The Vanishing of Betty Varian

“Well,” and Varian pulled himself together, “this won’t do. It’s a case for the police, – how shall we get at them?”

“I don’t know anything about the police, but if you telephone the inn or the clubhouse they’ll tell you. The local doctor is Merritt, – I know him. But he couldn’t do anything. Why call him when you’re here?”

“It’s customary, I think. You call Merritt, will you, and then I’ll speak to the innkeeper.”

The telephoning was just about completed, when a fearful scream from upstairs announced the fact that Minna Varian had awakened from her opiate sleep and had returned to a realization of her troubles.

Slowly Doctor Varian rose and went up the stairs.

He entered the bedroom to find Minna sitting up in bed, wild-eyed and struggling to get up, while Janet urged her to lie still.

“Lie still!” she screamed, “I will not. Come here, Herbert. Tell me, – where is my child? Why is Betty not here? Is she dead, too? Tell me, I say!”

“Yes, Minna,” Varian returned, quietly, “I will tell you all I can. I do not know where Betty is, but we’ve no reason to think she is dead – ”

“Then why doesn’t she come to me? Why doesn’t Fred come? Oh, – Fred is dead, – isn’t he?”

And then the poor woman went into violent hysterics, now shrieking like a maniac and now moaning piteously, like some hurt animal.

“The first thing to do,” said Doctor Varian, decidedly, “is to get a nurse for Minna.”

“No,” demurred his wife, “not tonight, anyway. I’ll take care of her, and there will be some maid servant who can help me. There was a nice looking waitress among those who went off this afternoon.”

“The servants will surely return as soon as they hear the news,” Varian said, and then he gave all his attention to calming his patient.

Again he placed her under the influence of a powerful opiate, and by the time she was unconscious, the local doctor had come.

Varian went down to find Doctor Merritt examining the body of his brother.

The two medical men met courteously, the local doctor assuming an important air, principally because he considered the other his superior.

“Terrible thing, Doctor Varian,” Merritt said; “death practically instantaneous.”

“Practically,” returned the other. “May have lived a few moments, but unconscious at once. You know the sheriff?”

“Yes; Potter. He’ll be along soon. He’s a shrewd one, – but, – my heavens! Who did this thing?”

Doctor Merritt’s formality gave way before his irrepressible curiosity. He looked from Doctor Varian to Ted Landon and back again, with an exasperated air of resentment at being told so little.

“We don’t know, Doctor Merritt,” Landon said, as the other doctor said nothing. “We’ve no idea.”

“No idea! A man shot and killed in this lonely, isolated house and you don’t know who did it? What do you mean?”

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?”