A few scattered drops began to patter on the hood. “You ’ll get wet enough to show you ’ve been out all night, anyway,” he said to Barney, and spread the map on his knees.
Barney was peeling off his clothes. “I can swim,” he volunteered pertly, “if I don’t get cramps.”
Babbing nudged his operative with a secret elbow. They had their heads together over the map. “Here ’s our road, now,” Babbing said. “Where does Langton’s property begin?”
II.
The highway from the Beaverton station ran for five miles up a tilted valley to the top of a ridge of rolling land whose slopes had been cleared for farms. Where the ridge joined the shoulder of Knob Top, the road began to wind down to the Careyville valley, in falling turns and angles; and, at the first turn, a narrower road forked off, into the woods of Knob Top, to find the Langton
