?”
Shayne lit a cigarette before replying. He said calmly, “If you would stop trying to hang something on me you might solve a case one of these days without a blueprint from me. I still say the corpse of the murdered girl isn’t Helen Stallings. I can prove it.”
“But you’ve just heard Mr. Stallings—”
Shayne waved the interruption aside. “Mr. Stallings can prove she is the girl who left his home after lunch yesterday, angry at him and at Arch Bugler. The girl who has been masquerading for a month as Helen Stallings. I don’t deny that. I haven’t looked at the body, but from Rourke’s description in the newspaper this morning I’m assuming that’s who she is. She came to my office yesterday afternoon just before I took my wife to the train.”
Burt Stallings’s tall, handsome body was rigidly upright and tense. Only his lips moved when he said bitterly, “I repeat — the man is insane. Someone masquerading as Helen? Bah! Utter nonsense.”
Rourke’s nose quivered on the scent of headlines. His head was slightly cocked toward Stallings as his pencil again raced over the notebook on his knee.
“You admit she came to you yesterday?” Painter again pounded the desk. “Last night you denied knowing anything about her disappearance.”
“Barking up a tree again,” Shayne said. “I denied knowing anything about Helen Stallings’s disappearance. I didn’t at that time, though I’ve doped it out since. Also, I didn’t even know where the girl was. She was snatched from my office while I was at the depot.”
Painter’s delicate mustache quivered upward in a sneer. “A likely story. By God, Shayne, I don’t know what you’ve cooked up to cover yourself this time, but we’re not going to swallow any preposterous tissue of lies.”
“Ask Stallings what actually became of Helen,” Shayne said easily. “He got rid of her a month ago. He and Arch Bugler together.”
Stallings fumed. “Must we listen to this man’s absurd accusations?”
“You’re Goddamned right you’re going to listen.” Shayne swung on him angrily. “I’m not only accusing you of getting rid of your stepdaughter, but of doing away with the girl who was posing as Helen. Baldy, from the Bugle Inn, telephoned you yesterday afternoon that he had doped her and that she was headed to Miami to see me. You were desperate. Your whole house of cards was tumbling down if she talked.”
“I did not. I can prove I didn’t leave the Beach. A bartender did warn me that my daughter was making loose threats against me and was going to you with them. I told all that to Mr. Painter at once. My hands are clean.”
Painter’s black eyes were glistening. They stalked the redheaded detective relentlessly. “Are you fool enough to think you can make anyone believe another girl has been pretending to be Helen Stallings for weeks and the deception has been successful? I suppose you’re going to pull an identical twin out of your sleeve now.”
“It didn’t take an identical twin — nor a twin of any sort. All it took was a girl who looked enough like Helen for a newspaper picture of her to pass for a previously printed picture of the real Helen Stallings. Here’s what I mean.”
Shayne drew some folded sheets of newspaper from his coat pocket and spread them out on Painter’s desk. “Here’s a shot of Helen Stallings at the airport when she arrived from the north — her first visit to Miami,” he added significantly. “It isn’t particularly clear, as good as most newspaper photos, and you’ve had your mug in the papers enough, Painter, to know you can’t recognize yourself half the time.
“Now take a look at this close-up. The date is a week later. The day after Helen Stallings filed suit against her stepfather for mishandling her father’s estate. Also, the day the Stallings family moved from an apartment into their new home. This picture is very clear. No doubt about it, that’s the girl who thereafter was known around Miami as Helen Stallings. Do you begin to get a glimmering of the truth now?”
Stallings was like a mass of poured concrete except for his lips. He protested, “This is all a fantastic product of Shayne’s imagination. You certainly won’t grant for a moment, Chief Painter, that such a masquerade would be successful, would fool her mother, myself, the servants, her friends.”
Shayne answered for Painter. “It didn’t fool you. You arranged it, with Arch Bugler’s help. Her mother? She’s confined to her bed in the west wing — has been ever since you moved into the new house. A maid told me the girl hadn’t seen her mother since her illness. The servants? They were all new. They’d never seen the real Helen Stallings. Her friends? She had been in the city only a week. Whatever friends she might have made during that week were promptly dropped. She began running around with a tough crowd. Bugler and his gang. That’s one of the things that put me next. Her abrupt transition into a member of the night-club sporting crowd, escorted by Arch Bugler. Somehow that didn’t fit my preconceived idea of the character of a Smith College graduate.”
Stallings moved his shoulders jerkily, then shook his head slowly. “Really, your ability to distort facts to fit your own ends is amazing, Mr. Shayne. All I can suggest is that you read less of Oppenheim or stop hitting the pipe.”
Peter Painter’s face was a curious study of mixed emotions. Again there was that lingering expression of fright in his black eyes as he felt the solid foundations of his case against Shayne crumbling against the assaults of doubt. Blended with his fear and his anger was the inbred determination of a police officer to get at the truth, regardless of consequences.
He said to Shayne, “Granting the remote possibility of your fantastic story that such a switch in identities could have been managed under the circumstances you outline—why? Why, in God’s name, would anyone go to such extraordinary lengths?”
“The answer is right here in the newspaper.” Shayne tapped a sheet he had laid on the desk. “The girl comes to Miami and starts a suit against her stepfather for misappropriation of the estate. Suppose he’s guilty and desperate to have the action squelched? Simply killing the girl won’t halt the investigation. Besides, the filing of the suit will look like a motive for murder. So he puts her out of the way and substitutes another girl who looks enough like her to appear in court and withdraw the complaint. It is an established fact that few people are observant enough to remember exact features when meeting a person once, or even twice. A girl of approximately the same build and coloring wearing the identical dress and hat worn by Helen Stallings might easily fool a judge or a lawyer. Maybe the complaint was withdrawn by a written document.”
“I’m a wealthy man,” Stallings interrupted angrily. “My conduct as administrator of the estate is above reproach. I will welcome an investigation.”
“Sure. You’ve probably got it covered up now. You could afford to, knowing it would all come into your hands in the end. But this wealthy stuff is the bunk,” Shayne went on sharply to Painter. “That island estate cost him a fortune — and he dropped plenty gambling at Bugler’s place when it was running. That’s why Bugler helped him, probably hatched the scheme himself. Arch is holding a handful of his markers and saw himself being left out in the cold if the girl went ahead with her court action and took the estate away from Stallings. I imagine he supplied the idea and the girl, didn’t he?” Shayne turned to Stallings.