“Oh, well, all right. I can’t think yet, the girl shot her father. I won’t think that,—lessen I have to. But, good land, man, you say you’ve looked all over the house,—where’s the murderer, then?” “Suicide?” laconically said the man who had come with the sheriff. It was the first time he had spoken. He was a quiet, insignificant chap, but his eyes were keen and his whole face alert. “Couldn’t be, Bill,” said the sheriff, “with no weapon about.” “Might ’a’ been removed,” the other said, in his brief way. “By whom?” asked Doctor Varian. “By whoever came here first,” Bill returned, looking at him. “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——” “But if there’s any such, they or he must be in the house now,” Bill said, quietly. “Let’s go and see.” The two started from the room and Landon, after a glance at Doctor Varian, followed them. “I don’t see,” Landon said to Potter as they went to the kitchen, “why you folks in authority always seem to think it necessary to take an antagonistic attitude toward the people who are representing the dead man! You act toward Doctor Varian as if you more than half suspected he had a hand in the crime himself!” “Not that, my boy,” and Potter looked at him gravely; “but that doctor brother knows more than he’s telling.”