LEFTY O’ THE BIG LEAGUE

HE WAS SAYING TO HIMSELF: “ONE MORE! ONLY ONE MORE! I MUST GET HIM—I’VE GOT TO!”

LEFTY
O’ THE BIG LEAGUE

BY

BURT L. STANDISH

Author of “Lefty o’ the Bush,” “Lefty o’ the Blue
Stockings,” “Lefty o’ the Training Camp.”

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 | Getting in Bad | 11
II | A Call-down from the Manager | 17
III | The Riot at the Theater | 24
IV | One Against Scores | 31
V | Friendly Buck Fargo | 36
VI | Who Was to Blame? | 42
VII | Without Gratitude | 48
VIII | The Man Who Knew | 56
IX | Something Sub-Rosa | 63
X | “When the Cat’s Away” | 70
XI | All In | 77
XII | Lefty’s Failure | 82
XIII | The Discharged Waiter | 89
XIV | Bert Elgin’s Luck | 97
XV | The Reason Why | 103
XVI | The Purloined Letter | 108
XVII | Guile | 114
XVIII | The Man in the Corridor | 120
XIX | Not Quite Proven | 125
XX | Janet Harting Wonders | 131
XXI | The Yellow Streak | 139
XXII | Lefty’s Chance Comes | 147
XXIII | There’s Many a Slip | 152
XXIV | The Unexpected | 158
XXV | The Struggle | 167
XXVI | Gaining Ground | 174
XXVII | A Chance to Make Good | 181
XXVIII | A Bad Beginning | 186
XXIX | Taking a Brace | 193
XXX | The Tricky Twirler | 198
XXXI | Once Too Often | 206
XXXII | The Spiking of Schaeffer | 213
XXXIII | The Telegram | 219
XXXIV | Nothing Else Possible | 225
XXXV | For Want of a Lie | 231
XXXVI | Dropped Out of Sight | 240
XXXVII | Opening the Season | 245
XXXVIII | The Two Managers | 250
XXXIX | The Meeting in the Grandstand | 254
XL | The Surprise | 263
XLI | The Beginning of the Game | 270
XLII | The Truth at Last | 279
XLIII | The Lucky Seventh | 285
XLIV | The Leading Run | 294
XLV | Lefty’s Triumph | 299
XLVI | How It All Happened | 305

LEFTY O’ THE BIG LEAGUE

CHAPTER I
GETTING IN BAD

“Say, fellows!” sang out Red Pollock, the snappy little shortstop of the famous Hornets. “Look who’s here!” There was a general turning of heads and craning of necks on the part of three or four players waiting their chance to wield the willow in batting practice.

“Another Yannigan,” groaned Cy Russell, star pitcher of the organization. “The woods is full of ’em.”

“He don’t look much to me, neither,” stated big Buck Fargo critically. “Say, Jim, who is it, an’ where’d you root it out?”

Brennan, the short, stocky, belligerent-looking manager of the Big League team, did not answer. With his bushy eyebrows drawn down in a frown over his deep-set eyes, he was staring at the young fellow threading his way through the groups of players scattered about the field at all kinds of training work. The stranger wore a soiled and faded gray uniform, upon the shirt of which was sewn a letter K, and dangled a worn leather glove by one finger. His cap, pushed back on a mane of heavy, dark-brown hair, revealed a clean-cut, pleasant face, dominated by a pair of keen brown eyes, a firm chin, and sensitive mouth.

As he took in these details Brennan’s scowl deepened and his bulldog chin protruded dangerously. Catching sight of his face, Pollock grinned and nudged the man nearest him. “Look at the old man,” he whispered. “Something doing.”

The stranger came on without a pause, and, a moment or two later, stopped before the manager. His lips were pressed tightly together, but otherwise his face was perfectly composed. “I’ve come to report, sir,” he said quietly.

The manager’s eyes narrowed. Several things had been fretting him all morning, and his temper was not even at its uncertain best. “Indeed!” he sneered. “And who are you?”

“Locke—Lefty Locke.”

“Never heard the name before,” retorted Brennan shortly.

For an instant the newcomer seemed taken aback. A faint touch of color came into his cheeks, and he looked at the manager as if wondering whether he could possibly be in earnest.

“I—thought—Mr. Toler had written you,” he stammered. “He—said he was going to.”

