In a few words Varian detailed the circumstances, and added, “We don’t know where Miss Varian is.”
“Disappeared! Then she must have shot her father – ”
“Oh, no!” interrupted Landon, “don’t say such an absurd thing!”
“What else is there to say?” demanded Merritt. “You say there was nobody in the house but those two people. Now, one is here dead, and the other is missing. What else can be said?”
“Don’t accuse a defenseless girl, – ” advised Varian. “Betty must be found, of course. But I don’t for a minute believe she shot her father.”
“Where’s the gun?” asked Doctor Merritt.
“Hasn’t been found,” returned Varian, briefly. “Mrs Varian, my brother’s wife, is hysterical. I’ve been obliged to quiet her by opiates. Doctor Merritt, this is by no means a simple case. I hope your sheriff is a man of brains and experience. It’s going to call for wise and competent handling.”
“Potter is experienced enough. Been sheriff for years. But as to brains, he isn’t overburdened with them. Still, he’s got good horse sense.”
“One of the best things to have,” commented Varian. “Now, I don’t know that we need keep Mr Landon here any longer. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Merritt, thoughtfully. “He was here at the time of the – crime?”
“Yes; but so were several others, and they’ve gone away. As you like, Mr Landon, but I don’t think you need stay unless you wish.”
“I do wish,” Ted Landon said. “I may be of use, somehow, and, too, I’m deeply interested. I want to see what the sheriff thinks about it, and, too, I want to try to find or help to find Miss Betty.”
“Betty must be found,” said Varian, as if suddenly reminded of the fact. “I am so distracted between the shock of my brother’s death and the anxiety regarding his wife’s condition, that for the moment I almost forgot Betty. That child must be hiding somewhere. She must have been frightened in some fearful way, and either fainted or run away and hid out in the grounds somewhere. I’m positive she isn’t in the house.”
“She couldn’t have gone out the back door,” said Landon. “It was locked when I went to it.”
“She couldn’t have gone out at the front door or we should have seen her,” Varian added, “She stepped out of a window, then.”
“Are you assuming some intruder?” asked Merritt, wonderingly.
“I’m not assuming anything,” returned Varian, a little crisply, for his nerves were on edge. “But Betty Varian must be found, – my duty is to the living as well as to the dead.”
He glanced at his brother’s body, and his face expressed a mute promise to care for that brother’s child.
“But how are you going to find her?” asked Landon. “We saw Miss Varian enter this house – ”
“Therefore, she is still in it, – or in the grounds,” said Varian, positively. “It can’t be otherwise. I shall hunt out of doors first, before it grows dusk. Then we can hunt the house afterward.”
“You have hunted the house.”
“Yes; but it must be hunted more thoroughly. Why, Betty, or – Betty’s body must be somewhere. And must be found.”
Doctor Merritt listened, dumfounded. Here was mystery indeed. Mr Varian dead, – shot, – no weapon found, and his daughter missing.
What could be the explanation?
The hunt out of doors for Betty resulted in nothing at all. There was no kitchen garden, merely a drying plot and a small patch of back yard, mostly stones and hard ground. This was surrounded by dwarfed and stunted pine trees, which not only afforded no hiding place, but shut off no possible nook or cranny where Betty could be hidden. The whole tableland was exposed to view from all parts of it, and it was clear to be seen that Betty Varian could not be hiding out of doors.
And since she could not have left the premises, save by the road where the picnic party was congregated, there was no supposition but that she was still in the house.
“Can you form any theory, Doctor Varian?” Landon asked him.
“No, I can’t. Can you?”
“Only the obvious one, – that Miss Varian killed her father and then hid somewhere.”
“But where? Mind you, I don’t for a moment admit she killed her father, that’s too ridiculous! But whoever killed him, may also have killed her. It is her body I think we are more likely to find.”
“How, then, did the assassin get away?”
“I don’t know. I’m not prepared to say there’s no way out of this place – ”
“But I know that to be the fact. There comes the sheriff, Doctor Varian. That’s Potter.”
They went into the house again, and found the sheriff and another man with him.
Merritt made the necessary introductions, and Doctor Varian looked at Potter.
“The strangest case you’ve ever had,” he informed him, “and the most important. How do you propose to handle it?”
“Like I do all the others, by using my head.”
“Yes, I know, but I mean what help do you expect to have?”
“Dunno’s I’ll need any yet. Haven’t got the principal facts. Dead man’s your brother, ain’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Shot dead and no weapon around. Criminal unknown. Now, about this young lady, – the daughter. Where is she?”
“I don’t know, – but I hope you can find her.”
And then Doctor Varian told, in his straightforward way, of his search for the girl.
“Mighty curious,” vouchsafed the sheriff, with an air of one stating a new idea. “The girl and her father on good terms?”
“Yes, of course,” Varian answered, but his slight hesitation made the sheriff eye him keenly.
“We want the truth, you know,” he said, thoughtfully. “If them two wasn’t on good terms, you might as well say so, – ’cause it’ll come out sooner or later.”
“But they were, – so far as I know.”
“Oh, well, all right. I can’t think yet, the girl shot her father. I won’t think that, – lessen I have to. But, good land, man, you say you’ve looked all over the house, – where’s the murderer, then?”
“Suicide?” laconically said the man who had come with the sheriff.
It was the first time he had spoken. He was a quiet, insignificant chap, but his eyes were keen and his whole face alert.
“Couldn’t be, Bill,” said the sheriff, “with no weapon about.”
“Might ’a’ been removed,” the other said, in his brief way.
“By whom?” asked Doctor Varian.
“By whoever came here first,” Bill returned, looking at him.
“I came here first,” Varian stated. “Do you mean I removed the weapon?”
“Have to look at all sides, you know.”
“Well, I didn’t. But I won’t take time, now, to enlarge on that plain statement. I’ll be here, you can question me, when and as often as you like. Now, Mr Potter, what are you going to do first?”
“Well, seems to me there’s no more to be done with Mr Varian’s body. You two doctors have examined it,