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Title: Lefty o' the training camp
Author: Burt L. Standish
Release date: January 23, 2026 [eBook #77754]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1914
Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEFTY O' THE TRAINING CAMP ***
LEFTY O’ THE TRAINING CAMP
[Illustration: A MOMENT LATER THE MANAGER WAS GRIPPING THE SOUTHPAW’S
HAND AND ASKING THE INEVITABLE QUESTIONS.]
LEFTY
O’ THE TRAINING CAMP
BY
BURT L. STANDISH
Author of “Lefty o’ the Bush,” “Lefty o’ the Big
League,” “Lefty o’ the Blue Stockings.”
_ILLUSTRATED_
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1914, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.
_All Rights Reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GROUCH 11
II THE MAN WITH THE QUEER EYES 18
III A MANAGER’S DILEMMA 25
IV THE UNEXPECTED 32
V THE FACE IN THE MIRROR 38
VI SUSPICIOUS DENIALS 44
VII THE BLUNDER 52
VIII THE TRANSFORMATION 59
IX THE TRAINING CAMP 65
X A PERPLEXING QUESTION 73
XI A VOICE OUT OF THE DARKNESS 78
XII A BIT OF A STAGGERER 87
XIII WHICH ONE? 92
XIV ON THE TRAIL 98
XV THE GUILE OF SAVAGE 106
XVI THE REGULARS ARRIVE 114
XVII THE TRY-OUT OF SAVAGE 122
XVIII THE VANISHING BALL 129
XIX A THING INCREDIBLE 137
XX THE TRAP 143
XXI THE LAST STRAW 151
XXII SAVAGE’S DISAPPEARANCE 155
XXIII THE CATASTROPHE 160
XXIV DIRE PERIL 169
XXV TWO IN ONE 175
XXVI METAMORPHOSIS 184
XXVII ENTER: A GIRL 192
XXVIII THE BETTER MAN DOMINANT 201
XXIX THE ETERNAL FEMININE 206
XXX THE ATLANTA TIGERS 214
XXXI TWO RUNS BEHIND 222
XXXII THE BREAK 227
XXXIII SUSPENSE 232
XXXIV THE EVIL TRANSITION 238
XXXV THE LAST STRAW 244
XXXVI BREAKING A BATTING STREAK 251
XXXVII THE VOODOO CHARM 256
XXXVIII IN THE NIGHT 264
XXXIX THE FACE IN THE CROWD 270
XL BEWILDERING FACTS 280
XLI REVELATIONS 286
LEFTY O’ THE TRAINING CAMP
CHAPTER I
THE GROUCH
“Crooked? You never said a truer word in your life, Tethridge.
Professional baseball’s so rotten it’s a wonder the board of health
don’t get after it.”
The lean, slope-shouldered man sitting next to the window of the
smoking car bent a puzzled glance on his more robust companion.
“Board o’ ’ealth?” he echoed, his sandy eyebrows arching in an odd note
of interrogation. “I don’t tyke you, old chap. What ’ave the board o’
’ealth to do with biseball?”
The young man at his elbow frowned, and pushed back a long lock of dark
hair straggling down from under the straight brim of an exaggeratedly
flat derby.
“Nothing,” he answered, in a resigned tone. “That was only my little
joke, old man. In such a bad state the board of health is needed. Get
me?”
For a second or two the Englishman preserved that expression of stolid
inquiry. Then, suddenly as cracks radiate over a sheet of heavy glass
fractured by a stone, that long, solemn face broke into curving lines,
and he laughed in a booming bass note quite out of keeping with the
lean, narrow-chested figure. “Jolly good, old chap! My word! I ’ad no
ideah you was such a bloomin’ joker, Nelson.”
He nudged his companion in the ribs. The latter, striving unsuccessfully
to dismiss the expression of utter boredom from his tanned, rather
rough-hewn face, pulled a package of cheap cigarettes from his pocket
and offered them to the man by the window. Tethridge declined the
cigarettes in favor of a blackened, disreputable-looking brier.
“The whole proposition’s as crooked as the fighting game,” declared
the man called Nelson; “an’ that’s saying a whole lot, believe me! The
crowd that runs it is out for the coin, an’, take my word, they squeeze
the public and rob their white slave players to get it.”
He paused a second to send a swift sidelong glance at G. Munby
Tethridge, who nodded instant agreement. In the seat just ahead a
clean-cut, alert-looking man, with keen brown eyes and a firm chin,
moved his broad shoulders impatiently, and frowned at the magazine
lying open on one knee.
“Gas bag!” he muttered under his breath.
“Look at the post season last year,” pursued the maligner of organized
baseball viciously. “Two-thirds or more o’ the tickets handed over to
speculators, an’ anybody wantin’ to see a game had to pay double or
triple. Do you think them speculators didn’t have to whack up with the
management? Sure they did! It was a put-up job.”
“What I always contended,” agreed the Englishman, pulling hard on
the odorous pipe. “A bally crooked gyme through an’ through. Tyke a
look at the w’y it’s pl’yed. Anything goes, by Jove, so long as a man
ain’t caught. He’ll swear himself black in the fice he wasn’t put out
when he was, or that he touched every bise when maybe he missed one;
and the lies all go if the umpire didn’t ’appen to see ’im. That’s no
gentleman’s gyme, old chap, like cricket, or any other decent sport.
There ain’t any honor about it.”
The harsh, penetrating voice, with its irritatingly positive intonation,
was audible through the greater part of the half-empty smoker. The
brown-eyed young man in front, having ceased making even a pretense at
reading, was scowling out at the snow-covered landscape. His expression
was one of deep indignation. A muscular hand gripped the edge of the
magazine with unconscious force. One foot beat lightly and impatiently
on the rod beneath the seat in front of him.
“Huh!” grunted Nelson. “That ain’t nothing. I could sit here by the
hour, an’ tell you a line o’ stories that ’u’d make your hair curl.
Here’s jest one of ’em I calls to mind: A coupla seasons ago there was
a fresh young piece o’ cheese pitching with us that called himself Fred
Moore. At that it wasn’t no more his real name than it was mine. He
was one o’ these college dudes, playing on his college nine; an’ then,
come vacation, he beats it to some far-off bushes, where he pitches
professional ball for the rest of the summer under a false monaker.
There’s honor for you, ain’t it? That’s the sort of thing as sickens me
of the whole business, an’ makes me swear to cut the game the minute I
can root out something that’ll bring me in enough coin to live on.”
He hesitated, his scowling glance resting for a second on the broad
shoulders of the man in front. At that moment a dark flush, rising
from the immaculate collar, had just reached the edge of that heavy
brown mane; but apparently Nelson was too moved by his own eloquence to
observe this danger signal.
“It’s them college muckers mostly who’ve put the profession where it
is to-day,” he went on hotly. “They cheat to go through college, and
afterward in baseball they’ll do any crooked thing that’ll help ’em
to get ahead of some square, decent man. Look at what happened in the
Panthers last year. They was both college dudes, you can bet!”
Mr. Tethridge arched his sandy brows in an expression of curiosity.
“W’at was that?” he inquired quickly. “I don’t seem to remember what
’appened. Dessey it was after I left.”
“It was.” Nelson’s rather full lips curled at the remembrance. “It was
the last game of the season between the Panthers an’ Bucks――a double
header at that. Didn’t make any difference who won. Panthers bound to
stay tail-enders, you know. A guy named Benson, playin’ third, wanted
to boost his hittin’ average for the season, so he makes up to Grant,
pitchin’ for the Bucks. They was both from the same college, and as
sure I sit here, bo, every time that crook Benson comes to bat that
other crook Grant lets him make a hit. He was up ten times in the two
games, and you can guess what that did to his batting average. That’s
your college ball player all over. Do you wonder I hate the very sight
of one?”
Tethridge shook his head slowly.
“Not I,” he drawled. “Strynge what rotters education makes of men over
hyer. But, I s’y, old chap, ’ow is it nobody saw this an’ myde a ’owl
about it?”
In the barely perceptible pause before Nelson answered, the brown-haired
man in the forward seat half turned his head with an impulsive movement,
his lips parted as if he meant to speak. His face was flushed, his eyes
sparkled with anger, but before he could get in a word the pessimistic
ball player was speaking again.
“They did,” he answered crisply. “It was too much for even the machine
to pull off. The crowd got suspicious, and the reporters took it up.
Result was the management had to clear themselves by firing Grant; but,
o’ course, all he did was to change his name and get a job with another
league.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
The new voice, breaking in upon the conversation, was superficially
quiet, almost drawling. There was a faint undercurrent of something
quite different in it, however, which made Nelson hastily raise his
head to stare in annoyed surprise at the man in the forward seat, who
had turned round upon them.
“Huh?” he grunted, noting in a flash the keen brown eyes and
uncompromising chin of the stranger. “’Course I am. What do you know
about it, anyhow?”
“I happen to know that both Benson and Grant were blacklisted,
and never got back into organized baseball,” was the ready retort.
“Benson’s pitching for a wildcat Texas team; Grant’s on the Pacific
coast. Moreover, you seem to have forgotten that the manager of
the Bucks was also dropped by the president of the league, who did
everything in his power to show that such scandals would not be
tolerated for an instant.”
Nelson flushed angrily. “_Is_ that so?” he inquired sarcastically.
“Reg’lar walking baseball guide, ain’t you? I s’pose somebody was
kidding you with this song and dance about Benson, an’ you swallowed it
hook, line, an’ sinker. That’s about your style.”
“Not quite,” returned the stranger coolly. “I happened to pitch against
him last spring at Ashland, the Hornets’ training camp, you know. He
calls himself Pete Nevens now.”
CHAPTER II
THE MAN WITH THE QUEER EYES
At the stranger’s matter-of-fact reference to a Big League organization
which was almost at the top of the tree, Nelson’s jaw sagged, and
for a second he sat staring at the brown-haired young man in dazed
incredulity.
“Is that so?” he sneered again, recovering himself. “On Jim Brennan’s
pitching staff, are you? What might be the name you sail under?”
“The same one I took with me to the Blue Stockings,” was the sharp
retort. “Tom Locke.”
For a moment there was silence as the two men stared intently at each
other. Though he betrayed nothing of what he felt, Lefty was almost
startled at this first real glimpse of the stranger’s eyes. A moment
before he would have called them black, but now they had lightened
strangely, as if behind the iris glowed a baleful, almost uncanny fire.
There was something so weirdly fascinating in the transformation that
the Big League pitcher was unconscious of everything else until Nelson
broke the silence.
“Lefty Locke!” he exclaimed triumphantly at last. “So you’re that
bird, are you?” He turned promptly to the Englishman, who sat gaping
and bewildered. “Tethridge, old man,” he said, “let me make you
acquainted with a fine specimen of what we was just talking about――one
o’ them college dudes who makes his living――an’ a mighty good one, at
that――off’n professional baseball, but who’s too ashamed of it to play
under his own name.”
Lefty’s eyes narrowed slightly. “My reasons for not playing under my
own name are certainly no affair of yours,” he said. “At least, I don’t
go around blackguarding my profession and every one connected with it.”
“Did I say a single thing that wasn’t true?” demanded Nelson hotly.
“Only about three-quarters of your remarks, that’s all,” returned
Lefty. “It’s the same old bunk you hear every now and then from the fan
with a grouch. Because organized baseball is conducted on a big scale
and with some outside betting upon it, it’s crooked. I couldn’t help
hearing all you said, and just about every statement you made was――”
“Gospel, an’ nothing else,” broke in Nelson angrily. “That ticket
business in the post season a year ago was so raw it had every
newspaper in the country hollering――you can’t deny that.”
“I don’t deny that the ticket sale was badly managed,” returned Locke.
“You noticed probably――since you’re so observing――that the speculators
didn’t have a show last October.”
“Mebbe not,” snapped Nelson; “but what did happen? The whole thing was
cut and dried from the very start. The public was worked to the limit.
Whenever there was a chance of the Cubs cinching the pennant before the
full seven games had been played, and the limit of gate receipts raked
in, then one of their boys would throw a game just to――”
“Ridiculous!” broke in Lefty. He was on his feet now, leaning lightly
against the back of the seat ahead of him, with both hands thrust deep
in his trousers pockets. Though seemingly quite cool and indifferent,
there was a dangerous glitter in his brown eyes, and he was apparently
oblivious to the half-dozen other passengers, who had left their seats
and moved closer, attracted by the argument.
“Ridiculous!” he repeated emphatically. “You’re talking drivel. How
could such a thing be done? How could a world-series game possibly be
thrown? With two such organizations as the ones fighting it out last
fall, what you claim is an absolute impossibility. You, as a ball
player, ought to know it as well as I.”
Nelson glared in a cold fury. “The Trojans hit Woodby all over the lot
in that fifth game――which never happened before or since,” he growled
angrily. “If that wasn’t done a-purpose to throw the game――”
“Shucks!” derided Lefty. “Do you think he was deliberately throwing
away over a thousand dollars bonus? Do you think he wanted the
distinction of losing the world’s championship for his club? The whole
match was fair and square from beginning to end, and organized baseball
is as clean and decent a sport as there is.”
“Ah, cut it!” broke in Nelson roughly. His big, muscular hands were
tightly clenched; his strange eyes glared balefully; his face expressed
eloquently the rage he felt for this cool, confident young man who
held such an enviable position in major baseball, and who was quietly
disproving every one of the busher’s contentions with an ease and
finality which was maddening. “You’re a great piece o’ cheese, ain’t
you, butting into a private conversation where you ain’t wanted! S’pose
you take the bench and try how it ’u’d feel to mind your own business
for a spell!”
Lefty straightened up. His face was somewhat flushed, for there was
just enough truth in Nelson’s remark to strike home. “If you want to
keep a conversation private it’s a good idea to refrain from the brand
of stuff you’ve been reeling off by the yard in a voice that everybody
in the car could hear. You’re the sort of critic who hunts out the
worst possible example he can find and judges a whole big class by that
exception. I’ve heard a few soreheads in the grandstand who talked like
you, but I certainly never expected to run against a player――even from
the bushes――who blackguarded his profession as you do, and tried to
make the sort of stuff you’ve been handing out pass as the truth.”
Nelson leaped to his feet with an imprecation. “You paper-collar dude!”
he snarled. “Mebbe you think you can call me a liar and get away with
it, but I’ll show you!”
He lunged suddenly across the back of the seat, the whole weight of his
body behind his hard fist. If the blow had landed on Lefty’s chin, as
was intended, the altercation would have ended instantly. It happened,
however, that Locke moved just at the right moment. Whether it was
by accident or design the scattering spectators could not determine.
They only knew that Nelson’s fist shot harmlessly over the pitcher’s
shoulder, and the next moment they beheld Lefty standing quietly in the
aisle, facing his antagonist.
“You quitter!” cried the latter, leaping out from between the seats.
“You needn’t think you’re going to get away. I’ll――”
“Cut that out, young feller!” sounded unexpectedly in a voice of
authority. “No scrapping allowed on this train.”
A hand gripped Nelson’s shoulder with no gentle touch. Still sputtering,
the busher twisted around, to behold the stalwart conductor, who was
accompanied by a square-shouldered brakeman.
“Cut it, I tell you!” repeated the official sharply, observing the look
of indecision on Nelson’s face. “This kind of thing don’t go here. Get
me?”
Evidently the aggressor did. For a second or two he stood glaring
darkly at the conductor from those uncanny, evil-looking eyes. Then,
with an angry growl, he shook himself free, and stepped back beside
Tethridge.
“Wait!” he growled, his angry glance shifting to where Locke stood
quietly in the aisle. “I’ll get you yet, an’ get you good, when there
ain’t anybody to hide behind.”
Lefty made no answer. The threat did not disturb him greatly. His lips
curved a little at the corners, and there was a whimsical flicker of
amusement in the eyes which rested inquiringly on the conductor’s face.
“If you’ve finished your cigar, Mr. Locke,” suggested that official, in
a very different tone from the one he had been using, “would you mind
going back to the Pullman? This drunk seems to have it in for you bad,
and if――”
“I ain’t drunk!” exclaimed the indignant Nelson. “I’m aiming to get
square with that gink for calling me a liar, an’ I will if――”
The conductor waited to hear no more. Though quite able to preserve
peace in an emergency, he never lost a chance to use softer measures
when they availed. In the present instance, the removal of the famous
pitcher to another car would apparently accomplish his purpose, so he
lost no time in bringing that about. With a friendly hand on Locke’s
arm, and keeping up a flow of pleasant conversation, he made his way
down the aisle.
Lefty accompanied him without protest. He disliked anything in the
nature of a public rumpus, and was glad to bring the distasteful
encounter to an end. At the same time he could not shut his ears to the
stream of loud-mouthed taunts which followed him down the car. They
brought a touch of color to his cheeks. It was not altogether easy to
preserve that attitude of unconsciousness, but he managed it.
CHAPTER III
A MANAGER’S DILEMMA
Back in his Pullman chair, Lefty tried to forget the unpleasant
encounter in the smoker. He realized that there was no one but himself
to blame for what had happened, and he regretted the impulsiveness
which had made it possible for the disagreeable stranger to drag him
into an altercation. Of course, they were never likely to run into each
other again, Lefty reflected, yet he did not find that possibility one
of unqualified satisfaction. Strangely enough, for one who so disliked
brawls and public rows, he discovered himself wishing for a chance to
take a little of the bumptiousness out of the man who found so much
satisfaction in maligning his own profession.
At length, however, he managed by a determined effort to thrust the
matter from his mind and turn his attention to more important things.
Kennedy, the lately reinstated manager of the famous Blue Stockings,
had wired him to take the first train to Deering, where old Jack spent
the few months of the “off season” on the farm.
No reason had been given for this sudden summons to travel over a
thousand miles, but Locke had been expecting the message for some time,
and was not surprised. It is far from usual for a manager to talk over
details of the club personnel and formation with his star pitcher.
In the present case the two happened to have been thrown together on
more than ordinarily intimate terms in the bush the previous summer,
and Kennedy came to know the young Princeton man as few save his
closest friends knew him. He came also to have a decided appreciation
of Locke’s judgment and ability at sizing up a ball player, and after
their return to the Blue Stockings late in the season the informal
chats inaugurated in the Middle Western town continued at frequent
intervals.
“He’s getting worried about the make-up of the team,” Lefty decided,
propping his chin on one hand and staring out over the flat,
snow-covered landscape, “and wants to talk it over. I’m not surprised.
There’ll have to be several holes plugged before we can think of
starting after that pennant in April.”
The manager of a Big League team is never free from worry and
responsibility. The moment the last game of the season is over he
begins casting about for material to fill gaps and strengthen the team
for the grilling struggle of another season. The opening of that
season is six months away, to be sure, but frequently that time is all
too short for what has to be done. The mere fact of not hearing from
Kennedy had comforted Locke with the belief that everything was going
well. Now, however, it looked as if the manager’s schemes were not
working out quite as he had planned them.
“Wonder where he’s fallen down?” mused Lefty. “There’s third and
center――and more twirlers. I wonder just which particular item is
troubling him the most?”
He continued to ponder the question until the porter, with his
inevitable whiskbroom, approached to perform the parting rites and
pocket the parting quarter. Shortly afterward Lefty swung off the train
at the small station of Deering, made straight for the only waiting
“cutter,” and was presently gliding swiftly over the hard-packed, snowy
road, listening to all the latest neighborhood gossip the driver had to
retail.
It was good to see again the square, old-fashioned white house, with
its wide veranda and the hospitable chimneys, hinting of cheery,
crackling open fires; and even better to meet in the hall that lean,
lanky, awkward figure with the homely, kindly face and the inimitable
smile.
Kennedy was unfeignedly glad to see him, and when the first brief
greetings were over he lost no time in conducting Lefty into his
special sanctum and drawing up two chairs before the smoldering logs.
“Spider’s sick,” he announced laconically, thrusting one hand through
his iron-gray mop of hair, which already stood up like the crest of a
cockatoo.
“What!” gasped Lefty, in the utmost consternation. “Spider Grant?”
It was an idle question. Among the Blue Stockings there was only one
“Spider,” that name being the sole property of the peerless first
baseman and captain of the team. But in his dismay at this thunderbolt
Lefty was not thinking of what he said. The query burst from his lips
quite without conscious volition.
“Uh-huh,” affirmed the manager; “inflammatory rheumatism. Tough, ain’t
it?”
“It surely is,” agreed Locke fervently. “By Jove, that’s the limit! How
long has he had it?”
“Couple of weeks. Didn’t tell me at first, ’cause he didn’t want
to worry me. He’s mighty consid’rit, Spider is.” The kindly smile
flickered for an instant out of the network of worried lines, only to
vanish quickly again. “But I’d a lot rather have known it before, an’
had that much more time.”
Lefty nodded understandingly. Unconsciously his face reflected the
expression of the older man, but with the difference that a faint,
lightening gleam of hope brought to his eyes.
“Look here, Jack,” he said impulsively, “it can’t be so bad. Surely
there’s a chance of his getting over it. He’s not old, and he’s never
had it before that I’ve heard. Perhaps by the time training season
starts――”
“Nix!” put in Kennedy decisively. “I’m taking no chances. He did have
it before, two years ago, an’ never told no one. Got wet hunting, same
as he did this time. No, they never come back――leastwise, not once in a
thousand times――an’ I’m not gambling with them kind of odds. It’s up to
me to dig up a new first baseman, and do it in jig time, at that. You
know I keep two scouts, Carney and Sackett, working the year round; but
every other manager has a bunch of ’em on the rustle, and this digging
up of new material is getting more and more difficult ev’ry year. So
I’m up against it, and it’s close onto the first of February.”
A wry, crooked smile flickered on his lips for an instant, then
vanished.
“But that’s not what I wanted you specially for,” he went on rapidly,
“though of course I want your opinion of my list of eligibles. You’ve
sized up the situation, I reckon. You know why we were licked in the
post-season series.”
Lefty did not answer at once. He had dropped both elbows on his knees,
and, with chin resting in cupped hands, was staring thoughtfully at the
fire.
“Well,” he said slowly at last, “Jack Daly didn’t seem to be covering
third the way he used to; slow in arching ’em over the diamond, you
know. There’s no doubt, too, that old Brock is losing his batting eye,
or something. He hit under two-eighty last season.”
“Exactly. Anything else?”
“You could do with――another twirler on the list.”
“I sure could!” Kennedy’s tone was emphatic. He bent forward suddenly,
his face serious, and emphasized his remarks with upraised finger.
“Lefty, this finding the right sort of men for the pitching staff has
got me guessing some. Carney found a sweet hitter for center field, an’
I reckon we can fill Daly’s place somehow; but this other thing――whew!
When I came back last fall there wasn’t but two first-class twirlers
in the crowd――you an’ Pete Grist. The others was all right in lots of
ways, but you couldn’t depend on ’em. That’s the main reason we lost
the world’s series――I didn’t have enough men I was sure of to put on
the mound. Now, Pete’s an old-timer who can’t last forever; you see
where that puts us. We’ve simply got to find at least two new pitchers
I can rely on, or else drop into second division.”
“That’s right,” Lefty agreed. “Two’s the least you could get along
with. How’ve you made out so far?”
Kennedy shook his head slowly. “Nothing to boast of. Got rafts of
twirlers, you understand, but they’re mostly from the bush, which isn’t
what I wanted at all. I offered all kinds of money for Donovan, of the
Specters, and Hen Wolfer, but nothing doing; they won’t loosen up on
’em. My best bet so far is Sackett’s find, a lad named Savage who was
doing things all last season out West.”
“Great spitball artist, isn’t he?” inquired Lefty. “I seem to remember
reading about him.”
“He’s got something besides a spitball,” Kennedy returned grimly, “or
I’d never have looked at him. I never could see a spitter if a man
could sneak the ball over any other way. I’ve watched this boy work
several times, and I’m pretty sure we can make something out of him. If
I could only find another as promising, believe me, I’d feel easier in
my mind.”
CHAPTER IV
THE UNEXPECTED
“That’s not as easy as it sounds, considering that your scouts have
raked the field with a fine-tooth comb,” Lefty said slowly as Kennedy
awaited his answer. “Have you thought of Liddell, of Minneapolis?”
“Yes, but they’ve had a man drafted from ’em already. It’s the same
with McGargle, of St. Paul, and Jerry Knight, of the Internationals.”
“How about―― By Jove! There is a lad who might make good, Jack! He
pitched all last season on the Sharks, of the Seaboard League. I saw
one of the early games, and he was certainly there with the goods.
He kept it up, too, for I got interested in the boy and followed his
record. Name’s Temple――Gene Temple――and――”
“Oh, shucks!” interrupted Kennedy, in a disappointed tone. “I know
him. He’s nothing but a kid, Lefty. Only out of school a year or so.
Bushers need ripening, son. You’re one big exception, of course, but I
couldn’t expect that luck again in a hundred years. I’ve got all the
raw material I want――and more, too. What I’m after now is something
sure.”
“I’ve an idea you’d find this boy worth trying,” was the composed
reply; “and you can’t exactly call a Class A League the bushes. Wait
till I tell you a few things.”
Without waiting for the manager’s acquiescence, he proceeded to draw
from his exceptional memory facts and figures concerning the brief
career of this youth from a small Eastern college who had so aroused
his interest. Kennedy was bored at first, but soon became attentive.
“Humph!” he grunted. “Mebbe, as you say, he’s worth trying. We can
draft a man from that club, too. Hanged if I won’t do it――or, better
yet, I’ll let you put through the deal. I’ll have my hands full
locating a first baseman, and there isn’t any time to be lost.”
Now that his mind was made up, the manager wasted not a minute in
arranging the necessary details. Lefty happened to remember that Temple
came from one of the small Jersey towns not far from New York, and it
was natural to suppose that he would spend the winter at home. They
decided, therefore, that Locke should take the eastbound train which
passed through Deering in little more than an hour, and so save a good
twelve hours.
Word was sent out to the stableman to hitch up and have the cutter
around in half an hour, and the brief interval of waiting was well
occupied by a discussion of every possible candidate for the vacant
position at first. Lefty made a number of suggestions, and old Jack had
become really cheerful when the sound of sleigh bells brought them out
of their chairs.
“Mighty glad we’ve had this talk, Lefty,” said Kennedy, with a friendly
hand on Locke’s shoulder. “I feel better already. Nail this wonder of
yours. Best thing you can do is to bring him South with you. Training
for the cubs will start in about ten days, and I reckon you won’t mind
coming that early, will you?”
“Not a bit, if I can help any,” said Lefty, sliding into his heavy
overcoat. “Don’t come outside. It’s cold after sitting in front of that
fire. Good-by.”
He held out a hand, and Kennedy gripped it.
“So long!” cried the manager. “Remember, this Temple wonder is your
find, and if he falls down you can expect to be just about scalped by
your Uncle Dudley.”
“I’ll have to see that he makes good, then,” returned Lefty.
A moment later the door had closed behind him. He paused a second to
pull up the collar of his ulster, for it had begun to snow. A man was
coming up the veranda steps, his figure bulking indistinctly through
the flying flakes. Lefty wondered idly whether he could be the one
who was to drive him to the station, and, if so, why he had left
the cutter. The fellow stopped before him, and, with a quick intake
of astonishment, the Big League pitcher recognized the unpleasant,
evil eyes and rough-hewn features of the disgruntled busher he had
encountered on the train.
The recognition was mutual. Uttering an exclamation of triumph, Nelson
stepped swiftly forward, his fists clenched.
“So it’s you, is it?” he cried. “This is luck! You slipped away from me
before, but there ain’t nobody here to hide behind. Put up your hands!
Ain’t you got any nerve at all?”
So amazed was Lefty at the appearance of the fellow there, of all
places, that for a second or two he stood perfectly still, staring at
him.
“Say, have I got to lam you into showin’ a little fight?” fumed Nelson,
shaking a fist in Locke’s face. “If you don’t――”
He stopped abruptly as the door was jerked suddenly open to reveal the
spare figure of the Blue Stockings’ manager standing on the threshold,
his glance flashing from one to the other of the two men.
“Well,” old Jack inquired curtly, “what’s all this about, Savage? What
do you mean holding up Locke on his way to make a train?”
The busher’s blustering manner vanished with ludicrous swiftness before
the stern glare of Jack Kennedy. He dropped his lids, and, shuffling
his feet awkwardly, began a mumbled, halting explanation.
Of this Lefty heard scarcely a word. He was staring dazedly at the
flushed, sullen face of the embarrassed minor leaguer. What under the
sun did Jack mean by calling him Savage? He couldn’t be the new pitcher
of whom Kennedy had just been boasting. Distinctly Locke had heard the
Englishman on the train call him Nelson――not once, but several times.
“Well, beat it into the house, and I’ll talk to you directly,” came in
the manager’s sharp, incisive voice. “Now, Lefty,” he went on, when the
fellow had vanished, “what the deuce is up? You didn’t tell me you knew
him.”
Locke shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t until a few hours ago. I ran
into him on the train, and got mixed up in a little altercation. Did I
hear you call him Savage, Jack, or was I mistaken?”
“Sure, he’s Savage,” Kennedy answered. “Nelson Savage is the new
twirler I was telling you about. What you got against him, anyhow?”
Lefty’s lips parted, and then closed swiftly. “Oh, nothing,” he
answered, turning abruptly away. “I was surprised, that’s all. Thought
his name was Nelson. Time to get going, Jack. Good-by.”
He ran down the steps, and climbed quickly into the cutter waiting
there. Once out on the highroad, headed for the village, the driver
resumed his gossipy chat, but discovered his companion oddly reticent.
The truth was that Lefty found it impossible to keep his mind off
Kennedy’s new pitcher, and the more he thought about the fellow the
greater became his disapproval. Personally he was not in the least
troubled by the discovery that this Savage was destined to become
a rival. He could hold his own both on the diamond and off. But
dissension and ill feeling always play havoc with a ball team, and here
were both with a vengeance. Besides, Lefty’s opinion of the newcomer
was distinctly unfavorable. A man such as Savage had shown himself to
be was not at all the caliber of which first-rate Big League players
are made.
“I certainly hope Jack didn’t pick a lemon,” the twirler said to
himself, with a troubled frown; “but I’ll be hanged if it don’t look
that way.”
CHAPTER V
THE FACE IN THE MIRROR
Anxiety continued to be present in Lefty’s mind at frequent intervals
during the trip East. It made him begin even to doubt his own judgment,
and wonder if, after all, he had been wise in recommending a pitcher
of whom he really knew nothing personally. It was quite possible that
Gene Temple might turn out to be as undesirable as Savage, in spite of
the record he had made on the diamond the previous season. All this was
not exactly pleasant to contemplate, especially when Lefty recalled
the manner in which he had really persuaded Jack Kennedy, against the
latter’s judgment and inclination, to consent to the trial.
The fact that the Sharks’ manager was away and did not return until
the second day after Locke’s arrival in New York was not calculated
to relieve Lefty’s worry. When at length he did see Mr. Amos Jillson,
however, the latter’s demeanor was reassuring. After a momentary flash
of annoyance, he began to blackguard Temple strenuously. The fellow was
wild, undependable, even tricky, he said. He’d been thinking, in fact,
of sending him back to the bushes again. It was a sure thing that a man
of his caliber wouldn’t last a week in such an organization as the Blue
Stockings.
Knowing the subterfuges of the trade, Lefty listened to it all with
bland composure, quite unmoved. When the manager realized what he
was up against, he became curt, almost pettish, and went through the
formalities of transference with the greatest possible dispatch.
Temple resided with his parents in the neighboring village of Belle
View, so Lefty was briefly informed. He had never heard of this rising
suburb, and when he tried to reach it by means of a very circuitous
trolley line, he hoped fervently that he might never have occasion to
seek it again.
It had been dark for over an hour when he finally alighted from the
car, stiff, cold, and decidedly hungry. Had he entertained the least
conception of the time required to make the journey, it would certainly
have been put off until the next day. But once he had found Temple,
the interview was not likely to take long. Then he could get a bite
to eat and find some way of returning more directly to New York and
civilization.
The fairly well-lighted main street of Belle View was lined with
small shops in trim new buildings. Most of them were closed, but the
brilliant windows of one attracted Lefty’s eye. He had almost reached
the door, perceiving with approval that it was a clean, neat-looking
little restaurant, when the sight of a railroad track flanked by an
exceedingly up-to-date station of stucco made him give a deep sigh of
thankfulness.
Within five minutes he had learned from the ticket seller everything
he wished to know. New York, by underground, was exactly twenty-eight
minutes away. There was a train at seven-forty-three, and another at
nine-forty-five. It was now a few minutes before seven. Eight minutes’
brisk walking would bring him to the Temple house.
It did not take Lefty long to make up his mind. If he stopped to get
something to eat first, he would miss the earlier train, and be in for
a tiresome wait of more than two hours. By hunting up Temple at once,
dinner would be delayed not more than half or three-quarters of an hour
longer, and he could have it in quiet comfort at his own hotel. With a
word of thanks to the communicative agent, the pitcher hastily left the
station, and walked briskly up the street.
Three blocks straight ahead, the man had said, two blocks to the left,
then turn to the right, and take the house on the next right-hand
corner. Lefty found the blocks inordinately long, as country blocks are
likely to be, but there was no difficulty whatever in following the
agent’s directions to the letter.
“Some class to this town!” the ball player reflected as he turned the
last corner, on which stood an attractive concrete bungalow. “Next
right-hand corner, he said. That would be it at the end of the block.”
There were only three houses in the entire block, which was shorter
than the others he had traversed. The concrete bungalow occupied the
first corner; then came a low, rambling house set back from the street,
and gleaming hospitably with lights. A long stretch of vacant property
followed before the neat hedge and well-kept grounds of the Temple
place were reached.
This house also stood well back from the street, and Lefty was halfway
up the walk before he noticed how dark and gloomy it seemed. A clump
of evergreens shielded it from the street light. Not a solitary gleam
showed in any one of the many windows. Either the place was equipped
with peculiarly opaque shutters or there were no lights inside the
house to show.
“I hope the whole family isn’t out,” grumbled Lefty, as he ran up the
veranda steps.
The doorway was a colonial one, with long, narrow, diamond-paned
windows on each side. Before ringing, Locke paused to peer through
one of these. It was not drawn shades or closed shutters which gave
that air of gloominess to the place. There were no lights in the hall
or anywhere else in the front of the house that he could see. There
was a momentary pause before Lefty’s hand reached toward the bell. He
would at least make absolutely certain that there was no one at home
before leaving the place. There might be a servant somewhere about, or
possibly――
He caught his breath sharply. The fingers feeling for the electric
button stiffened. From the farther end of the hall a glare of light
suddenly flashed up in a startling, wholly inexplicable manner which
was bewildering. For a minute or two Lefty stood there, staring
dazedly, before his lips curved in a grin of understanding.
The light was not in the hall at all. It shone through a door in the
right-hand wall, full upon a high, massive mirror standing in the
opposite corner. All in a flash Lefty took in the heavy, gilded frame
and the low, old-fashioned marble-topped stand on which it rested. Then
his eyes widened at what he saw reflected in the glass.
Only a very limited portion of the room was visible. A bit of green
wall, with part of a wide black picture frame, showed distinctly, while
in the foreground, bending over a table, the figure of a man in a
check suit interested Lefty amazingly. There was something puzzlingly
familiar about those square, muscular shoulders, the set of the head,
the very sleekness of the crisp black hair. The fellow could not be
Temple, who was a pronounced blond; yet the Blue Stocking pitcher was
possessed with the certainty of having seen the man before.
