The old miner growled, “Danged if Ol’ Pete didn’t think he was a beaut, allus havin’ his pitcher took even way back then. This’n with the whiskers looks some like him”
Windrow snatched the clipping from Strenk and studied it. He snapped, “Nonsense. You can’t prove a thing from this picture. Why, it might be one of Cal, here, taken ten years ago.”
“It’s hard to identify a ten-year-old picture,” Shayne agreed. “But the fact that Pete had them in his possession all this time will be accepted in any court as legal proof of his identity. And here’s one that shows he had recognized Nora Carson as his daughter as much as two weeks ago.”
He held out another neat clipping from the local Register-Call that carried a date two weeks previous. It had a clear likeness of Nora Carson above the cut-line: Actress Continues Ten-Year Search for Father in Colorado Mining Camps.
“I recollec’ seein’ that pitcher,” Strenk exclaimed excitedly. “’Twas on the front page ’longside one of me an’ Ol’ Pete together tellin’ ’bout our strike.”
“This one?” asked Shayne, picking up the last of the three clippings, rudely torn from the center of a front page.
It had a picture of Cal Strenk and Screwloose Pete with their arms around each other’s shoulders and wide grins on their whiskered faces above the caption: Local Men Make Rich Strike.
“Tha’s the one!” Strenk nodded vigorously. “I recollec’ when Pete tore it out, he was that proud. Carried it folded in his pants pocket an’ showed it to ever’one. But he never said nothin’ ’bout that pitcher of the gal bein’ his gal. I never saw him cut it out.”
Shayne refolded the clippings carefully, shaking his head. “That was Pete’s secret. This stuff proves it wasn’t any case of amnesia. He knew who he was all the time, and for two weeks he’d known his daughter was here looking for him. But he didn’t approach her — except to look through the hotel window tonight. And then he ran away to be killed as soon as she saw him.”