MICHAEL SHAYNE’S FLAT STATEMENT that the body of the murdered girl was not that of Helen Stallings brought a moment of stunned silence to Peter Painter’s private office.
Then Burt Stallings blustered, “The man is mad. Stark, raving insane. Of course the girl is Helen. There can’t be the slightest doubt.”
Timothy Rourke also was staring at his friend with a dazed look of incomprehension on his hard-bitten face.
Painter, however, reacted differently. His slender body shivered with wrath. He caressed his tiny black mustache with a trembling forefinger, and baffled fear spread over his features. His voice held a squeaky note of hysteria when he counseled, “Wait, Stallings. Shayne may be up to one of his hellish tricks again. He has a way of pulling elephants out of a thimble when you least expect it. If she isn’t Helen Stallings—”
“But she is. God, man! Don’t you think I can identify my own stepdaughter?”
Painter shook his head dubiously, darting a shaken look at Shayne’s placid self-assurance. He muttered, “You don’t know him like I do. This sort of stunt is right down his alley.” He paused reflectively, then pounded his desk with a small fist. “If he has managed to switch corpses—”
A look of comprehension crept over Rourke’s face. He breathed a soft, ecstatic “Oh, my sweet grandmother” and began scribbling rapidly on a batch of folded sheets drawn from his pocket.
Burt Stallings shook his head decisively. “There’s no chance of anything like that. I came directly from the mortuary here. The girl is my stepdaughter. I can’t be mistaken. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on when she disappeared from home yesterday. A bluish-green silk dress. The same garment described in the News story of her discovery this morning,” he ended triumphantly.
Rourke stopped scribbling. He cocked a worried eye at Shayne, but the redheaded detective was wholly unperturbed.
“That’s right. You described the dress when you reported the kidnap note.” Painter was beginning to breathe more easily, and his manner began to assume its normal aggressiveness. His slim padded shoulders strutted as he whirled upon Shayne. “How about it, Shamus? How are you going to get around Mr. Stallings’s positive identification of her?”
Shayne lit a cigarette before replying. He said calmly, “If you would stop trying to hang something on me you might solve a case one of these days without a blueprint from me. I still say the corpse of the murdered girl isn’t Helen Stallings. I can prove it.”
“But you’ve just heard Mr. Stallings—”
Shayne waved the interruption aside. “Mr. Stallings can prove she is the girl who left his home after lunch yesterday, angry at him and at Arch Bugler. The girl who has been masquerading for a month as Helen Stallings. I don’t deny that. I haven’t looked at the body, but from Rourke’s description in the newspaper this morning I’m assuming that’s who she is. She came to my office yesterday afternoon just before I took my wife to the train.”
Burt Stallings’s tall, handsome body was rigidly upright and tense. Only his lips moved when he said bitterly, “I repeat — the man is insane. Someone masquerading as Helen? Bah! Utter nonsense.”
Rourke’s nose quivered on the scent of headlines. His head was slightly cocked toward Stallings as his pencil again raced over the notebook on his knee.
“You admit she came to you yesterday?” Painter again pounded the desk. “Last night you denied knowing anything about her disappearance.”
“Barking up a tree again,” Shayne said. “I denied knowing anything about Helen Stallings’s disappearance. I didn’t at that time, though I’ve doped it out since. Also, I didn’t even know where the girl was. She was snatched from my office while I was at the depot.”
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.”
Shayne answered for Painter. “It didn’t fool you. You arranged it, with Arch Bugler’s help. Her mother? She’s confined to her bed in the west wing — has been ever since you moved into the new house. A maid told me the girl hadn’t seen her mother since her illness. The servants? They were all new. They’d never seen the real Helen Stallings. Her friends? She had been in the city only a week. Whatever friends she might have made during that week were promptly dropped. She began running around with a tough crowd. Bugler and his gang. That’s one of the things that put me next. Her abrupt transition into a member of the night-club sporting crowd, escorted by Arch Bugler. Somehow that didn’t fit my preconceived idea of the character of a Smith College graduate.”
Stallings moved his shoulders jerkily, then shook his head slowly. “Really, your ability to distort facts to fit your own ends is amazing, Mr. Shayne. All I can suggest is that you read less of Oppenheim or stop hitting the pipe.”
Peter Painter’s face was a curious study of mixed emotions. Again there was that lingering expression of fright in his black eyes as he felt the solid foundations of his case against Shayne crumbling against the assaults of doubt. Blended with his fear and his anger was the inbred determination of a police officer to get at the truth, regardless of consequences.