A moment later the stranger, straightening up, turned toward the door,
and Locke gasped as he recognized the face of Nelson Savage.
CHAPTER VI
SUSPICIOUS DENIALS
Lefty’s first thought was that he had been deceived by a superficial
resemblance, coupled with the tricks played by a faulty mirror. But
swiftly that explanation vanished. For a full minute the man stood
quite still against the table, staring thoughtfully out into the
darkened hall. The lights from above shone full on his face, bringing
out even in the reflection every little detail of form and coloring.
Hair, eyes, features――all were identical. It was Jack Kennedy’s newest
recruit without the possibility of a doubt. As he realized this Locke’s
eyes narrowed, and the muscles of his jaw hardened.
It was puzzling enough, after having left Savage on Jack’s farm, a
thousand miles away, to come upon him three days later in this New
Jersey suburb; but to find him on apparently friendly terms with Gene
Temple was even more surprising, and a great deal more unpleasant. He
had not supposed the two to be even casually acquainted. They came from
opposite extremes of the continent, and had never, so far as Locke was
aware, even played in the same game.
Recovering quickly from his surprise, Lefty followed the actions of the
bush pitcher with the closest attention. There was no questioning the
air of being at home which was betrayed in his every action. After that
momentary pause under the light, he squared his shoulders decisively,
and walked out into the hall, returning in a moment with something in
his hand. Just what it was Lefty could not see, for the fellow stepped
out of range at once. During the next five minutes or so the glass
reflected only tantalizing glimpses of him moving about the room.
What he was doing the watcher could not determine, nor was he
inordinately curious. His mind was taken up to a much greater extent in
wondering whether Gene Temple was also in the house. So far, nothing
had been seen of the Seaboard pitcher, yet it was hard to believe that
Savage was here alone.
Suddenly Locke’s hand reached for the bell, but he paused, his finger
tips just touching the button. His impulse had been to ring and
see what would happen, but he repressed it. If Temple was there he
would doubtless come to the door, and Lefty was not so sure he cared
about talking with the fellow just now. He wanted time to digest his
discovery, to readjust his mind to the realization that Temple was
apparently on intimate terms with an individual for whom Lefty hadn’t
the slightest use. It might make a radical difference in his actions.
One recruit of Savage’s caliber was quite enough in the training camp,
Locke reflected. Under the circumstances, he might decide that he had
no use for Gene Temple, after all.
So, instead of ringing, Lefty went quietly down the steps and along
the flagged walk to the street. Instinctively he retraced his steps to
Main Street, moved, perhaps, by a subconscious picture of the clean
little restaurant on the corner. But all the while his mind was going
over and over the problem which had so suddenly confronted him, and he
was trying his best to decide what he ought to do. It seemed unjust to
condemn a man unheard, yet if Temple was not a friend of Savage how
else was it possible to account for what Locke had just seen?
Brief as had been their acquaintance, Lefty’s dislike and disapproval
of the Western busher was acute, and by the time he reached the
main street he had decided to have nothing to do with any of the
fellow’s friends. He had also decided that the sooner everything was
straightened out and settled the better. He wished now he had obeyed
that first impulse to rouse Temple at the house.
“There’ll be no trotting back to New York until I’ve located the
fellow and straightened things out,” the pitcher said as he opened the
restaurant door and stepped into the warm, brightly lighted interior.
As he closed the door and turned to one of the bare-topped, shiny
tables that ran along one side of the room, he heard an exclamation of
surprise from a tall young man in a heavy ulster who was just turning
away from the cigar stand:
“Jumping Jemimah! Why, it’s Lefty Locke!”
Since the triumphant finish of the past season, Lefty had received
about as much adulation as any professional in the Big League. Wherever
he went enthusiastic fans treated him with that mixture of deference
and friendliness which is so characteristic of fans the country over.
Lefty made no pretense of being bored. He looked upon it all as part
of the game, and felt that some slight occasional inconvenience was
little enough to pay for the fame which had come to him. It amused him
to have people recognize him in street cars and public places. Even
the inevitable string of small boys, with awe-struck faces, camping
on his trail, did not annoy him. In the field he rather liked to hear
the bleacherites roar out that “Oh, you Lefty!” in tones of fond
proprietorship. He felt that the greater part of it was genuine; that
people really did like him, and were proud of him. And to treat such
honest admiration with indifference or disdain would be churlish, ill
bred, impossible.
As he turned now, with a faint, friendly smile for the man who had
spoken so impulsively, he saw a tall, well-built fellow, with laughing
gray eyes set in a face which was almost too good looking. It was a
face which, once seen, was not likely to be forgotten, and, after that
first brief flash of surprise, Lefty’s smile deepened to one of pleased
satisfaction.
“How are you, Temple?” he said quietly, putting out his hand.
“Fine as silk!” was the reply before an expression of dazed bewilderment
leaped into the gray eyes. “But how the deuce―― Say, you’re Lefty Locke,
of the Blue Stockings, aren’t you?”
“Sure thing!”
“But I don’t understand how you know my name. I’m sure I never met you
before, though I’ve seen you in the box, of course.”
His voice was low and pleasant; his gaze frank, direct, and steady. As
the Big League pitcher slipped out of his coat and hung it up, he found
himself warming already to the stranger.
“It doesn’t seem to occur to you that I might also have seen _you_
pitch,” he suggested.
Temple laughed. “You might, but that’s different; I’m next door to the
bushes.”
Locke shrugged his shoulders, and moved toward one of the tables. The
room was almost empty, a man and woman at the rear being the only other
patrons. A single waitress hovered at a little distance, waiting for
the latest patron to settle himself.
“I happened to see you pitch a game early last spring,” Lefty explained,
“and I don’t often forget a face.”
He paused, one hand on the back of a chair, his eyes fixed intently on
Temple’s. He had suddenly made up his mind to settle the whole affair
without delay.
“I’m going to ask you a question which may strike you as rather
peculiar,” he resumed abruptly. “How long have you known Nelson Savage?”
The younger pitcher suddenly stubbed his toe against a rubber mat, and
dropped the lighted cigar he was carrying. He bent instinctively to
pick it up; then, changing his mind, set his heel on the glowing end,
and took a fresh one from his pocket.
“Nelson Savage?” he repeated blankly. “I’m afraid I don’t get you,
quite. Who is he?”
Locke’s face hardened perceptibly. He had not expected such a barefaced
denial. He hesitated an instant, still holding Temple’s gaze in thrall.
It seemed remarkable that the gray eyes never wavered or shifted.
“It’s rather odd that you should ask that,” he remarked coldly, “when
he’s making himself at home at this very moment in your house.”
Temple’s jaw sagged; the match he had just struck slipped unheeded
through his fingers.
“You’re――kidding me――aren’t you?” he stammered.
Lefty made a negative motion of his head, and, pulling out the chair,
sat down. “I have just come from there,” he returned. “I saw him.”
Still with that dazed expression on his face, Temple came close to
the table, and, bending over, gripped the edge of it with both hands.
The action crumpled his cigar into fragments, but apparently he was
unconscious of it. He was staring at the older man with a look of
bewilderment which could scarcely have been counterfeited. When finally
he broke the silence his words came in jerks.
“You say――there’s a man――named Savage in my house――now――this minute?”
he gasped. “You saw him――there?”
A gleam of fresh interest flashed into Lefty’s eyes; the hard line of
his compressed lips softened. Either this man was genuinely surprised
and disturbed or else he was an amazing actor.
“I certainly did,” the Blue Stocking pitcher returned, in a less chilly
tone; “not more than fifteen or twenty minutes ago.”
Temple straightened abruptly, with a decisive squaring of his shoulders.
He began to button his ulster.
“Then he’s there for no good purpose,” he said. “I know of no one who
has any business there. My people are away――visiting in Boston. The
house is closed――unoccupied, except when I go there to sleep. Whoever
this man Savage is, it looks to me as if he’d broken in to steal, and
if he has――good night!”
He swung abruptly away from the table, and strode toward the door.
Lefty stared after him for a second; then, springing up, he grabbed
coat and hat, and followed.
CHAPTER VII
THE BLUNDER
What little conversation passed between the two men as they hurried
toward the Temple house was spasmodic and choppy. Briefly Lefty
explained how he had come to see Savage. The younger man asked no
questions, and was apparently not even curious to know what Locke could
want with him. He seemed, in fact, to be answering mechanically, as
if his brain was all the time occupied with some other phase of the
situation; and, naturally, the Blue Stockings’ pitcher quickly relapsed
into silence.
He himself was in a condition of puzzled doubt and uncertainty which
gave him plenty to think about. Much as he disliked Nelson Savage, he
did not wish to believe that the man would deliberately break into
a house for the purpose of stealing. Not only would it be an act of
incredible folly, but the coincidence of his traveling a thousand miles
to rob the home of Gene Temple was too startling to credit.
Yet, if that were not the true explanation, Temple himself must be an
unmitigated liar, his every action deliberately intended to deceive.
Lefty found this quite as hard to believe, and he decided to reserve
judgment until he had a little more to work on.
“In five minutes I’ll know,” he said to himself as they hastened around
the corner by the concrete bungalow. “It’s one of the queerest things――
Say, Temple, where are you going?”
The last sentence was uttered aloud in a surprised tone, for the blond
young man had turned abruptly in at the bungalow gate, and was striding
up the walk. At the sound of Locke’s voice he slowed down a bit and
glanced over his shoulder.
“Going!” he echoed guardedly. “I’m hustling to pinch this housebreaker
before he makes a getaway”.
Locke caught his breath sharply. “You don’t mean to say you live
_here_?”
“I sure do!” Temple’s tone was puzzled. “Where’d you think I lived?”
A wave of crimson surged over Lefty’s face at the realization of the
blunder he had made.
“But the man said the next corner!” he exclaimed indignantly. “Doesn’t
the idiot know――”
He broke off with a sudden deep chuckle as his keen sense of humor came
belatedly to his rescue. “I was talking about the wrong house all the
time,” he exclaimed. “Wouldn’t that get you!”
His face still puzzled, the younger ball player turned hurriedly and
came back to Locke’s side.
“You mean the house on the next corner?” he asked quickly. “Was that
where you saw this――Savage?”
“Sure thing!” answered Lefty. “Peach of a bull, wasn’t it? But the fool
agent said the next corner, and how was I to know he meant this one?”
Temple’s lips began to twitch and his eyes to crinkle. A second later
he threw back his head and burst into a shout of laughter, genuine,
infectious, yet with a note in it of such relief that Lefty stared at
him curiously. It wasn’t possible that such a chap could have been
nervous at the prospect of tackling a sneak thief.
“I can’t help it,” Temple said half apologetically when the violence of
his mirth had begun to subside. “It seemed to strike me as funny――our
hustling up the way we did. You certainly did get my goat for a bit,
though,” he went on frankly. “I’ve been careless, leaving things
around, and wasn’t keen about having ’em swiped. Besides, I couldn’t
for the life of me make out why anybody’d break into a house so early
in the evening. Of course, since it was at Markham’s you saw him, he
probably didn’t break in at all. Likely he’s a friend of Harry’s.”
“Hum! Possibly, though the whole business still seems rather odd. Who
is this Markham, by the way?”
They were standing together beside the gate. Temple’s manner had
altered amazingly, becoming in a flash light-hearted and jocular.
“Manager of Crawford’s sporting-goods shop,” he answered. “Who’s this
Savage, anyway――pugilist, ball player, or what?”
“A twirler from the sagebrush,” answered Lefty absently.
He was thinking over the affair, and there were certain details which
still seemed peculiar――such, for example, as the assurance which the
fellow showed in moving about the apparently empty house. Lefty had
half a mind to go on to Markham’s and see if he could solve the mystery.
“That accounts for it,” Temple went on. “Harry knows more scrappers
and ball players than you could count in a week. Well, what do you say
to going back? I’d ask you into the house, only it’s like a barn, and
there’s not a thing to eat around. Since the folks left, I’ve only been
showing up to sleep, and sometimes not even for that. You were going to
order supper at Mike’s, weren’t you?”
The Blue Stockings’ pitcher nodded, and swung through the gate beside
Temple, both starting to retrace their steps toward the restaurant.
Remembering Savage’s belligerent attitude at parting, Lefty was not
especially keen about stirring up something very likely to terminate
in a fight. At least, Temple was cleared of all foreknowledge of the
Western twirler, which was the principal thing just now.
It was not until they were seated on opposite sides of the neat table,
and the waitress had taken Locke’s order, that his companion broached
the subject which must have been in his mind for some little time.
“Did you――er――come to Belle View on purpose to――see me?” he asked, with
a touch of embarrassed hesitation.
Lefty smiled. “Yes,” he answered quietly. “I secured you for Jack
Kennedy this afternoon.”
Temple’s eyes widened, and a tide of deep crimson surged to the very
roots of his blond hair.
“You can’t mean――” he stammered, his hands gripping the table edge
with unconscious force. “It isn’t possible that the Blue Stockings
want―― Oh, say!” His face took on an expression of whimsical disbelief.
“You’re kidding me!”
“Not this time. I came East on purpose to get you for Kennedy’s squad.
Saw Jillson to-day, and now you’re a Blue Stocking cub. Hope you’re not
sorry?”
“Sorry!” cried Temple, bringing down one clenched fist with a crash
that made the dishes rattle. “Sorry! Why, I’d rather be that than
anything else on earth! It’s the Big League club that I’ve always put
ahead of all the others, but I never thought―― Do you s’pose there’s a
chance of my making good?”
“If there wasn’t,” returned Lefty briefly, “you’d hardly have been
picked by Jack Kennedy.”
The man’s modesty was refreshing, and his boyish impulsiveness held in
it an inexplicable attraction for the more famous player. Before supper
was over they were chatting together like old friends. When train time
approached Temple helped the Big League pitcher into his heavy coat,
and walked across to the station with him.
It lacked ten minutes or more of train time, so the two paced briskly
up and down the length of the concrete platform, smoking, and making
arrangements for their meeting a few days later to go South together.
“I’d sure like to make the trip with you,” Temple said enthusiastically
as they passed one of the waiting-room windows. “That’ll give me time
to see the folks, and―― Mighty!”
He broke off with sudden vehemence, and, ripping open his coat, glanced
at his watch. Scarcely seeming to look at it, he jammed it back, his
face frowning and troubled.
“Had a date at nine,” he explained rapidly to his companion. “Went
clean out of my head. Say, would you mind if I cut out now? Perhaps I
can square myself yet.”
“Go ahead, by all means,” replied Lefty, thrusting out a gloved hand.
“Good-by. Don’t forget where we’re to meet.”
Temple gripped the pitcher’s outstretched hand and wrung it.
“Not on your life!” he cried. “I’ve got it all straight. Hotel St.
Albans next Tuesday for lunch. Awfully sorry to go this way, but you
understand?”
Without even waiting for a reply, he turned and hurried along the
platform, almost at a run. Lefty was still watching him, a faint smile
on his lips, when the slamming of the station door made him glance
carelessly around.
A square-shouldered, youngish man was standing by the door, pulling
on a glove. His face was in the shadow, but a moment later he picked
up his suit case and strolled directly toward Lefty. The latter
watched him curiously, as one observes a lone fellow passenger at a
country station. Then, as the unknown stepped into the circle of the
nearest arc light, Locke caught his breath, every muscle stiffening
instinctively as if he were bracing himself to withstand an inevitable
shock. An instant later he had regained his composure.
“I hardly expected to see you quite so soon again, Savage,” he drawled
coolly.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TRANSFORMATION
In the brief, tense pause which followed, Lefty’s dominating emotion
was one of thankfulness that the station platform was deserted. The
much delayed fight seemed bound to come off there and then, and Locke
was not sorry. It was high time the fellow was shown a thing or two,
and the Blue Stockings’ twirler was not in the least averse to playing
the part of instructor. He did object, however, to playing that part
before a crowd of witnesses.
Determined to let Savage make the first hostile move, the Big League
player deliberately held himself in check, standing quietly, watching
his antagonist, and wondering why he did not begin. There was not
enough light for him to catch the play of expression on the busher’s
face; consequently the shock of surprise which followed the fellow’s
first words was doubly great.
“So soon?” Savage repeated at length, in a quiet, almost drawling
voice. “Surely there’s been plenty of time for me to get here.”
Lefty stared at him dazedly for a second before he could find his
voice. It was so totally different from what he had expected that for a
moment he could not believe he had heard aright. Then the realization
came suddenly that Savage was playing some game.
“Oh, plenty,” he answered calmly; “only the time was so short I
scarcely thought you’d be coming East.”
Savage shrugged his shoulders, and put down the suitcase. “I don’t
remember saying that I wasn’t,” he returned quietly. “Have a cigarette?”
He extended an open box, and Lefty, retaining his composure with no
little difficulty, accepted one. He refused to let this blustering
braggart outdo him in self-control. What the man’s game was he had not
the remotest idea, but he was certain two could play at it, and he
promptly proceeded to “stall along” until he could get the run of the
cards.
“Thanks,” he murmured nonchalantly, and produced a match box from his
ulster pocket. “Light?”
As the flame flickered up Savage bent slightly toward it, his face
clearly outlined to the smallest detail. Lefty, staring intently at
him, could not detect a sign of that ungovernable fury which had
characterized the busher at their first meeting less than a week
before. He seemed as calm and unruffled as if he had never worked
himself into a violent temper at the man who had accepted his cigarette
and who was now holding a lighted match for him.
The whole thing was such an anti-climax that Lefty could have laughed
aloud had he not been so bewildered. As it was, he decided to let
Savage do the talking, at least until he could determine how things
really stood. With that idea in mind, he took his time, aware from
the sound of the rapidly approaching train that a fresh diversion was
coming to his assistance.
“Mind the smoker?” inquired Savage as the engine thundered past them.
“We may as well sit together, then. It’ll make the time pass quicker.”
Locke acquiesced briefly, and they climbed aboard, picking out a
seat. They were no sooner settled than Savage made some whimsical
comments on two queer-looking characters sitting in front of them,
and the Big League twirler, to his amazement, found himself chuckling
appreciatively at his companion’s dry humor.
It seemed incredible, yet he was actually finding the fellow likable.
Tossing away the end of his cigarette, he pulled out a couple of
cigars, and passed one over. Had any one predicted the action half an
hour before, Lefty would have pronounced that person insane.
“From the way we parted,” he said with sudden impulsiveness, “I’d
hardly have said we’d be chumming it this way to-night.”
Savage, busily cutting the end of his cigar, did not look up.
“Yes?” he murmured. “How so?”
Lefty stared. He had smelled liquor on the busher the afternoon they
first met, but the man could scarcely have been so under the influence
as to have no recollection of their altercation.
“You surely haven’t forgotten that you wanted to lick the pants off
me?” he asked.
The smile vanished from the Westerner’s lips, and a flush swept into
his face. “I’m sorry you remember it so vividly, Locke,” he said, in
a low, rather constrained tone. Lefty wondered whither had vanished
all his slang and coarseness. “I must have been more of a beast than I
thought.” He hesitated, his slim fingers nervously rolling the cigar
between them. “I was feeling pretty rotten that day. I had more booze
in me than was healthy. And―― Well, you understand, old man, how a
fellow sometimes does things he’s ashamed of.”
He raised his head suddenly, and looked straight at Lefty with steady,
level eyes which seemed to hold a hint of appeal in them. For a second
Locke could have sworn that they were not the eyes of Savage at all,
they were so totally different from the lowering, evil-looking orbs
he remembered. Then he realized that it was simply the absence of that
baleful, uncanny glare which had impressed him so disagreeably. They
were human now――human and winning, and decidedly attractive.
Suddenly Locke found himself answering the unspoken appeal eagerly.
“Forget it!” he said forcibly. “You don’t suppose I took it as
seriously as that, do you? I was giving you a little josh, that’s all.
Let’s get on to something else. How’d you make out with Jack?”
“He’s going to give me a show,” Savage answered briefly. “Great chap,
Kennedy.”
“You bet your life he is!”
It was a subject on which Lefty could hold forth indefinitely, and when
the train pulled into Jersey City he found that he had been doing most
of the talking for twenty minutes or so. The announcement from Savage
that he was going over to Brooklyn resulted in an unexpectedly hurried
parting, and Locke had settled down in the uptown tunnel train before
he realized that there were a number of things he had neglected to find
out from the busher――among them the explanation of his curious actions
in the Markham house.
“Doesn’t make any difference, I reckon,” he decided at length. “I’ll
see him again in less than a week. By George, what a transformation!”
He shook his head slowly. “It’s amazing. He’s human now, and not a bad
sort at all. I s’pose it must be drink that does it. Jove! If I had a
devil like that inside me, which liquor unchained, it would be me for
the sprinkler, and no dropping off either.”
CHAPTER IX
THE TRAINING CAMP
Delayed by a blizzard, Lefty and Gene Temple did not reach the sleepy
little Southern town of Tulane until the second day of the spring
training. Kennedy and his crowd of recruits had left for the ball park
some time before, so the two belated ones stopped at the hotel only
long enough to change into their baseball clothes before following them.
After the bitter cold, the snow and general disagreeableness, which
they had left behind so short a time ago, there was an infinite
relaxation in the soft, caressing warmth and brilliant sunshine of this
Southern clime. The sky was deep blue, and cloudless. The trees were
just bursting into bud, their branches covered with a delicate tracery
of tender green. From the fresh-plowed fields came the indescribable
odor of new-turned earth. Somewhere a bird was caroling joyously.
There was something about it all which sent a thrill through the Blue
Stockings’ pitcher, bringing back in a vivid flash the remembrance of
this time a year ago, when he had appeared, unknown and unwelcome, at
the Texas training camp of the famous Hornets.
His experience there had been fraught with much hard feeling. It was
exceptional, to be sure; but it had, nevertheless, been the cause of
his looking forward to the trip this year with the reverse of pleasure.
He had never actually clothed the dislike with conscious thought. He
was not even fully aware of it until this very moment, when, with his
blood beginning to tingle in his veins, he drew in the soft, fragrant
air in deep gulps, and realized that the prejudice had vanished, that
he was glad to be alive and here.
“Pretty slick, isn’t it?” he said aloud, glancing at Temple.
The latter nodded, and answered with a brief affirmative. His face
was slightly flushed; his eyes were bright. Lefty smiled a little
as he realized that the youngster was just where he had been a year
ago――eager, dubious, thrilled with anticipation, devoured with
curiosity, and more than a little nervous. It made Locke appear older
and amazingly experienced. That single year which separated him from
Temple seemed infinitely longer in retrospection than it had been in
passing.
Presently the long line of unpainted high board fence showed ahead of
them, and instinctively the two players broke into a trot. Neither of
them spoke. Their spikes sank into the warm earth. Their eyes were
fixed upon the arching spheres of white that curved into view above the
fence, to fall swiftly away in swallow flight below that line of dingy
boardings.
Through the gate they trotted; then Lefty halted for a moment, eying
with interest the busy scene. Scattered over the field were eighteen
or twenty men, in uniforms of various sorts, engaged in almost equally
varied exercises. Some merely tossed a baseball back and forth slowly,
stiffly, and with occasional facial contortions which made Lefty
grin sympathetically. He knew from experience the discomfort, almost
the torture, of that “second” morning. Half a dozen were passing the
medicine ball about a circle. In front of the stand others were batting
the slow, straight balls pitched to them by Jack Kennedy himself.
As Locke took it all in, he felt again that tingling thrill of
enthusiasm. In spite of the toil and drudgery, the aches and pains
and stiffness ahead of him, he saw the distant goal lying beyond
everything, and was glad to be here.
“Take it easy, Mac!” sounded in old Jack’s crisp tones. “You may want
some of that smoke later on.”
Chuckling, Locke moved forward, closely followed by Temple. A moment
later the manager was gripping the southpaw’s hand and asking the
inevitable questions in that earnest tone of his which robbed it of
its perfunctoriness.
“Fine!” responded Lefty promptly. “Held up by a blizzard north of
Washington, but I reckon it won’t take long to catch up with the bunch.
This is Gene Temple, Jack.”
Kennedy shook hands with the recruit, his keen dark eyes sweeping over
the youngster from head to foot.
“You look pretty fit,” he commented. “A mite soft, maybe, but we’ll
soon fix that. Just take my place for a bit. Straight, easy balls, you
know. We don’t want any fireworks yet a while.”
Handing over the ball, he stepped aside and watched Temple for a few
minutes, correcting him when he seemed to be putting on a little too
much speed.
“Hardest thing in the world to keep ’em down at first,” he said,
turning to Lefty, with a grim smile. “He won’t hardly be able to move
that wing to-morrow morning if he ain’t careful.”
“Don’t I know it!” laughed Locke as they moved a little farther back,
where the manager could overlook the entire squad. “Well, how’s tricks?
I suppose Nels Savage showed up all right?”
Kennedy flashed a swift, oddly inquiring glance at his premier pitcher.
“What makes you ask that?” he asked briefly.
“Because I’m interested,” was the equally brief answer.
“Hum!” Kennedy’s eyes shifted out across the field. “Easy, there,
Coombs! Don’t put too much on the old soup bone!” he yelled. Then he
glanced back at Lefty. “I didn’t know he was such a friend o’ yours,”
he went on quietly. “It sure didn’t seem so, the way you met up on my
porch a couple of weeks ago.”
The southpaw laughed. “We weren’t then,” he explained. “Can’t say that
we’re so awful chummy now, either. I just happened to run into him
again around New York, and changed the opinion I’d formed of him when
we first met.”
“That so?” drawled the manager. “Funny――but I did the same identical
thing, only it wasn’t a change for the better. I’m afraid Sackett
picked a lemon that time. He’s a booze fighter. I landed here Monday
night, and he showed up next morning, full as a tick and devilish!
There ain’t any other word to express it. When he’s got a load aboard
he’s the limit. I reckon he must have been in that condition when you
first ran into him.”
“Guess he was,” returned Lefty. “Jove, that’s mighty hard lines, Jack!
Sober, he’s as decent a chap as you’d want around. What are you going
to do――ship him back to the sticks?”
Kennedy’s eyes snapped. “Not unless I have to. I’m going to boost him
aboard the water wagon, and keep him there. He hasn’t had a drop since
he landed here, and I’ll see that he don’t get it. There’s a chance to
make something good out of him if he’ll only do a little trying on his
own hook, for he’s pretty clever with the horsehide.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Jack,” the pitcher forcibly assured him,
a remembrance of Savage’s brief, halting half confession on the train
flashing into his mind. “He’ll work with you, all right, or I’ve got
him sized up far wrong. I reckon he must be one of those poor devils
who let alcohol get a strangle hold, and then can’t shake it off. I’ll
do anything I can to help――if you care to have me.”
“Good idea,” agreed Kennedy, pulling out his watch. “I can’t have him
in sight every minute. Well, it’s time we were breaking up the morning
session. I’ll see you at the hotel, Lefty. I got to chase down and send
a wire to Larry. He’s on the road with some theater company, and I
haven’t located him yet.”
Turning away, he raised his voice in a stentorian shout: “Everybody run
in!” Then he made straight for a horse and buggy hitched in the shadow
of the stand.
For a minute or two Lefty stood watching the players as they stopped
instantly whatever they were doing and jogged toward the gate. Then,
recognizing Savage as one of those who had been in the medicine-ball
circle, his eyes brightened, and he moved hastily forward.
He hadn’t the least idea of trying anything so crude as an open
attempt at reformation. He simply wanted to say a word of greeting to
the man he had taken such a decided interest in; he wished to renew
the pleasant intercourse which had been cut off so abruptly that
night on the platform of the Hudson River tube. So he ran after the
square-shouldered, muscular figure bringing up the rear of the jogging
line, and clapped him on the back in a friendly fashion.
“Well, old scout, how goes it?” he cried. “Glad to see you escaped from
the wilds of Brooklyn all right.”
The busher stopped abruptly, whirling round with a savage yank that
jerked his shoulder from Locke’s light touch.
“Keep your hands off me!” he snarled, glaring balefully from under
lowering brows. “What in blazes do you mean, pawing me like that? If we
was only away by our two selves I’d knock the dome off you so quick you
wouldn’t know what hit you!”
For a moment Lefty stared in utter astonishment at the dark, sneering
face, with its snarling lips and evil, glowering eyes. There was no
smell of liquor about the fellow; he was absolutely sober.
Suddenly the sting of those unprovoked insults penetrated that mental
armor of bewildered amazement. It send the crimson tide of indignation
surging into Locke’s face; brought a hard, cold glint into his eyes. A
swift side glance told him that the last straggler had almost reached
the gate. He took a step forward, and regarded Savage for a moment from
under drooping lids.
“You’ve been shooting off considerable hot air since I first saw you,”
he remarked coldly. “I’m rather curious to know if there’s anything
back of it. We’re never likely to be more alone than we are this
minute. Suppose you start in with that licking you’ve been blowing so
much about? Come ahead! I’m ready.”
CHAPTER X
A PERPLEXING QUESTION
Savage made no effort to accept Lefty’s militant invitation. He
did not stir or utter a word, but remained glaring at Locke with a
concentration which gave the southpaw a queer and decidedly unpleasant
sensation. He was vividly reminded of an occasion when he had stood
before one of the glass dens in the Bronx Park reptile house, staring
into the bright, evil eyes of a very active cobra which had reared
itself belligerently.
The stillness became oddly prolonged. The busher’s eyes seemed to widen
and grow larger. Locke was conscious of a peculiar sense of lethargy
which changed swiftly to irritation at the fellow who seemed to be
trying to stare him down. Suddenly he gave a determined shake of his
head.
“Well,” he demanded curtly, “aren’t you going to start something?”
Savage drew back abruptly, an expression akin to disappointment
flickering across his face.
“Say,” he rasped harshly, “what kind of a sucker do you think I am? I’d
start to beat you up in this ball park, and how soon do you s’pose it
would be before Kennedy landed on my neck?”
“Who’s going to put him wise?”
“If I once got going right you’d sure be a walking advertisement of
what had happened. The whole crowd would be wise soon as they lamped
you. Nix! You don’t get me in bad with the old man that way!”
Lefty’s lips curled. “Sure that’s the real reason?” he inquired
sarcastically. “Looks to me as if you were crawling.”
The busher’s fists clenched and his face flushed darkly. For a second
it seemed that he meant to fly at the throat of the man who had taunted
him. Locke’s muscles stiffened; he braced himself instinctively to
withstand the shock. But it never came.
“It won’t work,” growled Savage through his clenched teeth. “I’ll get
you before I’m through, but not until I have a place with this crowd
cinched. Another thing――there ain’t a bit of use in your coming around
with that soft stuff, ’cause it don’t go. I don’t like a hair of your
head, and trying that brand o’ bunk will only start ructions――see?”
The last word had scarcely left his lips when he turned and strode
rapidly across the field toward the gate. Lefty, scarlet with rage
at the insulting tone, took half a dozen swift steps after him
before cooling second thought put on the brake. It was one thing to
defend himself against assault, quite another deliberately to start
a rough-house, in spite of even as great a provocation as this. It
would be a poor way in which to repay Kennedy’s exceptional faith
in him by fostering what the manager feared above almost any other
calamity――dissension and hard feeling among members of his team.
“Just about one more crack like that, though, and you’ll get yours,”
muttered the southpaw angrily, coming to a halt. “Jove, what a mucker!
He ought to have the rudiments of decency beaten into his thick skull
with a club. Soft stuff――bah!”
To a man whose friendship and acquaintance was sought with a frequency
which is almost tiresome, the insinuation that he would deliberately
try to win over such a creature as this by flattery was irritating
to the limit. Nor was Lefty’s irritation at all assuaged by the
realization that in a far-fetched sort of way he had placed himself
open to the annoyance.
“But how could I know he’d be like this?” he growled as he moved slowly
toward the gate, his face still crimson with indignation. “Jack said he
was sober――and so he was. How could a fellow guess that any human being
would change like that? Why, on the train he was as decent a sort――”
He broke off abruptly, with a start of surprise, the anger in his face
giving place swiftly to puzzled thoughtfulness. How did he know that
the fellow had ever really changed? Might not that pose of friendliness
have been altogether a pretense?
Such a supposition would indicate amazing ability at acting on the part
of this crude individual from the Western bushes, but it was far from
impossible. Even more difficult to understand was the man’s motive in
perpetuating such a deception. Why should his manner toward Lefty be
so different in Belle View from that shown at Deering, or later here
in Georgia? What had he gained, or hoped to gain, by a pose which must
have been not only difficult but extremely onerous?
The question puzzled Locke all the way back to the hotel. He could
think of no plausible answer save that Savage had desired to divert
attention from some one or something in the quiet Jersey suburb. It was
a bit far-fetched, perhaps, yet by assuming that guise of friendliness
he had certainly so surprised and engrossed Lefty as to make him
totally forgetful of the odd circumstance of the busher’s presence in
the little country town.
If this supposition were correct, a lot of puzzling queries leaped into
life like Hydra heads. None was more difficult that the last of all
which popped suddenly into the southpaw’s mind, just as he came within
sight of the hotel: Why had Savage refused to fight?
The obvious explanation would have been: Because he was afraid――because,
like most loud-mouthed, blustering braggarts, he was a coward at heart.
But Lefty had a strong impression that this was not the case. Much as he
disliked the man, he had never had the least doubt of his courage. The
ruffian had been ready enough twice before to resort to violence. What
motive held him back now?
CHAPTER XI
A VOICE OUT OF DARKNESS
Thanks to the irritating nature of the encounter on the field, and the
swarm of unanswerable questions it had aroused, Lefty entered the hotel
in a decidedly ill humor. The delight and keen enthusiasm he had felt
that morning were quite gone; in their place had come a sense of ill
treatment.
After the sacrifice he had made in coming down ahead of the other
regulars, and practically giving a week of his time to coaching these
raw recruits from all over the country, it seemed as if fortune had
played him a scurvy trick by bringing into his sphere such an irritant
as Nelson Savage was likely to become.
“Wonder if I didn’t make a mistake, after all, in keeping my hands off
him?” muttered Lefty, glancing around the lobby. “There won’t be any
living with the dog until he’s been taken down by a thorough thrashing,
and―― Well, for Pete’s sake, look who’s here!”
In a flash the frown was swept from his face by a grin of surprised
delight as he leaped toward the tall, wiry young man who stood at one
end of the desk, talking and laughing with Jack Kennedy.
“Al, you old villain,” he cried, gripping the newcomer’s hands in both
of his, “where the deuce do you hail from? I’m certainly glad to see
that homely mug of yours again.”
Al Ogan’s response to the greeting was equally hearty. The two had
been fellow-cubs a year before in peppery Jim Brennan’s famous Hornet
organization, and Lefty had got along better with the clever young
infielder than with any other member of the team except his particular
chum, Buck Fargo.
“Haven’t been doing a thing in the twirling line since I saw you last,
have you?” Ogan inquired, one arm resting on Locke’s shoulder. “It’s a
wonder you wouldn’t get a wiggle on and make some kind of a reputation
for yourself.”
The southpaw laughed. “Time enough for that, old scout. We’re likely
to show you a trick or two this season. But, say, what in the name of
sense brought you down here? What license have you got to come snooping
around our promising growth from the timber regions?”
Ogan showed a fine set of teeth in a wide grin. “Doesn’t seem to occur
to you that I might be here for the purpose of giving you rubes a few
lessons in the art of playing the national game,” he remarked, with
twinkling eyes.
Lefty stared. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” he asked, darting a swift,
inquiring glance at Kennedy.
Evidently there was something in the latter’s face which gave away the
situation, for Locke suddenly brought his open palm down across the
manager’s shoulders with a force which shook old Jack.
“Why, you deceiving old reprobate!” exclaimed the pitcher. “So this
is how you filled Spider’s place? I’ll be hanged! Never even gave me
a chance to ask what luck you had with first. It was on the tip of my
tongue three or four times this morning, but you always choked me off.”
“Thought I’d give you a surprise,” chuckled Kennedy. “From the way you
looked a while back, I should say you needed one. What’s eating you,
anyhow?”
Lefty had not the slightest intention of letting either man know of his
clash with Savage; it would savor entirely too much of talebearing to
suit him. He smiled blandly, convincingly, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing,” he drawled. “No, Jack, if I seemed at all serious, it must
have been caused by the thought of wasting a perfectly good week of
freedom watching you do the Solomon act with this crowd from the
sagebrush. Now that Al’s here, life will be more bearable.”
Kennedy laughed and moved away toward the proprietor’s office, leaving
Locke and Ogan to talk things over.
Lefty was more than pleased at the encounter. The young Ohioan was
a college graduate and a good fellow in every sense of the word.
Personally Locke had always liked him, and just at present he would
have welcomed a much less agreeable member of the old squad. It gave
him some one of his own status to talk to; some one who knew men and
conditions of the baseball world, and who did not spend any time either
eying the famous southpaw with surreptitious awe, or jealously tearing
to pieces his hard-earned reputation.
Within ten minutes the two had decided to room together. They sat side
by side in the dining-room, and when the hour for afternoon practice
approached went out to the field together.
Without appearing to do so, Lefty kept an observant eye that afternoon
on Nelson Savage, and discovered, as he rather expected to, that the
fellow was not a general favorite. So far as could be seen, he was on
speaking terms with just two members of the squad. The remainder of the
recruits he treated with contemptuous disdain; if one could judge by
the biting comments cast in his direction, the dislike was mutual.
Of course it was impossible at this early day to obtain any idea of his
professional skill. Beyond handling a baseball with a certain amount
of deftness, he showed no particular ability; nor was he likely to for
some time to come. As for his physical condition, Lefty was surprised
at the discovery that the fellow was much too heavy, and extremely
short-winded. He puffed and panted when he joined the file that Kennedy
led at a trot around the inside of the fence; and he didn’t last five
minutes when lured into the diabolical “high-low” game.
Many of the other recruits were out of condition, but none of them
quite as badly as this, and Locke naturally laid it to the busher’s
intemperate habits. That evening after dinner, sitting in the lobby
with Kennedy and Ogan, a quick suspicion came to him at the sight of
Savage slipping out of the hotel alone.
“I thought you were keeping an eye on that fellow, Jack?” he remarked,
in a low tone. “What’s to prevent him digging up some redeye in the
village?”
Kennedy laughed, leaning back comfortably. “Evidently you don’t know
Tulane, son. The place is so dry that a quart of bourbon would look
like the flood. Only way he could smuggle it in is on the railroad,
and the boys are all good friends of mine that I’ve tipped off to look
out for that sort of thing. Unsociable grouch, ain’t he? Goes off
alone ’most every night just like that. You’d think he’d get tired of
himself, wouldn’t you?”
“Where does he go?” Lefty asked.
“Oh, moving pictures, I reckon. I followed him the first couple of
times, and found him down there.” He yawned. “There ain’t no danger of
his getting firewater now. The trouble’ll come when the push lands on
us. They’re supposed to be on the water wagon, an’ most of ’em are; but
you know how some of ’em carry flasks for colds, which they’re likely
to leave around permiscuous-like.”
Lefty could not take the manager’s easy-going point of view. He knew
that in country towns like Tulane the films are sometimes changed only
once a week――never oftener than twice weekly. Unless a man was an
absolute crank on the subject, he could scarcely care to see the same
series of pictures three or four times in succession. It looked rather
as if the busher had been clever enough to prepare a sort of alibi
for himself which made it possible for him to slip away every evening
without arousing the manager’s suspicions.
Presently Kennedy went off to write letters. A few moments later Locke
and Ogan strolled into the billiard room to see if there was anything
doing. They found a flourishing game of draw in progress, and, being
urged to “sit in,” Ogan succumbed without a struggle. Lefty shook his
head, however, watched the play absently for a few minutes, and finally
walked out through the lobby into the street. He had given in to the
pull of mingled curiosity and conscience, and found not a particle of
pleasure in doing so.
Tulane was certainly small, and, at night, at least, most undoubtedly
“dead.” It supported two moving-picture establishments, nevertheless,
which rather weakened the southpaw’s theory regarding Savage’s
inability to find continued amusement at picture-plays, but did not
make him abandon his determination to learn if such was the man’s
practice.
Entering the Palace Theater, he was fortunate in finding the lights
up for the accommodation of a vaudeville turn. The seating capacity
was not large, and in five minutes he was certain that Savage was not
in the place. At the Tulane Opera House the wait was longer, but the
result the same. By the time he had reached the street again Lefty’s
interest in the search had quite swallowed up the reluctance with which
he had started it.
The question now was, not to pick and choose from a multitude of places
where Savage might have gone, but to hunt out one solitary spot or
building which would attract the fellow or serve the purpose which
Lefty felt sure was moving him.
A baker’s shop was open, Locke discovered as he moved slowly down the
street; but its feeble light was the only one flickering amid the rows
of low-fronted, quaint old shops. It was like hunting a needle in a
haystack.
Presently, without any hope of success, the pitcher wandered through
some of the rambling, curving residence streets near the river. Here
the lights, save those from the houses themselves, were few and far
between, and there seemed so little chance of anything doing that he
was about to turn back when he became suddenly aware that two people
were approaching from the direction of the river road.
Stopping abruptly, he heard the murmur of men’s voices; but the
darkness was so intense that it was impossible to see more than
the shadowy outlines of objects a dozen feet away. For a moment he
hesitated; then, stepping back against the hedge which bordered the
place on his right, he found he could easily push through. A second
later he was standing on the other side of the flowering magnolia
shrubs.
The action had been governed by impulse――and just the faintest
suggestion of familiarity in one of the unknown voices. Almost
immediately the raucous, angry accents of Nelson Savage reached Lefty’s
ears.
“Why, you fresh young squirt!” said the pitcher to his companion. “I’ve
got a good mind to put old Kennedy wise to what I know.”
There was a momentary pause, during which the steps sounded loud and
clear, as if the men were passing on the other side of the hedge. In
his desire to find out who the other person was, Locke bent eagerly
forward, his ears strained.
“I hardly think you’ll do that,” came at length in a low, composed
voice. “You see, I happen to know a thing or two myself, and I might be
forced in self-defense――”
That was all. The man did not cease speaking, but a movement of his
head, or a little eddy of wind, perhaps, turned the words into an
unrecognizable murmur.
Lefty did not need anything further. Already he had heard enough to
amaze him. The voice of the second man was that of Gene Temple.
CHAPTER XII
A BIT OF A STAGGERER
Locke could scarcely believe his senses. Temple with Nels Savage, and
showing by his words every evidence of a previous acquaintance! It
seemed almost impossible. During the past week the southpaw had seen a
good deal of the latest recruit to the Blue Stockings’ pitching staff,
and the close proximity of a three days’ railroad journey, instead
of opening Lefty’s eyes to unexpected defects in his companion’s
character, had served, rather, to make him like the blond youngster
even more than he had at first. Temple could not be said to possess any
extraordinary mental strength or depth, but he was certainly likable,
and it was difficult to believe that he had deliberately lied.
Yet how else was the affair to be explained? The voice of that second
passer-by was Temple’s, Lefty was certain. Back in Belle View the
fellow had denied any previous acquaintance with the Western twirler.
There was only one inference to draw, much as Locke might dislike the
idea or consider it incredible.
All this passed through the latter’s mind in the few seconds while he
stood crouching behind the magnolia hedge, waiting for the men to get
far enough away for him to emerge without fear of detection.
Determined to prove his suspicions and become absolutely certain,
Lefty’s first impulse was to follow the two until a street light
enabled him to see with his own eyes. But as he pushed through the
hedge and paused for an instant on the sidewalk, a better way occurred
to him. Knowing little about the streets and byways of Tulane, he had,
nevertheless, a shrewd notion that the way he had come was shorter by
far than the route the others seemed to be following back to the hotel.
By swiftly retracing his steps, he could reach the lobby ahead of them.
Silently he slipped back to the entrance of the narrow lane through
which he had reached the river road, and darted into it. Five minutes
later he emerged on a wider street and made all speed toward the
lighted corner beyond, which he remembered turning not a great while
after leaving Main Street.
As he made this hurried, silent progress through the fragrant darkness
and quiet of the village streets, his mind was keenly active. With this
latest discovery several suspicious happenings in Belle View, unnoticed
at the time, came back with swift, vivid significance. Temple’s manner
when he had first heard of Savage’s presence in the town had been just
a little odd. Considering the circumstances, it was hardly natural
for a chap of his sort to be so greatly upset by the incident of a
strange person seen in his house; his intense relief at the discovery
of the truth had been proportionately queer. At the station, too, that
sudden recollection of a forgotten engagement had been oddly timed with
Savage’s appearance.
“Might easily have caught a glimpse of Savage through the window, and
used that excuse to beat it before the man came out and saw him,”
reflected Lefty as he turned into Main Street and hastily approached
the hotel. “I’d certainly never have thought he was that sort, hanged
if I would!” His face clouded disappointedly, and he frowned slightly.
“Even now it doesn’t seem like him. Well, I’ll know in a jiffy just
what’s what.”
A swift glance down the street showed nothing of the ill-assorted pair,
and Locke wasted no time entering the hotel. The lobby was deserted
save for the desk clerk, invisible behind an open newspaper; from
the billiard room came sounds of talk and laughter which brought the
southpaw over to the doorway.
The poker game was still in progress, and gathered about the table
was a ring of spectators which accounted easily for the empty lobby.
Neither Temple nor Savage was there; this Locke assured himself with a
slight nod of satisfaction. He was about to turn back to the lobby when
he discovered that Al Ogan was likewise missing.
For a second he paused, brows arching in surprise. The first baseman
was a poker fiend, if ever one lived; to imagine him voluntarily
dropping out of a game was difficult.
“What happened to Al, Mac?” the pitcher asked abruptly. “Thought he’d
stay with you all the evening.”
“Huh?” absently grunted Jack Mackentire, raising his eyes from the
cards. “Oh! Why, a kid came in with a note for him, and he beat it
without saying where he was going. Didn’t seem keen about leaving,
either. Want him special?”
“Oh, no,” said Lefty. “He’ll be back soon, I guess.”
It seemed a rather curious performance, for Ogan had only just arrived,
and could scarcely have any friends in the place outside the squad.
Still, it was none of Lefty’s business, and the southpaw turned back
toward the lobby.
As he passed through the doorway he stopped short with a gasp
of amazement. Just emerging from the little cubby-hole of a
writing-room――a spot patronized mainly by drummers and their ilk――was
Gene Temple. He was in the act of stretching luxuriously, head thrown
back, mouth gaping, arms extended. Clasped in one hand were three
sealed letters, written on the hotel stationery.
“Why, I thought――” began Locke. His teeth came together with a click as
he realized that he had been speaking aloud.
Temple came forward, smiling. “Nothing gives a fellow a more virtuous
feeling than answering a bunch of letters,” he drawled. “Look at those.”
Lefty had already observed them. “Must have taken you most of the time
since dinner,” he said, with swiftly returning composure.
“Not quite; but I’ve been at it――”
Whether the sentence was ever finished or not the southpaw was quite
unaware. He was standing where, by shifting his glance a trifle to
the left, he commanded an uninterrupted view of the main entrance.
The sound of voices made him glance thither now. The sight of Al
Ogan entering with Nelson Savage, and talking to the fellow with all
the seeming good humor in the world, was enough to drive every other
thought from the pitcher’s bewildered brain.
CHAPTER XIII
WHICH ONE?
“Letters generally are a nuisance,” Lefty found himself saying, in an
instinctive effort at self-control. “I’d certainly like to have mine
all written up.”
He wondered if his voice sounded as queerly to Temple as it did to
himself. The youngster’s face showed no particular surprise; perhaps
he was too immersed in his own thoughts to notice the oddness of his
companion’s tone.
Locke’s eyes were fixed on the two men crossing the lobby; his mind
was striving to find some reason or explanation for their being
together. Ogan could not have been the one he had heard while crouching
behind the magnolia hedge. He had never even seen Savage before this
afternoon, much less known him in the intimate fashion indicated by
the few words Lefty had overheard. He must have met the fellow by
accident――perhaps just outside the door. It was absurd to suppose there
was any prearrangement about it.
Temple moved away with a casual remark about posting his letters. The
other two came on, headed for the billiard room door. Savage passed
the southpaw without a word, and with a sneering uptwist of the lips
which at any other time would have made Locke long to hit him. Just
now, however, Lefty was too intent on something else even to notice it.
The busher’s face was flushed, his eyes were a bit glassy, his
breath fairly reeked with the smell of liquor. In spite of Kennedy’s
confidence to the contrary, the man had found a way to get whisky in
the sleepy little town of Tulane.
With wrinkled forehead and puzzled eyes, the southpaw turned and
watched the man enter the billiard room. How had the thing been
managed? Had some one broken faith, or was there an element of mystery
in the affair which――
“A bit more, and he’d have as nice a little load aboard as you’d want
to see.”
The voice at his elbow was low and drawling, with an undercurrent
of laughter in it. For a fraction of a second, Lefty found himself
wondering how in creation Temple could have returned so soon from
posting his letters. Then suddenly he realized that it wasn’t Temple
at all――could not possibly be, and, whirling, he looked into Al Ogan’s
smiling countenance.
As he stood staring, Locke felt that his face was flushing visibly.
Had the tangled affair begun so to wear upon his mind that even for a
second he could mistake one man’s voice for another’s?
“I wonder――where――he got it?” he managed to stammer at last.
“Give it up,” said Ogan, occupied with lighting a cigarette. “He had it
when I――er――ran into him a while ago――down the street.”
Lefty drew a long breath; the blood began to flow normally through
his veins again. The likeness was still there; his mind had not been
playing tricks. Certain tones and inflections of Ogan’s voice were
almost identical with Temple’s. He had never noticed it before, but
that was probably because he had never compared the two. In a second
the southpaw was smiling his old careless, good-humored smile, and
declining a cigarette from Ogan’s proffered box.
“Guess I won’t, thanks,” he said. “I’m cutting ’em out except one after
meals. Rather a good one on Jack, isn’t it? He was so sure there was no
bugjuice to be found in Tulane. You must have beat it out of here sort
of unexpected, old man.”
The infielder stepped past his friend and glanced into the billiard
room. “Oh, I don’t know,” he returned over his shoulder. “I got tired
of the game.”
Locke raised his eyebrows. It was difficult to imagine this possible.
“Going to sit in again now?” he asked indifferently.
“Nix! It’s me for the hay when I finish this smoke.”
He turned from the open door, and dropped down on one of the leather
chairs facing the main entrance. Lefty followed, outwardly indifferent,
but in reality keenly observant. Whether Ogan was lying or telling
the truth, there was certainly something on his mind, and while the
southpaw was still curious as to what it might be, he no longer felt
that phase of the mystery to be vital.
Whether it was Ogan or Temple he had heard covertly threatening Savage
was really of no great consequence, after all. It was unpleasant, to
be sure, and vastly disappointing, to realize that one of the men he
had come to like so well was deceiving him; but that was all. Of much
greater importance was the learning of where and how Savage obtained
his liquor. To this end Lefty meant to devote some of his spare time.
Temple returned presently from posting his letters. After a few casual
remarks, he departed for his room, leaving the southpaw puzzled anew at
the odd likeness of those two voices, and wondering why he had failed
to notice it before. He was still pondering when the poker session
broke up and the crowd sauntered back into the lobby with much talk and
laughter.
Only Savage seemed in a state of persistent ill temper. He stood close
by, growling at Pete Zacher, one of the few members of the squad
who tolerated him at all; and Lefty could readily believe old Jack’s
statement that the fellow was “fairly devilish” when he was drinking.
“That’s some classy ring you’ve got, bo,” he heard Zacher remark
suddenly. “Let’s take a slant at it for a minute.”
He indicated a heavy gold ring, oddly carved, which Locke had noticed
before on the little finger of the busher’s left hand. Savage scowled.
“It ain’t never been off my finger, an’ I’m not going to take it off
now,” he grunted disagreeably. “I guess you’ll manage to live without
lamping it any closer.”
It was not so much what he actually said as the nasty manner in which
the words were spoken that caused Locke to turn away disgustedly and
start Ogan on his way to bed.
“The ill-mannered mule!” he muttered under his breath as he crossed the
lobby beside his friend. “I’m hanged if I bother my head any more about
him! He can lap up all the jingle juice between here and New York for
all I care. Let him accumulate a roaring jag and start an all-round
rough-house so that he’ll get the sack. I’m not going to stir a finger
to prevent it.”
All this “listened well,” as Ogan would have said had it reached his
ears; but deep down within him Lefty knew that he didn’t mean it. He
was aware that the following evening would probably see him playing
the thankless rôle of sleuth in an effort to discover Savage’s secret
and keep the promise he had rashly made to Jack Kennedy.
CHAPTER XIV
ON THE TRAIL
The pitcher’s intuition proved accurate save in one particular. From
necessity, not choice, he fully expected to do his detective work
alone. Neither Temple nor Ogan was to be trusted. He did not mean to
trouble Kennedy until something definite had been discovered. And there
was no one else.
Returning from morning practice, however, Lefty had scarcely set foot
in the hotel lobby when he was staggered by the full weight of one
hundred and fifty pounds of solid bone and muscle landing violently
against him. His first impulse was to return the assault with interest.
Then, recognizing in time the freckled face and snapping brown eyes of
his classmate, Jack Stillman, he contented himself with a blow on the
latter’s shoulders which brought an involuntary grunt from the reporter.
“Still the same impulsive young thing,” said Locke. “Does a chap
good to pipe that freckled phiz of yours after watching a field of
uninteresting bushers all the morning.”
“They can’t all be like you, kid,” chuckled Stillman as they gripped
each other’s hands firmly. “Well, how’s tricks? What sort of a bunch
has Jack pulled in from the tall timbers this year? Any ginger in ’em?”
“Oh, fair. It’s a wonder, though, you wouldn’t get on the job with the
rest of the ink slingers. What’s the _Star_ doing without those yarns
of yours that tell so little with such a flow of language?”
Stillman grinned. “It doesn’t have to do without them,” he said, with
an airy wave of his hand. “They’re showing up in their proper column
every day. You see, I had to chase out and cover the Dawson City fight,
and that delayed me three days. The boss was for sending down an
understudy, but I wouldn’t listen to that. Told him to leave it to me,
and he’d have his stuff right on the dot. I had to dope out the copy
before I left.”
“Before you left?” repeated Lefty amusedly.
“Sure! Nothing ever happens in a training camp the first few days,
except getting stiff and sore, and limbering up. Kennedy gave me a
few tips just before he left home, and so the faking was dead easy. I
headed one column with a nice little poem written especially for the
occasion, trimmed the whiskers off a lot of prehistoric dope, and there
you are.”
Lefty laughed. Stillman could usually be counted on for doing the
unexpected, and there were few dull moments in training camp after his
arrival.
“I hope the poetry was guaranteed strictly original and――fresh,” the
southpaw remarked as they moved toward the stairs.
“You bet!” returned the reporter. “Some of it was so fresh that old
Deering said it was raw.”
He paused before the desk, and, striking an attitude, solemnly
declaimed:
“It seems most humiliating,
When you’ve made a perfect slide,
To be blamed for stealing, just because
The base was occupied.”
“How’s that?” he inquired, without the shadow of a smile. “Got Rudyard
Kip and Damon Runyon fanning, hey? Don’t like it? Hump! No accounting
for tastes. Maybe this’ll suit you better. I tossed it off with a
couple of dozen other little quatrains and rondeaus and sonnets on the
train right after breakfast:
“His fielding average may be low;
It really doesn’t matter,
If he hits ’em on the nose
Whene’er they nick the platter.”
“Help!” gasped Lefty, laying violent hands on the poetic one. “That’s
enough. They’re worse than the soup ads in the street cars.”
He swept the newspaper man irresistibly out of the lobby and up the
uncarpeted stairs.
“You certainly are one faker!” he chuckled as they reached the second
floor. “Cut out that stuff for a bit, though, and listen to me.” His
face grew suddenly serious. “There’s something doing here that’s about
got my goat, Jack. Suppose you focus the light of your keen old brain
on the mystery, and see if you can’t do the Sherlock Holmes act.”
Stillman shed his light and airy manner, and was instantly all
attention and interest. There was no keener mind on the staff of the
big metropolitan daily, and more than once he had earned the praise of
the city editor by a neat bit of detective work. Locke did not find it
possible now to go into the matter in any great detail, for Ogan was
already back from his shower when they reached the room. Before lunch
time, however, he managed to give his friend the essential particulars,
and on the way to the field they discussed every phase of the situation.
“You’re right in not bothering with Temple or Ogan,” decided Stillman.
“One of ’em knew this Savage before, of course; but that’s not
important. The main thing is to find where he gets his ardent. If he
cuts away again to-night we’ll be ready for him.”
Stillman devoted the better part of the afternoon to an exhaustive
study of the sagebrush twirler. The opinion he formed of the man was
far from flattering.
“Gee, that dill pickle must hate himself!” he remarked to Lefty as they
were returning to the hotel. “Of course, the stiff may turn out to be
a little baby wonder on wheels, but as it looks now I’d call him a
dead loss. He’s the kind that would have a whole club fighting in two
shakes, and――honest, old man――the best thing we can do is to give him
all the rope he wants, and let him hang himself.”
This had been Lefty’s real opinion for some time, but his promise to
Kennedy, and a sort of ethical determination to do the best he could
for a rival, made him reluctant to act upon it. The two friends were
still discussing the matter when old Jack caught up with them.
“Look here, son,” he began briefly, taking Locke’s arm, “McLean tells
me Savage had half a jag on last night. Is that straight?”
The southpaw hesitated an instant. “I’d hardly call it that,” he
answered. “He’d been hitting the bottle a bit, but he wasn’t exactly
loaded.”
“By mighty!” exploded the manager. “You knew, an’ never put me wise! I
thought you was going to help me out! I can’t see everything that goes
on. Why in――”
“Take it easy,” said Lefty. “I wasn’t holding back on you. I just
didn’t want to get you all riled up before I had something to tell. It
was this way.”
Briefly he narrated the scanty details he had gleaned the night before,
ending with the suggestion that the best way of straightening out the
affair would be to send Savage back to the bushes.
“Not yet,” returned the manager, his jaw squaring obstinately. “I told
you once before that I was going to make something out of him. I’ve
handled others as bad――or worse. I want to find out where he gets the
stuff, and it’s up to you to help out. You ain’t got nothing to do, and
if he cuts away to-night you and Jack can follow him as well as not.”
Of course Locke gave in. He felt that he owed Jack Kennedy a great
deal, and he was ready to go to much more trouble for him than the loss
of a single evening would involve. As soon as dinner was over Stillman
and Lefty strolled out into the lobby, where, while apparently occupied
in light conversation, they kept a close watch on the movements of
Nelson Savage.
They had only a short time to wait. The object of their attention did
not even sit down. After inquiring fruitlessly for mail, he lounged
against the desk for a minute or two; then, moving toward the door
with exaggerated carelessness, he disappeared into the street.
Within thirty seconds Locke and the reporter were standing by the
steps, watching the square-shouldered figure swing along Main Street in
the direction of the moving-picture houses――also the river road.
“Same way he came back last night,” Lefty commented, in a whisper.
Stillman nodded, leading the way across the street. They moved swiftly
forward, keeping well in the shadows. When Savage had passed the bright
lights of the Tulane Opera House and vanished into the dusky stretches
beyond, the pursuers hurriedly decreased the intervening distance until
they could distinguish the sound of the man’s feet as he strode briskly
along the graveled walk.
Now and then the sound ceased, as if the busher were listening for
possible indications of pursuit. Each time the pair behind him stopped
also, though they had been walking with the utmost care in the soft
dust of the country road.
At length Savage seemed satisfied that he had aroused no suspicion,
and thereafter there were no more halts or backward glances. Briskly
he strode on past fences and trim hedges, past twinkling lights, past
black, deserted stretches, or tall white columns gleaming vague and
ghostlike in the starlight.
More than once the two friends wondered silently where he could be
leading them. Each one was game and meant to stick it out as long as
his companion; so they tramped on, out along the lonely river road,
until suddenly the sound of Savage’s footfalls ceased abruptly.
They did not grow gradually less and less, finally to die away. There
was no noticeable pause or lagging in the step before the last. At one
instant they heard the brisk, regular sound of the man’s feet in the
dusty road; at the next――nothing.
CHAPTER XV
THE GUILE OF SAVAGE
In a flash the men behind stopped, too, and stood listening with
straining ears. In the sudden stillness which seemed to have fallen
over everything the lazy lapping of the sluggish river sounded as
distinct and clear as if they stood on its very bank. Lefty found
himself wondering whether Savage might not have stepped off into
the water. Then, realizing the absurdity of such a thing, he felt
Stillman’s hand drawing him to one side of the road.
There was a chance that Savage might have heard them and was stealing
back to make sure. Instinctively they both drew still farther back
against some alder bushes, hoping thus to escape discovery and the
consequent ruin of their plans.
At length, however, as the silence continued, it became evident that
the Westerner was making no such move. He had either remained where he
had first stopped, or, exercising extreme caution, he had drawn away
without their having the least suspicion in which direction he had gone.
“The gink has taken to the grass,” Stillman whispered, in a chagrined
tone, his lips close to the southpaw’s ear. “Come ahead, slow and
careful, now.”
Cautiously they crept forward, making not the least sound in the thick
grass that bordered the road. Savage could not have been more than
thirty feet ahead of them, but when they had made that distance there
was no more sight or sound of him than there had been at the beginning.
A few minutes later something square and shadowy loomed indistinctly on
the left――something which their exploring fingers told them presently
was the rough wall of a small frame building, weatherworn, and not too
solidly made.
“Boathouse, I reckon,” Stillman muttered, after a momentary pause.
“Thunder! If the man’s gone off in a boat it certainly puts us in
Dutch, my son.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t gone,” Lefty suggested, in the same cautious
whisper. “Maybe he’s inside.”
The words had scarcely passed his lips before a slight thud sounded
from the other side of the building. It was followed by a scraping
noise, then a splash which started both listeners, as if moved by the
same thought, toward the nearest corner of the shack. Owing to the need
for silence, no less than their ignorance of the lay of the land, it
took a minute or so for them to reach a point overlooking the river.
There they stopped abruptly, peering through the thin mist that floated
above the water and seemed strangely to give a vaguely luminous touch
to the shadowy scene.
A small boat, vigorously propelled by a single oarsman, was slipping
out of sight through the mist. After it had disappeared the rhythmical
splash of the oars came clearly back to the listeners’ ears.
“Thunder!” muttered the reporter. “He’s going across. I wish that――”
“If there’s another boat inside, we could follow him,” Locke broke in
suddenly. “He can’t be going very far――look at the time he was back
last night.”
“Come on,” hissed Stillman, moving swiftly along the front of the
house. “Here’s the door. Now, let’s see if there’s anything doing.”
He entered hurriedly, followed by Lefty. A moment later the flash of a
small pocket torch circled about the interior of the boathouse and then
winked out again. The place was dingy and forlorn looking. The rotting
floor was covered with dust save where a single boat had evidently
rested. There was no other craft of any sort to be seen.
“Stung!” remarked Stillman briefly.
There was silence for a moment before he flashed the light on again.
Lefty blinked a little as the glare struck his eyes. His forehead was
puckered thoughtfully.
“I suppose we could come down here in the daytime,” he said, “and find
out what sort of a place he goes to over there. There can’t be so many
joints within a short distance where he could get booze that it would
be much of a job to pick the right one.”
“It’s either that or get hold of a boat and be ready to follow him
some other night,” the reporter returned. “Your plan would be easier.
Anyhow, there’s nothing doing now but to go back and tell old Jack what
we’ve run up against. He’s liable to be gone two or three hours, and
I’m not going to hang around this hole all the evening for the good of
a big stiff the club would be a whole lot better without. Kennedy makes
me sick about this man, anyhow. Savage wouldn’t last two days with any
other manager.”
Lefty promptly agreeing with him, they made a more thorough inspection
of the shack without discovering anything helpful, then departed.
Back in the hotel, Kennedy listened to their story in noncommittal
silence, but with an ominous tightening of the jaws which boded little
good for the delinquent recruit. Later the manager was observed by
several to take up a position in the lobby from which he could view
both the main entrance and the stairs. He carried several newspapers,
and nothing could induce him to move from the place.
At nine o’clock some of the fellows, stiff and weary from the day’s
work, drifted to bed. Kennedy sat on. An hour later only the devotees
of draw poker and one or two sleepy onlookers remained, but still the
manager had not stirred. Eleven found him the sole occupant of the
lobby.
The big clock over the desk indicated scarcely five minutes past the
hour when a quick step sounded outside, and Savage entered. Without
glancing to right or left, he walked briskly toward the stairs.
Kennedy was there ahead of him.
“Here, you!” he said sharply as he faced the busher. “What in thunder
do you mean staying out to this hour? Where’ve you been?”
Savage flushed, and looked as if he longed to snap back, but didn’t
quite dare.
“I went for a walk,” he retorted sullenly. “Got farther off than I
thought――that’s all.”
“Humph!” grunted Kennedy skeptically. “A walk! It listens well!”
He stepped suddenly forward, and, catching a lapel of the busher’s coat
in one hand, deliberately sniffed the fellow’s breath. To his surprise,
he caught not the faintest odor of alcohol. He sniffed again; then,
stepping back, surveyed Savage meditatively.
“Well, if you haven’t been pouring it down, you’ve brought it back in a
bottle,” he said, in a tone which was almost disappointed.
Regardless of the man’s angry glare, he went through his clothes with
as much cool deliberation as if Savage had been a wooden dummy in a
tailor shop. The search was productive of nothing whatever in the
shape of flask or bottle. The busher’s face wore an expression of
satisfaction.
“Awful smart, ain’t you?” he sneered. “Maybe you’d like me to strip
so’s you can be sure it ain’t under my clothes.”
Kennedy surveyed him coldly. “You beat it upstairs,” he ordered
suddenly, “and don’t waste any time turning in.”
Left alone, the manager followed slowly, his face perplexed. He was
perfectly sure that Savage had lied to him, yet he could not prove
it. The feeling that he had been tricked by this busher from the tall
timbers was extremely unpalatable to old Jack, and kept him awake long
after he had tumbled into bed.
It thus happened that when a thin trickle of smoke curled in at his
transom he had only begun to doze off. The pungent tang of it in his
nostrils brought him out of bed in a single leap. In another second,
yanking open the door into the hall, he saw by the light of a flaring
gas jet that the smoke came through the transom of the room next his
own――the room occupied by Nelson Savage.
Fortunately most of the locks in the old Holcombe House were not noted
for any great strength. A single surging blow of the manager’s wiry
body sufficed to tear the screws of this one out of the tindery wood.
The door burst open, letting Kennedy in with a rush.
The lights were going full blast. Still fully dressed, Savage lay
across the bed, the blankets of which were smoldering briskly, giving
out an ever-increasing volume of choking smoke. Scattered over the
floor were several cigarette butts. Tucked under the unconscious man’s
arm was a quart bottle, while the fumes of alcohol arose even above the
smell of burning wool.
Kennedy seemed to take in these details even as he was leaping for
the washstand. A deluge from the water pitcher instantly quenched the
smoldering blanket, but Savage was too far gone to do more than grunt
and hug his bottle tighter. An examination of the latter revealed less
than two inches of cheap liquor remaining. The busher had apparently
consumed the rest, for bits of tinfoil lying about showed the bottle to
have been freshly opened.
With set jaw and angry eyes, Kennedy jerked the bottle from Savage’s
unconscious grip, and hurled it through the open window. As he did
so, he discovered, fastened to the bureau, a length of heavy cord
sufficient to reach within a few feet of the ground.
“So that was how he worked it!” muttered the older man, his eyes fixed
scornfully on the figure sprawling before him. “Left the string hanging
down, an’ tied the bottle to it before coming in. Suffering snakes! If
I didn’t have to have somebody besides Lefty and that kid Temple to
pitch for the boys, you’d hike back to the sticks so fast you’d hit
only the high places. Anyhow, your goose is done brown. It’s the can
for yours the minute the old bunch shows up and get their soup bones
into working order.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE REGULARS ARRIVE
Kennedy was determined to find out where the busher got his liquor.
Savage’s attitude next day greatly strengthened that determination. Not
only did he refuse to tell anything about it, but he brazenly denied
having had anything intoxicating at all. He reeled off a lot of ancient
stuff about taking colic medicine, which struck the manager temporarily
dumb.
Recovering, old Jack spat out some verbal vitriol which made even
Savage wince. Kennedy then held confab with Jack Stillman, after which
the reporter proceeded to corner the hotel proprietor, and, with his
usual dexterity, painlessly extract the facts he sought. They were
brief and singularly discouraging. The land across the river for
almost a mile in either direction was owned by one Caspar Livermore,
a well-to-do planter and horse breeder. Mr. Livermore was not only
extremely penurious, but had the reputation of being a prohibitionist
of the deepest dye, to whom the mere mention of intoxicants was like a
red rag to a bull. There were no other habitations of any sort save the
hut of a decrepit old negro woman, reputed among the superstitiously
inclined of her race to have dealings with the devil. Even that hut,
which was on Livermore land, stood a good half-mile above the rotten
old boathouse.
“Looks as if the old lady might bear investigating,” Stillman said
afterward to Locke, “though it’s usually safe to be suspicious of these
guys that throw a fit at the sight of a whisky advertisement. They’re
often the kind who lap up sixty per cent. alcohol patent medicines by
the gallon. I reckon I’d better hunt up a boat, and be ready in case
there’s anything doing to-night.”
With considerable difficulty, he managed to locate a flat-bottomed
scow, which he conveyed by the sweat of his brow to a point about a
quarter of a mile above the boathouse. Unfortunately, after all this
labor, there was no occasion to use it that night. After dinner Savage
lounged around the lobby in solitary silence for half an hour or so. At
half past seven he sallied forth to one of the moving-picture shows.
Lefty and Stillman were both prepared to swear that this time he not
only entered the Palace Theater, but remained there until the last
foot of film had been shown. That over, he returned to the hotel, and
treated himself to the luxury of several wordy altercations before
bedtime.
Kennedy was annoyed by their report. The desire to learn the source of
the perplexing pitcher’s drink supply was becoming an obsession with
the manager, and he urged them to continue their sleuthing. To this
both ball player and newspaper man agreed. They, too, were becoming
more than vexed at the success which seemed to attend Savage’s every
maneuver.
Hustling back from the field that afternoon, however, every thought of
the delinquent busher was driven from Lefty’s brain by the sight of
four men lounging in the hotel lobby. They were cleanly built, well
set-up specimens, remarkable mainly for the almost miraculous fit
of their very up-to-date garments, and for rather blasé manners. At
the sight of Locke the latter mood vanished as if it had never been.
They fell upon the southpaw as one man, slapping his back with a fond
enthusiasm which fairly took his breath away.
It was the vanguard of the “regulars”――the men whose names were
familiar household words the country over. It was small wonder that
they carried themselves with a little air. The surprising thing was
that they could fling that air aside, as they were doing now, to greet
with hearty, genuine boyish delight the comrade they had not seen in
months.
When the rougher preliminaries were over tongues began to wag in
chorus as Lefty was informed how the various men had passed the winter.
Dirk Nelson, the steady, dependable, rather quiet backstop, had been,
as usual, on his farm in Maryland.
“And don’t you believe it wasn’t hard to come away just when things
were getting ready to sprouts,” he concluded, with his slow, attractive
smile. “Golly, if I’d saved up as much mazuma as old Herman Brosk, I’d
sure quit the game!”
“Yes, you would!” exclaimed Rufe Hyland skeptically. Rufe looked
after the Blue Stocking right field in summer, and spent his few
leisure winter months in presiding as capably over a well-equipped
gymnasium on Sixth Avenue. The gym was merely a diversion, however.
With him baseball was the only thing worth while. “Yes, you would,” he
repeated――“for about one month! Then you’d be back hustling to sign on
again.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Kid Lewis, the peppery little shortstop.
“It’s a mighty fine thing after the post season to know you don’t have
to play ball for three solid months, but if you thought it was for
good――suffering cats! Why, come February, when a fellow’s blood begins
to stir, I leave my little old two-by-four cigar store on Pennsylvania
Avenue without even tellin’ it good-by.”
“Say, Kid,” inquired Torrey, the change catcher, curiously, “how’s
that business pay, anyhow? You must pull in quite a bunch of mazuma
just because you’re a Blue Stocking.”
“Oh, I do pretty well,” returned Lewis. “It ain’t as if I was the
real thing, like Lefty here”――he grinned, and ducked under the sweep
of Locke’s arm――“but there’s plenty of decent fellows who are willing
to buy their smokes even from an outfielder. Say, look what’s coming!
Whew! Some class to the old hoss, ain’t there?”
The others turned to behold Laughing Larry Dalton, with his brown eyes
and gay, careless smile. He was arrayed in a suit of amazing checks,
sported a three-carat diamond in a startling scarf, and was preceded
by a small darky staggering under the load of very new and very
English-looking luggage.
“Solomon’s glory!” gasped Hyland. “I thought I was some dressed, but――
Say, old man, who wished it on you, anyhow?”
“Ain’t he immense!” cried Lewis. “Pipe that chunk of alum weighing down
his manly bosom! Can you beat it?”
“Jack’s got a cub who’s jest set his heart on your job, old horse,” put
in Nelson seriously, “and won’t take no for an answer. How about it?”
“Hush!” said Lefty, with upraised hand. “You boys are pretty raw,
talking like that to a real actor. Didn’t you know little Larry’s been
on the stage all winter? Talk about side――why, it sticks out all over
him.”
Dalton was quite unaffected by the comments on his personal appearance.
His smile widened as he shook hands with one after another of his
teammates.
“Glad you like my get-up,” he drawled. “I thought these were some togs
myself. Came pretty near starting a riot when I did my turn in it out
at Salt Lake.”
“You were the handsome, curly-haired hero, I s’pose?” said Hyland.
“Nothing like that for me!” retorted Dalton. “I was the villain. Great
dope, fellows! Before I quit the show I used to get sore as a crab if I
wasn’t hissed enough.”
Lefty was highly amused by the mental picture of the laughing-eyed,
happy-go-lucky chap doing the heavy villain. By this time the lobby
was filled with curious recruits pausing on their way to showers, and
newspaper men who quickly joined the circle. Kennedy appeared, and
shook hands in his friendly fashion, exhorting them to have “plenty
of pep this year.” The reporters stood about, laughing and joshing
familiarly, and making mental notes for the daily wire home.
After dinner, while they were all gathered in the lobby, joking and
discussing old times, two more arrivals blew in. Handsome Billy
Orth, from his orange plantation in California, had picked up Joe
Welsh, who owned a small cattle ranch in Arizona, and who affected
rattlesnake-skin four-in-hands and hatbands.
“Back to the land of ’simmons and sore arms!” greeted Dalton. “By heck,
Joe, you look kinky as the deuce! I’ll bet you’ll be down with a case
of Charley horse inside a week. William, what do you think of this foxy
shark――Locke here――sneaking down with the cubs and getting all limbered
up ahead of us?”
Orth and Lewis joshed back. And so it went. There was a pleasant sense
of friendliness about the whole affair which made Lefty regret the
promise he and Stillman had given to keep an eye on Nels Savage.
He was not incommoded in the least by it. Savage did not leave the
hotel, but spent the evening lolling about the lobby and playing pool
with Pete Zacher. Locke and Stillman were puzzled enough to know what
to make of such behavior, but when the third evening passed, and the
fourth, and the fifth, without a single dereliction from duty on
the part of the bush twirler, they began to believe that his last
experience had taught him something. Then, to upset this theory, the
reporter learned of several attempts that Savage had made to wheedle a
drink out of one of the older men. He was just as disagreeable as he
had ever been, while his pitching, though it showed occasional brief
spells of cleverness, continued to make old Jack shake his head and
mutter.
“He ain’t used the spitter once since he landed,” the manager commented
to Stillman one afternoon. Like more than one other baseball man, he
did not hesitate to open his mind to this reporter, who had never once
offended by sending the wrong thing to his paper. “Says he don’t want
to do it till he’s warmed up. That may be so, or it may not, but I
never yet see a spitball flinger that wasn’t trying it every little
while.”
Two days later Kennedy announced the first five-inning practice game to
take place next morning at eight-thirty between the Regulars and the
Yannigans, as the recruits were called. Since their arrival the former
had been warming up with even greater leisure than the youngsters. From
experience they knew well how an apparently trifling strain or twisted
muscle at this crucial stage was likely to develop into something
serious later on.
Even the prospect of the first game left them cool and unperturbed.
On the other hand, the cubs, thrilled with the notion of showing off
before Kennedy, hustled around, perfecting an elaborate system of
signals and indulging in various other stunts which merely emphasized
their “cubbishness.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE TRY-OUT OF SAVAGE
It might have been noticed, however, that none of the old squad was
late in arriving at the grounds next morning. Kennedy had announced
that Gene Temple would start pitching for the Regulars, while Savage,
the new twirler from the West, was to step into the box for the
Yannigans.
“I’m going to give him a fair show,” the manager confided to Stillman.
“He ain’t showed anything much in practice, and if he don’t put
something on exhibition to-day I reckon we’ll have to hitch the can to
him.”
In the camp of the Regulars knives were being sharpened for Savage’s
scalp with a vigor which had rarely before been shown toward a recruit.
“I don’t seem to have taken to Jack’s latest treasure,” Dalton drawled
as they were making ready for the game. “It would sort of please me to
spill the beans for him to-day.”
“Now, I should sorrow!” said Rufe Hyland. “If little Nelsie gets his it
will break my heart.”
“Gent seems to be awful popular,” chuckled Pink Dillon, of the
pitching staff, who, arriving at camp late, had consequently seen
little of the offending Savage.
“We all love him,” said Laughing Larry. “Wait till you run up against
him about once, and you’ll be applying for membership in this knockers’
club. Now, fellows,” he added, as they trotted out into the diamond,
“don’t forget to put in a little extra ginger to-day and blanket this
sweet-tempered affair from the sagebrush. Snow him under so deep he
won’t ever let another peep out of him.”
This was the explanation of an exhibition of peppery vim on the part of
the Regulars which astonished Jack Kennedy. Usually the older and more
experienced players care little for the results of these early practice
games, and frequently they lose for the simple reason that they think
more of their arms and legs than of piling up a score against a lot of
youngsters. Later, of course, as they begin to shape up, the Yannigans
find it less and less easy to accomplish anything against them; but
even then the cubs’ downfall is generally due to some clever bit of
headwork rather than to any great physical exertion on the part of
their opponents.
The Regulars had the field. From the bench Lefty watched interestedly
to see how Temple would act in his first appearance with big company.
He had given the youngster a bit of advice as to taking things easy,
and he was pleased to observe that he followed it.
Coombs, the first man up, got a hit and reached first. The second
batter flied out to Douro, the center fielder, however; and Coombs,
trying to steal second, discovered to his sorrow that the cub pitcher
was far from being asleep. Two more stickmen faced Temple before a hot
grounder toward Larry Dalton was whipped to first ahead of the runner.
“Now, fellows, remember!” urged Dalton as they trotted in from the
field. “Let’s get after our amiable friend there, and show him
something.”
The men were quite ready to obey his injunction. Batting is one of the
greatest joys of a ball player’s existence. Moreover, the attitude of
Nelson Savage as he strolled into the box, lips curled sneeringly, his
whole manner one of careless nonchalance, as if he considered the crowd
scarcely worth pitching to, was extremely aggravating.
Rufe Hyland hustled to the plate, barely able to restrain his
impatience to get after the man who irritated him so. He fell with
violent delight on the very first ball pitched, smashing it on a line
into the field to the right of center, and reached the initial sack
with ease.
Kid Lewis, who followed him, bunted nicely, sacrificing the outfielder
to second, and almost making first himself. Max Douro landed on the
horsehide with apparent ease, sending it out between second and short.
“All off with him,” chanted Dalton from the coaching line. “Got him
going already! Everybody hits him! Now, Joe, get busy and send Rufe
home.”
Welsh advanced confidently to the pan, and Hyland danced away from
third. It was up to Savage to display his wares now or never. With a
curious gleam in his eyes, Lefty glanced at Kennedy, who stood near,
chewing a cigar and scowling at the Western pitcher.
The southpaw murmured to himself, “I can hear the jangle of the tin can
now.”
But Welsh presently fouled out back of third, and the cub shortstop
made a splendid one-handed stop of a red-hot liner smashed out by Ogan,
by which the downfall of the pitcher on trial was apparently merely
deferred for a brief time.
The second inning was practically a repetition of the first. In the
first half a cub managed to reach third, where he languished and
perished. When the sides changed the Regulars proceeded to the bat with
that same zest and ardor, and in a brief space bases were filled with
only one out.
From the bench Lefty was watching Savage closely, and he could not
help granting the fellow a little grudging admiration. In spite of his
wretched, slip-shod work; in spite of the way he was being hit all over
the lot, the man’s attitude of insolent condescension had not altered.
His lips still curled sneeringly; he continued to regard each batter
with that same slow, heavy-lidded scrutiny which was like a slap in the
face. As in the beginning, his manner gave one the impression that he
was going through a childish performance which bored him to death.
“He’s got nerve enough for two,” muttered the southpaw.
Hyland came to the bat again. Seeking to duplicate his performance of
the first inning, he hit the first ball over. It was an infield fly
which the second baseman easily smothered.
“Too much of a rush, Rufe,” chided Dalton, who had been made temporary
captain of the Regulars. “Take your time. Now, Kid, you know what to
do. Tap it gently on the nose, and let’s have a few tallies.”
Continuing to watch Savage, it seemed to Lefty as if the man’s delivery
had grown slower and slower. He certainly took his time in winding up,
and for a man getting such poor results it seemed almost ludicrous.
His first three balls to Lewis were wide, and the batter declined to
reach for any of them.
“Why the mischief don’t you try the spitter?” Locke wondered to
himself. “Couldn’t do worse with it than you’ve done already. It’s
supposed to be your one best bet.”
Savage evidently had no intention of following the unspoken advice,
for he made no motion of the ball to his mouth. Slowly winding up, he
lobbed one over that cut the outside corner, and Lewis, playing the
game, let it pass.
“Strike!” called Pink Dillon, who was acting as umpire.
“That’s right, Kid,” approved Dalton. “Make him put ’em over. Make ’em
be good!”
Again that maddeningly long-drawn-out wind-up; again a curve which
shaved the rubber by such a narrow margin that Dillon hesitated a
second before calling: “Two!”
Lewis, who had seemed on the point of swinging and then changed his
mind, glared at the umpire.
“Clean your lamps, Pink!” he advised sarcastically. “They need it bad.”
“Never mind that, Kid,” admonished Dalton. “You’ll get him this time,
all right. On your toes, boys! Run on the hit!”
Lewis scooped up a handful of dirt, rubbed it over his bat handle,
and faced the pitcher with a firm squaring of his jaws. He looked as
if he was ready to hit anything that came within a mile of the plate,
and perhaps that was what made Savage such a long time getting into
action. His movements were so deliberate and snail-like that the base
runners, dodging away from the sacks in readiness for the hit, grew
impatient.
“Get a move on!” called Dick Nelson from second. “Somebody put a stick
of dynamite under him!”
“Just so we finish the inning in a couple of hours!” delicately hinted
another.
The comments made no impression whatever on the sneering man in the
box. Slowly he drew up his right arm, and leisurely cuddled the ball
under his chin, his eyes fixed scornfully on the face of Kid Lewis.
There was a pause which seemed eternal; then, with a whiplike motion,
the arm uncurled, sending the horsehide spinning squarely across the
center of the pan.
“Batter out!” cried Dillon.
His voice reflected the surprise that filled every man on the field.
Lewis had not wiggled his stick. At the plump of the ball and the sound
of the umpire’s voice, he gave a start and a gasp. Then, whirling, he
stared down at the horsehide in the catcher’s mitt as if he had taken
leave of his senses. An instant later, his face flaming, he turned on
Dillon.
“What sort of a game do you call this?” he demanded angrily. “That
ain’t the right ball! The guy out there never pitched at all!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE VANISHING BALL
“Don’t get sore and do the baby act,” Dillon admonished. “You’re out,
and there’s no sense howling about it.”
“If you say so, I suppose it goes, Pink,” sneered Lewis; “but it’s a
raw deal or a bum joke. You know the ball wasn’t pitched. This gink
catching flashed another ball, and――”
“Be a sport, Kid, for the love of Mike!” interrupted Torrey, the
catcher. He had taken off his mask, and was busy adjusting the strap.
“Pulling off a string of guff like that don’t get you anywhere.”
Lewis glared at him, and swallowed hard. He seemed about to retort when
Dalton sharply ordered him to cut it out.
“That’ll be about all for you, Kid,” he said. “Quit holding up the
game. Now, Gene, old boy, just put a little something on the ball, and
show these infants what they’re up against.”
Lefty could not help smiling a little as he saw Lewis slouch sourly out
to his place in the infield, scowling and kicking up the dirt for all
the world like a child who has been scolded.
“Too bad for anybody to take these little games seriously,” he remarked
to Pete Grist, beside him.
The veteran of the pitching staff absently cuddled a stiff elbow, and
nodded. “That’s one of Kid’s failings. He certainly is there with the
alibis whenever he goes wrong at bat.”
The unexpected rally on the part of their pitcher heartened the cubs to
such a degree that they hammered out two runs in the first half of the
third, and would have made more only for a bit of swift fielding on the
part of Larry Dalton.
Taking their turn at bat, the Regulars managed to force one man across
the rubber before they, too, were brought up sharply by clever work in
the infield.
“Some kid――that playing third,” remarked Grist approvingly. “What’s his
name?”
“Palsifer――Tap they call him,” Locke explained. “He’s from the Southern
League. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jack was thinking of him for Daly’s
place.”
The old pitcher nodded understandingly. Third base was one of the
positions everybody felt to be weak, and throughout the remainder of
the game Grist kept an eye on this promising youngster.
In the fourth inning Temple slumped distinctly, letting the Yannigans
hit him right and left. Had it not been for the admirable support given
him by the Regulars, the cubs would have sewed the game up in a sack
then and there. As it was, the score stood three to one in their favor,
a rather surprising thing, considering the efforts which were being
made by the older men.
Nels Savage, on the contrary, distinctly improved. Apparently he was
making no greater effort than before, and the insolent indifference
of his manner continued unabated. In spite of all this, there was no
question of his better form. In the last half of the fourth he struck
out two men, the first of whom was Lewis, who again started to raise a
protest that the ball had not been pitched. He was promptly squelched
by Dalton, who was also beginning to show signs of pettishness. As
Lewis passed Lefty, scowling and angry, the southpaw hailed him.
“What sort of a game is that you’re trying to put over, Kid?” he
bantered.
Lewis glared. “It ain’t a game! It’s gospel. Dillon called me out twice
on a third strike when Savage hadn’t made a move to deliver the ball.
They put up a job on me, that’s what they done. What in thunder’s the
matter with Pink I don’t know, but――”
“Say,” interrupted Locke suddenly, “you aren’t really serious? You
sure can’t mean to say you didn’t see that ball come over?”
“Didn’t see it!” repeated Lewis angrily. “How could I see it when there
wasn’t any to see? I tell you, the gink didn’t make a move to――”
“Don’t talk nutty, Kid!” admonished Grist. “Lefty and I saw it as plain
as you could see the ball he just pitched to Douro. What’s the sense in
talking like that?”
Lewis refused to argue further. He turned and departed, leaving Locke,
at least, slightly puzzled by his manner. It seemed impossible that he
could really mean what he said, yet there was a convincing touch of
earnestness in the heat of his temper.
Lefty and Grist were still discussing the question when Kennedy’s voice
sounded behind them:
“Locke, get out there and pitch the last inning. They’ve got Temple
sweating blood, and the rest of the staff are about the worst-bunged-up
lot of cripples I ever saw.”
The southpaw was glad of a chance to use his arm even for a single
inning. He limbered up a bit, and by the time the last Regular had
flied out to the cub center fielder he was quite ready.
Trusting mainly to his support, Lefty kept down the Yannigans’ score.
With the arrival of the final half of the inning Locke felt a sudden
desire to put his batting skill to the test of Savage’s pitching. Of
course, what Lewis contended was absolutely absurd, but it would be
interesting to see what the fellow had.
As man after man stepped to the plate and left it either for the bench
or in the direction of first, Lefty’s interest in the proceedings
became greater. In a vague way, he felt as if he were waiting for
something unusual which was presently to take place, and even when
another tally was scored that feeling continued unabated.
Two men were out, and there was a runner on second. Lefty had a feeling
that the batter would be put out and the game ended without his going
up. It was Larry Dalton’s voice urging him to hustle, rather than the
crack of leather meeting wood, which brought the realization that he
had not guessed right. He snatched up a bat at random, and hurried to
the plate.
Seen from this particular part of the diamond, Lefty decided that the
sagebrush twirler’s sneering countenance was more disagreeable than
even he had supposed. The uptilt of the lips, the slow, insolent,
heavy-lidded glance, the dragging, maddening deliberation of movement
were all emphasized; and all combined to arouse deep irritation.
Locke felt a sudden desire to plant a fist on those sneering lips.
With difficulty he pulled himself together, realizing with a flush of
chagrin that Savage had put a strike over.
“Careful, old man!” cautioned Dalton. It was Lefty’s carelessness and
inattention which had made that first strike possible. He would see to
it that there was no more of that. He stood waiting, tense and ready,
his gaze fixed keenly on the narrow slits through which gleamed the
Westerner’s strange, baleful eyes.
Savage’s movements were very slow. A ball was put over――another, and
another still. To Locke the time consumed had been so everlasting that
he wondered for a moment if it wasn’t four, and why he did not hear the
order to take his base.
The last delivery had been so wild that it was all Torrey could do to
pull the ball down. The horsehide slipped from his grasp and rolled
toward the rubber, where Locke bent and picked it up. He held it for a
second in his hand before snapping it out to Savage with a force which
was a wordless protest against the busher’s unnecessary slowness; and,
great as was his abstraction, he remembered noticing along one side of
the sphere a streak which was half cut, half scratch, as if the leather
had scraped against a sharp stone.
If this was the method followed by Savage in regular games, he would
be hooted every time he appeared on the field. The fans like snap and
ginger above all else in a player. No umpire would permit it. That
everlasting stare, too, was annoying. Lefty began to wish the busher
would look in another direction, if only for a moment.
Presently he looked down himself to see whether he had inadvertently
stepped too far forward. Before he glanced up again the ball, whizzing
over, buried itself in the catcher’s mitt; and Dillon’s voice, full of
a most unprofessional admonition, announced:
“Two――and three!”
Flushing, Lefty straightened his shoulders and tapped the rubber with
his bat. What could have induced him to be so careless he did not know.
He was quite sure, though, that it wouldn’t occur again.
With eyes unwavering, he waited. Every movement of the pitcher’s
dragging wind-up was impressed vividly on his mind. In the midst
of that movement Savage seemed to pause and remain set, poised and
motionless. Lefty was contemplating demanding judgment on a balk, when
the unmistakable plunk of something hard smashing against the catcher’s
mitt made him catch his breath and whirl round.
“Batter――out!” cried Dalton. Under his breath he growled scathingly:
“Oh――you――big――bonehead!”
Lefty paid no attention to this uncomplimentary remark. In fact, it
is doubtful if he heard it. He was staring unbelievingly at a soiled
baseball lying in the hollow of Torrey’s mitt――a ball which bore on the
uppermost side a long streak――_the_ ball which he had held in his hand
a few minutes before!
CHAPTER XIX
A THING INCREDIBLE
It was not strange that Lefty gasped and stared in utter amazement. The
thing was uncanny――impossible! It made him feel for an instant as if
something had happened to his brain――some twist or kink in the nerves
of vision. In the flash of time before he got a grip on himself he felt
vividly the staggering nature of such a thing happening at the crucial
moment of a real game instead of a time like this, when nothing really
mattered.
“Great Scott, Lefty,” came suddenly from Dalton, in a decidedly peevish
voice, “you’re certainly a pippin, throwing away the game like that!
Why didn’t you come out of your trance and baste that last one? It cut
the pan in halves.”
Locke swung his bat carelessly in the direction of the pile, and turned
to his chum, with a laugh.
“Sorry, old man,” he said. “That curve fooled me, that’s all.”
He made no effort to lower his voice, glancing coolly at Savage,
who was coming in from the box. The pitcher’s eyes held a gleam of
triumph and derision, which brought a touch of color to Lefty’s face,
and roused in him a longing to get even with this fellow for the
humiliation.
“Curve!” cried Dalton. “It was straight, and it didn’t have anything on
it but the cover.”
The southpaw moved closer to his friend. His manner was casual and
indifferent, but in his eyes was a look of earnestness which instantly
caught the infielder’s attention and held it.
“Nothing on it!” murmured Locke lightly. “Larry, if Savage could turn
that trick at will, he’d be the greatest pitcher the world has ever
seen.”
He paused an instant and glanced around. Most of the players were
heading toward the gate, for it was after eleven, and they were in a
hurry for their shower, rubdown, and lunch. Dillon stood at a little
distance, however, talking with Kennedy, while Kid Lewis was staring
at the southpaw from near the bench. Catching his eye, Lefty waved him
over.
“You don’t understand what I mean, Larry,” Lefty said, in a low tone.
“Nobody could who hadn’t been through the same thing. Don’t ask any
questions until I’ve talked with Kid; then I’ll tell you all about it.”
Without waiting for Dalton to speak, Lefty turned toward the approaching
shortstop.
“Say, Kid,” he asked lightly, “what’s the matter with your eyes? How’d
it happen you didn’t swing when Savage whipped over a straight one
twice for the third strike?”
The shortstop’s eyes narrowed, and he scowled. “See here, Locke,” he
snapped, in the tone of one driven to the limit of irritability, “do I
look weak in the garret? Anybody ever hint I was ready for the foolish
foundry? There ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes; they was examined by
the best doctor in New York, and found O. K. Savage balked both times
Dillon called me out. I saw him wind up and stop, glaring at me like he
could chaw me up; he didn’t pitch the ball either time. Torrey smacks
his fist into his mitt, and then shows another ball. Then everybody
tries to make me think I’ve been asleep. Fine work! Nice little joke!
But I never thought Kennedy would stand in on anything so piffling and
childish.”
His jaws snapped shut over the last words like the slam of a door in a
person’s face; turning on his heel, he marched off across the field.
As Grist had remarked that afternoon, the shortstop was prone to make
excuses for poor stickwork and errors, but aside from that he was a
decent, good-natured chap. Evidently the supposed trick, with its
resulting banter, had worked him up to the point of exploding, Lefty’s
question being all that was needed to fire the fuse.
“What’s it all about?” Dalton suddenly inquired. “Don’t keep a fellow
in suspenders. What’s all this bunk about a game being put up on Kid?
Is he crazy, or just sore?”
Lefty turned to his friend, his face serious. “It’s simply this, Larry:
Three times to-day――twice with Lewis, and once with me――Savage has
pitched a ball the batter couldn’t see.”
“Couldn’t see! You mean he sneaked it over?”
“Nothing of the sort. I mean, from the batter’s point of view, the ball
was invisible.”
Dalton’s jaw sagged, and he stared oddly at his friend. “You don’t
happen to be――in earnest, do you?” he asked, in a queer voice.
“Quite,” Locke smiled faintly. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a
fact. Listen now, and I’ll tell you.”
When he had finished a brief, but comprehensive, account of the
inexplicable incident Dalton’s mouth and eyes were open to their widest
extent.
“Queerest thing I ever heard tell of,” he commented dazedly at last,
running the fingers of one hand through his thick, curly hair. “I don’t
mean to doubt your word, old man, but――an invisible ball! Why, that’s
wilder than the worst nature fake ever doped out by a cub reporter. You
haven’t thought of any sane explanation of the thing, have you?”
Lefty hesitated, a slight flush creeping into his face. “I don’t know
whether you’d call it sane or not,” he answered slowly, feeling
decidedly foolish and fully expecting his friend to burst into a roar
of derisive laughter, “but it’s the only one I can think of. Do you
suppose he could have done it by――some sort of hypnotism?”
“Hypnotism!” exclaimed Dalton. “Why, look at the distance he was away
from you! How the deuce could he pull off a stunt like that? They
always have to look you square in the eyes and make a lot of motions
with their hands, and all that.”
“Not always. I don’t know much about it except the little I’ve read,
but it is claimed that sometimes Oriental magicians can hypnotize a
whole crowd at once, and make them believe something is happening
which isn’t at all. Of course, Savage isn’t an East Indian, but he’s
certainly got queer eyes that make you think he might do things like
that.”
“You’ve got me,” Dalton admitted in a bewildered tone. “When you come
to discussing East Indian wizards and their tricks, just count me out;
I don’t know anything about ’em.”
He paused an instant, a smile struggling through the puzzled lines in
his face. “If the same thing hadn’t happened to two of you,” he went
on, his eyes twinkling, “I’d have laid it to a touch of biliousness.
That puts a chap on the bum as quick as anything. As it is, though――
Look here, Lefty, Jack Stillman’s got a head on his shoulders. He’s
heading this way now. You don’t mind his knowing, do you?”
Locke shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I suppose not,” he returned slowly.
“I’m not keen about having every one know the kind of trick that was
put over on me.”
To tell the truth, the southpaw was humiliated by the possibility that
he had been hypnotized by such a character as Nelson Savage. It was
only natural, of course. No man cares to admit that he can be, even for
a moment, brought under the influence of another person. There is a
general conviction, which is much more widespread than true, that such
succumbing is proof of a weaker intellect. It was this feeling that
brought to the southpaw a sense of shame――concealed under the guise of
light indifference, but none the less poignant――and made him disposed
to shrink from telling even so close a friend as the newspaper man.
CHAPTER XX
THE TRAP
Stillman was keenly interested. “By Jove!” he exclaimed when all the
details had been told. “What dope for a story! A fellow’d have to make
it humorous, though; it’d never go as a serious yarn.”
“Do you suppose I was――hypnotized?” Lefty asked, in a disgusted tone.
“He’s got a mighty queer look about the eyes――just the expression I’ve
seen in people who were abnormal mentally,” said the reporter, somewhat
evasively it seemed. “Remember whether you looked him square in the
eyes when you were up at the plate?”
“Don’t remember especially, but it’s likely I did.”
“What we want to do is to make sure how he works this trick,” suggested
Stillman promptly. “It may be hypnotic influence, or accident, or just
plain bluff. It’s up to us to get him to repeat it, and find out.”
“How are you going to do that?” Dalton inquired. “He’s liable to be
suspicious and foxy.”
“Very likely, but we’ll have to work it just the same. Now, my
suggestion is this: Keep the whole business under your hats, both of
you. Pretend you haven’t noticed anything queer at all. Some time
to-night Lefty can get in conversation with Larry, and talk about what
a stick he was, letting such a bum pitcher hand him a strike-out.
He should do this when Savage can hear him, and he must pretend not
to know the man is listening. Larry can say that everybody’s rotten
sometimes. Keep up that sort of thing to-morrow. Work it every chance
you have to do it naturally, and I’ll bet by the time batting practice
is called you’ll have him hooked and ready for the landing net.”
“And then, when he’s good and mad, you think he’ll try that strike-out
stunt again?” said Locke.
Stillman nodded. “Isn’t it natural?” he queried. “If you work it right,
and don’t overdo it, he’ll be in a state of temper that doesn’t stop
to reason. If I can only get old Jack to make him pitch for batting
practice we’ve as good as got him. There’s just one thing you want
to remember: If you do get up against him, don’t keep staring at his
eyes. Look at anything else about him you want to, but don’t give him a
chance to work his little trick again, if that’s how he does it.”
Locke and Dalton proceeded to carry out the reporter’s suggestion to
the best of their ability. They maneuvered so well that by breakfast
time Savage had been reduced to a state of cold fury without in the
least realizing how completely he was falling into the trap.
Stillman attached himself to the person of the manager immediately on
leaving the hotel that morning. The newspaper man had a way of inducing
old Jack to do things, whenever he wished them done, by throwing out
hints; and he now proceeded to throw in his best and most effective
form.
That his efforts were not wasted was proven when Kennedy ordered Savage
to the mound to pitch for batting practice some fifteen minutes after
the field was reached.
“Every man run out his hit, and no loafing,” said the Chief.
Watching Savage, the reporter saw him pass behind Locke and Dalton on
his way to the mound, pause for a second irresolutely, with an angry
snarl of the lips and swift clenching of his fists, and then move on
again. A moment later Kennedy touched the scribe on the arm.
“Step out here with me, Stillman,” the manager said. “I want to give
you the chance you were anxious for to watch Savage work at short
range.”
“I’ll be there like a passenger train.” The newspaper man’s tone was
enthusiastic. “Just one second till I get my camera. I left it over on
the bench.”
Sprinting over, he snatched up the camera and turned back. Halfway he
encountered Locke, and slowed down.
“Get in as soon as you can,” he whispered. “Don’t forget about his
eyes; string him along a little.”
Without waiting for a reply, he loped out upon the diamond, and took
his place beside Kennedy, who was acting as umpire. It did not take
Stillman long to discover that Savage had lost some of the cool,
insolent indifference of the day before. It was evident that he
strove to affect the pose, but every now and then, in movements or
gestures, there escaped a hint of the real nature beneath the shell of
make-believe――a hot intolerance, made worse by the rasping his temper
had undergone at the hands of Locke and Dalton.
The reporter studied him with an interest quite unfeigned, hoping the
while that Lefty would not too long delay his appearance at the plate.
If signs meant anything, the busher was ripe for the experiment. It
needed little or nothing to send him off. Seeing Lefty standing ready
to succeed Hyland at the rubber, Stillman suddenly resolved to give a
last effective push.
“Well, Locke’s up,” he remarked, in a low tone, as Hyland clouted the
ball and began to lumber heavily around the base lines.
“He wasn’t very strong with the willow yesterday,” reminded Kennedy.
The reporter laughed. “That was an accident. There isn’t one of the old
guard, let alone a cub, who can keep Lefty Locke from hitting the ball
somewhere into the diamond when he wants to.”
He spoke just loud enough for Savage to hear, and was rewarded by a
stiffening of the busher’s whole frame. From that moment Stillman was
oblivious to everything about him save the drama which had for its
limited stage the narrow stretch between the pitcher’s mound and the
plate.
He saw that the southpaw was following his injunction not to look at
Savage’s eyes. He guessed, too, from the latter’s attitude, no less
than from the sudden slackening of his movements, that the pitcher was
trying to force Lefty into doing the thing he had been warned against.
To Stillman the affair had suddenly become infinitely more absorbing
than he had expected. It seemed to have developed all at once into
a tremendous struggle between two wills. His glance flashed from
Lefty’s face to the back of the fellow in front of him. The thick,
muscular neck, the very pose of the head, sunk low upon those powerful
shoulders, and inclined slightly forward, combined inexplicably to
give the reporter a strange feeling that perhaps in Savage dwelt an
evil spirit which grew stronger with every victory, as vampires are
said to increase in power and malignity with each new victim.
Common sense told him that it was absurd. This was the twentieth
century, with evil spirits and magicians relegated to the dim and
distant past. But, though he tried his best to thrust the silly notion
from his mind, he found himself wishing for the power to throw his
influence on Lefty’s side of the balance.
Savage’s first delivery was wide; it seemed to Stillman as if the
fellow had purposely made it so. The second was also a ball. When the
third missed a corner of the pan by at least six inches the reporter
decided that the man on the mound was following a regular system
which he held to on such occasions as this. He noticed also that the
pitcher’s movements became slower and slower with each delivery. As far
as Stillman could tell, his eyes never left the batter’s face.
When at last Savage completed his tedious wind-up, and pitched, the
newspaper man fairly held his breath, though in reality he was quite
sure what Lefty would do. The ball was a fair drop, with considerable
speed. Locke missed it by several inches.
“A bluff, of course,” Stillman muttered to himself. “He’s playing his
part of the game to force Savage to the limit.”
And yet, as he waited for that interminable wind-up to end, the
reporter was not quite so confident. What if Lefty should forget
instructions and let the busher get in his fine work, after all? It
would be more than humiliating――it would be disastrous. A man who could
break up such a cool character as Lefty Locke would be dangerous even
on his own team――a menace on any other.
Glancing anxiously at the southpaw, Stillman was just in time to see
his friend’s eyes shift in a sudden peculiar manner. The movement had
in it every appearance of intense effort, and was accompanied by a
queer, dazed shaking of the head. Before he could recover himself,
apparently, the ball whizzed over the center of the pan.
“Strike!” called Kennedy; and, in a lower tone, to Stillman: “Anybody
who can fan Lefty Locke twice running is going to bother the rest of
the crowd, believe me!”
“Wait!” retorted Stillman. “He hasn’t fanned――yet.”
It was far from easy to assume that air of confidence. Lefty had
evidently, through carelessness or bravado, disobeyed orders. His eyes
were fixed, and there was something decidedly mechanical in the way he
swung his bat gently back and forth.
Stillman frowned. That odd sense of an evil influence radiating from
the man before him returned with added strength and conviction. He
found himself at one moment mentally raging at the fellow’s slowness;
at another he feared Savage would pitch too soon. His eyes never left
the southpaw’s face, and the longer he stared the more certain he
became that his friend was again under Savage’s control.
Suddenly the busher’s arm shot forward. Stillman caught his breath in a
sharp intake. The progress of the ball seemed as slow and dragging as
a defective motion-picture reel running at quarter speed. Apparently
Lefty had not moved a muscle. He stood with that same staring, vacant
expression on his face, as if utterly oblivious for the moment to
everything that was happening about him. Stillman groaned aloud; then――
There was a ringing crack as Lefty swung at precisely the right moment
to meet the sphere when it floated over the center of the pan. Out into
the field to the right of deep center soared the horsehide.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST STRAW
Stillman recovered from his surprise just in time to observe the brief,
fierce spasm of rage which seized Savage. He had partly turned, and
stood, hands clenched and muscles tense, staring at Locke, running
down the base line. There was stamped on the rough-hewn profile a look
of mingled astonishment and bitter hate which made even the hardened
newspaper man feel a little tingle along his spine.
For a fraction of a minute the baffled pitcher stood motionless. Then,
with machinelike precision, he wheeled full around, deftly caught the
ball lined in by one of the youthful volunteer fielders, and faced the
next batter without having uttered a word.
“By Jove!” murmured the reporter under his breath. “He’s sure got it in
for Lefty.”
Stillman cut away from Kennedy as soon as he could after batting
practice was over, and made for the spot where Lefty was preparing to
limber up his arm over by the stand.
“You certainly need a good tanning, you big bluff!” he said as he came
up.
The southpaw grinned. “Pretty good, wasn’t I?”
“Too good! You had me all up in the air, thinking it was real.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that glassy-eye stuff took you in when you
knew what was doing?”
“We didn’t rehearse that part,” explained the reporter, “so I wasn’t
expecting it. Besides, it would be just like your crazy ways to chance
doing what I told you not to, just to see what would happen.”
Locke’s smile widened and took on a touch of chagrin. “That’s just what
I did do――and, say, that gentleman has got some hypnotic eye, believe
me! He was working it overtime to-day, too. If I hadn’t looked away
when I did there’d been nothing doing for mine.”
“Then I did guess right? He was trying to work it again to-day?”
“Trying his best. Say, did you see his face when he discovered how I’d
been stringing him along? Some temper there, eh?”
“You bet!” The reporter’s tone was emphatic. “You want to keep an eye
on him, old man. I don’t believe he’s got a scruple to his name.”
“Don’t worry,” put in Locke. “He’s had a thrashing coming for some
time, and I’m willing to be the one to hand it to him. Well, now we’ve
found out about this, what are we going to do?”
This seemingly simple question proved difficult to answer. In setting
the little trap for Savage, the two friends had been animated
altogether by a desire for personal information. They had sought to
know what it was that enabled the busher to perform those almost
uncanny feats. And now, having found out, they were rather at a loss as
to what to do with their information.
Satisfied though they might be regarding the nature of the man’s
remarkable power, they were unwilling to place themselves open to the
ridicule and disbelief with which ninety-nine persons out of a hundred
would greet such a story.
After dinner, Lefty, Stillman, and Larry Dalton retired to a corner
of the lobby to discuss this question. Their arguments were warm and
lengthy, and for the better part of the evening they remained oblivious
to much of what was going on about them. They finally decided to hold
off any action until the power on other players of this surprising
talent of the bush pitcher had been tested further. Then Kennedy
appeared before them, his face far from amiable.
“Any idea where that sweet-scented geranium, Savage, has taken
himself?” he inquired.
“Might be playing pool,” Dalton suggested. “I saw him go in there with
Ogan after dinner.”
Kennedy shook his head. “He ain’t. Charley, the marker, says he
finished his game and came out over an hour ago.”
“Want us to take a look around for him?” inquired Lefty, with no great
show of enthusiasm. A glance at the clock had shown him the hour hand
close to eleven, and the discovery seemed to bring on a sudden yearning
for bed.
“No!” was the almost snappy retort. “The common scruff’s off tanking up
again, I reckon. If he is”――the lean jaws tightened, and the dark eyes
snapped ominously――“it’s going to be the last time. You boys better hit
the straw. Look at the hour.”
He turned on his heel and walked away, apparently heedless of whether
his advice was taken or not. Tramping upstairs, he turned into the room
next his own, and walked straight over to one of the windows looking
out on the side of the hotel. His exploring fingers encountered a stout
cord hanging limply over the sill.
“The cheap, low-down tank!” he growled. “This is the end of him. I’ve
coddled him along all I’m going to. I don’t give a hang whether I’m shy
on working pitchers or not. I’ll tie the can on him to-morrow, an’ if
every decent manager I know don’t hear the jangle of it I’ll certainly
be some surprised.”
CHAPTER XXII
SAVAGE’S DISAPPEARANCE
With his mind finally made up to a step he had really wanted to take
for days past, Jack Kennedy arose with extreme promptitude next
morning, and dressed briskly. Having made his toilet, he stepped into
the hall and knocked loudly on the door next his own. There was no
response, but this did not surprise the manager.
“Sleeping it off, I reckon,” he muttered as he turned the knob and
entered without ceremony. “Well, it’ll be the last time he――”
There was an abrupt pause, followed by a grunt of surprise, as the
manager stopped in the middle of the room and stared about him. Except
for himself, the place was empty. The bed was smooth and untouched.
Even the string still hung limply over the window sill. Evidently
Savage had not returned at all.
“Out all night!” exclaimed the manager. “Or has he gone for good?”
Frowning, he walked over to the window and glowered into space for a
minute or two. It was a shock and a disappointment to have the fellow
sneak off this way without giving the manager a chance to let loose
some of the verbal vitriol that had been corked up in him for so long.
“He can’t be gone for good,” Jack said aloud, “with all his stuff lying
around like this. He’ll be back, and then――”
The pause was more eloquent than words. The manager turned to leave the
room, when suddenly the door was thrown violently open, and Al Ogan
burst in.
“You common scrub!” he exclaimed furiously. “Where’s my―― O-h!” His jaw
sagged, and he stared amazedly at Kennedy. “I thought you were Savage.
Where is he?”
Old Jack shook his head. “Give it up. I was asking myself that question
not half a minute ago. What seems to be your trouble?”
“Trouble!” Ogan snapped out the word in a tone of extreme anger. “The
cheap skate stole my watch!”
“What!” Kennedy’s voice was sharply incredulous. “You can’t mean that,
Ogan. Savage has certainly got brains enough not to pull off a stunt of
that sort.”
“Has he? Well, he don’t use ’em, then! The watch was swiped last night
in the billiard room, and he’s the only one who could have taken it.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“It’s as plain as print. We were playing pool right after dinner――the
only ones in the room. My coat and vest were in a chair back of the
table. When Savage asked for a match I told him to help himself from
the box in my side coat pocket. I was making a hard shot at the time,
and my back was turned. When I came to look for the watch this morning,
it was gone.”
Kennedy frowned. “How was it you didn’t notice the loss last night?” he
inquired, with some tartness. “You don’t know but somebody went through
your clothes while you were asleep.”
“And left a roll of bills in my trousers pocket?” countered Ogan
sarcastically. “I guess nit! Generally I take my watch out and leave
it on the bureau, but last night we were late, and I just dumped the
clothes on the chair and tumbled in. Since Lefty bunked with Dalton,
I’ve had the room to myself, and I have a habit of locking the door.
There’s no getting around it, Jack, Savage is a thief, and I’m hanged
if I let him walk off with something I think as much of as I do that
watch. Haven’t you any idea where he’s gone?”
A sudden spasm of disgust assailed Kennedy, making him wish fervently
that he had never set eyes on the aggravating individual who had
disturbed his equanimity more than any recruit he had ever handled.
“Not a ghost of one,” he answered. “I’m done with him. He can be in
the infernal regions for all I care, just so he stays away from me.”
He strode past Ogan to the door; there, pausing abruptly, as if ashamed
of his outburst, he glanced back over his shoulder.
“Go see Locke,” he advised gruffly. “He thinks he’s got a hunch where
Savage gets his booze. I’ll let him off this morning to take you there
if he wants to. But don’t mention that man’s name to me again.”
He stamped out into the hall.
“Old man’s temper is certainly riz up,” Al commented. “Wonder what else
this crook has been doing to put himself in bad?”
He wasted little time on that question, however. Descending to the
dining room, he bolted his breakfast, and sought out Lefty Locke.
“Sure, I’ll go!” the latter agreed, when he had listened to Ogan’s
recital. “Can’t promise to help you much, but I’ll do my best. Jack
Stillman and I have only the vaguest sort of an idea that he gets his
booze at a certain farmhouse across the river; we really don’t know a
thing for sure. I’ll be right with you.”
Knowing that the reporter would be busy with his daily column for the
_Star_, Lefty made no attempt to hunt him up. Securing his hat, he
joined Ogan at the door, and together they started briskly for the
river road.
They had scarcely fallen into step before there flashed suddenly into
the southpaw’s mind a remembrance of that perplexing night of over a
week before and the problem of the voice in the dark which he had never
really solved. It was rather curious that these latest developments
should again couple Savage and Al Ogan together. Locke wondered whether
it might not be something more than mere coincidence. He became swiftly
determined to find out, if finding out lay within his power.
“It’s funny, Al,” he remarked in a rather careless tone, “but I had an
idea you and Savage knew each other pretty well.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CATASTROPHE
Ogan turned and stared at Lefty with an air of questioning which was
either real or remarkably well assumed. “Know Savage well?” he said.
“What gave you that notion?”
The pitcher shrugged his shoulders. “Reckon it must have been that
night a week or so ago when you came into the hotel with him about ten.
You certainly acted mighty chummy then.”
“Chummy!” was the puzzled exclamation. “Why, I’ve never―― Oh――that
night, you mean! I remember now.” He hesitated an instant, and glanced
suddenly away with an affectation of carelessness which did not deceive
his companion. “I reckon that must have been the first time I ever
spoke to the man,” he went on. “I ran into him by accident, not a block
away from the hotel.”
Lefty’s eyebrows went up. “And yet,” he drawled, “you’d left that poker
game and hustled out over an hour before.”
“I went for a walk,” Ogan explained hastily, without looking at the
southpaw. “I―― Say, what the deuce is this, anyhow――an inquisition?”
The color flamed into his face, and he flung back his head to stare
resentfully at Locke. “You talk as if you thought I wasn’t telling the
truth. You――look that way, too.”
“Hardly that.” The pitcher’s tone continued lightly casual. “I did have
an idea, though, that you weren’t telling me everything. You see, Al,
it wasn’t just idle curiosity that made me ask.”
For a second or two longer Ogan’s resentful expression remained
unchanged. Then his eyes softened a little; his lids drooped.
“Sort of crabby, wasn’t I?” he inquired. “Guilty conscience always does
make a fellow sore. You see, I was ashamed to tell anybody about that
note of Tap――”
“Tap!” put in Lefty, in astonishment. “Did Tap Palsifer send you that
note?”
“Sure! Who’d you think did? Tap knew about the trouble I had last
season, but he didn’t want to come right in and break up the game, so
he found a boy to take in a note he’d written to――”
“You’ve got me, Al,” interrupted Lefty, with a shake of the head.
“Reckon I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. I don’t understand a
single word you’ve said. Don’t go ahead if it’s something you’d rather
not tell me.”
“It isn’t――now I’ve made the break,” the infielder returned, after the
briefest of pauses. “I’d like you to know, and then you can give me
a hand in case I tumble another time. It’s cards, generally. I can’t
seem to use ’em in moderation. Last year I played so much it put me to
the bad on the diamond, and I had to cut it out altogether. I had no
business to sit in the game the other night, but I thought it might be
different this year. Tap was wiser than I, though. The old hankering
was there worse than ever. I had the time of my life pulling out,
but I managed to somehow; and when I got outside didn’t he give me a
roasting――and then some! Well, we went for a stroll and, on the way
back, ran into Savage. Tap stopped to get some cigarettes; Savage and
I came on together. He wasn’t half bad that night. I didn’t know then
what he was.”
Lefty drew a long breath, and smiled. It was impossible to doubt the
truth of Ogan’s explanation. The man’s eyes were clear and candid;
his gaze unwavering. So it was Temple, after all, that he had
overheard――Temple, the seemingly open, wholly attractive youngster
Locke himself had been the means of bringing into the Blue Stocking
squad.
His interest in the puzzle reawakened surprisingly by this discovery,
Lefty promised himself a speedy interview with the young Seaboard
recruit, and made haste to apologize to Ogan for the manner in which
he had bungled. Fortunately the infielder took it all in good part, and
the southpaw forestalled any awkward questions by branching off into
an account of the little Stillman and himself had learned of Savage’s
mysterious trips across the river. By the time he had finished, the
boathouse was in sight.
Pausing only long enough to see that the boat was gone, Locke led the
way upstream to where Stillman’s worm-eaten old flat-bottomed scow had
been hidden in the bushes.
“Though why he was so careful about it I don’t know,” Lefty commented
as they hauled it out and shoved it into the water. “I can’t imagine
anybody taking it as a gift, much less stealing it.”
Placing Ogan in the stern, Locke took the oars, and headed for a slight
cove in the farther bank, which looked at that distance like the mouth
of a small creek or inlet.
The river was wide, and from the shore it had a sluggish appearance,
which Lefty soon discovered to be deceptive. He had not progressed a
dozen yards before he felt the strong tug of the current, and presently
it was all he could do to keep the bow from being turned downstream.
“Better let me take an oar,” Ogan suggested. “You don’t want to strain
your arm.”
“Don’t worry about me,” returned the southpaw. “Keep an eye peeled for
logs coming downstream. These spring freshets always flood out a lot
of ’em, and they’re hard to see in this muddy water.”
The infielder nodded, and at once directed his gaze upstream.
There was a pause in midstream to let a water-soaked, low-floating log
shoot past, while two minutes later the oarsman had to pull furiously
to escape being struck amidships by another. There was a lot more,
both of hard work and excitement, in the little jaunt than he had
anticipated. It would be aggravating if nothing came of it.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of strenuous labor, the strength
of that midstream current began to lessen. Locke bent to his oars,
sending the boat through the water at comparatively good speed. It
seemed to him that not more than a few seconds could have passed before
he saw Ogan raise himself suddenly in the stern.
“Hard on your right――quick!” he shouted. “There’s a snag――”
The words died on his lips as he dropped back on the seat, clutching
instinctively at the sides. The southpaw put forth every ounce of
strength he possessed in a strenuous attempt to pull the boat around.
Before the clumsy scow had even begun to respond to his efforts, there
was a thud, a crash; the boat rose up as on the crest of a wave,
quivered, then dipped sidewise, coming to rest at a weird angle. And
there it hung precariously, its strained, rotting frame shaking and
trembling continuously with the force of the strong current rushing
against the exposed bottom.
With the sudden shock of collision Lefty had lost an oar. Now,
bracing himself with one foot against the lower side of the boat, and
stretching a helping hand to his companion, he carelessly relinquished
the other, which was carried away by the water.
Ogan lost not an instant in pulling himself up beside Locke. He was
drenched to the waist, for the stern seat had been thrust under water
when a knotty spur of the snag tore a hole in the rotten planking just
back of the bow. For a minute they clung to the frail, shaking timber
in silence, staring across the hundred feet or so of troubled, muddy
water between them and the shore. Then the southpaw suddenly burst into
a laugh.
“Jove!” he cried. “If Savage could see us now, he’d say the joke was on
us.”
The infielder’s responsive chuckle was prompt, but seemed somewhat
lacking in spontaneity.
“I’m glad he isn’t around!” he returned. “Say, old man, how the
mischief are we going to get out of this? The old tub’s likely to break
up any minute.”
“That’s no lie!” Locke had relinquished his hold on the seat, and was
tugging at the laces of his dripping shoes. “There’s nothing else but
to lighten cargo a bit and swim for it.”
“That’s the bad part of it.” Ogan spoke slowly, in the tone of one who
is striving hard to suppress every hint of emotion. “I――can’t swim.”
The southpaw’s nimble fingers abruptly ceased picking at the sodden
laces; his head came up with a jerk. His gaze rested for a second
lightly on his friend’s face, then flashed past the baseman’s broad
shoulder to linger appraisingly on the sweep of smoothly sliding brown
water that had suddenly widened so miraculously. In his expression
there was no hint of the momentary contraction of the throat muscles,
or the brief anxious chill which lingered for a second on his spine as
he realized the meaning of that terse announcement. When he spoke, his
voice was level and untroubled.
“That so?” he queried coolly, breaking one of the laces with a snap,
and dragging off a shoe. “I’ll have to swim for two, then, won’t I?
Don’t lose any time shedding your coat and shoes, old fellow. They’re a
nuisance in the water.”
Ogan proceeded to obey instructions as quickly as he could. His face
was, perhaps, a shade less brown, but his lips were firm, and there was
not even a tremor in the fingers that did their work without fumbling.
His own feelings gave Lefty a good idea of what must lie beneath that
mask of nonchalance. The fellow was grit clear through, he thought
admiringly, as he slipped out of his coat and let the garment drop
carelessly into the stream.
“Grab hold of me to steady yourself,” he advised quietly when Ogan
began to wriggle out of coat and vest. “Loosen up your shirt, too. I
reckon that’s about all you’ll have time to do.”
The southpaw’s own thin silk shirt was open at the throat. Under his
stockinged feet he felt the planks bend and quiver like that absurd
moving floor in one of Coney Island’s side shows. The wreck could
scarcely hold together many minutes longer, yet he waited with cool
patience until the infielder was quite ready.
“There!” he said at last as the striped vest was whirled out of sight
by the current. “Now, listen. We’ll slide over this side together, and
do it as easy as we can. When we’re in the water you don’t want to
worry. Lie perfectly still, with one hand on my shoulder, and let me do
the rest. You can catch hold of my shirt, but don’t lose your head and
grab me around the neck. Get me?”
“Sure!” Ogan’s lips were pressed tightly together, a straight gray
line. His eyes were wide, almost purple, but unwavering. “But if I
should be a fool, you――hand me one.”
Locke smiled briefly, reassuringly. “You’re not going to be a fool.
Come ahead now. Take it easy. We don’t want the old tub to split up――
Hold up a second! I’ll be hanged――”
With a splintering crash, the great bulk of a submerged log, swept
down by the rushing current, struck the wrecked boat squarely. Flung
violently against the one remaining oarlock, Lefty caught a momentary
glimpse of Ogan’s body hurled past him into the brown torrent. The
planks under his feet seemed to melt away like ice in boiling oil.
In another instant the muddy water met over his head, blotting out
everything.
CHAPTER XXIV
DIRE PERIL
With the instinct of a skilled swimmer, Lefty had drawn in a deep
lungful of air before he went under. It was that same instinct which,
on rising to the surface, made him thrust vigorously with arms and
legs toward the place where he had last seen Ogan. He was not in the
least troubled about himself. A moderately good swimmer, keeping his
head, would have no difficulty in reaching shore; and Lefty was more
than that. But the infielder probably would thrash about and struggle
fiercely, only to hasten the inevitable.
As his head shot up into the sunlight the southpaw brushed a straggling
lock of hair from his eyes, and stared eagerly downstream. Not a dozen
feet away the muddy water was suddenly cleft by a clutching hand,
followed swiftly by the distorted face of Al Ogan, eyes staring, mouth
gasping widely for precious air.
With a powerful lunge, Lefty flung himself forward. A few strokes
brought him beside the struggling man just in time to slide a firm
hand under his chin.
“Steady, Al!” he cried. “Take it easy, old man. You’re all right now.”
He scarcely expected to be obeyed, and he was not. Ogan was in the grip
of that paroxysm of madness which comes to every drowning person. He
knew only that out of the awful, despairing waste of instability had
come something solid, something which kept his mouth for a moment above
the loathsome, lapping, suffocating water. His impulse was to grasp it,
and grasp it he did with a surprising swiftness which caught Lefty,
looking though he was for such a move, off his guard.
Remembrance of the few succeeding minutes was never very clear to
Locke. The instant Ogan’s fingers closed over his wrist in the iron
grip of despair he knew his work was cut out for him. He recalled
jerking away with all his strength, and of going under in the process.
When he finally came to the surface with lungs fairly bursting, Ogan
was nowhere to be seen. Pausing only long enough to draw a deep breath,
the southpaw dived.
In diving he had nothing whatever to guide him, and it was sheer luck
that brought his outstretched hands against the body of the man he
sought. This time there seemed no movement. Ogan had evidently lapsed
into unconsciousness, and, catching him under the shoulders with one
arm, Lefty struck out for the surface.
He was beginning to grow exhausted from so much struggling. He was
assailed by grave doubts of his ability to get Ogan ashore. Then,
to his horror, just as they shot up into the blessed air, the limp
infielder turned unexpectedly in his arms, and fastened clutching
fingers about his throat.
The southpaw tore away the gripping hands, and took an uncertain stroke
or two out of reach. Almost as quickly he was back again. His head
reeled dizzily, and he could scarcely see, but to let his friend sink
was a thing impossible. Reaching out, he caught Ogan by the hair. Then
a sobbing breath of thankfulness passed his lips as he saw a strange
boat that was almost upon them.
It came swiftly on the current, threatening to run down the two
struggling in the water. Then it swerved, its progress was stayed
perceptibly, and a figure suddenly bent over the side, with arms
outstretched. Lefty was too much occupied with the now almost senseless
Ogan to glance at the stranger’s face. He held the infielder up in the
water until a pair of strong hands slid under the limp arms and began
to drag the dripping body into the boat. Then the pitcher reached for
the moving craft himself, caught the side near the stern, and clung
there, too weak to pull himself into the boat unaided.
A moment later a shadow blotted the sun from Lefty’s eyes. Glancing up,
he found himself staring into the face of Nelson Savage.
For a moment the southpaw had a weird feeling that he was seeing
visions. That the busher should be here was natural enough, but to find
him doing what this man had done seemed incredible. Then, as the fellow
dropped to his knees on the stern seat and reached out a helping hand,
Locke realized that the impossible was happening.
“Give us your fist,” the Westerner said briefly.
There was a straining of muscles in which Locke rendered what help he
could, and a moment later the pitcher was in the boat, staring dazedly
and still a little incredulously at the face of his rescuer.
“All right?” the latter questioned, stepping back to secure one of the
oars which was balanced precariously over the side.
Savage’s heavy brows met in a single straight line above the bridge
of his rather large nose, and there was an undercurrent of suppressed
anxiety in his voice, and an inflection which faintly stirred a chord
of memory in the southpaw’s mind.
“Sure!” Lefty answered mechanically, his eyes still searching the
other’s face. “Only a little winded, that’s all.”
A second later he forgot everything else in the remembrance of Ogan’s
condition. The infielder sprawled in the bottom of the boat, his eyes
closed. Without a word, Savage and Locke straightened him as best they
could, and began to work his arms vigorously. To their intense relief,
he responded almost at once; he was not unconscious, but utterly
exhausted. As soon as he realized this, Locke suggested that they make
for shore at once.
Savage agreed, and, each taking an oar, they headed for the bank from
which Lefty and Ogan had started, without trying to pull back to the
boathouse.
It was a curious, silent row. Neither man spoke, for, in truth, they
needed all their wind for the physical exertion of cutting across the
current. But all the time Lefty’s mind was busy trying to figure out
the subtle, but unmistakable, change which had come over the chap
beside him. He could not imagine the Savage of yesterday and the day
before acting as this man had done. He might, perhaps, have come to the
rescue of two drowning men, but certainly he would never have shown any
anxiety for their welfare once they had been dragged from the water.
There were other things, too, slight, but equally puzzling; but it was
not until they had reached the bank and lifted the still helpless Ogan
from the boat that the remembrance he had been striving for came to
Lefty in a flash.
That unpleasant, baleful glare had vanished from Savage’s eyes. They
were human now, almost attractive and winning――the eyes of the man he
had met and unaccountably liked at the station in that little, far-away
Jersey village of Belle View.
CHAPTER XXV
TWO IN ONE
The realization had scarcely flashed into Locke’s mind when Ogan, who
had dropped weakly down against a sapling, slowly lifted his head from
his lax arms, and stared fixedly at Savage. His expression was dazed,
as one just awakening from a dream to realities which he could not
understand. Then swiftly the puckered, puzzled wrinkles in his forehead
changed to deep, vertical furrows.
“You!” he said sharply; then: “Well, where’s my watch?”
Savage’s eyes widened a trifle. “Your watch!” he repeated. “I don’t
remember seeing it.”
The infielder made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Don’t try that
game!” he snapped. “You saw it well enough last night in the billiard
room. What’s more, you managed to slip it from my pocket into yours.”
Even though Ogan was probably still too dazed to realize what he was
doing, the bad taste of entering into a discussion of the robbery at
such a moment brought a flush of embarrassment to Lefty’s face. His
lips were parted in a swift impulse to silence his teammate, when a
glance at Savage stilled the words abruptly.
The busher had straightened almost imperceptibly; his face took on the
keen wariness of one suddenly on his guard. It was gone in a second,
leaving only the faintest added touch of color and a slight lowering of
the lids; but it was enough to reduce Locke to wondering silence.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Savage returned, with chill brevity. “I know
nothing whatever about any property of yours.”
“You don’t!” sneered Ogan. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and faced
the quiet, square-jawed man before him. “I s’pose you’ll be saying next
that you weren’t shooting pool with me last night?”
Savage’s lids drooped even lower. His hands were clenched so tightly
that the knuckles showed white against the brown skin. He had not
stirred, but to Locke he suddenly gave the impression of tremendous
dynamic force, quiescent, but likely at any moment to leap forth in
strenuous action.
“Because I played pool with you,” the Westerner returned, in that
same cold, deliberately restrained tone, “it hardly follows that I am
responsible for the disappearance of your valuables. I happen to own a
very good watch already, and really have no use for two.”
“I didn’t suppose you’d wear it!” retorted Ogan hotly. “Such things are
easy enough to dispose of, as you probably――”
“Al,” interrupted Lefty indignantly, “cut it out! Can’t you understand
that but for Savage we’d both of us, probably, be at the bottom of the
river? He’s the one who pulled us out.”
The infielder’s jaw sagged, and for a time he stared at his friend, a
crimson tide surging into his face. His gaze shifted to the busher. His
lips quivered a little and parted, as if he meant to speak, but closed
again as he turned his back and moved uncertainly toward the near-by
roadway.
“You mustn’t mind, Savage,” Locke said, in a low tone. “He’s been
worrying a lot about losing a watch his father gave him, and he really
isn’t himself at all. Suppose we go on back to the hotel? I’m beginning
to feel as if some dry clothes would be acceptable.”
The other pitcher nodded, and they started after Ogan. At first there
was a rather awkward pause, but, overtaking the infielder, his very
silence seemed to throw the other two together, and before they knew it
they were conversing on various topics relating to the training camp
and the forthcoming baseball season.
Lefty was talking with a purpose. An idea had come into his mind――a
strange, fantastic, almost uncanny idea, which, if he could find any
reason for it, would explain a good many of Nelson Savage’s apparently
inexplicable traits. By the time they reached the hotel he had accepted
his solution of the problem, weird as it might seem. Ogan hurried
on ahead of them, apparently eager to escape from an embarrassing
situation. He was passing the desk when Major Holcombe, the proprietor,
halted him.
“Mistah Ogan,” said the major, in his slow, courtly, Southern manner,
“one moment if yo’ please, suh.” He came forward from behind the desk,
one hand extended. “I think this is yoah property. It seems to be
marked with yoah initials. I regret most sincerely the unfawtunate
situation, suh, but I have discov’ed a man in my employ――the boy
Charlie, who has taken cha’ge of the billiard room――guilty of theft,
suh, and this was found on his pusson.”
For a long moment Ogan stared at the watch which had been laid in his
mechanically outstretched hand. Then he raised his eyes to Savage’s. In
them there was contrition, embarrassment, and regret. It was not easy
to speak. He moistened his lips, and at last the words came haltingly:
“I beg your pardon, Savage. I seem to have made a big――mistake. I hope
you’ll forgive me.”
There was no hesitation in the busher’s acknowledgment of the apology.
He took the other’s outstretched hand promptly.
“Don’t worry about that, Al,” he said quickly. “We’re all of us likely
to go wrong now and then. Forget it!”
Mumbling something indistinguishable, Ogan hurried toward the stairs,
and disappeared, leaving the other two to follow more slowly. In the
second-floor corridor Lefty paused an instant beside Savage’s door.
“Well, I’ll go on and get into something dry,” he said. “See you later,
old chap.”
Savage nodded and entered his room. The southpaw continued on down the
hall alone. While dressing Lefty turned over and over in his mind the
curious idea that had come to him. It was almost absurd, yet what other
explanation could make apparent impossibilities dovetail so accurately?
Starting downstairs, he found that it was almost noon, and was not
surprised to encounter Jack Kennedy in the lobby below.
“Well,” queried the manager briefly, “did you find the man you went
after?”
Hesitating, Locke glanced swiftly around. The players were appearing by
twos and threes at the main entrance. He drew Kennedy across the room,
pausing beside the door of the stuffy little writing room.
“We did,” he returned quietly. “And, Jack, I want you to do something
for me.”
The manager stared, then frowned. “Look here, Lefty,” he exploded,
“don’t tell me you want a favor for that sneak!”
“But I do. Wait! Just let me tell you what he’s done for me.”
Briefly, but with vivid clearness, he told what had transpired on the
river that morning. Kennedy remained unmoved.
“Very nice!” he conceded. “But where do I come off――holding on to a
creature who gets skated every time he can beg, borrow, or steal drink?
I’m not running the Blue Stockings for my health, you know. I’ve got
to show results. I’ve got to make every man count, and how am I going
to do that if I keep no-goods like this Savage? Why, son, he isn’t
worth his board. Not only has he tippled ever since he struck camp, and
sassed me till I’m ready to mash his homely mug in, but he’s got the
kind of disposition that would set a whole team scrapping――and you know
what that means.”
Locke reached forward impulsively and laid a restraining hand on
Kennedy’s arm. “Listen to me, Jack,” he said quickly. “I want to ask
you something. Did you ever read a book called ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde’?”
The manager’s eyebrows went up, and he sniffed. “About that fool who
took powders and changed himself into a bum?” he inquired.
“Well, that’s the way the story has it, but Stevenson didn’t mean it
quite so literally. What he had in mind was a case of dual personality.
You know that every one of us has good impulses and bad. In some people
these impulses are strengthened to personalities which are constantly
at war. Sometimes the good nature is uppermost, sometimes the bad. It’s
a constant fight for control of the body, and the one that is strongest
ultimately wins out.”
His eyes were very bright; his whole face indicated his earnestness.
“That’s Savage’s case,” he went on emphatically. “I’m positive of it.
I’ve told you what sort he was when I first met him that day on the
train. When I ran into him at Belle View, he was utterly different; he
was human and civilized. He’d lost that beastly look about the eyes;
the better nature was uppermost. Down here he had changed again; the
other self held control, and you know what that was. It got my goat.
I didn’t know what to make of it. But to-day when I found him changed
again I remembered the story. I remembered a play I saw last winter
which had that very subject for its plot, and which was founded on
fact. There have been such cases――a number of them――and I’ll bet you
any money, Jack, that Savage’s is one of them.”
In spite of the talk and laughter of a group over by the desk, that
corner of the room seemed very still. Kennedy, incredulous and
skeptical, leaned against the back of a worn leather chair.
“And you believe all that?” he asked at length.
“I certainly do,” was the emphatic response.
“Where do I come off if I keep this man? What’s there in it from a
business point of view?”
“A good deal, I think,” Locke rejoined. “You’ve complained that Savage
has never made good on the diamond. Well, you’ve only had a chance to
judge from the poorer side of him. How do you know what he’ll do in his
present condition? It’s like trying out a totally different man. He may
develop into a pippin.”
“And then do this lightning-change business just when I need him most?”
the manager growled pessimistically. “Hanged if I want to monkey with
a chameleon like that, son. I’ve got too many troubles running a crowd
of normal, ordinary ball players to bother with freaks who change
themselves every little while.”
“But won’t you give him a chance, Jack?” pleaded Lefty. “If you won’t
do it for him, or for the good it may bring to the organization, do it
for me. I haven’t asked you for many favors, have I?”
There was another pause. Then Kennedy’s homely face expanded in that
rare smile which transformed it utterly. “Have it your own way, Kid,”
he muttered. “You mostly do when you really set out to get something.
We’ll give this changeling of yours another try-out, only remember
this: If he falls down you won’t have a leg left to stand on. There
goes the gong.”
He turned toward the dining room, and Lefty followed him. Even before
they had crossed the lobby there came the scraping of a chair in the
little space misnamed the writing room, and Nelson Savage moved slowly
into the doorway. His face was set, and rather pale. The pupils of his
eyes were dilated, and his expression was a curious mixture of pain,
gratitude, and infinite regret.
CHAPTER XXVI
METAMORPHOSIS
For a minute or two Savage stood staring across the lobby after Locke
and the manager. Then, as they disappeared into the dining room, he
drew a long breath and raised one hand to his forehead with a puzzled,
undecided gesture.
“_Jekyll and Hyde!_” he muttered in an odd voice as he turned back to
the writing room. Beside the spotted, baize-covered table he paused
again, looking down with thoughtful, unseeing eyes at the unfinished
letter lying there.
“So that’s it,” he murmured under his breath. “I wonder?”
He frowned, and began tapping lightly on the table with one finger. His
lids drooped, and his whole face was eloquent of troubled indecision.
It was several minutes before he roused himself with a determined shake
of the shoulders, and sat down.
“What a splendid friend that chap would make!” he said in a low tone,
his somber face brightening momentarily. “He’d stick to a fellow
through thick and thin, once he believed in him. I wish―― Oh, thunder!
What’s the odds, anyhow!”
He drew the letter to him, and picked up a pen. Five minutes later he
had sealed the envelope and dropped it into a side pocket; and when he
presently entered the dining room no one could have guessed from his
expression that he had so lately been stirred to the very depths of his
being.
As he hesitated just inside the doorway, glancing from right to left,
Locke, who had been watching for his appearance, hailed him from a
near-by table.
“Better sit down here, Savage,” he said pleasantly. “There’s an extra
place or two.”
He had maneuvered so that one of those vacant chairs should be next
his own, for his theories as to the busher’s eccentricities had made
him anxious to see as much as possible of the fellow, and study him
at close range. Several of the other players looked surprised at this
unwonted cordiality toward a man few of them had any use for. Larry
Dalton’s eyebrows went up comically as he glanced inquiringly toward
his friend, but he made no audible comment. He rather suspected some
elaborate joke, but, like the others, was content to wait until he got
his bearings before joining in.
Savage showed neither hesitation nor embarrassment. He took possession
of the chair beside the southpaw as if it were the most natural thing
in the world, gave his order to the waiter, and settled back, his
smiling eyes, so different in expression from the eyes his comrades had
known, ranging composedly from one to another of the surprised faces.
Before the meal was over Lefty had observed enough to strengthen
his belief in the accuracy of that odd supposition concerning dual
personality. The Westerner’s two natures were opposite as the poles.
The snappy, grouchy, quarrelsome Savage who had become so unpopular
with his companions and such a thorn in the manager’s side, had nothing
in common with the pleasant, well-mannered, somewhat retiring chap
sitting at Locke’s right. And Lefty was not the only one to notice the
change. He could read in the faces of the others, and in the way they
cast furtive glances at the busher, that they were equally astonished,
and quite unable to know what to make of it all.
“What’s the game, old man?” Dalton whispered, as they walked out into
the lobby afterward. “What in thunder have you done to him? You must
have done something. The mucker’s almost human!”
Lefty shook his head. “You’ve got me,” he returned briefly. “I haven’t
done a thing. He’s been this way ever since he pulled Al and me out of
the river this morning. Maybe he’s decided to turn over a new leaf.”
“Huh!” grunted the infielder skeptically. “It’s more likely he’s
putting up a game.”
Locke made no comment on the suggestion. His eyes were fixed upon
Savage, who stood a short distance away, talking with two or three
players. His mind was busy with a new detail of the extremely
interesting problem the man presented.
Was the fellow aware in his present state of what had been said and
done by his other self? During dinner he had not talked a great deal,
preferring apparently the rôle of listener. He had answered questions
freely, however, and now and then volunteered a comment. To the
ordinary observer there had been nothing at all out of the way in his
manner, or in those brief remarks, but Lefty recalled now a certain
keen attentiveness to what was being said which reminded him oddly
of a deaf man feeling his way. There had also been one or two little
inconsistencies of speech that seemed significant.
Still watching and thinking, Locke presently saw Pete Zacher stroll up
and join the group. A moment or two later the recruit’s harsh voice was
raised in a note of surprise:
“Say, Nels, what in time have you done with your ring?”
Savage stared at him for a flash, then glanced swiftly down at his left
hand.
“That’s so,” he said. “Much obliged for reminding me. Reckon I must
have left it in my room when I was washing up.”
“In your room?” repeated Zacher. “I thought you said you never took it
off.”
The Westerner hesitated for a second, then shrugged his shoulders
lightly. “Did I say that?” he queried carelessly. “You mustn’t take
everything so literally. Very likely I didn’t want to take it off at
that particular time.”
Zacher’s lips curled. “I don’t know what you meant; I only know what
you said.” He laughed disagreeably. “I s’pose there’s hockshops, even
in this little one-horse burg, eh?”
The recruit’s expression scarcely changed, but to Lefty’s observing
eyes his smile had taken on a chilling quality.
“Very likely,” he retorted quietly, turning on his heel. “You ought to
know, if any one does. Going out to the park, Lefty?”
The southpaw nodded, and together they moved toward the door. In a
breath Savage had committed two palpable inconsistencies. He had flatly
contradicted a former utterance about the ring, while his manner showed
undisguised dislike for a man with whom he had previously been on
better terms than with any one in the squad. It was scarcely possible
that he would have done this with a full consciousness of that other
personality.
Lefty had read of one or two such instances, but to come face
to face with such a condition was vastly different. It seemed
incredible――uncanny. He tried to picture the mental turmoil of a man
awakening suddenly to an existence which had been snipped off as
abruptly, perhaps, months before. The fellow must, by this time, have
some notion of the state of affairs. He must realize that something
almost like another soul inhabited his body at intervals. But to have
absolutely no knowledge of what that other soul had been making his
body do or say would be intolerable.
The busher’s performance on the field that afternoon won a grudging
nod or two of approval from doubting Jack Kennedy. There was nothing
especially brilliant about his form, but Savage unquestionably showed
an anxiety to do his best which had hitherto been conspicuously lacking.
“He might make a pitcher if he kept that up,” admitted the manager to
Lefty. “Of course he won’t, though. About the time I begin thinking I
can use him, he’ll get hitting it up again, or have one o’ them fits
you tell about.”
Though Locke waved away the possibility with some assurance, he was
secretly troubled by that very fear. With no data to guide him, he had
not the least notion of how often these lapses occurred or what brought
them about. The previous period had lasted over two weeks, at least;
but, for all he knew, the present one might terminate at any moment. He
cudgeled his brains to think of anything he could do to ward off such a
catastrophe, but there seemed to be nothing save an effort to keep the
busher’s mind occupied and prevent him from brooding over his condition.
With this idea in mind, Lefty deliberately started in to make things as
agreeable as he could for Savage, and before very long he discovered
the task to be far from irksome. As in that brief railroad trip they
had taken together in the North, he found the Westerner very winning
and likable; and Savage left no doubt of that liking being returned.
The end of the second day found them good friends indeed, and,
curiously enough, none of Lefty’s older cronies――Stillman, Dalton,
Ogan, and the rest――showed any signs of disapproval at the intimacy.
Said Laughing Larry: “When a guy who’s been as rotten as he has can
turn himself into a first-rate, decent chap, it would be a crime not to
encourage him.”
Truly the metamorphosis had been complete. But would it last? That was
the question which troubled the southpaw, and was scarcely ever absent
from his mind. He had a feeling that the hateful transformation might
come at any moment, and without the slightest warning. He could never
be really sure in parting from Savage, even for an hour, that their
next meeting would not find the busher’s evil self again in control.
CHAPTER XXVII
ENTER: A GIRL
“Going to do anything special to-night, Lefty?” asked Savage, as Locke
hastily averted the searching glance of inquiry which he had come
intuitively to cast on the Westerner almost every time they met.
“Not a thing,” returned the southpaw promptly. “Got something on your
mind?”
The busher hesitated an instant, oddly embarrassed; and for the first
time that evening Lefty noticed that his companion was dressed with
unusual care.
“I wonder if you’d mind――making a call with me?” Savage faltered.
“Would it bore you?”
“I’ll be glad to go,” said Lefty readily. “Want to start right away?”
The Westerner nodded and turned toward the door. Pausing a moment at
the desk to mail a letter he had just written, Locke joined him, and
they left the hotel together. For a space they walked along in silence
under the thick, spreading branches which met and intertwined above the
roadway. Then Savage turned suddenly toward his companion.
“There’s a――friend of mine stopping here with her aunt,” he said,
with an effort at casualness which was not at all deceptive. “She’s
heard a lot about you, and she asked me to bring you around some
evening.” He hesitated perceptibly; in the bright light from one of
the moving-picture theaters his face seemed rather flushed. “You’ve
done a lot for me, old man, and been a mighty good friend,” he went on
impulsively. “I’d like to have you meet her.”
A thrill of keen interest, mingled with relief, surged over Lefty. In a
flash he realized that the Westerner’s manner could mean but one thing:
There was a woman in the case. A woman, provided the busher had a deep
enough interest in her, was likely to prove a strong influence for good
in his present condition. Moreover, her presence in Tulane explained
the recruit’s absence from the hotel on the previous evening――a
circumstance which had worried Locke not a little.
“I’d be glad to meet her, Nels,” he said simply, “and I certainly
appreciate your compliment in wanting me to. That’s all rot, though,
about my having done anything for you. If there’s any indebtedness
between us, it’s on my side.”
It was so dark under the trees that neither man could see the other’s
face. Lefty was conscious, however, of his friend turning swiftly
toward him with a quick-drawn breath.
“Do you think I don’t know?” the busher asked almost sharply. “I’m not
much of a talker, but some day I may have a chance to do something;
and, believe me――”
His teeth came together with a click, cutting off the words abruptly,
and leaving the southpaw devoured with curiosity. Just what did Savage
mean? Was he referring merely to Locke’s marked friendliness, or had he
something more vital in mind? Did he really know much of the behavior
of his other self, or was it merely guesswork?
Had there been time Lefty would have managed to frame some sort of an
indirect question, but just as he was thinking out a way of pursuing
the subject, his companion pushed through a gate and led the way up
a brick walk to the wide portico and spreading façade of a typical
Southern house.
The door was opened by a negro butler, who took their hats and ushered
them into a room at the right of the wide hall. It was an attractive
apartment furnished with admirable taste in old mahogany and rosewood,
but the southpaw had no time to observe details. A fire flickered
on the hearth, and, standing before it, her back to the door, was a
slender girl, a glimpse of whom made Lefty’s heart bound and sent the
color flaming to his very temples.
“Janet!” he gasped, in a low, dazed tone. “Why――”
He broke off abruptly with a stifled gasp of disappointment as the girl
turned, revealing the charming, piquant face and smiling gray eyes of a
stranger.
“I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Locke,” she said, with an attractive
Southern accent, as Savage presented his friend. “My aunt, Mrs.
Randolph.”
Lefty stammered out his acknowledgments rather haltingly. When the
white-haired, Dresden-china old lady had resumed her chair by the
center table, his gaze returned to Miss Celia Berkeley.
“Didn’t I hear you say something as you came in, Mr. Locke?” she asked
demurely, but with laughter lurking in her eyes. “It sounded like――a
name. I might almost venture to say a girl’s name.”
Lefty smiled. “It was,” he acknowledged. “As you stood before the fire
you looked so like a girl I know up North that it gave me quite a
shock.”
Even now, with the lamplight full on her face, he could still see that
odd, tantalizing resemblance to the girl who meant more to him than
any one else in the world. Her height was nearly the same as Janet
Harting’s, and it seemed that they had been cast in the same dainty
mold. The way she carried her head was like Janet’s manner, too, and
while her hair was a shade darker than the Northern girl’s, it curled
and waved above her perfect ears and at her temples in that fascinating
manner with which the southpaw was so familiar.
“Really?” exclaimed Miss Berkeley interestedly. “Do you mean to say I
have a double somewhere?”
“Hardly that. It’s more a superficial resemblance of height and hair
and that sort of thing than any real likeness.”
The girl dimpled, and her eyes gleamed mischievously. “That means she’s
heaps more attractive, doesn’t it?”
Lefty flushed a little. “I didn’t say so,” he protested.
“You didn’t have to,” she countered. “I have a trick of reading
people’s minds, sometimes, and I’m quite sure she’s lovely. You must
tell me all about her.”
The southpaw did not need much urging. He had not laid eyes on Janet
in over a month, and he hungered for a sight of her. There had been no
letter, even, for the better part of a week. He had written lengthily
that very night, asking if there was anything the matter, and he
wished now that he had wired. Naturally, he painted a glowing picture
of Miss Harting’s charms, which would have made that young person
blush, and which caused the girl sitting opposite him to give a long
sigh, the dimple still dancing in her cheek.
“If I even make you think of such an attractive creature, I am
desperately flattered,” she said. “I have a feeling that I’d like this
Janet of yours immensely, so you must bring us together when I go North
this summer. You’ll promise, won’t you?”
Of course Lefty did. He meant to keep that promise, too, for he felt
that she and Janet would get along famously together. Miss Berkeley
seemed quite as fond of baseball as Janet, though Locke discovered,
when the conversation presently turned on that subject, that she lacked
a good deal of Janet’s technical knowledge of the game; and they were
both attached to baseball players. If that didn’t make them friends,
the southpaw decided, nothing would.
The evening was quite the pleasantest Lefty had passed since training
season began. The three young people chatted on all sorts of subjects
while Mrs. Randolph, though mainly occupied with her knitting,
added a remark now and then which showed that she was following the
conversation. There was nothing in the least stiff or formal about the
call; on the contrary, it passed off with an atmosphere of friendliness
which made Locke feel as if he had known the ladies for a long time.
When the two ball players left, shortly before ten, it was with the
promise to return for dinner the following evening.
They were halfway back to the hotel before a sudden qualm made Lefty
break off abruptly in the midst of a most enthusiastic tribute to Miss
Berkeley’s qualities.
“By George, Nels!” he exclaimed. “I hadn’t any business to accept that
invitation to dinner.”
“Why not? Got a date?”
“N-o, but I’ll be butting in and spoiling another evening for you. She
seemed really to want me to come, and it never occurred to me until
this minute that it was probably her Southern hospitality that made her
do it.”
Savage laughed softly. “Don’t you go worrying about that. She asked
you, didn’t she? Well, that’s enough. She wouldn’t have done it unless
she wanted you. I can’t imagine why, of course,”――his voice held a tone
of mischievous teasing,――“but I know Celia. If your attention wasn’t
already occupied elsewhere, I’d probably be steering you off. As it is,
I’m mighty glad you get on so well together.”
There was no mistaking his earnestness, and, though still entertaining
some slight misgivings, Locke let the matter drop.
Returning from the field next afternoon, he was buttonholed by Kennedy,
who kept him talking for nearly an hour. This still left him plenty of
time to dress, but he lost track of Savage. On descending finally to
the lobby, he found at the desk a note from the other man saying that
Miss Berkeley had asked him to come around early, while Locke was to
follow as soon as he was ready.
“Glad they’ll have a few minutes alone, anyhow,” the southpaw said to
himself as he walked briskly down Main Street. “I’ll be hanged if I can
understand why she wants to drag in a third party. I’m sure I wouldn’t.”
As he walked he fell to wondering――not for the first time that
day――whether Celia Berkeley was aware of Savage’s peculiar mental
shifts. It seemed scarcely possible, considering her light-hearted
gayety, and yet it would be a thing most difficult of concealment in
such an intimate friendship. Perhaps she did know, and was bravely
concealing the fact in an effort to keep the man she cared for from
slipping back to that other hateful self. The possibility made Lefty
long more than ever to help in the affair. He was wondering whether he
might dare to broach the subject some day to Miss Berkeley alone, when
he reached the gate of the Randolph place, and, glancing up, saw the
slender girl coming toward him.
She was dressed in some white, clinging stuff which made her seem
slenderer than ever. She wore a wide, drooping garden hat which partly
concealed her face. In the shadowy half light her amazing likeness to
Janet struck on Lefty’s senses with a fresh thrill. “If only it could
be Janet!” he thought, as the gate clicked behind him.
“Good evening, Miss Berkeley,” he said, in a voice which he kept steady
only by an effort. “I hope I’m not too early.”
With a swift, indescribable motion, the girl flung back her head, and
stretched out both hands impulsively in a manner which sent the blood
drumming in Locke’s temples, and made him leap forward with a stifled
cry of astonishment and joy.
She was not Celia Berkeley, but Janet Harting!
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BETTER MAN DOMINANT
“And so you really think Janet and I will like each other?” inquired
Miss Berkeley, her eyes sparkling mischievously above the bowl of
flowers in the center of the candle-lit table.
The southpaw’s answering laugh was clear and mirthful, without even a
suspicion of pique. With Janet sitting beside him there was no room in
his mind for anything but pure, unadulterated delight.
“Oh, I’m the only original goat, all right,” he admitted cheerfully.
“You two certainly played the game to the queen’s taste.” He glanced
sidewise at Janet. “I’ve never even heard you mention Miss Berkeley’s
name, to say nothing about being friends.”
The girl dimpled charmingly. “I didn’t. I only met her the last time I
was staying in New York. We got on famously, though, and when she asked
me to visit her we both thought it would be great fun to surprise you.”
“You sure did it!” Lefty chuckled. “You’d make a clever actress, Miss
Berkeley. I did wonder a bit why, with one pitcher already attached,
you’d want another butting in.”
“In other words, you thought me a dreadful flirt,” said the girl.
“Well, now it’s all over, I warn you to make the best use of your time.
Janet and I are here for only three days.”
Locke’s face fell. “Three days! Why, I thought you’d surely be here
until we break up.”
“There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t, Celia,” put in Mrs.
Randolph from her end of the table. “You know I should love to have you
and Miss Harting stay as long as you please.”
Miss Berkeley shook her shapely head. “I’m sure you would, Aunt Julia,
but it’s quite impossible. I’ve simply got to get back to look after
dad and the boys. It was all I could do to persuade them to let me off
for this one week. Of course,” she added, with a glance at the man
opposite her, “it isn’t as if we were going a thousand miles from here.
Savannah’s not more than eighty, is it? I know we make it in about four
hours.”
“Hum!” murmured Lefty. “I suppose a fellow might get off for a Sunday
if we worked Jack right.” He looked at Savage. “Reckon we’ll have to
make the most of these three days, old man, but they’re going to seem
awfully short.”
It was long after ten when the two men departed, but both commented on
the brevity of their stay. In the morning, too, it required something
of an effort for Lefty to concentrate his mind on the work of training.
But he was not the sort to waste time in vain regrets.
Savage worked hard, and made such a good showing that about the
middle of the morning Kennedy took him in hand and began coaching him
personally. Lefty had noticed the manager hovering about the Westerner,
watching him in a surreptitious sort of way, and he was not surprised
when old Jack suddenly abandoned his skeptical attitude.
For the remainder of the morning and all afternoon the lanky baseball
veteran kept at it, hammer and tongs, criticizing almost everything
Savage did, and only varying the monotony by an occasional rare grunt
of approval. It seemed as if he were doing his best to discourage the
man or drive him to an outburst of anger, and Locke watched his friend
with some anxiety as to the outcome. Knowing the old manager better,
probably, than any one else in the squad, he realized that this seeming
onslaught was in the nature of a compliment. Kennedy never wasted
time on the hopelessly incompetent. If a recruit showed little or no
promise he mentally checked him off as deadwood, and got rid of him at
the earliest possible moment. He would never have kept Savage as long
as this but for the necessity of having some one to relieve his old
twirlers in pitching to the other players, and latterly on account of
Lefty’s warm personal interest in the man. It was evident now that he
had altered his opinion, and if the Westerner could only realize this
and continue his good work under the grilling fire of criticism, he
stood a chance to make good.
His performance surpassed even Locke’s hopes. Not once did he lose his
head or his temper, though several times it seemed as if the latter
was badly strained. Without comment he followed Kennedy’s directions,
pitching the same ball over and over again until he had succeeded in
pleasing his critic. There was no trace of sullenness or boredom in
his manner. He seemed to be giving the best that was in him, honestly
striving to improve his form. He made no objection when the spitball
was suggested, and his ability at that erratic sort of delivery was so
marked as to surprise the manager into a burst of approval.
“You get a good break on that spitter,” he said. “That’s the sort of
stuff I’ve been trying to get out of you for two weeks.”
To Locke, on their way back from the park, he was even more
enthusiastic:
“The boy’s got the makings of a twirler in him. You saw his spitball?
Reminded you of Ed Walsh, didn’t it? He’ll improve before we start
North, and if he only don’t go an’ slump――”
“I don’t know why he should,” Lefty said reassuringly. “He’s got every
possible inducement for keeping up the pace.”
He had a feeling that it was not a matter of volition with Savage. But,
knowing Kennedy’s skepticism regarding the matter of dual personality,
he refrained from voicing it.
“Well, I hope he does,” old Jack said briefly. “Young Temple’s doing
fair, but that’s about all.” He chewed on his cigar for a moment, then
went on meditatively: “I’ve half a notion to put Savage in the box when
we play that Atlanta team next week. They’re a tough bunch, from what
I hear, and if he could make a showing against ’em, I’d begin to think
I’d found a pitcher.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
With proverbial Southern hospitality, Mrs. Randolph insisted that the
two ball players dine at her house on each of the three evenings before
the departure of her niece and Miss Harting for Savannah. On the last
of these evenings they were asked to come early enough for afternoon
tea, which was served on a flagged terrace overlooking an attractive,
old-fashioned garden laid out on the slope leading down to the river.
It was a charming spot.
When the teacups were emptied and Mrs. Randolph had retired for her
customary rest before dinner, Celia Berkeley lost no time in suggesting
that Janet take the southpaw for a little stroll.
“I know he’s curious to see what a real Southern garden looks like,”
she remarked, her gray eyes dancing. “Nelson doesn’t care much for
flowers, so we’ll wait for you here.”
Lefty embraced the suggestion with enthusiasm, and without further
delay they passed through the belt of shrubbery to one of the winding,
box-bordered paths; a wilderness of flowers on either hand, before
them the glinting river with a distant line of blue hills, beyond which
the sun was dropping.
It was the first time they had been really alone, and there were
quantities of things to say, none of which would have been of the
slightest interest to a third person. Besides, back in Lefty’s mind was
a half-formed notion of confiding to Janet his perplexities regarding
Nelson Savage――perplexities which had been increased not a little that
day by a change he had noticed in the busher’s manner.
It was nothing he would have paid much attention to under ordinary
conditions. Savage had been noticeably thoughtful and preoccupied ever
since breakfast, as if there were something on his mind. But nowadays
the southpaw was fearful of the slightest alteration in his friend’s
demeanor, and he had a positive longing to talk the matter over with a
sympathetic, interested confidant.
At length they reached the end of the garden and paused, momentarily
silent, beside an ancient stile which gave access through a moss-grown
stone wall to the peach orchard and, beyond, the river. The sun had
dipped out of sight behind the hazy, purple hills, leaving the sky a
riot of orange and flaunting crimson. The sloping orchard before them
was a sea of delicate pink. At their feet, sheltered by the wall, and
creeping over it in places, a wild tangle of yellow jasmine sprawled
untrammeled, perfuming the air afar with its heavy fragrance. It seemed
to Lefty as if such a spot must necessarily beget confidences, and in a
moment his mind was made up.
“Nels Savage is a good sort,” he began tentatively.
“Isn’t he!” agreed Janet. “I liked him the minute I saw him.”
“It’s certainly lucky, then, that you didn’t see him a week ago,” Locke
said emphatically. “He wasn’t the same man at all.”
Janet bent suddenly and plucked a sprig of jasmine. Usually devoted
to flowers, she seemed bent now on stripping the stem clean of its
starlike yellow blossoms.
“Not the same?” she repeated slowly, her eyes bent on the unconscious
work of destruction. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. You wouldn’t have known him. He was grouchy and
ill-tempered. The whole crowd hated him like poison. I couldn’t stand
him myself, and you know how thick we are now. When I think of what an
unmitigated ruffian he was――”
“But, Phil!” The girl’s head came up suddenly; her eyes were
wide――protesting. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t―― He had to――”
She broke off with a quick little gasp of dismay, and clapped one
hand to her lips. For a second she stood silent, the color creeping
into her face, her startled gaze fixed intently on Lefty’s narrowed,
questioning eyes.
“Well?” queried the southpaw at length. “What did he have to do? Aren’t
you going to finish?”
Janet dropped her hand and glanced down through the long vista of
straight, slender trunks with their crowns of blossoms.
“I don’t know that there is anything more to say,” she answered slowly.
“I suppose I was thinking how impossible it was for a man like Mr.
Savage to――act as you say he did, unless――unless――he was obliged to.
Don’t you think we’d better start back? It must be almost time for
dinner.”
Lefty ignored the last remark. His face was serious――almost stern.
His eyes were fixed intently on Janet’s profile. The perfume from the
jasmine seemed suddenly to have become almost sickening in its cloying
sweetness.
“Unless he was obliged to!” he repeated in an odd tone. “Can you
suggest, Janet, any possible reason which would necessitate a fellow
like Savage turning himself voluntarily into a beast?”
“But I know so little of him,” she protested. “How can I tell――how can
any one tell――what motives govern some one who is almost a stranger?
Don’t be absurd, Phil, and make a mountain out of a molehill. Mr.
Savage is nothing to me except that he’s practically engaged to Celia,
and I like him.”
Lefty did not speak for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and turned toward the house.
“It _is_ getting rather late,” he said quietly. “Perhaps, as you say,
we’d better go in.”
His voice was colder than he realized. It was merely the man’s instinct
to hide from a woman the fact that she had hurt him. That Janet knew
something was perfectly evident. What it could be he had not the
slightest idea, save that it had to do with the problem he had been
trying his best to solve. He had no wish to force her confidence, but
the fact that she was unwilling to give it freely stung him to the
quick.
The girl herself started slightly at his tone, and turned a little
pale. Then her chin went up in that old, familiar movement, and without
a word she fell into step beside him, walking back to the house in
silence.
The evening was not exactly a lively one. Lefty did his best to forget
the incident and behave as if nothing unpleasant had happened. He
honestly wanted to ignore it, but always at the back of his mind was
the consciousness that Janet was keeping something from him. It was
her own secret to keep or reveal as she chose; he admitted that. It
might amount to nothing in the end; though, knowing the girl as he did,
such a possibility was doubtful. But it had to do with another man,
and there is no suitor alive, though he may have absolute faith in the
woman he cares for, who can behold with equanimity that woman mixing up
in the intimate affairs of even his best friend, if it be to his own
exclusion.
Janet was, by turns, dull and superficially brilliant. At nine she
pleaded a bad headache and wished to retire, thus breaking up the party
prematurely. The girls were leaving at an hour which made it impossible
for Lefty or Savage to see them off, so the good-bys had to be said
that night. They left Locke enraged at himself, provoked at Janet,
and soured with the world generally. He had a feeling that he was a
brute who had spoiled what would otherwise have been three days to
look back upon with unalloyed pleasure. He even blamed Savage because
his interest in the busher had prompted him to ask that unfortunate
question; and on reaching the hotel he hunted up a paper and took
refuge behind its open sheets, mainly to avoid mingling with one of the
several groups scattered about the lobby.
He did not escape; one of the groups joined him. He had scarcely
settled down before Jack Stillman, Dalton, and Al Ogan invaded the
ancient leather-covered sofa. The irrepressible Larry gently removed
the newspaper and sat on it.
“What the deuce do you want with the world’s happenings?” he inquired
airily. “Within a month we’ll be making history ourselves. Listen,
till I tell you some real news. Did you know there was going to be
a genuine, old-fashioned horse race over at the county seat next
Saturday?”
“No; is there?” was the indifferent reply.
“There is. Wouldn’t you like to take it in?”
Lefty shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t say I’m pining away with any
such desire.”
Dalton sighed and cast up his eyes. “Gee! You’re about as lively
to-night as a wooden Indian. I thought you’d be all for it. Anybody
who’s got a passably good nag around here will enter, and they say
there’s an Englishman come on from the West with a couple of fast ones.
It ought to be more fun than a badger pull.”
Locke drew himself up in the corner of the sofa, and surveyed the
volatile infielder. “Have you figured out how you’re going to get off
to see this jamboree?” he inquired briefly.
“Well, you know what a store Jack sets by you, old man,” Dalton said
ingratiatingly. “We thought if you asked him――”
“Nothing doing!” put in Lefty decisively. “I’m not going to lay myself
out for a panning. By next Saturday the old man will probably have
games scheduled for every other day or so, and you’ve got just about
as much chance of getting off for the afternoon as a snowball has down
below. If you’re so keen about it, ask him yourself.”
All of which goes to show how completely a misunderstanding with a
girl could sour even as good-tempered a man as Lefty Locke. Later, in
his room, he realized that he had been rather short, and regretted it;
but by that time he had begun to consider Janet’s abruptly terminated
remark in detail and ponder over it.
She had intimated that Savage had been obliged to act the part of an
ill-mannered rowdy in the early part of the training season. Whether
she knew what she was talking about was, of course, a question; but if
it was true, Lefty’s hypothesis of dual personality was knocked into a
cocked hat. But how could it be true? How could any man deliberately
work the transformation which had occurred in Savage’s case? How
could any normal human being, of his own volition, be sane and decent
and likable one day; a coarse, evil-eyed rowdy the next? Above all,
supposing such a thing were possible, why should he do it?
CHAPTER XXX
THE ATLANTA TIGERS
The days which followed were so full that Lefty had little time in
which to trouble over the coolness of Janet. As the end of the training
season loomed in sight, Kennedy worked his squad harder and harder. The
mornings were devoted to all sorts of intricacies having to do with
“inside” baseball. Each afternoon saw a hotly contested game between
the Regulars and Yannigans, now lengthened to full nine innings. There
were long runs to and from the park, bathing, massaging; and the result
of it all was that the men slowly but surely shaped into the pink of
condition. Those who had been overweight found themselves getting back
to normal, while the few who needed it gained the coveted pounds under
this wholesome, healthy routine.
The men, one and all, ran faster, batted harder, and threw with more
confidence and accuracy. The members of the pitching staff had worked
out that first inevitable soreness, and were beginning to put on steam.
Best of all was the growing sense of efficiency――the delight in doing
without effort something which had, a short time before, been so
laborious.
There was one feature of this period which was not so pleasant to the
thoughtfully inclined. Scarcely a day passed that did not see the squad
diminished by one or more members. It is not so bad when a recruit
departs. He is young, and life lies before him; another chance will
come if he is worth his salt. But the case of an old-timer who has
failed to stay with fast company is rather tragic. He has outlived his
usefulness. It is the beginning of the end. He will go swiftly down the
ladder he, perhaps, climbed laboriously, to end in the oblivion of the
bushes whence he emerged so short a time before.
Happily, this season, there were no especially trying instances of this
sort. Herman Brosk, the veteran center fielder, realizing that the
inevitable had come, spared Kennedy the performance of a distasteful
duty by stepping down and out of his own accord. But he was known to
have saved his earnings with German thrift, and to be the possessor of
a profitable farm in the Middle West. Spider Grant’s case was harder,
but even he had hopes that a year of care and treatment would put him
in shape again. As for Jack Daly, the old third baseman, Kennedy simply
benched him, trusting to carry him through the season as a pinch hitter.
Of the new men, Ogan was retained at first, Tap Palsifer at third,
while Congreve showed such signs of developing into an exceptional
hitter that he was taken on. The fate of Red McLean, Tetlow, and Lane
still hung in the balance. The remaining recruits were all shipped to
minor leagues, where they would have a year in which to become better
fitted for fast company.
On the pitching staff, Temple and Nelson Savage were the only youngsters
retained. The former showed indications of becoming a fair, all-round
twirler of the sort who might never be spectacular, but could always be
depended on. As for Savage, his general work improved constantly; but it
was his cleverness with the spitball which attracted general attention
and admiration.
Lefty could detect no signs of threatened backsliding in the Westerner’s
manner. There was a slight restlessness to be noticed at times, and one
evening he disappeared from the hotel, returning very late. Aside from
these trifling instances he continued to be the same pleasant, likable
chap, friendly with all, but particularly devoted to the southpaw, and
intensely keen about his progress on the diamond.
The game with the Atlanta Tigers was looked forward to with interest by
every man in the squad. The first contest with an outside team always
is an event in training camp, but this particular crowd of Southern
professionals had a reputation for unusual ability, and a hot go was
predicted.
When they arrived at the hotel just in time for dinner on the day of
the game, their appearance seemed to proclaim them real ball players.
Bronzed of face, keen and alert of expression, snappy in movement, they
bore themselves with an air of quiet assurance which narrowly escaped
being cocky.
“Some bunch, that!” commented Dalton, a little later, as he and Lefty
stood watching the visitors indulging in gingery practice.
“They should be,” rejoined Locke. “I understand they’ve won every game
to date. We ought to take a fall out of them.”
“Hope so. I’d feel a lot more sure, though, if you were going to be in
the box instead of Nels. He’s been showing form lately, but you can’t
tell how he’d stand being hammered.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.” The southpaw’s tone was confident. “His
head’s screwed on all right. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll make an even
better showing against this crowd than he has in practice. He’s the
sort of a fellow who does his best when pushed to it. Well, there they
go. We take the field.”
As Savage walked out to the mound Locke could not help contrasting
his demeanor with what it had been on that day when the “vanishing
ball” had so startled and bewildered the portsider. He was juggling
his glove and smiling over some joke Dalton had made in passing, and
seemed utterly devoid of nervousness. He had been cool before, but that
was the sneering nonchalance of one who did not care, as different
from his manner now as day is different from night. Locke had a sudden
conviction that the game would produce no such semihypnotic tricks
as the busher had worked off before. Those had been part and parcel
of that other detestable personality. The Savage who stood there, a
smile lingering on his lips, but with eyes keenly sizing up the batter
taking his place at the pan, was incapable of such wretched artifices.
He would pitch straight ball, and win or lose on his ability as a
legitimate twirler.
Unless two teams have played against each other before, the first
inning of a game is likely to prove something of a lottery. Neither
pitcher has had a chance of getting a line on the opposing batters. A
few fortunate twirlers seem possessed of a sort of sixth sense, almost
like intuition, but this is generally no more than an unusually keen
observation, coupled with long experience in facing an infinite variety
of batters.
Savage had undergone no very lengthy experience. His first delivery
was a tentative teaser at which Olds, the big outfielder, failed to
nibble. His second was also wide; then something in the batter’s
attitude seemed to tell him that a high, close ball might be difficult
for him to meet.
It was a wrong guess. Olds rapped the horsehide with unexpected ease,
pushing a warm grounder into right field. He sought to draw a hasty
throw by romping over first and turning toward second, but Rufe Hyland
was wise, and winged a perfect heave to Lewis, who covered the hassock.
Big as he was, and apparently unwieldy, Olds proved astonishingly
fast. Taking a deceptively small lead off the sack, he went down,
nevertheless, like a flash on the first ball handed up to Moore, the
Tiger first baseman.
Evidently expecting such a move, the latter swung at the ball without
trying to hit it, his sole intention being to bother the catcher. Dirk
Nelson caught the ball in perfect throwing position, and got it off to
second with a sharp, short-arm throw.
But the runner covered ground so fast and made such a perfect
“fall-away” slide that it was impossible to tell whether he touched the
sack first or was tagged successfully. It seemed simultaneous, and he
was declared safe.
“Some start,” remarked Lefty, who sat on the bench with Pink Dillon.
“You wouldn’t think that big fellow could get over the ground like
that, would you?”
“No. I hope it don’t rattle Nels.”
His fears were short-lived, for Savage showed no trace of annoyance,
even. Toeing the slab, he carried the ball to his mouth, covered with
both hands. There was an upward and backward motion of his head, and
suddenly the captain of the Tigers shouted:
“Look out for the spitter, Irish!”
The admonition was to no purpose. The ball, whizzing from Savage’s
fingers, took a sharp shoot toward the ground as if actually dodging
the bat!
“Strik-ah!” announced the umpire.
Savage repeated the performance, but this time his shoot carried the
sphere a shade wide. At least, that was how it evidently appeared to
the umpire, an official belonging to the visiting team.
When Savage had handed up two more balls he found himself compelled to
put the horsehide over. Behind his hands he pretended to make ready to
throw the spitter again, but, instead of moistening the ball, he wiped
it as dry as possible on his glove, and delivered a straight smoker for
the inside corner.
Moore seemed almost to anticipate what was coming, for to all
appearances he thrust out his bat and held it so loosely in his fingers
that the ball almost knocked it from his hands. In this manner he
dropped a bunt in front of the plate, and was off toward first.
On the alert, Olds was away like a shot toward third. But Savage had
not been caught napping, for the moment the ball left his fingers he
was chasing it in. Snatching it up, he whirled to throw, realized
that it was too late to catch Olds, and, without a perceptible loss
of motion, spun on around, sending the sphere to first. It sped past
Moore’s shoulder, and Ogan had it with the runner ten feet away.
But the sacrifice had been successful. The Tigers had a man on third,
with only one out. Their chance to score seemed good.
CHAPTER XXXI
TWO RUNS BEHIND
“That’s the game!” cried McCormick, the visiting captain. “Get into it,
Rick. Here’s where we pull in a little old run or two. On your toes,
Irish.”
It was an excellent opportunity for a squeeze play, and as Allaire
hurried to the plate the infielders closed in, ready to go after the
ball the instant it was dumped into the diamond.
Savage, evidently believing that the squeeze would be attempted, handed
up a shoot, high and close. Allaire made a foul, and Olds was fully
halfway down the line before he could pull himself up and turn back to
the sack.
Returning to third, Olds edged off toward the plate, knees bent, every
muscle tense.
Savage flashed a glance at him, then got into position to pitch. He did
not start to deliver the ball, however, but, suddenly stepping toward
third, whipped it to Palsifer.
Three times Savage drove Olds back to the cushion, but when again he
pitched, the runner stretched his legs for the plate. Unfortunately
for him, Allaire simply popped a little fly into the pitcher’s hands,
and Savage, taking his time, threw it to third for a double.
The abrupt termination of the inning brought a grim smile to the lips
of Jack Kennedy, who, resting on one knee, with arms doubled under his
chest in a characteristic attitude, had been watching the progress
of the game. To him the result of the contest was of no importance
whatever. It was simply an opportunity to size up his players. Savage
had done nothing extraordinary, but he had kept his head and used it,
and that satisfied the manager for the present.
