“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.”
“Well, what’s the procedure?”
The procedure, as Wise mapped it out, was to go to the hospital first and see what could be learned concerning Mrs Varian’s stay there twenty years ago.
They had no difficulty in getting an interview with the superintendent of the institution, but as Wise had feared, he was not the man who had been in charge a score of years previous.
In fact, there had been several changes since, and the present incumbent, one Doctor Hasbrook, showed but slight interest in his callers’ questions.