“Sit down and light up. I hope you all smoke? And you need refreshment, for you’ve been working under a strain.”
“Refreshments are coming presently,” said Rudolph. “What’s your solution, Doc?”
“The young ladies have been telling me every detail of the disappearance, as well as the events leading up to it. Now, it seems Mildred Travers is an old resident of this section of California. Was born here, in fact.”
This was news to them all and the suggestion it conveyed caused them to regard Dr. Knox attentively.
“The old Travers Ranch is near San Feliz—about thirty miles south of here. I know that ranch by reputation, but I’ve never been there. Now for my solution. The Travers family, hearing that Mildred is at El Cajon, drive over here in their automobile and induce the girl to go home with them. She can’t leave baby, so she takes little Jane along, and also Inez to help care for her. There’s the fact, in a nutshell. See? It’s all as plain as a pikestaff.”
For a moment there was silence. Then big Runyon voiced the sentiment of the party in his high treble.
“You may be a good doctor,” said he, “but you’re a thunderin’ bad detective.”
“If I could telephone to the Travers Ranch, I’d convince you,” asserted the doctor, unmoved by adverse criticism; “but your blamed old telephone is out of order.”
“As for that,” remarked Rudolph, taking a cigar from a box, “I’ve been a visitor at the Travers Ranch many times. Charlie Benton lives there. There hasn’t been a Travers on the place since they sold it, ten or twelve years ago.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “I’m sorry to hear that. It was such a simple solution that I thought it must be right.”