Buck Liddell, the slender, wiry, rather handsome pitcher for the
Tigers, bore himself in a confident manner, with just a trace of
self-consciousness. His wavy blond hair, worn rather long, had a way of
trailing down now and then over his forehead, to be tossed back by a
jerk of his head, or swept aside with a quick movement of his hand.
“Reckon he’s some bear with the Atlanta dames,” chuckled Joe Welsh, as
he stepped to the plate.
“Regular matinée idol,” agreed Kid Lewis, swinging a couple of bats.
Liddell nonchalantly sent a couple of sizzlers across to the first
baseman while the catcher was adjusting his mask and wind pad. They
fairly smoked, denoting that he had speed, at least. A moment later he
toed the slab, swung his arm in a wide sweep, balanced himself on one
foot for an instant, and shot over one which Welsh missed by inches.
The next had a hop on it and the batter fouled. Another foul followed
and the Big Leaguer recovered himself, a slight frown wrinkling his
forehead. When Liddell made ready to pitch again he went through the
movements which seemed to indicate great speed. But suddenly, following
those movements, he sent in a ball that seemed to drag and hang in the
air. Welsh, who a month later would have called it a cinch, was fooled
like any youngster, and struck too soon.
“You’re out!” said the umpire.
“What’s he got, Joe?” asked Lewis in passing.
“Mostly speed and a change of pace. Look out for that.”
Lewis made a bid for a hit off the second ball pitched to him. It was
a snappy grounder, hugging the sod, but the shortstop made a splendid
one-handed stop, whipping the ball to first for a put-out.
Rufe Hyland did better, dropping a fly over the infield, and romping
to first with ease. With the first ball pitched to Dalton, Rufe was
off down the base line. Thanks to a high throw on the part of the
backstop, he made the sack; and his teammates began to root for a run,
urging Dalton to smash out one of the two-baggers which had been his
speciality during the previous season.
But Laughing Larry had not regained his batting form of six months
before. The best he could do was to lift out a long fly which the
opposing left fielder secured without any great expenditure of effort;
and the Tigers romped in, pleased by the manner in which they had held
down the famous Blue Stockings.
The latter did not seem to be seriously disturbed at the way things
were going. There was a lot of josh and banter as they spread out on
the diamond. They remembered that they had been in training for little
more than two weeks, whereas their opponents, bushers though they were,
had been playing the game much longer. They knew that a few weeks hence
they would be able easily to beat a team twice as good as this one.
But when, in the second inning, through a series of fielding errors,
combined with a strong hitting streak on the part of the Tigers, the
latter managed to push two men across the rubber, the pride of the Blue
Stockings began to be touched.
“It’s up to us to wake up,” Dalton remarked, with his infectious grin.
“Reckon we’ve been taking things too easy. Oh, you’re all right, kid,”
he added, catching Savage’s eye. “You’ve got the goods. It’s the rest
of us dubs that have been loafing on hits and pegging wild. Suppose
we try a dash of pepper.” His gaze shifted around the circle, coming
to rest for an instant on the face of Jack Kennedy, who stood within
hearing distance. “I guess it won’t hurt anybody, to perk up a mite and
show this crowd that we’re not all down with the Charley horse.”
The manager nodded. “Get after their pitcher the moment he lets up,”
was his advice. “He won’t last nine innings. He’s putting every blamed
thing he’s got on the ball now, and it’s going to wear him out before
long.”
CHAPTER XXXII
THE BREAK
Whether or not old Jack was right in his prediction――it was probable
that he was, since he had few superiors in the subtle art of sizing
up a ball player――Buck Liddell certainly showed no immediate signs of
slumping. He kept up his extraordinary pace, varying speed, curves,
and slow balls in a manner which proved that he possessed exceptional
judgment. In the last half of the second only three men faced him; in
the third inning, but four. The Blue Stocking batters, piqued by his
steadiness, put forth their best efforts to hit him effectively, but in
vain.
Savage was equally successful in preventing further scoring on the part
of the visitors, though his methods were quite different. He made no
attempt, apparently, to try for Liddell’s strike-out record, preferring
to rely on the support of the men back of him. Each inning saw one
or more hits made off him, and the bases were populated most of the
time. He was chary of the spitball――that most trying delivery in a
pitcher’s repertoire. He used few curves――not nearly so many as his
companions knew him to command. It might have been noticed, however,
that he varied these with such skill that the effect, though seemingly
so infinitely inferior to Liddell’s performance, was practically on a
par with it. Always at the crucial moment he stiffened, putting forth
all the skill he possessed, using spitter or speed or curve, as the
occasion demanded.
In the first half of the fifth, with only one out, the Tigers had
men on first and second. It was evident that the batter would try to
sacrifice, and Locke rather expected Savage to keep the ball high and
close in an effort to prevent this. To his surprise the Westerner
lobbed over a low one which could not have suited a stickman better if
it had been made to order. As in the first inning, however, he followed
the pitch through, and was almost on the plate when the batter sent the
sphere rolling slowly along the third-base line. Pouncing on it with
amazing swiftness, Savage snapped it to third for a force-out. Without
an instant’s hesitation, Palsifer lined it down to second, beating the
runner from first by a foot, and retiring the side in a twinkling.
Kennedy, who stood a few feet away, wheeled toward Lefty. “There’s a
bit of headwork,” he said.
Tap, the infielder, loped in from his position, grinning widely over
the successful double play.
“Was that turn put up between you and Savage?” the manager asked him.
“Sure!” chuckled Palsifer. “He tipped me off to stick by the base next
time a bunt was expected. It worked, didn’t it?”
“It did!” The manager turned to Locke again. “He uses his head. He’s
been using it right along. You’ve seen how he’s been sparing himself
and depending on his support. That’s what fielders draw their salaries
for――to stop balls that are hit at ’em. This boy’s got the right idea.
He’s not wearing himself out like that fellow yonder.” He indicated
Liddell, strolling across the diamond. “He’s not giving away all he’s
got in the first couple of innings. He’s holding back a trick or two
for a pinch. That’s the sort of a man I like to handle, and the sort I
can make something of.”
Lefty had rarely heard the old manager express himself so warmly over a
recruit, and the southpaw was more than pleased by the fact that Savage
was making good. After his intervention in the Westerner’s behalf he
felt more or less responsible, and it was agreeable to realize that his
judgment had not been wrong.
During the last of the fifth Liddell showed signs of growing
unsteadiness, which increased when he was hit by the first two men up.
He managed to pull himself together in time to prevent an avalanche
of runs, but during the lapse the score was tied, and the entire Blue
Stocking contingent felt that it was only a question of another inning
or so before the final blow-up.
McCormick, of the Tigers, opened the sixth inning with a single, but
the lead he took off first was much less than it would have been
earlier in the game. Savage had shown dangerous speed and accuracy in
throwing to bases, and the visitors were becoming cautious.
Sam Vogt, the clever little Southern shortstop, was handy at laying
down bunts; but Savage kept the first two balls high and close and Vogt
found himself in a hole before he knew it.
“That’s the stuff, Nels!” cried Dalton. “You’ve got this chicken cold!”
Savage smiled. Suddenly his whole frame stiffened as if stricken by
some strange paralysis. Seconds passed, and still he stood quite
motionless, a perfect picture of arrested action, eyes set, the healthy
color draining from his face.
As he stared at him in astonishment Lefty felt a sudden premonitory
tightening of the throat, and his heart began to beat more rapidly.
Then Larry Dalton broke the spell.
“Come alive, old man,” he sang out amiably, “and take this victim into
camp.”
Savage shivered slightly. The next instant, with a little shake of his
shoulders, he sent the sphere straight over the center of the pan with
only moderate speed.
It was the sort of ball the rawest of recruits might have pitched, and
Vogt fell on it with violent delight, smashing out a hot two-bagger.
McCormick reached third, and might have scored but for the fast
fielding of Max Duoro.
“Well, what do you know about that?” muttered Kennedy, penthouse brows
coming together above his big nose.
Lefty made no answer. His eyes were riveted on his friend’s face. He
was conscious of a sickening sense of apprehension stealing over him.
Had it come? Could it be possible that the man out there was fated to
undergo that horrible transformation again, and at the very height of
his triumph?
CHAPTER XXXIII
SUSPENSE
McKnight, the second baseman, was up, and ready. A successful bunt or a
long sacrifice fly would give McCormick a chance to register.
Savage took the signal from Nelson, and nodded. His face was no longer
pale, but his jaws were hard, and his lips set in a straight line.
The sphere cut the air, passing high with a slight inswerve, and
McKnight’s attempt to bunt was a failure.
McCormick was sent diving back to third by Nelson, who whipped the ball
to Palsifer. The runner managed to reach the sack, but it was by a
desperately narrow margin.
The infielders had crept up into the diamond, and were balancing
on their toes. Lefty’s heart was pounding; his eyes never left the
pitcher’s face.
A second time Savage put the ball over high and close, with that
same inswerve. Though the batter again did his best to bunt, he only
succeeded in making a small foul.
“Got him, Nels――got him!” cried Laughing Larry. “He’s in a hole now.”
McKnight spread his legs, and, taking a fresh grip on the bat, waited
for a good one――waited too long. Savage started the ball high. The man
at bat evidently fancied it would pass above his shoulders. Too late he
saw it take a marvelous drop, shooting down across his chest.
“Three――you’re out!”
Lefty drew a breath of relief, and his tense muscles relaxed. Savage
was evidently still there with the goods. Perhaps that inexplicable
lapse had been only momentary. Perhaps the thing Locke dreaded had not
come, after all.
Wurts, the next man up, took his place at the pan, bat held loosely.
Once more Savage kept the ball high and close, and put it over with
speed. Like his predecessor, the Tiger backstop bunted a foul.
A wide one followed, which Wurts made no effort to reach. Then came
another of those amazing drops, and the batter found himself fooled
even as McKnight had been. He failed to strike when the ball cut across
his shoulders and breast. An outcurve followed, and was disdained. A
moment later, however, he whiffed fruitlessly at a spitter.
“Reckon he’s on an even keel again,” the southpaw murmured under his
breath. “Now, if he can only put the kibosh on this bird he’ll be all
right.”
Few professional pitchers are good batsmen, but there are exceptions,
and Liddell had proved himself one of them. His performance with the
stick earlier in the game had been admirable, and he advanced to the
plate now with determination written all over his slightly supercilious
face.
How he missed the first ball was evidently a puzzle to him. He swung at
it as if he felt quite certain of meeting it fairly and squarely, and
his failure brought a ludicrous look of surprise to his face.
Savage was not faltering now. He wasted no time, nor did he hurry
unduly. He put over a curve which fooled Liddell even more than the
first one.
“Great work, old man!” cried Dalton. “You can sure put it on that
little old pill to-day.”
For an instant the rival twirlers faced each other in silence.
Liddell’s air of superciliousness had vanished; he was biting his
lip as he gripped his stick. Savage still wore that expression of
grim determination, but his lids were drooping slightly, and for a
second Locke was unpleasantly reminded of the fellow’s manner two
weeks before, when he had tried the vanishing ball. He thrust the
recollection from his mind as the recruit pitched.
Liddell’s judgment told him that the ball would cut a corner when it
broke. He was not mistaken in thinking it would be good, but instead of
crossing the outside corner, it took such a sharp shoot that it barely
clipped the inside of the rubber.
“Out!” announced the umpire.
Hurling his bat to the ground, the handsome pitcher strode out to the
mound in a very unbecoming state of temper.
Lefty moved a little farther over to intercept Savage, who came slowly
in, head bent over the glove he was apparently examining.
“You pulled out of that hole fine, old man,” Locke said, as soon as the
other was within earshot.
Savage raised his head for an instant, showing a face which was still
rather serious. His eyes were perfectly normal, however, and Locke
decided that he must still be troubled over that momentary slump.
“Had to,” returned the Westerner briefly. “No business to get into it.”
Locke smiled. “What was the matter?”
The recruit’s eyes dropped again to the glove, which Lefty saw to be
ripped along one side.
“Oh, nothing special,” he answered vaguely. “Just carelessness, I
reckon.”
“We all do it now and then,” consoled the portsider. “What’s up now?”
he asked, as Savage passed the bench and headed for one end of the
grand stand.
“Going to get another glove,” explained the Westerner over his
shoulder. “This is on the blink. I’ve got a good one stowed away in the
dressing room.”
Locke nodded, pausing by the bench long enough to see his friend reach
the end of the stands and disappear through a door leading to a small,
rough sort of dressing room occupying part of the space beneath the
seats. It was never used for that purpose by the Blue Stocking crowd,
who always changed at the hotel, but it made an admirable storage place
for bats, balls, spare gloves, and all the other paraphernalia of the
game. The southpaw’s attention was swiftly recalled to the field, and
there it remained for the better part of ten minutes.
Whether or not Liddell’s predicted downfall had been hurried by his
experience at the bat, or was simply due at this time, there could be
no doubt whatever that it had come. The first man up hit him, and those
who followed continued the work gleefully. Before another man could be
hustled into the box they had made three runs, and ere the pitcher’s
successor had worked the kinks out of his arm two more were added. The
inning ended with the Blue Stockings five tallies in the lead.
“That’s more like it,” said Dalton, as the visitors came slowly in from
the field. “That’s the way it ought to be. Come ahead, fellows; we’ll
hold ’em down this inning, and see if we can’t put the blanket on this
new pill slinger. Get a move on, Nels.”
Lefty turned in time to see Savage rise slowly from the ground a little
to one side of the bench, where he had apparently been sitting since
his return from the dressing room. As he passed, on his way to the
mound, he not only failed to glance at the southpaw or speak a word,
but seemed actually to be averting his head.
The unnaturalness of the proceeding at once struck Locke, keyed up
as he was by the busher’s inexplicable slump in the last inning. An
instant later he drew a quick breath as the unmistakable reek of liquor
was borne to his nostrils, and he stared after Savage, his face full of
deepest apprehension.
“Whew!” he whistled, “the crazy idiot went off to take a drink. Now the
deuce is to pay!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE EVIL TRANSITION
Sick at heart, all his recent fears revived, Lefty watched his friend
step into the box and prepare to pitch. To the best of his knowledge
and belief Savage had not touched liquor for ten days, and his breaking
over now seemed to the southpaw like the beginning of the end. Whether
it was the cause or effect of that hateful change of personality, Locke
did not know; but he always associated drink with the evil side of the
busher’s character, and he could not now shake off the feeling that the
worst was happening.
Savage’s first delivery was a swift inshoot that cut a corner of the
pan, and was pronounced a strike. He followed it with two coaxers which
were disdained. Then came another shoot at which Billy Olds swung in
vain, and Lefty was conscious of a growing sense of wonder mingled with
that hope which is so hard to kill utterly.
Could it be possible that he had been mistaken? Savage’s manner was
not what it had been earlier in the game, to be sure. He had lost, in
a great measure, the snap and vim and swiftness of action shown up to
now――had become almost irritatingly deliberate. Also, his expression
had changed from keen, light-hearted gayety to heavy-lidded somberness.
But Locke had never seen the man pitch in a real game before. For all
he knew, this might be simply the prelude to a blow-up such as comes to
many pitchers at about this stage of a contest. Perhaps he had felt it
coming, and resorted to liquor in a desperate effort to brace himself
and stave it off.
All of this was unlike the man Locke had come to think so much of, but
the southpaw’s reluctance to believe the worst made him ready to seize
upon any possible explanation. Even when Olds fell upon the next ball
handed up and smashed it out for a safety, he did not lose hope. The
same thing had happened more than once in each of the previous innings.
Moore, next batsman, hit a slow bounder to Lewis, who made the mistake
of waiting for the ball, and was then forced to throw hastily. That
throw was wide, and dragged Ogan off the cushion, permitting Moore to
make the base by a single stride.
Savage took the ball from Ogan, and turned to glare angrily at the
shortstop. His lips moved, and for a moment it seemed as if a burst of
heated denunciation would break forth. In another second, however,
his teeth came together with a snap, and he stepped back into the box,
frowning heavily.
“Don’t blame him for being sore,” muttered Lefty to himself. “If he’s
on the verge of a blow-up, that sort of thing certainly gets a fellow’s
goat. Keeping his mouth shut shows he’s got some self-control left.”
The portsider was further heartened by the manner in which Savage took
the next batter in hand. Allaire did his best to bunt, but the pitcher
kept the balls high and close, and two fouls resulted, the second of
which came down back of third, giving Palsifer an opportunity to make a
circus catch.
Unfortunately these encouraging symptoms were of short duration. Locke
could not fail to observe that Savage’s work became slower and more
labored with each delivery. He started by handing “Brick” Forbes two
balls in succession. A single strike followed, then another ball, and
the pitcher was in a hole.
There was no similarity now to the debonair coolness with which the
Westerner had met the same situation several times before. His face
was set and tense, the mouth a single gray line. His lids drooped
until they seemed almost closed. His wind-up was dragging, as if each
movement was an effort.
Forbes swung savagely as the ball came across the pan, lifting a high
fly to center.
“Duoro will grab that,” murmured Lefty, his eyes following the white
spot sailing across the vivid blue. “He can’t miss it.”
The young fielder had ample time to get under the ball. It looked
like a certainty, and the base runners ducked back to their bags.
Unfortunately, by one of those inexplicable slips usually caused by
overconfidence, the horsehide struck Duoro’s mitt and trickled over the
edge to the ground.
Olds stretched himself for third, and a sarcastic chorus arose from the
infield, in which Locke could plainly distinguish the voice of Savage,
raised in a roar of fury. Olds made his base, getting there ahead of
Duoro’s throw.
The damage was done.
Still growling inarticulately, his face an angry crimson, Savage sent
over a ball which the captain of the Tigers lined out for a two-bagger,
scoring Olds and Moore. Sam Vogt fell on the second ball pitched to
him, smashing out a line drive between second and short. Laughing Larry
pulled off a marvelous mid-air catch, following it with some ground
flipflaps, from which he recovered in time to make a throw to the plate
that nailed Forbes in an attempt to score after the pill was captured.
Lefty drew a long breath and glanced sidewise at Kennedy, who had
scarcely stirred during the entire inning. The manager’s face was dark,
but, beyond the fact that he was far from pleased at the progress of
events, his expression told nothing.
The southpaw’s troubled gaze veered swiftly back to the figure of the
busher moving slowly toward the bench. In spite of what he had been
trying to make himself believe――that this was simply the natural manner
of a man struggling against an inevitable breakdown――there was dread in
his heart, which increased swiftly as he studied that forbidding face
with its lowering brows, drooping lids, and twitching lips.
Savage came straight on, head bent, slapping his glove at intervals
against his thigh. He passed Lefty without as much as a glance, heading
for a point a little to one side of the bench. The portsider stepped
forward. The continued suspense was growing intolerable. He must know,
one way or another, how matters stood.
“Brace up, old man, and don’t take it so seriously,” he said, with
forced lightness. “We all make a bull now and then.”
Like a flash the fellow whirled on him with a movement which suggested
the sudden snapping of hardly won self-control.
“Bull!” he snarled, his eyes gleaming through narrow slits. “That’s
what you call it, is it? Let me tell you this, Locke: I don’t want any
of your sympathy. You can save that for those bonehead friends of yours
who play ball like a bunch of bushers. What’s more, you can keep out
of my way from now on. I told you once before that I didn’t like your
brand, and I meant it. I pick my friends, and you’re not one of ’em,
nor ever will be. Get me?”
His eyes were wide open now, and from their baleful, evil depths came a
gleam of bitter hatred which sent a sickening sense of failure surging
over the man on whom they rested for a second before Savage turned and
walked away.
Lefty had found out what he wanted to know. His efforts to stave off
this moment had been without avail. The evil transition had come again.
The very worst had happened.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE LAST STRAW
It was the shock of having his hopes dashed so utterly and completely
that made Locke oblivious for a moment to Savage’s insolence. But
swiftly the sting of the uncalled-for insult brought the color flaming
into his face, and made him leap forward in mingled anger and sorrow.
“Savage! Savage!” he called sharply. But the busher did not heed him.
A touch on his arm cut off further action abruptly. Glancing round, he
found Kennedy beside him.
“Get busy and warm up,” ordered the manager briefly.
Locke hesitated an instant, his eyes searching the older man’s face.
The manager was evidently in no mood for conversation. He wheeled and
marched over to the coaching line, leaving the pitcher to hunt up a
glove, root out Babe Torrey, the change catcher, and proceed to a
retired spot.
Their unexpected success in the first half of the inning seemed to put
new heart into the Tigers. Though Liddell’s successor was hit several
times, fine support prevented those hits from being effective. As the
visitors trotted in from the field, Lefty loped over to where Kennedy
was standing.
“Want me now?” he asked.
The manager shook his head. “Not just yet. I’m going to give this bird
one more chance. Buzz around. You may have to go in any time.”
The manager was evidently bitterly disappointed over the behavior of
the man he had lauded so highly a little while before, and was probably
hoping against hope that he would pull up before the final smash. But
the person going out to the mound now held nothing in common with the
Savage who had pitched so brilliantly up to the previous innings. They
were as unlike as two different beings.
Lefty moved back and continued his warming up with Torrey, pausing
at intervals to follow the progress of events on the diamond. He had
worked conscientiously while the Blue Stockings were at bat to put his
pegging arm into condition, but now his efforts became desultory and
intermittent, serving no more than to ward off any possible chill.
He kept the ball in motion between himself and Torrey, but it was
a mechanical sort of business which showed how absorbed he was in
watching Savage.
The change in the latter had become more striking. He seemed to
have thrown aside the efforts he had previously made to conceal his
condition, and lapsed into the man Locke had known and detested in the
early days of training. He strolled into the box, his lips curling
with that old air of insolent condescension, as if he had little or no
interest in the proceeding, and was only there in the performance of a
not very highly regarded duty.
Locke tried to tell himself that his growing irritation, threatening
to become anger he could not bridle, was unjust to the busher’s
other――and, he believed, normal――self which he had liked so well; but
it was all to no purpose. The evil personality of Savage was so strong,
so dominant, above all so antagonistic, that the southpaw presently
forgot everything save the intense dislike it raised within him.
McKnight, the first batter up, opened the inning with a single off
the second ball delivered by the Westerner. Alec Wurts, who followed,
seemed to have no difficulty whatever in picking out one that suited
him, dumping it into the diamond. He took his medicine at first, while
McKnight advanced to second.
“That’s the game!” called McCormick from the coaching line. “This guy’s
all in, boys! We’ll have the blanket on him in two shakes.”
Earlier in the day Savage had shown remarkable skill in preventing
bunts, or else had used them to his own advantage. The contrast
presented by his careless, slipshod work now was too striking to escape
general notice, and Locke was not surprised to see Larry Dalton hurry
across the diamond and touch Savage on the arm. The portsider was too
far away to hear what was said, but he saw the busher roughly shake off
Larry’s hand and snap out something which brought an angry sparkle to
the captain’s eyes and a tart rejoinder from his lips.
The reprimand evidently had little effect. Within two minutes Kent,
who had replaced Buck Liddell, reached first on a single. McKnight was
stopped at third; but, with only one out and the crack hitters coming
up, things looked more than encouraging for the visiting team.
“Might as well hand ’em the game, and be done with it!” was the
disgusted comment of Babe Torrey, scarcely audible above the racket
made by various Tiger coaches. “Why the deuce don’t Jack take him out?”
Lefty shrugged his shoulders. He had been keeping an eye on Kennedy,
but the manager had not even glanced in his direction.
When Olds squared himself at the rubber, alert and fairly quivering
with eagerness, Lefty and the change catcher, with one accord,
abandoned their languid tossing of the ball, and faced the diamond.
Both felt that the next few seconds would see something doing.
“He’ll knock the coating off the pill unless that fellow takes a
brace,” muttered Torrey.
Locke had little hope that the brace would come. Savage’s expression of
careless insolence was unaltered. One might have supposed him a bored
spectator, for all the interest he showed. How any sane human being
could make such an exhibition was beyond comprehension.
Not only were the first two balls pitched wide of the plate, but the
third almost escaped Dirk Nelson’s clutches, and made him mutter under
his breath as he saw Kent scampering to second, with the sack already
safely purloined.
Then came a pause――a curious, tense pause. Watching Savage, Lefty had
an odd feeling that the man was aware all at once that he had gone too
far. He flashed a single swift glance around the diamond, and moistened
his lips. When he faced the batter again, it was with a determined
shake of the shoulders and a quick jerk at the visor of his cap that
brought it down over his eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, Savage kicked away an imaginary pebble, but
without glancing downward. Like a statue, he stood poised, leaning
forward slightly. For no single instant did his intent gaze leave the
batter’s face.
Suddenly Lefty realized what was coming. “He’s going to try the
vanishing-ball stunt!” he said under his breath.
Would it work this time? The southpaw felt his pulse quicken; his eyes
began to smart with the intensity of his stare. Would the man never
pitch? Slowly――very slowly――the arm drew back, paused, and at last shot
forward, projecting the sphere straight over the heart of the pan.
Before the ball had reached the plate Lefty knew the attempt had
failed. The bat came round with every ounce of the big man’s muscle
behind it. There was that sharp, ringing crack which sends a thrill
through every fan, and the horsehide soared out over the infield――on,
on, climbing higher and higher.
Duoro and Joe Welsh both whirled and raced toward the fence. The
diamond instantly resounded with the shouts of coachers urging on the
circling base runners. The Blue Stocking infielders stood dejectedly,
hands on hips, following with their eyes the progress of that little
dot of gray.
It was falling now. Faster and faster it dropped in a wide arc which
would carry it well beyond the laboring fielders. At last it vanished
beyond the fence. The voice of Jack Kennedy promptly sounded above the
racket made by the jubilating Tigers:
“Get off the field! Yes, I mean _you_――bonehead! Don’t lose any time
about it! Locke, get busy!”
As Lefty passed the manager, Kennedy’s angry voice, pitched in a much
lower key, followed him:
“Hope to thunder you’re satisfied with your experiment!”
Old Jack rarely lost his temper, nor was he the sort to taunt a man
because of mistakes. He did both now, and Lefty could not blame him.
CHAPTER XXXVI
BREAKING A BATTING STREAK
With that trained sense of observation which Big League players develop
to its highest point of efficiency, Locke had noted the strength and
weakness of each Tiger batter, even while his mind was more or less
occupied with a study of Nels Savage. Now, to begin with, he forced
Moore to foul twice in rapid succession.
With two strikes and no balls declared, the portsider did his best to
lead the Tiger batter into reaching. But Moore, evidently having a good
eye, was not to be fooled, and three balls were called.
“Take a walk, Irish!” urged McCormick.
Lefty had no intention of walking anybody. He sent over a swift
inshoot, which, observation had told him, was as distasteful as any
ball to this really exceptional hitter. Moore was ready for it this
time, unfortunately, and he cracked out a grounder that Lewis reached
with difficulty. It seemed to scorch Lewis’ fingers, and he fumbled.
When he recovered the slippery sphere, his throw was so hurried that
it pulled Ogan off the sack, giving Moore “a life.”
Instantly the Tiger coaches opened up. But their racket affected the
southpaw not a particle. Cool and undisturbed, he continued his work
in the box, luring Allaire in to swinging at the first ball over――an
elusive curve.
But the hitting germ seemed to be coursing in the veins of the Tigers.
With two and three called on him, the batter finally forced Lefty to
put the ball over, then lifted it into left field.
It looked as if Joe Welsh had a good chance to get the fly and Moore
hesitated on the line, part way down from first, ready to duck back to
the bag in time to prevent a double play.
Welsh seemed to stumble a bit just as he was reaching for the sphere.
He dropped it.
Moore got away for second like a flash. Welsh made a swift recovery of
the ball and lined it unerringly into Dalton’s hands, but the runner
beat it to the “anchorage.” Still Lefty was undisturbed. Not even when
Dalton missed stopping a hot liner by what seemed the fraction of an
inch, and the bases were filled, did Locke show a sign of worry or
irritation. But his jaw hardened a little, and that characteristic
expression of stubborn determination his team-mates knew so well came
into his face.
He was working with deliberation, and, though he did not seem to watch
the bases, the Tigers swiftly learned that it was extremely hazardous
to take much of a lead. It puzzled them not a little, for they could
detect no signals between catcher and pitcher. They were up against
one of the minor phases of inside ball. The infield’s code of signals
was well-nigh perfect, and impossible of detection by ordinary outside
players.
The first ball to McCormick was a trifle wide. Lefty caught it on the
return and seemed about to pitch, but, instead, without the slightest
warning, whirled, and threw to second, where Dalton had been edging in.
Allaire dived back barely in time, after which he took a smaller lead.
Locke’s next pitched ball was a queer little wobbler, lacking speed
though delivered with a snap that seemed to promise smoke. The batter
saw that it would come over, but his impatience to hit seemed to
overbalance his judgment. He struck too soon, popping a little fly
which Locke caught without moving from his tracks. Like a flash, he put
the ball over to third; but Moore, warned by Allaire’s narrow escape,
had remained in the vicinity of the cushion, and managed to get back in
time.
“That’s the way to stop ’em, old man!” called Dalton encouragingly.
“Take this rube into camp.”
Sam Vogt was no mean hitter. Lefty had sized him up as one of the most
dangerous on the visiting team, for the reason that he had a fine eye,
a powerful swing, and few weaknesses.
One of the latter, however, was an evident distaste for a dead slow
ball, and that was the sort first handed up by the portsider. Waiting
with steady nerves, Vogt saw that it would not cross the plate, and
declined to go after it.
He swung at the next one, however――a sharp drop which he simply fouled.
“Give him another like that,” urged McCormick. “He’ll take the peeling
off it!”
Lefty smiled good-humoredly, and whipped over a high smoker. It proved
to be too high, however, and there was some joyous cackling from the
coachers. When Locke followed this up by still another wide one they
felt that the famous southpaw had been much overrated, and jubilated
loudly.
“Take one, Sam!” advised the captain. “Let him force a run.”
Lefty’s judgment told him that the batter would follow instructions
unless he saw that the ball was certain to come over the center of the
pan. He consequently laid one carefully over the inside corner, and
Vogt let it pass.
“Strike――two!” called the umpire.
There came a momentary pause, hushed and tense. A second later the ball
came hissing from Locke’s fingers with a burning speed surpassing
anything he had yet known. It took a sharp hop just before it reached
the pan, and Vogt’s bat slashed empty air.
Lefty had stopped a dangerous batting streak and prevented further
scoring.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE VOODOO CHARM
The crucial point of the game had been in that first half of the
eighth. Before the inning was over the Blue Stockings had discovered
the weak points of the substitute pitcher, and hammered out three runs.
In the beginning of the ninth Locke proved invincible on the slab, and
the game ended with the Big Leaguers in very good humor again.
Lefty glanced curiously about for Savage. The busher was nowhere to
be seen, so the southpaw led the crowd at a lope back to the hotel.
Turning into Main Street, he saw ahead of him the lanky figure of
Kennedy, striding along at a speed plainly evincing some fixed purpose.
He had left the field before the finish of the game. That in itself was
significant.
“Something doing,” murmured Locke.
Quickening his pace, he entered the lobby almost on the manager’s
heels. The first person his eyes rested on was Savage, lounging against
the desk, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from one corner of his
mouth. Kennedy walked straight up to him.
“You can pack up,” he said. “There’s a train out at three. Don’t miss
it. If you’re hanging around this town to-morrow there’ll be something
happen that you won’t forget. Get me?”
The busher exhaled a cloud of smoke and surveyed Kennedy defiantly from
under drooping lids.
“I ought to,” he drawled. “You talk loud enough. Supposin’ I don’t care
about leaving? You don’t happen to own this hotel, and――”
Half the witnesses thought the manager was going to knock Savage down.
The look upon Kennedy’s face must have awed the insolent man, for he
hesitated an instant before adding slowly:
“Oh, very well. I hadn’t any idea of staying. I was just interested in
finding out how far you’d go.”
He took a step or two toward the stairs; then, with the lithe quickness
of a panther, whirled and strode over to Lefty. The latter’s muscles
tensed, ready for an attack. Savage stopped abruptly, scarcely a foot
away, and thrust out his face until his baleful, hate-filled eyes were
separated from Locke’s only by inches.
“Maybe you think you’ve pulled off a clever stunt in getting me fired,”
he said in a voice that quivered with passion. “But I’m going to get
you, and get you good and plenty!”
“Why don’t you start something?” Lefty invited. “So far you’ve managed
to duck every time. Just kick in now, and see what happens.”
“Too easy!” sneered the busher. “I’ll play the game my own way, and
I’ll put it across on you, bet your sweet life!”
Wheeling, he hurried toward the narrow hallway out of which the stairs
led. As he turned the corner, he collided with a negro boy just coming
through the door.
“Get outa my way!” he snarled.
A blow of his open hand sent the boy spinning, and Savage passed on,
leaving behind a feeling as if a tornado had swept through the lobby.
For a second the negro cowered against the wall. Then, with a
frightened whimper, he ran straight for Lefty, catching the southpaw’s
sweater tightly in both hands.
“Doan let him git me, mistah!” he gasped, his voice shaking with
fright. “Doan let him tech me! Ah’ll done be turn inter a stone, or
suthin’! Ah――Ah knows dat man, mistah! He――he am de dibbil hisself――wif
horns!”
A glance only was needed to show that the boy was half crazed with
fear. His face had turned a mottled gray, his eyes rolled, his teeth
were chattering like castanets. Locke put aside an impulse to get
after Savage and chastise him then and there, and gave his attention to
calming the negro.
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “I won’t let him touch you.” A
sudden recollection brought a glint of curiosity into his eyes. “You’re
new in the hotel, aren’t you?” he went on. “How do you come to know
anything about that man?”
“Ah――Ah knowed him ’fo’ I cum hyer, boss,” was the hesitating reply.
By this time Dalton, Ogan, Jack Stillman, and several others had
gathered around. Lefty glanced at the reporter, with uplifted eyebrows,
and turned swiftly back to the boy.
“Where was that?” he asked. “Tell us about it. You needn’t be afraid of
him,” he added, as the boy glanced fearfully toward the stairs. “He’s
going away from here in a hurry.”
“Dat ain’t nuffin’,” sighed the boy. “He put de ebil eye on me jes’
de same.” His eyes grew round and large; his voice sank to an awed
whisper: “He’s frien’s wif ole Mammy Bunce, ober de ribber. She done
give him a voodoo chahm. Wif dat an’ his ebil eye he do anythin’ he
want. He make a hoss jump clean across de ribber. Ya-yassir, he done
it.”
“What!” ejaculated Lefty, in amused surprise. “Why, you young sinner,
you――”
“Fo’ de Lawd, mistah, thass gospel!” protested the boy earnestly. “Ah
done seen him do it. Ah was ridin’ Marse Liv’mo’s roan to de blacksmif
along down ribber――de hoss Mistah Tet’ridge want fo’ to buy. Marse
Liv’more wouldn’t go fo’ to sell nohow, an’――”
“Tethridge!” interrupted Locke suddenly. “Who’s he?”
“He am de gemman dat’s train’ hosses for de big race over to Marse
Liv’mo’s.”
Lefty’s eyes narrowed the least bit as he remembered that the name
of the Englishman who had been Savage’s companion that wintry day on
the train was Tethridge. He also recalled something Dalton had said
about an Englishman who was entering a couple of horses in the race at
the county seat two days hence. It began to seem as if there might be
points of interest in the boy’s fantastic tale.
“All right,” he said briefly. “Go ahead.”
“Ah was ridin’ de roan down ribber,” resumed the youth, “when Ah meet
up wif dat man. Ah see him at Mammy Bunce once, an’ Ah was pow’ful
sca’t. When he stop an’ look at me wif dem debbil eyes, Ah was sca’t
worse. He say to me: ‘Boy, dat hoss am gwine to jump across de ribber;
better git off.’ But Ah’s so sca’t Ah jes’ couldn’t move noways. Den he
comes up close, his eyes gettin’ bigger an’ bigger, lak dey was gwine
jump out’n his haid an’ bite me. Woo! He doan’ say nothin’ mo’, but I
git outa de saddle an’ he jump on. Seems lak Ah couldn’t do nothin’ but
jes’ stan’ dere an’ watch him. He rid straight down to de ribber, an’
jab de roan wif his heels, an’――whiff!――over de ribber dey goes, clean
to de odder side――one jump!”
A snicker went round the circle, and several of the men lounged off,
chuckling at the boy’s infinite capacity for lying. Dalton and Stillman
remained with Locke, however, to see if there might be any further
developments.
“And when you woke up the horse was gone?” Lefty inquired skeptically.
“Yassah. Ah’s jes’ tellin’ you-all dat he jump de ribber.”
“Are you sure he jumped, or did you only dream it? How about the
tracks? Did they lead down to the water?”
“Ah――Ah didn’t stop fo’ to look. Ah’s so sca’t dat man might come back
Ah jes’ run an’ run. Ah didn’t dare go back to Marse Liv’mo’s wifout no
hoss, so I hangs aroun’ down to Holt Ferry fo’ right long time, an’ den
comes up hyer, an’ Majah Hol’cum done hire me.”
“How long ago did this happen?” inquired Lefty.
“Ah doan rightly ’member, boss, but Ah reckon close on three
weeks――mebbe fo’.”
Locke hesitated an instant, his face thoughtful. Then he shrugged his
shoulders and smiled.
“All right, Snowball,” he said carelessly. “Chase yourself, and don’t
worry about this devil of yours. We won’t let him swallow you.”
With a voluble burst of thanks, the boy scuttled out of the room. Locke
turned back to his two companions.
“Some imagination there, eh?” chuckled Dalton.
“Wish I knew what it was founded on,” muttered the reporter
thoughtfully. “He’s evidently met Savage somewhere, and has been
thoroughly scared. Do you suppose that blackguard could really have
stolen a horse, Lefty? Of course that jumping-the-river stuff is all
bunk, but it looks to me as if the kid had been hypnotized by our
two-sided friend.”
“Oh, I guess he’s quite equal to anything,” the southpaw returned.
“Between three and four weeks ago would place it just before the
training season opened, and make it possible for him to be there.
Moreover, this Tethridge, who was so anxious to buy the roan, was
chumming with Savage the first time I laid eyes on the latter up North.
You can take that for what it’s worth, Jack.”
“Jove!” exclaimed the newspaper man, his eyes brightening. “Looks as
if there might be more to that Arabian Nights tale than you’d think at
first. Isn’t it up to us to find out from Livermore whether the horse
was stolen, and――”
“You can do anything you like, but cut me out.” Locke’s tone was a bit
heated. “I’m sick of the sound of the name of Savage. I’d be thankful
if I knew I was never going to hear it again. What’s more, with the
bunch moving on so soon, I haven’t the least intention of getting mixed
up in any criminal cases and being held here for weeks, perhaps.”
He wheeled and made for the stairs without further delay, leaving
Dalton and the reporter alone.
“Right off the bat!” the former grinned. “Say, Jack, what about that
voodoo dope the kid was giving us? Anything to it?”
“You’ve got me,” said Stillman. “I happen to know that there is an old
black woman across the river with a reputation for holding talkfests
with his satanic majesty. Whether Savage kicked into the game or not I
can’t say.” They turned to follow the southpaw. “I reckon Lefty’s right
about it,” he went on regretfully; “but after what he did to-day I’d
certainly like to put that Savage proposition where he couldn’t play
anything but solitaire for a while.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
IN THE NIGHT
The Holcombe House was a low, rambling, typical country hotel such
as one sees in many small towns throughout the Southern States. A
wide veranda, much frequented on balmy nights and sultry afternoons,
stretched across the entire front of the main building, its sloping
roof surmounted by a long row of bedroom windows, monotonously alike.
By half past ten the lobby was generally deserted save perhaps for
a lone drummer making out his report, or a chance friend of the
major chatting with him in the little office behind the desk. At
twelve, precisely, the courtly, old-fashioned proprietor followed his
invariable custom of shutting up, and retired to his private rooms on
the southwest corner of the second floor. Half an hour after midnight
the place was tight as a drum.
After a long day of hard work in the open, the Blue Stockings were
usually quite ready for bed at ten o’clock, and this night was no
exception. Lefty and Larry Dalton were among the first to go, and by a
quarter after the hour they were stretched between the blankets in the
room they occupied together, next to Major Holcombe’s.
The southpaw slept soundly, but not heavily. Any unusual noise was
likely to arouse him. Consequently he was not surprised, a little
later, to find himself sitting bolt upright in the darkness, listening
in bewilderment to unwonted sounds that seemed to come through one of
the open windows. There was an irregular thumping, a muffled crash, the
dull pad-pad as of shoeless feet, then a voice raised in anger.
A second later, as his brain cleared, Lefty realized that a struggle
of some sort was going on in the next room. This brought him out of
bed with a single bound. Gripping the shoulder of the still-slumbering
Dalton and giving him a shake, he ran over to the window, thrust up the
screen, and slid out on to the veranda roof.
The major’s nearest window, not two feet away, was wide open, and
as Locke threw one leg over the sill he heard a dull, muffled thud,
followed by the heavy crash of a body falling. For a fraction of a
second he feared that he had come too late. Then the major’s voice,
panting and somewhat shrill with excitement, came to him out of the
blackness:
“Keep back, yo’ ruffian, or I’ll put a bullet through you!”
“Don’t shoot, major!” exclaimed Lefty as he dropped into the room.
“It’s Locke. Do you need any help?”
There was a brief pause, followed by the click of a switch, and the
room leaped into brilliancy, revealing a curious scene. Major Holcombe,
tall, lean, and lanker than ever in his abbreviated nightshirt, stood
against the wall, one hand gripping an old-fashioned service revolver.
His gray hair, left long at the sides to be brushed across the thin
spot on top, was mussed and disheveled. He was breathing a little
unevenly, and there were hectic spots on his high cheek bones. But
his black eyes flashed as he stared at Locke across the body of a man
huddled against the foot of the bed.
“I――thank yo’, suh,” he said at last, a touch of the old stateliness
in his manner. “Your promptness does yo’ credit, suh, but I seem to
have settled fo’ the scoundrel. A clear case of breakin’ and enterin’
combined with murderous assault, suh. The ruffian had a gun, which
I was fawtunate enough to knock out of his hand; otherwise I should
probably not be heah to tell the tale. I shall call yo’ gentlemen to
witness”――by this time Dalton had appeared in the window, and was
staring in with bewildered, sleep-muddled eyes――“that I was obliged to
strike him down in――”
He broke off abruptly with a whistling gasp, and stared downward.
With an inarticulate grunt, the man on the floor stirred and rolled
over, revealing the flushed face of Nelson Savage. There was a slight
cut on his forehead, but the reek of liquor in the air gave Locke an
impression that the fellow’s collapse had been caused as much by drink
as by the glancing blow from the major’s revolver. With Savage in
normal condition, the old Southerner would have stood no chance at all.
“You!” exclaimed Major Holcombe, straightening up. “So!”
He turned to Lefty, his lips set, his lean jaw tightening. “This is a
case fo’ the sheriff, suh,” he said coldly. “The scoundrel evidently
wanted revenge fo’ havin’ been turned out of my hotel. If you will look
after him until I can make a hasty toilet, I shall be obliged.”
He thrust his antiquated weapon into Locke’s hand, and, gathering up an
armful of clothes, stalked into a rear room. Lefty stared thoughtfully
at the unconscious man for a moment, then glanced at Dalton.
“Revenge,” he murmured thoughtfully; “I wonder if that was it――and he
mistook the window?”
“Thunder! You mean he was after you?”
“Why not? I told you how he ranted down in the lobby this afternoon,
and you can see he’s more than half seas over. It would be a simple
matter for a man in that condition to mistake the second window from
the corner for the third, especially when they’re so close together.”
“The scoundrel!” exclaimed Dalton, his face darkening. “I hope―― He’s
coming round.”
The southpaw turned to see his enemy struggle to a sitting posture and
stare slowly around the room. His eyes were only half open, but as they
came to rest on Locke’s legs, clad in silk pajamas, they widened, and
his gaze traveled swiftly upward to Lefty’s face.
“Didn’ git yer, but I will yet!” he snarled in half-drunken fury. “If I
don’t make you――”
“Stop!” ordered Lefty, his patience utterly exhausted. “Another word
out of you, and I’ll put a gag in your mouth.”
The busher promptly let out a stream of unprintable abuse. Locke as
promptly stuffed the end of a towel into his mouth, securing it firmly
in place with a necktie Larry brought from the other room. Another
towel was used to tie the man’s hands, and Savage was reduced to a
helpless condition.
Looking more like himself, the major presently returned, his mood of
cold, determined indignation unchanged. He had been humiliated and
outraged, and the person responsible was going to suffer the full
penalties of the law. As a precaution, Kennedy was roused, and informed
of what had happened; but he refused to see the recruit, much less
interfere in his behalf.
“Let him go to jail, where he belongs,” he said grimly.
Savage was presently carried off by the sheriff, defiant to the last.
When the Blue Stockings departed, late the next afternoon, for Webster,
to play an exhibition game at the big county fair, the prisoner was
behind bars awaiting trial on charges which could scarcely fail to land
him in the penitentiary for a prolonged stay.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE FACE IN THE CROWD
The game at Webster was scheduled for the morning in order not to
interfere with the horse race at two P. M. The latter was the big event
of the fair; but the presence of an organization like the famous Blue
Stockings naturally attracted a goodly portion of the big crowd which
had come in from miles around.
Kennedy’s squad looked upon the occasion as more or less of a lark, and
were interested in it mainly because of the opportunity it brought to
witness the race. But they found the team from Savannah a snappy bunch,
and it was only by really hard work that they pulled out winners by a
score of four to one.
Pink Dillon pitched for six innings, and was succeeded by Lefty. The
latter had not been in the box five minutes before he noticed a waving
handkerchief from one of the lower rows of the grand stand. Looking
closer, he was astonished and overjoyed to see Janet Harting and Celia
Berkeley smiling down on him.
He had received two letters from Janet since her departure from
Tulane. Both were written in the old, friendly style, which made Locke
hope and believe that she had forgotten the disagreement that had
spoiled their last evening together; but in neither letter had she
hinted at a possibility of their meeting so soon.
“Another surprise, I reckon,” murmured the southpaw as he doffed his
cap and stared searchingly at the girls’ escorts. “Or maybe they came
on the spur of the moment. Wonder who she’s got with her?”
A second later his heart sank, and even his slightly jealous
speculation concerning the identity of the good-looking man at Janet’s
right was swept from his mind. He would have to face Celia Berkeley!
Worse than that, he would be obliged to tell her what had happened to
Savage. He fairly squirmed at the thought.
There was a smile on her lips, and her laughing eyes were gazing around
the field. She was looking for the man, of course, wondering, probably,
why he had not shown himself. How could he tell her the truth?
In his troubled abstraction, Lefty put over a ball which the Savannah
batter fell on with violent delight, smashing it out for a two-bagger.
The accident brought Locke up sharply, and for the remainder of the
game he kept his mind strictly on business.
He had no more idea, as he hurried toward the stands after the ninth,
of how to break the unpleasant news than when the necessity for it
first burst upon him. Striving to hide his discomfort, he pushed
through the crowd to where the girls stood, and greeted them warmly.
The escorts proved to be Miss Berkeley’s two brothers――good-looking
young fellows――who would have appealed instantly to Lefty had his mind
not been absorbed with the disagreeable duty before him.
“We only decided to come last night,” the Southern girl explained,
in answer to Locke’s question. “We wanted to, of course, the minute
we heard you-all were to be here; but Ted and Billy couldn’t tell
definitely about getting off till yesterday afternoon. But where’s
Nels? Didn’t he come?”
It was impossible to tell her here in the crowd, so the southpaw hedged.
“No,” he answered. “You see, Jack didn’t bring the whole squad”――which
happened to be quite true――“and Nels was one of those left behind.”
“How mean!” pouted the girl. “That manager of yours must be a regular
old bear.”
To Lefty’s relief, she asked no further questions, but at once began
a discussion concerning lunch. They had motored over, it seemed, and
brought a large hamper with them, the contents of which Lefty Locke
was invited to share. Thankful for the temporary respite, the portsider
hustled off to dress, accompanied by Ted Berkeley, while the others
sought their machine.
The ordeal he was dreading did not come during the informal meal. At
half past one the pitcher found himself beside Janet in a box that
must have cost real money to secure at so short a notice, with the
disagreeable task still before him.
Directly opposite them was the judges’ stand, and Locke had scarcely
taken his seat before he became aware of a small-sized disturbance
going on in that direction. A tall, erect old gentleman with iron-gray
hair and a nose like the beak of a hawk stood against the stand, his
hands behind the back of his long frock coat. Beside him were several
other less noticeable men――officials, if one could judge from the
ribbons on their lapels――while about them was a circle of some two
dozen nondescript persons, attracted evidently by the dispute; for the
track had not yet been cleared, and people were crossing it in every
direction.
The eyes of each member of the little group were fixed intently on the
small, wiry little man who stood before the gray-haired judge, rage and
indignation mirrored in his keen, narrow face, emphasizing each remark
by the slap of a clenched fist against an open palm.
“I tell you, colonel,” Lefty heard him assert, “that mare is a ringer!
I know it! I can prove it! She’s got a record, she has! She ran in the
race for the Maxworth Cup over the line last September, under the name
of Princess. She was a sorrel then, with a white fetlock, and a white
crescent on her off flank. She’s a sorrel now underneath the dye this
faker soaked on to turn her into a bay, and――”
“One moment, suh!” The colonel lifted an impressive hand. “Yo’ are
making serious charges, Mistah Baxby. Steve, run ovah an’ fetch
Tethridge. He left heah not two minutes ago.”
One of the men hustled off, and Baxby, finding that the judge turned a
deaf ear to his monologue, began to pour out his woes to the crowd of
curious onlookers, which increased with every passing minute. He gave
the date of the race, the fact that Tethridge had been the owner of the
winning horse, and various other details in such a positive manner that
Locke, becoming convinced that he was speaking the truth, waited for
the Englishman’s appearance, with a smile of grim anticipation.
After considerable delay, Lefty discerned the attendant returning.
Beside him was the lean, lank, rather awkward figure of a man with a
slouching gait and a thin, hard, weather-beaten face. The pitcher had
no difficulty in recognizing this individual as the same Tethridge
whose slurs on professional baseball had once roused his ire.
As the Englishman came closer, a certain veiled anxiety almost hidden
beneath an overassured manner, made Locke wonder if the attendant,
inadvertently or otherwise, had not put the fellow on guard.
Pushing through the rapidly increasing crowd of people, Tethridge
paused before the judge. “Well, old chap,” he drawled, “what might be
the trouble?”
The colonel cleared his throat and bent a searching gaze on the man,
which was returned without the tremor of an eyelash.
“A serious charge has just been made against yo’, suh,” explained the
official. “Mistah Baxby heah asserts that the mare yo’ have entered
under the name of Alice Gray is a――ah――ringer, suh. He claims that she
won the Maxworth Cup under the name of Princess.”
“He’s a bally liar!” retorted Tethridge, drawing himself up. “Princess
is a sorrel with white mawkings. Blimy――I ought to know! I only sold
the blooming mare a fortnight since.”
“Who’d you sell her to?” shrilled Baxby. “Produce the owner――I dare
you! Produce the bill of sale! You can’t do it! Because why? She’s over
there in the stable this minute, daubed up with dye! A bit of acid
will show up the fake, you crook!”
By this time the space about the judges’ stand was packed with people,
jostling, shoving, and surging back and forth as they tried to get a
place in the inner circle to see what was going on. Some one raised a
cry of “ringer,” and it spread like wildfire, echoing in a chorus about
the track. Others came running; the people in the boxes and seats stood
up to see and hear better. The whole affair reminded Lefty suddenly of
a brimming powder keg waiting for the spark. He was just congratulating
himself that the girls were not down there in that seething mob when
all at once a new actor entered upon the scene.
He was a burly fellow of thirty-five or so, and he came tearing up the
track, dragging by the arm a wizen colored boy, roughly dressed, and
evidently frightened half out of his wits. Straight at the crowd the
man launched himself, boring a hole with his big shoulders, heedless of
angry protestations from those he was shoving aside. At last he burst
into the inner, much diminished space――the boy popping after him like a
seed squeezed from an orange――and glared around.
“There you are!” he roared, in a voice which rose even above the din.
“You dog!” He shook his fist under the Englishman’s nose, and Tethridge
shrank back to the edge of the narrow circle. “I’m going to beat up
that face of yours so your own mother won’t know you!” He whirled
toward the judge. “Kunnel, my horse is gone lame!”
An uneasy quiver eddied through the crowd. Voices took up the news,
adding the name of the horse which had so unexpectedly failed at the
last moment. Freckles couldn’t run――he was out of the race. Freckles
was evidently a favorite, for instantly men by the dozen flung
themselves out of the mob and tore over to the betting shed.
The noise increased. Lefty, bending over the edge of the box, could see
the colonel’s lips move, but heard no sound. Tethridge, his ruddy color
gone, shrank behind the officials, passing a limp hand across a shining
forehead. Gesticulating wildly, the big, black-haired man continued
to shout out his story. Though Locke missed a word here and there, he
heard enough, thanks to that bull-like voice, to understand what it was
all about.
Tethridge had evidently tried to bribe the stableboy to prevent his
master’s horse――the favorite above all other entries――from running. Not
daring to take the risk, the boy refused; but threats or bribes, or
both, sealed his lips. Not an hour before, Tethridge had been in the
stable with a friend, who had diverted the attention of the trainer
long enough for the Englishman to slip into the favorite’s stall and
out again. When the horse was led out he limped badly, and examination
revealed a cut muscle which would take months to heal, if, indeed, a
cure could ever be accomplished. No one had actually seen it done, but
that was unnecessary.
The recital proved to be that spark which Lefty had been expecting.
With a roar, the crowd surged forward.
A gasp arose from the stands. Women screamed and turned their backs.
For a second Locke expected to see the man torn to pieces before
his eyes. But at this juncture Colonel Arlington gave an exhibition
of strategic maneuvering which proved his early training. With a
single sweep of his arm, he flung Tethridge against the foot of the
narrow steps leading up into the judges’ stand. In another second
he whipped out a large revolver and held the crowd at bay until the
terror-stricken man and the various officials had climbed into the
stand. Once safely up there, with the colonel and his revolver at the
top of the steps, the mob might surge and eddy and roar around the base
of the structure without doing a particle of harm.
It did not even come to that. Almost immediately, now that the cause
of their excitement had been spirited out of reach, the units of the
mob began to lapse into individuals, and realize how foolish they had
been. In rapidly increasing numbers they slipped away, some spurred by
the necessity of rearranging their bets, until at last the crowd had
shrunk to a size easily handled by officials and policemen hurrying up.
From his seat in the box, Lefty smiled grimly as he watched the white
and terrified Tethridge, cowering behind the railing of the stand.
“And you’re the man who called professional baseball crooked!” he
murmured to himself. “I wonder――”
He stopped abruptly, gripping the arms of his chair spasmodically.
Unaccountably his gaze had shifted to the fair-sized crowd still
thronging about the foot of the judges’ stand. He found himself staring
down into the upturned face of Nelson Savage!
CHAPTER XL
BEWILDERING FACTS
It was but a momentary glimpse, for the crowd, seized with a panic at
the approach of a number of policemen, fled in a body, and the busher
was whirled out of sight in an instant. But it was enough. Locke knew
that face too well to be mistaken. It was Savage――the man he had left
sixty miles away behind iron bars, with no chance of a trial within the
week at least.
The thing was incredible. It was on a par with that fantastic story of
the jumping horse, and for a moment Locke felt his brain reeling. He
pulled himself together to answer a question of Janet, then set about
reasoning it out more calmly.
There must be some natural explanation, of course. The fellow was
here in Webster. That much was beyond any doubt. There were only two
possible ways of his getting out of jail――either he had broken out, or
in some inexplicable manner he had been released. The southpaw found it
difficult to understand how either of these things could have happened.
After a most uneasy ten minutes, he excused himself, and left the box
to seek a long-distance telephone.
He had some difficulty in getting the Tulane jail, but when he finally
did so the connection was so good that he recognized at once the voice
of Joe Warren, the assistant keeper, an ardent fan who had spent most
of his off hours at the ball park.
“Joe, this is Locke,” Lefty said quickly. “I wanted to ask you about
Savage. Is he――still there?”
“Here!” The man’s voice vibrated over the wire with sudden shrillness.
“I should say nit! The old man chased him as far as the station, and
then lost him. Reckon he must have jumped the fast freight that went
through a couple of minutes before.”
Locke’s eyes narrowed. The explanation was very simple, after all.
“Broke out, did he?”
“You bet! Lord knows how he done it, but he cut his way through the
roof of the calaboose. Couldn’t even wait till dark, an’ of course
he was seen. It ain’t twenty minutes since old Mose Peters piped him
climbing through the hole he made, an’――”
“_What?_”
“I say, it ain’t more’n twenty minutes ago that he broke out. Mose
Peters lives in that――”
“But that’s impossible!” protested Lefty dazedly. “Stop kidding, Joe,
and tell me the story straight.”
“I ain’t kidding!” Warren’s voice took on a slightly injured tone. “It
might be twenty-five minutes by now, but not a second more. Peters seen
him through his back winder, an’ hustled over as fast as his rheumatics
would let him. Bob took it on the run without even waitin’ for his
hat. Got a glimpse of the feller duckin’ out of Main Street toward the
station, but that was the last he seen of him. By hard runnin’, he jest
about had time to hook on to the freight above the station, an’ that’s
what we reckon he done. I ain’t seen Bob since. He ’phoned from the
station for me to send down his hat an’ gun, an’ that’s when I heard
about it. I hadn’t no more’n hung up before you rung.”
Lefty drew a long breath, and passed one hand dazedly across his
forehead. Visions of high-power motor cars, of aëroplanes even, flitted
through his mind; but the speediest of them could not make three miles
a minute. By changing from the freight to the down train, which came
along within the half hour, Savage could reach Webster around half
past four at the earliest. But he was here now――somewhere out in that
vast crowd swarming around the track. At least, the pitcher had been
positive of that until this moment; now his mind began to waver.
He might have been mistaken by a chance resemblance――it was within
the bounds of possibility. Through the thin partition before him the
muffled shuffling of many feet and the rasping sound of many voices
came to him from the betting shed. Then he realized that Warren was
speaking:
“Hello! Hello! Are you on yet, Mr. Locke? Say, how the mischief do you
happen to know anything about the escape? Bob ain’t ’phoned you, has
he?”
“N-o.” The pitcher’s face had suddenly become curiously altered. The
lips were firm, the muscles of the jaw had hardened. “No, Joe,” he
repeated more briskly, “Bob didn’t ’phone. I――thought I saw Savage in
the crowd on the track just now, but of course that’s――impossible. Yes,
sure! I guess you’ll pinch him all right. We’ll be back by to-morrow
noon, I reckon. Sure, we licked ’em――four to one. I’ve got to get back
for the race. Good-by.”
Returning to the box, Lefty found that order had at last been
reëstablished, and that the first race was about to start. After all
the preliminary excitement, the actual events seemed rather tame. The
party sat through two of the races, then Miss Berkeley suggested that
they drive back to the hotel to have an early dinner before the rush.
The southpaw was still unusually quiet, and more than once Janet
jokingly commented on his preoccupation. He laughed it off, but when
they reached the hotel and the girls went to their rooms to dress for
dinner, the thoughtful pucker flashed instantly back into his forehead.
“Well, suppose we improve the shining hour with a nip or two of
bourbon,” suggested Ted Berkeley. “I’ve got some good stuff in my bag.
You’ll join us, won’t you, Locke?”
Lefty smilingly shook his head. “I can’t. We have to keep pretty strict
training, you know. I’ll come along, though, and watch you punish it.”
Berkeley, laughing, acquiesced, and led the way toward the elevators.
Already the lobby was filled with a heterogeneous assemblage and as
they pushed their way through Locke’s roving eyes suddenly lit up at
the sight of a figure moving along a cross corridor toward the side
entrance.
With a hurried apology and a promise to come up later, he fairly
flung himself in the direction the fellow had taken. Halfway down the
corridor the young man glanced back, and, instead of stopping, jerked
his hat over his eyes and sped on almost at a run. A moment later he
became mixed up with an entering crowd. Before he could extricate
himself, Lefty reached him and caught his shoulder.
“Hold up a minute, Savage!” he said quietly. “I want to talk to you.”
With no reply save a defiant movement of his head, the busher turned
and faced him. For a tense moment their glances clashed. Then Lefty
broke the awkward pause.
“I know all about it,” he said, in that same quiet, restrained tone.
“Suppose we go up to my room and talk it over?”
Savage hesitated momentarily. Then, with a slight shrug of his
shoulders, he followed Lefty back through the hallway. A few seconds
later the metal gate of the elevator shaft clanged shut behind them.
CHAPTER XLI
REVELATIONS
There was a constant passing and repassing of people through the lobby,
but not until after five did the advance guard of the Blue Stockings,
consisting of Kennedy, Dalton, Gene Temple, and Ogan, appear. They came
by the main entrance, laughing and joking, at the precise moment that
a broad-shouldered young man, a soft hat pulled down over his eyes,
turned from the register and put a question to the clerk.
“Tethridge?” the latter repeated briskly, turning for an instant to
inspect the keyboard. “Why, he hasn’t come――”
He stopped abruptly, with a sniff of surprise, for the young man,
without a word of explanation, had whirled about, and was making
swiftly for the side corridor. A second later the keen eyes of the
Blue Stockings’ manager sighted him; there was a gasp of astonishment,
checked in its very birth. Then a shout:
“Savage! Grab him, Temple――don’t let him get away!”
For a fraction of a second, Temple, who was nearer the hurrying man
than any of the others, seemed to hesitate. But another roar from
Kennedy, accompanied by a forward rush, spurred him on, and, plunging
through a throng of bewildered loungers, he grabbed the Westerner by
one arm.
With a snarl like that of a trapped animal, Savage whirled on him. “Let
go, you cheap sport!” he cried. “If you don’t, I’ll put the whole crowd
wise to your crookedness――”
He did not finish, for at that moment Kennedy gripped the other arm,
and, with characteristic presence of mind, shoved him through the door
of an adjoining writing room, whence he was followed by the other
members of his squad. Then the door slammed in the face of the crowd of
curious spectators.
There was another door leading to a small reception room, but this Ogan
promptly closed, taking his position in front of it. Kennedy released
his hold on the busher, who stepped back against a table, his chin
high, his eyes insolently returning the manager’s steady, contemptuous
stare.
“So you broke out?” the latter commented scornfully. “Nice one you are
to talk about crookedness! Why, that’s your middle name!”
Savage’s eyes gleamed. “At least I never forged my father’s name,
like that man!” he retorted, with a vicious side glance at Temple’s
flushed face. “Nor passed myself off for an amateur after I’d played
professional ball all summer. Oh, you can’t deny it! I know! Your old
man didn’t prosecute, but it’s the truth, all the same. You didn’t
think to run up against me, I s’pose, after pitching two seasons as
Fred Moore out on the coast, an’ then trotting back East to pretend you
were a sweet young innocent that didn’t even know fellows got money for
playing ball.”
Temple’s face was flaming now, and his eyes were filled with a mixture
of bitter shame and indignation.
“That’s nothing to what I’ve got on you!” he retorted. “It’s past and
gone now.” His eyes swept pleadingly from one face to another. “I
had to earn money to get through, and pitching was the only trade I
knew. The rules of professional athletics are unjust, anyhow. Fellows
do other things for money to help them along in college――waiting,
dishwashing, tutoring, coaching――why shouldn’t they play ball? The
check was a heap worse, but it was that or starve. Since my father
forgave me, I don’t see it’s anybody else’s business.”
He caught his breath, and his eyes returned to Savage’s sneering face.
“You’re a corker to bring up things like this!” he went on bitterly.
“I was in the grandstand the day you pitched against the Atlanta
Tigers. Oh, I know you didn’t see me! I was spread out flat, taking
things easy. But I saw _you_――through a crack in the floor. It was a
nice, wide crack, too, that gave me a fine view of the dressing room
underneath. I saw everything that went on there. I know the game you’ve
been playing, and when I’ve told Kennedy he’ll――”
“Great――cats!” The exclamation came in a gasping gurgle from the lips
of Al Ogan. “Am I seeing things?”
The door had opened and closed. Two men stood with their backs against
it. One was Lefty Locke. The other so resembled in every detail――save
expression alone――the sneering busher leaning against the table that
the result was petrifying.
A tense silence fell upon the room as the dazed occupants stared with
widening eyes and sagging jaws at this apparent miracle. It was the
face of the manager which changed first. His gaze had been shifting
continually from Savage to the newcomer, and back again. Presently the
dark, heavy brows lowered in a scowl.
“So there’s two of you!” he snapped.
A bitter smile flitted across Locke’s lips. “A pretty dual personality,
Jack,” he said quietly. “This has certainly been one on me, all right.”
The newcomer took a step forward, his face serious.
“I know you’ll be furious, Kennedy,” he said slowly. “You certainly
have a right to be, but I――”
“Hold on, there!” The manager’s voice was harsh and angry. “You say you
know all about this game,” he went on, glaring at Temple. “Suppose you
spin out the rest of that story.”
Temple flushed and dropped his eyes. Apparently he would have much
preferred remaining in the background.
“There――isn’t――much more,” he stammered. “I’d dozed off, and when I
came to I heard some one moving around down below. It was Savage, and
I was some surprised that he wasn’t out on the field. Once he went
outside for a minute or two, and a little while afterward the other one
came in.”
“Other one!” ejaculated Kennedy. “You knew there were two, then?”
Temple nodded. “I knew Neil here”――he glanced at the scowling fellow
by the table――“had a brother, Nelson, who was a lot better pitcher,
and when I found him passing under Nelson’s name I guessed there was
something queer about it.”
“But you kept your mouth shut because of what he knew about you,”
growled the manager. “Go on.”
“I hadn’t any idea they were so much alike. When I saw them together
in the dressing room under the stand I was stunned for a minute. I
gathered from their talk that they had planned to make a shift that
night, but Neil was half full, and insisted on going out then to finish
the game. Said if Nels didn’t agree he’d go out anyhow. So he got his
way. They changed clothes, and Nels went out through the gate in the
fence, while the other walked out on the field. That’s all, I think.”
“All!” Kennedy repeated harshly. “I should hope so!” He turned to
Nelson Savage with a heavy scowl. “You’re the one I hired, ain’t you?”
he snapped. “I thought so. You deliberately turned my offer over to
this miserable brother of yours, didn’t you? Well, what did you do it
for? You must have known what he was. What was the game?”
Nelson Savage winced a little, clenching his hands tightly behind his
back.
“I did it because I wanted him to have one more chance,” he explained,
in a low tone. “He’d been going to the bad for a long time, but he can
pitch when he’s right. I hoped a chance like that, and being down here
in training where he couldn’t drink, would make him pull up. I even
gave up baseball myself, much as I hated to, and accepted an offer to
go on the road for a sporting-goods house.”
He hesitated an instant, and caught his lip between his teeth. “It
wasn’t any use. When I came down through the State, I stopped off
to――see a friend, and also to learn how he was making out. I discovered
that Neil had got in with a shark named Tethridge, who was training
some race horses over at Livermore’s place, across from Tulane. He’d
evidently been supplying my brother with liquor, for when I slipped
over there I found Neil so intoxicated he could hardly move. He was as
bad next morning, and there was nothing to do but take his place until
he could sober up. He seemed perfectly content to lie around doing
nothing, but finally I simply had to cut out and attend to work or lose
my job. So I looked him up, and told him he’d have to come back. I’d
planned to make the shift after the game, but――well, you’ve heard about
that. I know what a poor trick it was to play on you, Kennedy, but I
was trying to save my brother. If I can ever make it up to you in any
way at all, I’ll be mighty glad.”
During the recital, to which the others listened with absorbed
interest, Neil Savage had preserved his attitude of sneering composure,
unmoved. Now he straightened languidly, and yawned.
“Now that the Sunday school sentiments have all been expressed,” he
drawled insolently, “I don’t suppose there’s any particular use of my
hanging around.”
For a second Kennedy did not answer. He was looking at the other
brother, and the expression of appeal in Nelson’s eyes would have moved
a much harder-hearted person than old Jack.
“All right; you can beat it,” he said shortly. “I might suggest that in
the future Georgia would be a good State for you to avoid.”
“Thanks for the advice,” was the nonchalant reply. “I had the same
notion myself.”
Without further comment, glancing neither to right nor left, he moved
toward the door. Lefty stood aside to let him pass, his look eloquently
expressing the indignation which was consuming him. Nelson Savage, his
eyes fixed rather wistfully on his brother, took an impulsive step
forward as Neil passed, and then drew back, his face white. The door
opened and closed with a slam which had in it a sense of finality as
absolute as the word at the end of a tale. The pause that followed was
broken by Kennedy.
“You’re a fool, young man,” he said, “to monkey with a brother like
that; but I reckon you’ve had your lesson. You can pitch, and I believe
you can make good in professional baseball. Mebbe, after this, you
won’t care to tie up with me, but perhaps I can get you a try-out with
Ben Frazer, manager of the Wolves. He’s got a catcher, Brick King,
that he’s been trying to trade for a twirler, but I don’t want any of
his lemons. Still,” he added, “everything considered, I ought to have
first shot at you. If you’ve got a full line of the goods I’ve seen a
few samples of, I might give you a chance to put your John Hancock to a
Blue Stocking contract. Would you?”
Savage’s face lightened. “Would I?” he cried. “Just give me that
chance!”
With the departure of Neil Savage, happening to glance toward the door
of the small reception room, Lefty was surprised to see it ajar, and,
standing in the opening, the figures of Janet and Celia.
How long they had been there he did not know, but without delay he
walked swiftly over. Miss Berkeley’s face was serious; the gray eyes,
fixed so intently on Savage, held a glint of tears in them. She did not
speak or even turn her head when the southpaw, his expression somewhat
stern and accusing, drew Janet back into the other room.
“You knew all the time,” Lefty said briefly, his brows drawn down in a
frown.
She put one hand lightly on his arm, and raised her anxious,
questioning eyes. “Celia told me about it,” she explained hastily, “but
made me promise never to breathe a single word――even to you. Surely you
won’t blame me for keeping that promise?”
For a second the frown struggled for existence before it was swept away
by the light which illumined Lefty’s whole face.
“Perhaps I’ll forgive you――if――”
His hand had found hers. He bent nearer, looking into the depths of
those wonderful violet eyes. His voice sank to a murmur, so low that no
third person could possibly have heard and understood.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved, for example,
Douro/Duoro.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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