Coney Island, that he did not know where Philadelphia was, nor in what direction it lay, nor how long it would take to get there. He admitted his ignorance reluctantly—to the back sheet of the newspaper which Babbing continued to read—but he admitted it. He had too much respect for Babbing’s penetration to attempt to tell him anything but the truth.
If he had told the whole truth, he would have confessed that Philadelphia was not a city to him at all, but a baseball team.
Babbing put aside his paper. “You ’re a real New Yorker,” he concluded, with sarcasm. He opened his satchel on the seat beside him, took a book from it, and settled down again to read. Barney returned his eyes to the window, smiling doubtfully.
He did not notice Babbing’s book. Yet he might well have done so. It was a curious book for a detective to be reading—a sort of boudoir volume of Elizabethan poetry, bound in white vellum elaborately tooled in gold leaf.