He said to Shayne, “Granting the remote possibility of your fantastic story that such a switch in identities could have been managed under the circumstances you outline— why? Why, in God’s name, would anyone go to such extraordinary lengths?”
“The answer is right here in the newspaper.” Shayne tapped a sheet he had laid on the desk. “The girl comes to Miami and starts a suit against her stepfather for misappropriation of the estate. Suppose he’s guilty and desperate to have the action squelched? Simply killing the girl won’t halt the investigation. Besides, the filing of the suit will look like a motive for murder. So he puts her out of the way and substitutes another girl who looks enough like her to appear in court and withdraw the complaint. It is an established fact that few people are observant enough to remember exact features when meeting a person once, or even twice. A girl of approximately the same build and coloring wearing the identical dress and hat worn by Helen Stallings might easily fool a judge or a lawyer. Maybe the complaint was withdrawn by a written document.”
“I’m a wealthy man,” Stallings interrupted angrily. “My conduct as administrator of the estate is above reproach. I will welcome an investigation.”
“Sure. You’ve probably got it covered up now. You could afford to, knowing it would all come into your hands in the end. But this wealthy stuff is the bunk,” Shayne went on sharply to Painter. “That island estate cost him a fortune — and he dropped plenty gambling at Bugler’s place when it was running. That’s why Bugler helped him, probably hatched the scheme himself. Arch is holding a handful of his markers and saw himself being left out in the cold if the girl went ahead with her court action and took the estate away from Stallings. I imagine he supplied the idea and the girl, didn’t he?” Shayne turned to Stallings.
Stallings’s physique unbent to the point of straining forward from the waist and tossing his silvery hair back. He declared, “This is clearly a frame-up to defeat me at the polls tomorrow. Though Shayne knows he hasn’t a shred of evidence to bolster his insane accusations, he realizes that by making them public he will so becloud the issue in the minds of the voters that his candidate will have a chance to win. But I warn you, young man, any newspaper that prints this story will lay itself wide open for a libel suit — which I shan’t hesitate to bring.” He shook an admonishing finger at Timothy Rourke.
“That’s right, Mike,” Rourke muttered. “This is swell stuff, but — I got to have something to back it up.”
“That’s easy,” Shayne assured him. “Proving the girl isn’t Helen Stallings will be enough. Don’t you agree that will prove my story?” he asked, turning to Painter.
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.”
“That’s an outright lie,” Stallings sputtered. “It’s impossible.” His dignity was shattered.
Shayne smiled thinly. He reached in his inner breast pocket and drew out the marriage certificate he had taken from Whit Marlow’s bag. “Look it over for yourself.” Painter unfolded it while Stallings leaned far forward to read it with him.
“Marlow is in the Miami jail right now.” Shayne’s voice crackled authoritatively. “Call Gentry and have him sent over to identify the body Stallings claims to be that of his stepdaughter.”
“By God, I’ll do that.” Painter shoved the certificate aside and seized the telephone. He got Miami police headquarters and spoke to Chief Gentry. After talking a few minutes he covered the mouthpiece and asked Stallings, “What mortuary has the body?”
“Gleason’s, here on the Beach. But I certainly don’t approve—”
Painter turned his attention to the telephone again. In a moment he hung up and announced, “Gentry is sending Marlow over at once. We’ll meet him at the mortuary and straighten this thing out once and for all. But don’t think that means I believe a word you’ve said,” he added to Shayne. “If that young man identifies the corpse as his wife you’re going to jail and stand trial for her murder.”
Shayne said, “That suits me,” and got up. He winked broadly at Rourke.
Stallings rode in the official car with Painter to the mortuary. Shayne and Rourke rode with two Miami Beach detectives in a patrol car.
“How sure are you about all this?” Rourke asked anxiously as they were driven northward. “God knows, every word of it was a complete surprise to me.”
“I’m as sure as any man can be without actual proof. God damn it, Tim, that’s the way it has to be. It’s the only thing that hangs together — the only theory that fits all the facts.”
“Theory,” Rourke growled. “I don’t like it, Mike. Stallings acted too damned cocky all through the interview. If you’re wrong—”
“If I’m wrong,” Shayne interposed cheerfully, “I’ll have lots of spare time to work out some more theories in Petey Painter’s jail. But I can’t be wrong. Too many queer facts dovetail perfectly.”
“When the hell did it come to you? Have you guessed all along that the girl wasn’t Helen Stallings?”
