“You’re crazy,” Painter snapped. “The body was found this morning where you’d ditched it. We’ve got her safe enough. And if you’re figuring on pulling a fast one by snatching the body, you’d better start thinking again.”
“Why, no,” Shayne disclaimed pleasantly, “I wouldn’t snatch the body for anything. That corpse will bust your case wide open. It just happens that the body is not that of Helen Stallings at all.”
THIRTEEN
MICHAEL SHAYNE’S FLAT STATEMENT that the body of the murdered girl was not that of Helen Stallings brought a moment of stunned silence to Peter Painter’s private office.
Then Burt Stallings blustered, “The man is mad. Stark, raving insane. Of course the girl is Helen. There can’t be the slightest doubt.”
Timothy Rourke also was staring at his friend with a dazed look of incomprehension on his hard-bitten face.
Painter, however, reacted differently. His slender body shivered with wrath. He caressed his tiny black mustache with a trembling forefinger, and baffled fear spread over his features. His voice held a squeaky note of hysteria when he counseled, “Wait, Stallings. Shayne may be up to one of his hellish tricks again. He has a way of pulling elephants out of a thimble when you least expect it. If she isn’t Helen Stallings—”
“But she is. God, man! Don’t you think I can identify my own stepdaughter?”
Painter shook his head dubiously, darting a shaken look at Shayne’s placid self-assurance. He muttered, “You don’t know him like I do. This sort of stunt is right down his alley.” He paused reflectively, then pounded his desk with a small fist. “If he has managed to switch corpses—”
A look of comprehension crept over Rourke’s face. He breathed a soft, ecstatic “Oh, my sweet grandmother” and began scribbling rapidly on a batch of folded sheets drawn from his pocket.