“I’m here because of some revelations of Mrs Varian,” Zizi said and Wise stared at her. “Mrs Varian!” he exclaimed. “I say, Ziz, go to your room, get your bag unpacked and your things put away as quick as you can, won’t you? And then let’s confab.” Zizi darted away, she arranged to have a bedroom and sitting-room that she could call her own for a few days, and in less than half an hour, she was receiving Wise in her tiny but pleasant domain. “Now,” he said, “tell me your story.” “It isn’t much of a story,” Zizi admitted,—“but I came here because this is where Betty Varian was born.” “Up here? In Greenvale, Vermont?” “Yes,—in a little hospital here.” “And what has that fact to do with Betty’s disappearance?” “Oh, Penny, I don’t know! But I hope,—I believe it has something!” “Well, my child, I’m up here to investigate the early life of Mrs Lawrence North.” “Then we are most certainly brought to the same place by totally different clues,—if they are clues, and one or both of them _must_ prove successful! Who was she, Penny?” “As near as I can find out, she was a widow when North married her. Her name was then Mrs Curtis. Her maiden name I don’t know.” “Well, what’s the procedure?” The procedure, as Wise mapped it out, was to go to the hospital first and see what could be learned concerning Mrs Varian’s stay there twenty years ago. They had no difficulty in getting an interview with the superintendent of the institution, but as Wise had feared, he was not the man who had been in charge a score of years previous. In fact, there had been several changes since, and the present incumbent, one Doctor Hasbrook, showed but slight interest in his callers’ questions. “The hospital is only twenty-two years old,” Hasbrook said, “so the patient you’re looking up must have been here soon after it was opened.” “You have the records, I suppose?” asked Wise. “Yes,—if you care to hunt them over, they are at your disposal.” As a result of this permission, Wise and Zizi spent several hours looking over the old and not very carefully kept records of the earliest years of the little country hospital. “The worst of it is,” said Zizi, “I don’t exactly know what we’re hoping to find, do you?” “I have a dim idea, Zizi, and it’s getting clearer,” Wise replied, speaking as from a deep absorption. “Here’s something.” “What?” “It’s a list of births for a year,—the year Betty Varian was born and,—oh, Zizi! the very same night that Mrs Varian’s baby was born, a Mrs Curtis also bore a child!” “Well?” “Oh, don’t sit there and babble ‘What?’ and ‘Well?’ Can’t you see?” “No, I can’t.” “Well, wait a bit,—now, let me see,—yes, Miss Morton,—h’m,—Miss Black,——” “Pennington Wise, if you’ve lost your mind, I’ll take you to a modern sanitarium,—I don’t want to go off and leave you here in this little one-horse hospital!” “Hush up, Zizi, don’t chatter! Miss Morton,—h’m——”