“I know,” Mason remarked absently, “and I don’t give a damn. I’m going through the house.”
They searched the cabin thoroughly. At the end of the search, Mason delivered his verdict “Okay,” he said, “they played us for suckers. The business about Evelyn Whiting’s testimony was just a stall to get rid of me and keep me from getting suspicious. They packed up and left as soon as we’d gone.”
“What do we do next?” Drake asked.
“We find Eves.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Mason admitted, “but I do know we’re going to find him.”
“Where do we go from here?” Drake asked.
“We wake up the man in the store, find out if he saw Eves leave, and put through a telephone call,” Mason said.
They summoned the operatives, returned to the cars, and, after some delay, got the man who operated the general store out of bed. He had seen Eves and the young woman, whom he understood was Mrs. Eves, leave within half an hour after Mason had visited him that afternoon. The car, he said, was pretty well filled with baggage.
Drake put through a long distance call to his San Francisco office, talked for several minutes, then drew Perry Mason aside.