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.”