“She couldn’t have gone out at the front door or we should have seen her,” Varian added, “She stepped out of a window, then.”
“Are you assuming some intruder?” asked Merritt, wonderingly.
“I’m not assuming anything,” returned Varian, a little crisply, for his nerves were on edge. “But Betty Varian must be found,—my duty is to the living as well as to the dead.”
He glanced at his brother’s body, and his face expressed a mute promise to care for that brother’s child.
“But how are you going to find her?” asked Landon. “We saw Miss Varian enter this house——”
“Therefore, she is still in it,—or in the grounds,” said Varian, positively. “It can’t be otherwise. I shall hunt out of doors first, before it grows dusk. Then we can hunt the house afterward.”
“You have hunted the house.”
“Yes; but it must be hunted more thoroughly. Why, Betty, or—Betty’s body must be somewhere. And must be found.”
Doctor Merritt listened, dumfounded. Here was mystery indeed. Mr Varian dead,—shot,—no weapon found, and his daughter missing.
What could be the explanation?