Brennan’s eyes flashed. “Well, he didn’t,” he snapped. “Where’d you come from? What’s your record?”

“I pitched last season with the Kingsbridge team of the Northern League,” Locke said briefly.

“A twirler!” exclaimed the manager. “Well, I’ll be—” He stopped abruptly, gulped once or twice, and then asked, in an ominously quiet voice: “What did you do season before last?”

“Nothing. It was my first year in professional baseball.”

“What!” Brennan’s face turned purple, and his last shreds of self-restraint vanished. “You pitched one season, an’ got the gall to expect a job with the Hornets! You expect me to believe that Ed Toler, the best scout I’ve got, picked you up without saying a word to me about it—when we’re overrun with pitchers, at that. I don’t want you. Training was begun ten days ago, an’ I got enough men. You can hike back to the bush, where you come from. I wasn’t born yesterday, an’ you can’t put one over me like this. Get that?”

As he listened to the tirade, the color flamed into Locke’s face, and his grip on the leather glove tightened. Then, from the group of players, who had been interested spectators of the interview, came a smothered laugh, which seemed to act like a tonic. As he heard it, Locke’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened.

“You don’t want me?” he repeated, in a steady voice. “You’re willing to release me from the contract I made with Toler?”

“That’s what I said,” growled Brennan.

“Then I’m free to accept any other offer?”

Something in his tone made the manager prick up his ears, all his professional instincts aroused. It is one thing to fire a man who isn’t wanted, but quite another to let him go when another club is after him. “Offer!” he sneered, with deliberate intent. “I s’pose the Tigers an’ the Blue Stockings are fair tearing each other’s eyes out as to which’ll have you.”

Lefty’s lips tightened at the man’s tone. “You guessed right, in a way,” he retorted. “Twenty-four hours after I pledged with Toler, I had an offer from the Blue Stockings of a thousand dollars more than your scout promised me.”

The silence which followed this statement was eloquent. Some one in the little group near by whistled incredulously. Brennan’s eyes were fixed intently on the cub pitcher’s face, as if he were trying to make out whether this was the truth or a magnificent bluff. Accustomed as he was to judging men, he was forced to admit that the youngster did not look like a liar.

“And how much was that?” he demanded abruptly.

“Twenty-five hundred.” Already Lefty was sorry for his impulsive outburst. In a flash he realized that if he had kept his mouth shut he would have been free in a moment to accept the better offer.

“Humph!” grunted Brennan thoughtfully. If Doyle, of the Blue Stockings—the Hornets’ most bitter rivals—wanted this kid as bad as that, there must be something in him, and it would never do to let him go. Much as he hated backing water, the manager was too shrewd a man to allow personal feelings to influence his professional judgment. He scowled deeply, bit his lips, and then snapped sourly:

“Well, seeing as you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful. Trot out there and take that fellow’s place; I can use him somewhere else. Toss a few straight, easy ones over the plate. Stir your stumps now,” he went on, turning fiercely on the astonished group near by. “You boys get busy. We’ve wasted too much time. We’ll stop this general shillalah swinging, and take the field in regular positions. Every one of you run your hits out. You need the exercise.”

Without a word, Lefty turned, and made his way toward the cub pitcher, who had been shuffling around near the slab waiting for the altercation to end. He had been extremely foolish not to keep his face shut, but there was nothing to be gained by repining over the past.

An instant later, as his eyes met those of the man he was replacing, he started slightly, and a look of dazed surprise flashed into his face. It vanished swiftly, but as he reached the fellow his lips were compressed, his eyes hard and cold.

“Hello, Elgin,” he said stiffly.

The other, his face black as a thunder cloud, growled out an unintelligible monosyllable, thrust the ball into Locke’s hand, and walked hurriedly away, leaving the latter to stare after him with an expression which told, as well as spoken words could have done, how unpleasant and distasteful the encounter was to him.

CHAPTER II
A CALL-DOWN FROM THE MANAGER

The meeting had so surprised and startled Lefty that he stood there for a moment or two, ball in hand, watching Elgin join the manager and start with him toward another part of the field. He was aroused abruptly by a drawling, sarcastic voice from the plate:

“Don’t hurry yourself, bub; any time to-day will do.”

