Dorn tried to prevent Vicki from speaking. He heaped her with scorn and flatly denied all allegations—but Mrs. Bryant insisted.
Vicki started to enumerate her points: the so-called Lucy had not worked for Whitney Decorators because no such firm had ever existed. Her alleged doctor, Dr. Alice James, did not exist. The addresses where she’d said she lived did not exist.
“Lies, lies!” Dorn said to Mr. Bryant. “I visited every one of those persons and places myself. You have my word for it.”
Marshall Bryant nodded. Vicki said to him:
“Mr. Dorn is the one who’s lying. You have only his word for these things, and he and his mother and this girl he misrepresents to be your granddaughter—they’re all in collusion together.”
“I’ll take you to court for libel, Vicki Barr!” Dorn fairly shouted.
She ignored that, and appealed to the Bryants. “Send an impartial investigator to San Francisco, or go yourselves. You’ll find out from the Interstate Insurance Company that that’s where Lucy worked, ever since she got out of school. Talk to Mr. Hall. Talk to Jill Joseph who lives in Lucy’s old house in Sutro Heights—she and her parents, the Rossiters, knew Lucy’s parents—”
“Ridiculous,” said Dorn, with a little laugh. “Perhaps this other girl’s name actually is Lucy Rowe—though I doubt it—but even if it is, that does not make her your granddaughter and your heir. Can’t you see how easy it is for an unscrupulous girl to claim to be your kin whom you’ve never seen? A crude attempt, I must say.”
Vicki saw that she was getting nowhere. The more points she raised, the more Dorn, with a lawyer’s great verbal skill, twisted and bypassed them. He managed to make Vicki’s statements appear implausible. He enumerated proofs of his own correctness. Lucy, sitting beside her, was numb with misery.
Vicki looked at the false Lucy and had an inspiration. She addressed her directly, sharply: