They strode down the road toward Turner’s for a mile or more. Neither the tall lad nor the short one uttered a word. Bill drank in the crisp, cool night air, pleasant after the dusty highway. On either hand dense woods shut out the moonlight. Directly overhead, however, light filtered between the treetops, flecking the overgrown trail with splotches of silver.
When they came to an open woodlot, Bill paused.
“Yes, I think from what Ezra said, we go to the left here. We’ll see where it lands us.”
Shortly after passing round the field, a dense wood of pines showed up against the moonlight on their right hand. Between them and the pines was a broad stone fence.
“We’ll hang out here for a few minutes,” Bill remarked. “There’s nothing like making quite certain. If you hear anyone following, Charlie, it means we were noticed in the car, and we’re probably in for a rousing time.”
After an interval he got up and stretched himself, gave a curt order and plunged abruptly into the heart of the woods. Bill had no idea how far they penetrated, but they appeared to go forward for a good fifteen minutes before they struck upon a grassgrown avenue or drive among the trees, and at the end of it they saw a clearing. Both lads stopped.
A gentle wind stirred in the tree-tops, and above its rustle, they suddenly heard the soft wash of the sea. Bill turned and Charlie followed his gaze. Set back, quite close to the woods, amid overgrown lawns and shrubbery, there glimmered in the pallid moonlight, the outlines of a house.
“Turner’s!” whispered Bill as Charlie came close. “It looked different from the air, but I guess it’s the place, all right.”
“Sure—and there’s the garage, see it?”
“Come along.”