It was burly Buck Fargo, the prize backstop, who stood leaning indolently on his bat, watching Locke with mocking eyes. Lefty recognized him instantly from the many published pictures he had seen, and, berating himself inwardly for having given the fellow a chance to criticise, he swiftly toed the pitcher’s plate and sent the ball over.

Of course, it went wide. The cub catcher let out a stream of sarcastic language as he stretched himself in vain for it. A joyful snicker arose from the waiting players, and Fargo grinned aggravatingly.

“Try again, bub,” the latter invited pleasantly. “Jest a mite nearer this time, say a couple of feet. This here stick’s only regulation length, and I ain’t built like a gorilla.”

Lefty bit his lips and made no response. A small boy retrieved the ball, and the irate catcher whipped it out with decidedly unnecessary force. With gritted teeth, Locke caught it, determined that there would be no more exhibitions like that. He did not know what was the matter with him. To be sure, he had done very little pitching for a long time, but he should be able to find the plate better than this.

The second effort was not much of an improvement, and a howl of derision greeted it; for there is nothing a crowd of old baseball men enjoy more than having fun with a green cub.

The sound had a curious effect upon Lefty. Before the echoes of that jeering chorus died away he had regained his grip. He realized that they were doing their best to rattle him and cause him to make an exhibition of himself, and his jaw squared resolutely.

“I’ll fool ’em!” he muttered. “I’ll show him something.”

He caught the ball easily, his eyes fixed on Fargo’s grinning face. The big catcher stood negligently swinging his bat, and when he saw the sphere coming apparently straight toward him with speed, he dodged back precipitously, only to behold it shoot gracefully in and cut a corner of the plate.

“Well, well, well!” he exclaimed. “Accidents will happen. You’ve really got a curve, have you? Let’s have another one like that, if you can do it.”

Lefty could and did, and the batter sent the horsehide soaring over the fence. Obedient to instructions, he tossed aside his bat, and began trotting leisurely around the bases. Halfway between first and second he paused for a moment. “You’ll learn, bub,” he chuckled. “Some time next fall mebbe we’ll make a pitcher out of you.” Then he resumed his placid way about the diamond, while a new ball was produced, and Locke faced the second batter.

Lefty did not try any more curves, for he had suddenly realized that this was batting practice, not an exhibition of pitching. He continued to find the plate with a fair degree of accuracy, however, and one after another the three other players smashed out the sphere with joyous enthusiasm, forgetting in the delight of batting to continue their baiting of the new pitcher.

Not so Buck Fargo. He enjoyed batting quite as much, as his companions, but he also dearly loved to get a cub’s goat.

“Where’s your curves, bub?” he taunted, as he took up his bat for the second time. “Can’t you give us something interesting, or was they accidents, like I thought?”

Lefty smiled faintly. He did not intend to give Fargo the satisfaction of seeing that his words made any impression whatever. In spite of his determination, however, as he flung his arm forward, unconsciously he gave it a little twist which, made the horsehide—seemingly wide at first—cut a corner of the plate in an elusive curve. The batter hit it glancingly, and popped up a little fly which Locke smothered without moving more than a step or two from his position.

“Not bad for the bush,” chuckled Fargo, quite undisturbed. “Saved me the trouble of stretching my legs, anyhow. Come ahead, Cy, and see what you can do with the boy wonder from Squedunk.” He shot a swift glance out of the corner of his eye toward a distant part of the field, and went on in exactly the same tone, with scarcely a perceptible break: “He’s got a baby curve or two that might be fair if he could control ’em.”

Lefty was possessed by an irresistible impulse to see what he could do with the mighty pitcher, Cy Russell. He knew perfectly well that the discomfiture of one of their number might get the whole bunch down on him, but he was a very human individual, with a spice of obstinacy in his make-up. Moreover, he had failed to catch that quick glance of Fargo’s across the field, and so was quite unsuspecting.

As Russell faced him, Locke deliberately sent over a drop which fooled the batter completely. A slow floater was equally successful, and a swift, straight one, cutting the center of the pan, completed the discomfiture of the notoriously poorest hitter in the organization.

Fargo jeered out something about luck and “goose eggs,” and hustled the next man to the plate. Lefty, throwing prudence and common sense to the winds, resolved to give them what they clamored for if it was in his power. He fooled the batter into swinging at a clever bender, and then, oblivious to the sudden cessation of Fargo’s taunting voice, was just winding up to pitch again when a hand suddenly gripped his wrist, and a harsh voice sounded in his ear:

“What the deuce do you think you’re doing, Locke?”

