Painter hesitated, looking slowly from Shayne to Stallings. “If she isn’t Helen Stallings, it ought to prove something,” he muttered at last.
“How does he plan to prove this absurd contention?”
Stallings asked sharply. “Is she supposed to have a strawberry birthmark or has he got a set of her fingerprints from the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
“I’ll produce a witness to identify her,” Shayne told Painter confidently. “One whose identification you’ll have to accept without doubt.”
“It’s another trick of his,” Stallings argued. “He has planned this in advance. He’s got someone planted who will pretend to have been acquainted with Helen in school. I tell you the whole thing is an absurd tissue of lies, and any person who states that the body of the strangled girl isn’t my stepdaughter is a malicious liar. All he’s after is to get this trumped-up story in the newspapers to defeat me at the election.”
“It’ll have to be an absolutely positive identification before I’ll accept it,” Painter warned Shayne. “Someone like — well, the girl’s mother.”
“She’s too ill,” Stallings protested hastily. “The doctor’s orders are very strict that she must have no excitement whatever.”
“All right,” Shayne agreed. “I’m not so sure about the nature of her illness. I’ve got a strong hunch Doctor Patterson has kept her shot full of dope this past month so she wouldn’t recognize the girl as an impostor and spoil your game. But let that pass. I’ve got someone who will do as well as her mother. A husband should recognize his own wife.”
“A husband?” Stallings choked over the word, shaking his head frantically. “She has no husband,” he told Painter, regaining his calm immediately and effectually. “This is just the sort of trick I expected him to attempt. Helen wasn’t married. She was practically engaged to Arch Bugler.”
“I wondered,” Shayne murmured, “whether you knew about her husband. You knew Whit Marlow was coming to visit her, didn’t you? But he was too cagey to mention the marriage in a letter addressed even to his wife. You see,” he went on to Painter, “that’s what started all the fireworks yesterday. This Marlow was due in town and they realized he’d know the girl wasn’t Helen the instant he saw her. They had to get her out of the way in a hurry. I don’t know whether he and Bugler planned to murder her or not, but it was certainly the perfect solution, as she must have realized. She got panicky and tried to get to me with her story. Then they had to put her out of the way. And the supreme irony of it was that if they’d known the truth none of their murderous scheme was necessary. Helen was already married, and the estate would have reverted to Mrs. Stallings as a natural consequence according to the will. She married a man named Whit Marlow last April.”