“Terrible thing, Doctor Varian,” Merritt said; “death practically instantaneous.”
“Practically,” returned the other. “May have lived a few moments, but unconscious at once. You know the sheriff?”
“Yes; Potter. He’ll be along soon. He’s a shrewd one,—but,—my heavens! Who did this thing?”
Doctor Merritt’s formality gave way before his irrepressible curiosity. He looked from Doctor Varian to Ted Landon and back again, with an exasperated air of resentment at being told so little.
“We don’t know, Doctor Merritt,” Landon said, as the other doctor said nothing. “We’ve no idea.”
“No idea! A man shot and killed in this lonely, isolated house and you don’t know who did it? What do you mean?”
In a few words Varian detailed the circumstances, and added, “We don’t know where Miss Varian is.”
“Disappeared! Then she must have shot her father——”
“Oh, no!” interrupted Landon, “don’t say such an absurd thing!”
“What else is there to say?” demanded Merritt. “You say there was nobody in the house but those two people. Now, one is here dead, and the other is missing. What else can be said?”