Brought to earth, Lefty swung around, and stared for an instant, with mantling cheeks, at Jim Brennan’s angry face.

“Gimme that ball!” rasped the manager. Locke handed it over without a word. “I s’pose you think you’re mighty smart showin’ off your cute tricks,” the older man went on, in a cold, biting tone; “but that’s where you fall down—hard. This is batting practice, not a Fourth of July celebration. When I want any fireworks I’ll let you know. Get that? Well, see you remember it. Another stage play like this will be your finish. All around the park, boys, and then back to dinner.”

He turned from Lefty with an abruptness which made it impossible for the cub pitcher to say a word in his own defense, and perhaps it was just as well. To tell the truth, there was nothing to be said. Locke realized perfectly that he was totally in the wrong. A moment later, as he caught a glimpse of Buck Fargo’s grinning face, it flashed over him that the whole thing was a put-up job to get him a call. The big catcher could not have failed to see Brennan coming long before the manager got within hearing distance, yet he had kept up his taunts to the last minute in order that Locke might be taken by surprise.

“Looks like my luck had deserted me,” Lefty thought, as he fell into the line of men trotting briskly around the field just inside the high board fence. “Haven’t been here an hour before I get a call from the manager and run into Bert Elgin.”

At the thought of the latter’s presence in the squad, he frowned deeply. The call-down was swiftly forgotten, but this other annoyance was likely to be much more lasting and trouble-breeding in its results.

CHAPTER III
THE RIOT AT THE THEATER

“A rah, rah boy, is he?” sneered a voice from the group not far away. “I see his finish.”

Lefty knew they were talking about him. He had been aware of the fact for five minutes or so, but this was the first remark which had reached his ears in its entirety. Sitting in a corner of the Hatchford House lobby, he turned his head slightly and met the belligerent glance of a burly, dark-browed, full-lipped fellow of twenty-six or seven, who was lounging against a pillar a little way off.

For a moment their eyes clashed, and then Hagin—Lefty had heard him so called, and recognized the name as that of the left fielder on the regulars—laughed disagreeably and said something to the man next him, who glanced up, stared, and turned away with just the same sort of laugh.

Lefty’s eyes dropped to the newspaper he held before him. In the scant nine hours since his appearance on the field that morning, the wide difference between a bush-league team and an organization like the Hornets had been forced upon him at every turn. In his joy and astonishment at the unexpected offer from Brennan’s scout, to say nothing of the better one which followed it so closely, he had given little thought to what his reception would be by the other players.

He was far too sensible, of course, to expect anything like an open-armed welcome, but he had not quite counted on the cold-shouldered indifference which was meted out to him from every quarter.

The other fellows were mostly friendly enough among themselves. On the field, in the hotel dining room, and now in the lobby, they gathered in little groups, laughing, joking, chaffing each other in a way which, in no small degree, emphasized the newcomer’s loneliness and isolation.

Lefty had tried several times during the day to scrape acquaintance with some fellow who looked pleasant and friendly enough, for he was a chap who enjoyed the companionship of his fellow men, and exactly the sort of joshing give-and-take which is inevitable when a crowd of like-minded individuals get together. His mild little efforts had been met with such brusque, chilling indifference, however, that he speedily gave it up.

“I seem to have gotten in wrong from the start,” he reflected, as he sat with his eyes fixed on the paper, though he had read scarcely a word. “Brennan’s sore as a crab because he had to back water before his own men. I wish to thunder he hadn’t! I’d be better off. Then there was that fool exhibition of mine on the field. I suppose they all think I’m swelled up about my pitching, and was showing off. And now they’ve found out I’m a college man. I wonder how they got wise to that. I didn’t mean any one should know, if I could help it; some professionals seem to have such a deep dislike for a fellow who’s been through college. I wonder if Elgin could have dropped a hint.”

In reality Lefty had quite missed the most important reason of all. Other things may have influenced the men in some small degree, but the simple fact of his belated arrival at the training quarters accounted for more than anything else.

Ten days had been ample for the cubs, or new recruits, to become acquainted. They had formed their little cliques, split up into their different factions. They were sufficient unto themselves. It was natural for them to treat a new arrival with jealous coldness, for every additional candidate only decreased the chances of the others to make good. As for the old men—the regulars of this especial team—they had small use for a youngster until he showed himself made of the right stuff.

At length, tired of sitting alone, Lefty arose and sallied forth to take a casual inspection of the Texas town. Ashland was a place of some size, and decidedly up to date. A number of factories and various oil refineries gave employment to several thousand workmen, the majority of whom—it seemed to Lefty—were thronging the brightly lighted streets, blocking the corners, or crowding into the many moving-picture or vaudeville shows which lined the main thoroughfares.

Lefty did not find this solitary inspection of the town very exciting, and, after he had traversed a few of the principal streets, he decided that he had had enough. A glance at his watch told him that it was only a quarter to eight. The evening seemed to be dragging along with infinite slowness. He might return to the hotel and go to bed, of course, but he wasn’t in the least sleepy, and somehow he had a feeling that by doing such a thing he would be giving in. Finally the glaring lights of a combination moving-picture and vaudeville show across the street gave him an idea. Crossing hastily, he bought a ticket and pushed into the darkened auditorium.

The place was jammed to the doors with a rather boisterous crowd, made up almost entirely of men. Lefty could see no vacant seat, and so he took his place against the wall back of the last row, from which position he watched the progress of the pictured drama with a certain amount of interest. There was no questioning the unusual excellence of the films.

Two of them were rolled off before the stage lights went up and the curtain lifted upon the Montmorency Sisters, vocalists. Lefty yawned, and decided to get out. The place was hot and stuffy, and he was on the point of crowding past the later arrivals who filled the space near him, when, suddenly catching sight of two men sitting three rows away, he changed his mind.

One of them was a total stranger. Lefty did not remember ever having seen him before. The other was Bert Elgin, and, as his eyes took in the sharp profile, with the familiar, sneering uplift at the corner of the lips, Locke’s face darkened. The face had changed little since he had last seen it. An added line or two showed about the mouth, perhaps, and there was, no doubt, a certain maturity which years alone can bring. In all essential features, however, it was unaltered, and the sight of it brought a rush of vivid recollection into Lefty’s mind which made him frown. It seemed the irony of fate that they two should meet again under conditions which must throw them together in most undesirable terms of intimacy.

Oblivious to the twittering pair capering about the stage, Lefty stood staring at the back of Elgin’s head with unseeing eyes. His mind was back in the past, and his expression showed how unpleasant the remembrance was.

The burst of handclapping at the end of the act aroused him in time to see Elgin and his companion arise and crowd toward the aisle. He stood there waiting for them to go, for he had no desire to encounter the fellow just now. With narrowing eyes, he watched his old enemy elbow his way roughly toward the door, careless of who or what was in his path.

It all came about so suddenly and unexpectedly that Lefty never knew just what was the real cause. He saw one or two men turn and stare angrily at the fellow shoving his way past them, muttering something under their breath as they did so. Then, just as the pair were opposite him and close to the door, Locke heard a sharp cry of pain in a woman’s voice, followed instantly by a bellow of fury from a man. Swiftly there came the thud of bare fists against flesh and bone. A dozen men sprang up and began shoving toward the door. A woman screamed shrilly.

CHAPTER IV
ONE AGAINST SCORES

Instinctively Lefty joined the rush toward the center of disturbance. He caught a glimpse of two men struggling in close embrace, each raining blows upon the other’s face and body. He saw that one of them was Bert Elgin. The other was a big, burly fellow, dressed in a workman’s Sunday best, his face flushed, his eyes aflame with anger.

A score of other men were trying to get close enough to put in a blow or two. The place resounded with shouts of: “Kill him!” “Lynch him!” “Beat him up!” Then the whole struggling mob burst through the narrow doorway into the garish, glittering lobby.

Lefty was borne irresistibly toward the door by the crowd behind him, which seemed eager to take part in the fracas. By the time he reached it the entire audience was on its feet, making for the single exit. Hands pinioned helplessly at his sides, Locke was forced into the maelstrom of bodies. There was a squeeze, a breathless grunt, and he plunged out into the dazzling brightness.

The disturbance had ceased to be a fight and turned into a riot. The mob was made up of men in the raw, lacking in self-restraint, whose passions were roused to a white heat with very little cause. A woman’s cry of pain, the roar of fury from her escort, and the trouble was started.

