The Vanishing of Betty Varian

“I know, it seems utterly absurd, – but – it was Betty, – it was, it was! When will Mr Wise be back, Zizi?”

“I had a letter this morning, and he says not to expect him before the end of the week at least. He is on an important trail and has to go to a distant town, then he will come back here.”

“Oh, I want to consult him about this thing,” and Rodney looked disconsolate.

“Work at it yourself, Rod,” Zizi advised him. “Get lists of the picture making companies, write to them all, and track down that film. It must be a possible thing to do. Go to it!”

“I will,” Rodney declared, and forthwith set about it.

“Now, I want to go off on a little trip,” Zizi said to Minna. “And I don’t want to say where I’m going, for it may turn out a wild goose chase. The idea is not a very big one, – yet it might be the means of finding out a lot of the mystery. Anyway, I want to go, and I’ll be back in three days or four at most.”

“I hate to have you leave me, Zizi,” Mrs Varian answered, “but if it means a chance, why take it. Get back as soon as you can, I’ve grown to depend on you for all my help and cheer.”

So Zizi packed her bag and departed.

With her she took a letter that she had abstracted from a drawer of Minna Varian’s writing-desk.

She had taken it without leave, indeed without the owner’s knowledge, but she felt the end justified the means.

“If indeed the end amounts to anything,” Zizi thought, a little ruefully.

Once started on her journey, it seemed like a wilder goose chase than it had at first appeared.

The route, the little, ill-appointed New England railroad, took her inland into the state of Maine, and then westward, until she was in the green hills and valleys of Vermont.

It was when the conductor sung out “Greenvale” that Zizi, her journey ended, alighted from the train.

She found a rickety old conveyance known as a buckboard and asked the indifferent driver thereof if she might be conveyed to any inn or hostelry that Greenvale might boast.

Still taciturn, the lanky youth that held the horse told her to “get in.”

Zizi got in, and was transported to a small inn that was not half so bad as she had feared.

She paid her charioteer, and as he set her bag down for her on the porch, she went into the first room, which seemed to be the office.

“Can I have a room for a day or two?” she asked.

“Sure,” said the affable clerk, looking at her with undisguised admiration.

Zizi smiled at him, quite completing his subjugation, for she wished to be friendly in order to get all the help she could on her mission.

She registered, and then said,

“Greenvale is a lovely place. How large is it?”

“’Most three thousand,” said the clerk, proudly. “Gained a lot of late.”

“Do you have many visitors in the summer?”

“Lots; and we’ve got a noted one here right now.”

“Who?”

“Nobody less than – why, here he comes now!” and Zizi looked toward the door, and just entering, she saw, – Pennington Wise!

CHAPTER XVI

In Greenvale

“For the love of Mike, Zizi, what are you doing here?” exclaimed Pennington Wise, nearly struck dumb with astonishment at sight of the girl.

“I ask you that!” she returned, looking at him with equal amazement.

“Well, anyway, I’m glad to see you;” he smiled at her with real pleasure. “I’ve had a long, horrid and most unsatisfactory quest for the elusive L. N. and I haven’t found him yet.”

“Any hope of it?”

“Nothing but. I mean no expectation or certainty, – but always hope. Now, what’s your lay? Why, – Zizi, tell me why you’re here, or I’ll fly off the handle!”

“Well, wait till we can sit down somewhere and talk comfortably. I haven’t had a room assigned to me yet.”

“But tell me this: you’re here on the Varian case?”

“Yes, of course. Are you?”

“I am. Oh, girl, there must be something doing when we’re here from different starting points and for different reasons!”

“I’m here because of some revelations of Mrs Varian,” Zizi said and Wise stared at her.

“Mrs Varian!” he exclaimed. “I say, Ziz, go to your room, get your bag unpacked and your things put away as quick as you can, won’t you? And then let’s confab.”

Zizi darted away, she arranged to have a bedroom and sitting-room that she could call her own for a few days, and in less than half an hour, she was receiving Wise in her tiny but pleasant domain. “Now,” he said, “tell me your story.”

“It isn’t much of a story,” Zizi admitted, – “but I came here because this is where Betty Varian was born.”

“Up here? In Greenvale, Vermont?”

“Yes, – in a little hospital here.”

“And what has that fact to do with Betty’s disappearance?”

“Oh, Penny, I don’t know! But I hope, – I believe it has something!”

“Well, my child, I’m up here to investigate the early life of Mrs Lawrence North.”

“Then we are most certainly brought to the same place by totally different clues, – if they are clues, and one or both of them must prove successful! Who was she, Penny?”

“As near as I can find out, she was a widow when North married her. Her name was then Mrs Curtis. Her maiden name I don’t know.”