“And how about your father?” Mason inquired. “How does he take it?”
“Oh, Dad takes it right in his stride,” she said. “Pops is a Thinker, carries the world on his shoulders. Only occasionally can I get him to set it down long enough to play with me.”
“That,” Mason said, “doesn’t answer my question.”
“Ooh, the Big Bad Lawyer!” she laughed. “I forgot I was being cross-examined. What shall we call this, Mr. Mason — ‘The Case of the Purloined Picture’?”
“It wasn’t purloined,” he said, “so much as substituted.”
“All right, then. ‘The Case of the Substitute Face.’ How will that do?”
“All right,” he said, “at least temporarily. What does your father say about it — and, incidentally, what are your theories?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have theories. I’m too young... You don’t mind being kidded a bit, do you, Mr. Mason? Because if you do, you only have to say so and I get worse... No, seriously speaking, Dad and I both think it’s just a joke someone in the hotel played. You know Moms. She swears that it was my picture in the frame when she was doing the packing, but Moms gets excited when we travel. You see. Miss Joyce and I look alike, even if Miss Joyce wouldn’t admit it. Ever since I started traveling, people in restaurants and night clubs have been staring at me, nudging each other and whispering.”
“You might capitalize on it,” Mason said. “A stand-in or something.”
“That’s what I claim,” Belle Newberry said, the banter instantly leaving her eyes, and her voice slightly wistful. “I think it would be a swell chance for me to go to Hollywood and look around, but Dad says nothing doing, that I stay with him until after I’m twenty-three, and that’ll be six months. My Lord! It seems as though I’ve been twenty-two forever... there I go, telling my age!”