As they surged against the frail, ornate booth from which tickets were dispensed, they were like a lot of madmen. Not half a dozen out of the crowd knew what the disturbance was about. Blows were rained on the heads and shoulders and backs of friends in their eagerness to get at the man in the very heart of that seething throng, and already two vigorous personal encounters had been started in different corners of the lobby on that account.

As he was flung forward against the side of the ticket booth, Lefty felt sudden anger surge up within him. He forgot that Bert Elgin was his enemy, and remembered only that he was battling against odds. And when, a moment later, by some odd trick of chance, he saw the fellow’s face, bruised, battered, blood trickling from a cut on his cheek, and caught a fleeting glance of desperate appeal from Elgin’s terror-stricken eyes, he threw caution to the winds and jumped into the fray.

The very size of the mob was in Locke’s favor, but it is doubtful whether he could have done much to help Elgin except for the unexpected giving way of the ticket booth. Slowly it began to sway under the tremendous pressure against one side. A door at the back was burst suddenly open, and the ticket agent dashed forth, clutching the cash drawer in both hands, only to trip and fall headlong, scattering money in every direction, and causing a new diversion. The crashing over of the booth was another, and for an instant Elgin was freed from the clutching hands which had held him prisoner.

Lefty darted forward, gripped the man by the shoulders, and dragged him into the angle made by the wrecked booth and one wall of the lobby. Petrified by fear, the fellow sank helplessly to the floor, and Locke had barely time to leap in front of him before the yelling crowd surged forward again.

In the second that he stood there waiting, the cub pitcher was conscious of a curious feeling which had come to him once or twice before at moments of great tension on the diamond. It was as if his brain had been wiped with a cold, wet sponge, clarifying his vision, and soothing his raw nerves to an almost uncanny degree.

He felt that there could be but one end to the encounter, and yet he was not afraid. He eyed the semicircle of angry faces calmly, coolly, appraisingly, mentally picking out the exact spot on the protruding jaw of the foremost man with which he meant to make connections an instant later. When the fellow went down before his beautiful swinging blow, Lefty felt a thrill of successful accomplishment.

A second man swiftly followed the first, but after that there was no time for picking and choosing. With a howl of rage, the crowd rushed forward in a body, bent on getting their hands on their prey and crushing him bodily. Luckily only three men could face Locke at once, and for a brief space he held them back by sheer skill and trained muscles.

With fine precision he wasted not a single effort, but broke through clumsy guarding arms, to land on some vital spot with a jolt which sent his man reeling back against the others, or else crumpled him to the floor.

In about three minutes those in the front rank were seeking to escape the deadly accuracy of his blows by dodging to one side or trying to push back through the crowd. Unfortunately for Locke, those in the rear continued to force their way forward, and thus slowly but inexorably the ring closed in.

Lefty’s arms moved faster and faster. He had long ago ceased to pick and choose—it was impossible. Several times he had leaped back before it occurred to him to wonder what had become of Elgin. That was but a fleeting thought, however. He had never counted on the fellow’s aid, so it was just as well that he was not in the way.

A number of glancing blows had struck home, one cutting his lips. At last he began to wonder how long he could keep it up, and what the end would be. He knew he might expect no mercy from the maddened crowd, all of whom supposed, by this time, that he was the one who had started the fracas. Unless the police came soon, or some other help—

Suddenly he felt a movement behind him. His first thought was that his enemies had found a way to get him at the rear; but even before he could whirl about to face them, two hands caught his shoulders, and a familiar voice sounded in his ear:

“Lemme have a whack at ’em, kid.”

It was Buck Fargo, the big catcher of the Hornets.

CHAPTER V
FRIENDLY BUCK FARGO

Dazed, bewildered, a sudden overpowering weakness gripping his limbs, Lefty felt himself thrust against the wall, and saw the massive form of the man who had baited him so successfully on the field that morning leap into the front place, eyes blazing and huge fists doubled for action.

Perhaps it was the sight of him—burly, menacing, and fresh—which turned the tide. More likely it was that sudden panicky awakening which comes to every mob when the first outburst of passion has run its course. At all events, Fargo had no more than time to land his fist with precision and force on the faces of two men, before some one at the rear started a yell that the cops were coming.

The effect was magical. Out into the street poured the mob, and fled wildly in every direction. Before he realized that it was all over Lefty felt himself grasped by the shoulders, hustled out of the barricade and rushed across the street. The whole thoroughfare was filled with flying men, so that they passed unnoticed as Fargo headed straight for the nearest corner.

