“Those are not easy questions, Doctor Varian,” Wise responded, with a grave face, “but of this I am confident,—one name will answer them all.”
“You know the name?”
“I am not quite sure enough yet to say that I do,—but I have a strong suspicion. I think it is the man who wrote the blackmailing letters to Mr Varian.”
“The man we call Stephen? It well may be. They referred to a robbed woman. Now, my brother never robbed anybody in the commonly accepted sense of that term, but it may mean the mother of Betty. Could the doctor in the Greenvale Hospital, that attended the two women that night, be trying to make money out of the matter?”
“They tell me he died some years ago.”
“But these letters are not all recent. And, too, he might have divulged the secret before he died, and whoever he told used it as a threat against my brother.”
“It’s hardly a blackmailing proposition.”
“Oh, yes, it is. Say the doctor,—or the doctor’s confidant threatened Fred with exposure of the secret of Betty’s birth, I know my brother well enough to be certain that he would pay large sums before he would bring on Minna and Betty the shock and publicity, even though there was no actual disgrace.”
“Well, then, granting a blackmailer, he’s the one to look for, but on the other hand, why should he kill Mr Varian, when he was his hope of financial plunder? Why should he kidnap Betty? And, above all, why should he kill Martha and abduct Lawrence North?”
“The only one of those very pertinent questions that I can answer is the one about Betty. Whoever kidnapped her, did it for ransom. That is evidenced by the letters to Minna.”