“He ought to know,” said Wise. “A man in love with a girl doesn’t mistake her identity. Besides, it’s quite on the cards, Ziz. Say Betty is confined somewhere,—say she is let out for a little exercise in care of a jailer, of course,—say there’s a M. P. contraption taking a picture of a crowd,—they often do,—pick up stray passers-by you know, and say, Betty somehow got into the picture——”
“Oh, the jailer, as you call him, wouldn’t let her!”
“More likely a woman in charge of her. And, maybe a woman not averse to taking the few dollars those people pay to actors who just make up a crowd. Well, say that happened, and then Betty, not daring to speak aloud, made her lips form the words ‘I am Betty Varian,’ in the hope that among a few thousands of lip readers in the country one might strike twelve!”
“Nobody could be so clever as all that, Pen!”
“She might be on a chance inspiration. Anyway, how else can you explain it?”
“Why, anybody might have said that, who wasn’t Betty at all.”
“But why? What would be the sense of it? and why would such a thing occur to anybody but Betty?”
“If it’s true,—then you can find her! Surely you can track down a moving picture company!”
“Oh, it isn’t that! It’s tracking down the place where Betty is confined,—and—doing it while she is still alive. You see, Zizi, those ransom letters are true bills, and the villains have nearly reached the end of their patience.”
“Then why don’t you approve of Mrs Varian’s throwing the money over the cliff?”