Mason whistled and said, “Wait a minute. Is this Bali?”
“That,” she told him, “is Bali.”
“All right,” he told her, “we stop off at Bali... Hello, Paul. What’s new under the sun?”
“Read the papers?” Drake asked.
“Yes. I see that the police have taken a tumble to Packard, and are giving plenty of publicity to his disappearance.”
“Not only that,” Drake said, “but they aren’t getting anywhere. It’s no wonder I couldn’t locate him, with the limited resources which are available to a private detective agency. The police have been moving heaven and earth to find him and can’t even get a trace of him.”
“But surely,” Mason said, “they must have been able to uncover something about him in Altaville.”
“Not a trace,” Drake said. “At any rate, nothing they can work on. Packard is the most important witness in this case, and he’s wandering around the city somewhere, in a daze. The probabilities are his amnesia came back on him and he doesn’t know who he is.”
“You’ve been running down all the leads?”
“I’ll say so. I’ve covered the hospitals, jails and every other lead I can think of. The police have been doing the same. They’ve combed the city, looking for an amnesia victim. They’ve uncovered drunks, idiots, crooks and bums, but not a trace of Packard.”