Zizi tried to cheer him, but her heart too was heavy with vague fears, and she left him to his routine work of calling the police and once again bringing them up to Headland House on a gruesome errand.
These things done, Wise went at once to North’s bungalow in Headland Harbor. He had small hope of finding Joe Mills there, and as he had foreseen, that worthy had decamped. Nor did they ever see him again.
“I suppose,” Wise said afterward, “he was in the cellar when North was killed; but I never thought of him then, nor could I have caught him as he doubtless fled away in the darkness to safety.”
“Then it was a put up job, that scene of struggle and confusion in North’s bedroom that day he disappeared?” Bill Dunn asked of Wise.
“Yes; I felt it was, but I couldn’t see how he got away. You see, at that time, North began to feel that my suspicions were beginning to turn in his direction, and he thought by pretending to be abducted himself, he would argue a bold and wicked kidnapper again at work. At any rate, he wanted to get away, and stay away the better to carry on his dreadful purposes, and he chose that really clever way of departing. The touch of leaving his watch behind was truly artistic,—unless he forgot it. Well, now to find Betty Varian.”
“Just a minute, Mr Wise. How’d you come to think of looking for that cave arrangement?”
“After I began to suspect North, I watched him very closely. I had in my mind some sort of rock passage, and when I took him out in a boat, or Joe Mills, either, when we went close to that part of the rocks where the cave is, I noted their evident efforts not to look toward a certain spot. It was almost amusing to see how their eyes strayed that way, and were quickly averted. They almost told me just where to look!”
“Wonderful work!” Dunn exclaimed, heartily. “No,” Wise returned, “only a bit of psychology. Now to find Betty.”
But though the detective doubtless would have recovered the missing girl, he had not the opportunity, for love had found a way.
By the hardest sort of work and with indefatigable perseverance, Granniss had gone from one to another of the various officials, mechanicians and even workmen of the moving picture company he was on the trail of and after maddening delays caused by their lack of method, their careless records and their uncertain memories, he finally found out where the picture of a crowd, in which Betty had appeared, was taken.