“Them cops is coming at last,” he explained shortly, whirling into a side street. “We don’t want to be pinched. Think you’re good for the hotel, kid? If you ain’t, we can stop at a drug store and have you patched up.”

“I can make it all right,” Lefty gasped. “I’m only—dead beat.” An instant later he stopped still. “What became of Elgin?” he asked abruptly. “I forgot him.”

“He beat it.” Fargo’s tone was noncommittal. “He crawled out the same way I got in, while they was busy with you. That ticket coop was held up a mite at the end by hitting against the wall. He’s all safe.”

There was an expression of curiosity on the catcher’s face, and for a moment he seemed about to ask a question. Apparently he changed his mind, however, for the next instant his lips closed and he hustled Lefty on again.

They reached the hotel without attracting much attention. Locke had managed to wipe most of the stains of battle from his face, and as they entered the side door Fargo clapped his own wide-brimmed felt hat on the other’s head, starting some rough bantering with the elevator boy, which kept the fellow occupied. They stepped out on the top floor without the boy having really noticed Lefty at all.

“Now we’ll take stock, kid,” the catcher said, as he switched on the lights in Lefty’s room and closed the door. “That face of yours ain’t so bad, after all. We’ll fix your mouth up in a jiffy. Got any plaster?”

Locke nodded. “Yes, but I don’t want you to bother about it, Fargo. It’s white of you to—”

“Stow that, son!” interrupted the big chap shortly. “This rumpus is going to get the old man up on his ear for fair. If he finds out you was in it, there’ll be blazes to pay.”

“But how can he help it? I was there, and everybody saw me.”

“Sure you was,” grinned Fargo, dexterously applying a wet towel to Locke’s countenance. “In the scuffle you got a tap or two by mistake; that’s all. You don’t s’pose that crazy bunch of roughnecks is going to remember faces, do you? They was clean off their nuts, every last one of ’em.”

There was silence for a moment or two as the big, muscular fingers applied the plaster to the cut lips with surprising deftness. “There!” Fargo said with satisfaction. “That’ll do fine. There’s a scratch alongside your nose, but it don’t amount to nothing. Pull off your shirt, and let’s have a look at the rest of you.”

Lefty obeyed without question, and revealed a muscular chest dotted here and there with bruises already beginning to darken. It had been impossible to guard himself at every point from the frenzied rushes, and he had instinctively protected his face.

Fargo grinned as he saw the damage. “Won’t you be stiff and sore to-morrow morning!” he chuckled. “It’s lucky you can lay it to the first day’s practice. Say, kid, how in thunder did you two start that riot? You look like a peaceable guy to me.”

“I didn’t start it,” Lefty returned swiftly. “I broke into the game afterward.”

“Humph! Let’s hear about it.”

Briefly, Lefty told him what little he knew about the beginning of the trouble. He said nothing of his dislike for Bert Elgin, but Fargo must have guessed it from his manner.

“So that’s it?” the catcher commented. “I gather you two ain’t very chummy.”

“Not exactly,” Lefty returned shortly.

Fargo eyed him curiously. “Then why did you butt in? He started the muss, and I should say he deserved what he got.”

“But the whole push was against him,” protested Locke. “I couldn’t sneak off and let them hammer him to pieces.”

“Strikes me that he sneaked,” Fargo said swiftly. “When I came across the street to see what was doing, there wasn’t any use trying to get near the front, so I made for the corner to see if I could get a glimpse over the top of that tipped-over ticket cage. I hadn’t been there a minute before Elgin came crawling out from underneath. He was so blamed scared that I hadn’t more’n got out of him that you were in there alone when he beat it. Looks like it didn’t worry him any to leave you alone for the bunch to hammer.”

Lefty smiled faintly. “Can’t help that. It was up to him. I’d have hated myself if I’d gone away and left any man in that kind of a hole.” He hesitated an instant, the color rising to his face. “Besides, even if we aren’t friends, he’s—one of the bunch.”

Fargo stared at him oddly; then he broke into a laugh. “Time we was both in bed,” he said abruptly. “Don’t forget to keep your trap shut about this to-morrow. You was there and got a love tap or two in the scuffle. Lucky the old man can’t see that chest of yours.”

