He nodded, but said nothing. He was already walking along under the trees, following the course of the wire so cleverly concealed as to be invisible to any save the most alert observer.
Della Street parked the car on the highway, climbed through a fence, and took a short cut through the pine thicket to join him. A hundred yards away an unpainted cabin was so inconspicuous among the trees that it seemed as much a part of the scenery as the surrounding rocks.
“I think that’s the place we’re looking for,” Mason said, “but we’ll trace the wire and find out.”
“What do we do when we get there?” she asked.
“It depends,” Mason told her. “You’d better stay back, Della, so you can get the sheriff, if the party gets rough.”
“Let me stay with you, Chief,” she pleaded.
“No,” he told her. “Stay back there. If you hear any commotion, beat it for Sabin’s cabin as fast as you can, and bring the sheriff.”
Mason followed the wire to the place where it abruptly left the protection of the trees to loop itself around insulators just below the eaves of the unpainted cabin. At this point it had been arranged so that it looked very much like the aerial of a wireless set. Mason circled the cabin twice, keeping in the concealment of the dense shadows as much as possible.
Della Street, anxiously watching him from a point some fifty yards distant, moved slowly toward him.
“It’s all right,” he called to her. “We’re going to notify the sheriff.” He joined her and they walked back to the cabin where Fred Waner emerged apparently from nowhere to bar their way.