“No. I didn’t have the faintest idea. It just began unscrambling itself this morning the more I tried to make two and two equal five. It wouldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, it came out four every time. The thing that’s been nagging at me subconsciously all along,” Shayne went on in a musing tone, “was the inexplicable change that appeared to come over Helen Stallings all at once. First, she changed her mind and withdrew the suit against her stepfather; then she started running around with Bugler and his crowd. It looked as if she must have got a crack on the head — or they were two different girls.”
“Might have been duress,” Rourke argued weakly. “If Bugler had a stake in Stallings keeping control of the money he might have got hold of Helen and put the pressure on. Arch Bugler is capable of anything.”
“That’s the only other possibility that passes muster,” Shayne agreed. “But it doesn’t explain all the other strange happenings. That Doctor Patterson — I’m willing to bet he’s a phony. And he’s got some tie-up with Bugler. To hell with all this guesswork,” the detective ended philosophically as the patrol car drew up behind Painter’s automobile in front of the Gleason Mortuary. “We’ll know soon enough whether I’m out on a limb or not.”
A detective got on each side of Shayne and walked him up the steps behind Painter and Stallings. Rourke trailed along behind them, an uneasy expression in his slaty eyes.
In a small anteroom Painter explained the official nature of their call to a man wearing a frock coat and an air of deep melancholy.
“Here comes our man from Miami,” Painter ended, after glancing out the door. “We’ll all go in together.”
“The young lady, of course, is not — ah, they’re not quite through with her back there.” He inclined his head lugubriously toward the rear.
“That’s all right,” Painter said impatiently. “Better see her natural this way, before you birds get her all prettied up past recognition.”
A member of the Miami detective force entered the anteroom leading Whit Marlow by the arm. The young saxophone player’s face was ashen, his eyes looked sick. He glanced at Shayne, Rourke, and the others without recognition. Painter faced him and asked, “Marlow?”
“Yes. What’s this all about?” Marlow jerked his head up with a show of spirit.
“Are you the legal husband of a young lady generally known as Helen Stallings? Helen Devalon before her name was changed to Stallings?”
Marlow’s ashen features twitched. He started a denial, then his shoulders drooped dispiritedly. “All right. So it isn’t a secret any longer. But we had a right to get married. Suppose she does lose the money? Where’s Helen? That’s all I want to know. Where is she?”
Painter turned and nodded to the mortician. He led them back through the chapel to a tiled workroom that stank with the heavy odor of embalming fluids. Stallings dropped behind the Miami detective and Marlow. Rourke and Shayne came next, followed by the two Miami Beach officers.
The mortuary attendant whispered something in the ear of a tall man wearing white duck pants and a surgeon’s jacket.
Whit Marlow’s breath was coming jerkily between set teeth as his befuddled senses slowly began to catch the sinister meaning of the questions which had been thrown at him and this trip to the rear of the mortuary. An agonized look came into his young eyes and he trembled violently. The husky Miami detective supported his slight figure with a heavy arm.
The mortician went to a huge porcelain cabinet with a tier of long drawers. He touched the handle of one drawer and it slid out smoothly on oiled rollers. “We haven’t got started on her yet,” he said apologetically.
Painter stood back with a wave of his hand toward Marlow. “Do you know this woman?”
The young husband swayed forward, white-faced and shaken. He peered over the edge of the porcelain drawer and drew back with a tortured sob. “Helen! Oh, God! Helen!”
Painter and Stallings both nodded sagely and turned to Shayne, but Shayne disregarded them. He stepped forward angrily, grabbing Whit Marlow’s arm.
“Don’t be a fool,” he grated. “Take a good look at that girl’s face. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. You were convinced it was Helen before you looked. Look again.”
Stallings protested. “See here, now, you’re trying to influence him. Painter—”
Marlow shuddered, then gathering strength from Shayne’s assured words he steeled himself for a long and searching look at the waxen face of the corpse.
After a full minute he turned wildly upon Shayne. “What kind of games are you playing? Of course that’s Helen. Do you think I could be mistaken? She’s my wife. Do you hear? My wife.” He staggered back, pressing his hands against his eyeballs. The Miami officer caught him as he started to fall.
Shayne stood very still. An expression of utter disbelief contorted his gaunt features. Faintly, he heard Painter saying, “Very well. That settles it as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Stallings. Sorry to have caused you this trouble, but he won’t make any more after he’s locked up.”
Shayne whirled to see Painter and Stallings in a huddle with Rourke. The Miami Beach detectives were standing close to them, listening intently to the conversation.
Turning slowly, Shayne’s big feet glided toward an open window and stepped noiselessly to the mortuary grounds.