“There were some rubber boots near the table, and there was dried mud on the boots; an alarm clock was on the table near the bed. It had stopped at two forty-seven; the alarm had been set for five-thirty; both the alarm and the clock had run down. The body was clothed in a pair of slacks, a shirt and sweater. There were wool socks and slippers on the feet.
“There was a telephone line running out of the cabin, and the next day, when Perry Mason and Sergeant Holcomb were helping me make an investigation, we found that the telephone line had been tapped. Whoever had done the tapping had established a headquarters in a cabin about three hundred and fifty yards from the Sabin cabin. It had evidently been an old, abandoned cabin, which had been fixed up and repaired when the wiretapping apparatus was installed. We found evidences that whoever had been in the place had left hurriedly. There was a cigarette on the table, which had evidently been freshly lit, and then burnt down to ashes. The dust indicated that the place hadn’t been used for a week or so.”
“Did Helen Monteith make any statement to you about that gun?” the coroner asked.
“Yes, she did,” the sheriff said. “That was only today.”
“Now, just a moment,” the district attorney inquired. “Was that statement made as a free and voluntary statement, and without any promises or inducements of any kind having been offered to her?”
“That’s right,” the sheriff said. “You asked her if she’d ever seen the gun before, and she said she had. She said she’d taken it at the request of her husband, and bought some shells for it; that she’d given him the gun and shells on Saturday, the third of September.”
“Did she say who her husband was?” the district attorney inquired.
“Yes, she said the man she referred to as her husband was Fremont C. Sabin.”
“Any questions anyone wants to ask of the sheriff?” the coroner inquired.
“No questions,” Mason said.