“Yes, I do,” she asserted stoutly. “If Pete wasn’t Nora’s father, who was he?”
“I suppose no one will ever know. Just an old prospector who’d lived alone too much.”
“Then, who is Peter Dalcor?” Phyllis asked helplessly.
“Good heaven, Phyl, I don’t know that one either. He may have been dead these ten years for all we know. Frank Carson made himself up to look like Dalcor last night — and Philip Steele repeated the performance for us just now.” He shrugged. “Isn’t that clear enough?”
“Just about,” said Phyllis sweetly, “as clear as mud.”
And later that evening, when they were back at the hotel and Shayne was having a noggin of cognac while Phyllis took a quick shower, she stuck her head out of the bathroom door, holding a bath towel up in front of her dripping body. “Oh, darling,” she cried breathlessly. “It just came to me like a flash. I understand it all now.”
A grin quirked Shayne’s mouth. “Such sudden intuition must have been a severe shock to your nervous system.”
“But, would it have worked?” she asked dubiously. “Frank’s plan, I mean. He couldn’t have proved Pete was his father-in-law.”
“It won’t be put to the test now. But he and Bryant had laid their plans carefully. No one could have proved Pete wasn’t Nora’s father. She made a public identification of him. And that stuff planted in Pete’s cabin was mighty convincing evidence. The old clipping and a picture of Peter Dalcor and Nora taken years ago—”
“What happened to that evidence?” Phyllis’s voice was reproachful. She began rubbing her dripping body with the coarse towel. “Why did Mr. Windrow and Strenk deny having seen you dig it up?”