“I came here first,” Varian stated. “Do you mean I removed the weapon?”
“Have to look at all sides, you know.”
“Well, I didn’t. But I won’t take time, now, to enlarge on that plain statement. I’ll be here, you can question me, when and as often as you like. Now, Mr Potter, what are you going to do first?”
“Well, seems to me there’s no more to be done with Mr Varian’s body. You two doctors have examined it, you know all about the wound that killed him. Bill, here, has jotted down all the details of its position and all that. Now, I think you can call in the undertakers and have the body taken away or kept here till the funeral,—whichever you like.”
“The funeral!” exclaimed Doctor Varian, realizing a further responsibility for his laden shoulders. “I suppose I’d better arrange about that, for my sister-in-law will not be able to do so.”
“Jest’s you like,” said Potter. “Next, I’ll investigate for myself the absence of this girl. A mysterious disappearance is as serious a matter as a mysterious death,—maybe, more so.”
“That’s true,” agreed Varian. “I hope you’ll be able to find my niece, for she must be found.”
“Easy enough to say she must be found,—the trick is to find her.”
“Have you any theory of the crime, Mr Potter?” Landon asked.
“Theory? No, I don’t deal in theories. I may say it looks to me like the girl may have shot her father, but it only looks that way because there’s no other way, so far, for it to look. You can’t suspect a criminal that you ain’t had any hint of, can you? If anybody, now, turns up who’s seen a man prowling round—or seen any mysterious person, or if any servant is found who, say, didn’t go to the circus, but hung behind, or——”