Burt Stallings shook his head decisively. “There’s no chance of anything like that. I came directly from the mortuary here. The girl is my stepdaughter. I can’t be mistaken. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on when she disappeared from home yesterday. A bluish-green silk dress. The same garment described in the News story of her discovery this morning,” he ended triumphantly.
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.”