“Well,” Mr. Rorth said, grinning, “I’ll say I’m having a hard time believing you. For instance, how can you tell that a man slept there—what evidence do you have?”
“Well, there’s a little crack in the window, and Bill and I climbed up and looked through it. We saw the blanket Mrs. Butler was looking for last night.”
Mr. Rorth raised his eyebrows a bit and looked straight at Ronnie. “Well, that is convincing.” He thought about it for a moment. “Tell you what, Ronnie. I’m going down to the village later this afternoon to see if Mr. Caldwell got settled all right. I’ll take a look at the old office building on the way.”
“The crack is in the south window and you can peek in through there.”
“Never mind the crack. I’ll bring the key—if that old lock will still turn. Last time I looked it was wrapped with a cloth to keep it from rusting.”
“Not any more it isn’t,” said Ronnie.
After lunch Ronnie gathered together some tools and lumber to use in building a sign for the highway. With these under his arms, he stopped by the grape arbor where Phil was lying in the hammock. “You coming down?” he asked, hoping he would so he could carry some of the load.
Phil eyed the lumber and tools. “I’ll be down after my siesta,” he said. “Nobody with any sense exercises during the heat of the day.”
By resting his load on the ground every few hundred feet, Ronnie reached their new office without too much trouble. Bill hadn’t shown up yet, so Ronnie stretched out in one of their chairs, making plans for the afternoon while he waited for his friend.
But after five minutes he grew restless and decided he’d kill some time by taking another peek through the shutter into the boarded-up building. He slipped out of the office and made his way toward the building. Soon he was standing on the log and peering through the crack.