Outside the door he paused, the queer look in his eyes again. “One of the bunch!” he muttered aloud. “Well, I’ll be hanged!”

CHAPTER VI
WHO WAS TO BLAME?

On his way in to breakfast next morning, Manager Brennan bought a copy of the Ashland Morning Chronicle to glance through during the progress of the meal. Having seated himself and given his order, he spread open the sheet. The first thing to catch his eye was the flaming headline, “Palace Theater Wrecked by Mob.”

Having heard echoes of the affair the night before, the manager glanced over the account with interest. Halfway down the column he stopped short, clutched the paper, and stared with bulging eyes and purpling cheeks at a certain short paragraph:

The cause of the riot is not definitely known. It is said, however, to have been started by the rowdyish behavior of one of the visiting baseball men who was attending the performance. We might call Manager Brennan’s attention to the fact that, while Ashland is always ready to extend every hospitality to himself and his famous organization, she does not care about having that hospitality abused.

With a guttural exclamation of rage, Brennan half started from his seat, only to relax again and glare around.

“You read that stuff?” he demanded, catching the eye of Red Pollock across the table.

“Sure!” grinned the latter. “Great dope. If Cy hadn’t coaxed me into a game of draw, I’d been there myself, instead of missing all the fun.”

“You’d ought to thank me,” said Russell philosophically. “If you hadn’t been so busy losing your dough to Pete and me, you’d likely got your block knocked off down the street. According to accounts, there wasn’t nothing playful about that mix-up.”

“I reckon not,” sighed Pollock regretfully. “They say the lad that started the rumpus, whoever he was, got into a corner and held off the whole bunch for ten minutes. He must be some scrapper. I got mixed up in a strike riot in Chicago once, and, believe me, it’s no cinch to stand off a crowd of roughnecks like that.”

“Humph!” grunted the manager. He had cooled down considerably while the others were speaking, and was doing some thinking. “Any of the boys see it?”

“Sure! Buck got a look-in, he was telling us.”

Brennan glanced swiftly down to where Fargo sat at the end of the table. “How about last night, Buck?” he called, in a deceptively mild tone. “Were you the one who started the rough-house downtown?”

“Nix on that!” grinned the catcher. “It was going full blast when I got there. I seen all I wanted to from the outskirts. The crowd was plumb crazy. About a hundred of ’em trying to get at one poor bloke penned in behind the upset ticket booth. Them that couldn’t get a whack at him hit somebody else for luck, and a dozen nice little individual scraps were going on all over the place.”

“But who was the man?” Brennan persisted. “Didn’t you see him?”

“Couldn’t get a sight of him from the street,” Fargo answered readily. “The ticket booth was too high. I run into one of your cubs—Locke’s his name—trying to get out of the crowd, and we came home together.”

The manager frowned suspiciously. He knew Fargo of old, and realized that he was just the sort of man to be concerned in an affair of this description. The catcher’s gaze was candid and open, however, and the closest scrutiny failed to disclose as much as a scratch on his face.

Brennan’s gaze veered swiftly to the next table, where his new recruit sat with some of the other youngsters. Locke looked cool and undisturbed as he ate his breakfast with evident relish. The manager’s keen eye discovered a bit of plaster on one lip and a scratch on one side of his nose; but, by what Fargo had said about the general nature of the fighting, those slight abrasions might easily be accounted for. Besides, Locke did not strike him as having much of the rowdy in his make-up.

Without further comment, Brennan fell to on his breakfast and resumed reading the newspaper account. When he had finished it, he came to the conclusion that if one of his men had indeed been the cause of the disturbance the fellow must be a scrapper of unusual ability, and would surely bear upon his person unmistakable marks of the conflict.

Being a man of action, he at once started the round of his players. He had no desire to antagonize the rougher element in Ashland. He knew perfectly well that this would mean a constant succession of bickerings, with the possibility of injury to some of his highclass players if they got into a fight.

His critical inspection of the men showed the regulars to be beyond reproach. Not one had even a slight abrasion for which he could not account. The majority were provided with plausible alibis. Of the cubs, three were on the suspicious list. Locke he had already eliminated, and so did not bother about him. The other two were Bert Elgin and a young fielder named Ross, both of whom—and particularly the first mentioned—bore telltale signs on their faces.

They told a plausible, well-balanced story: They had been sitting near the stage of the Palace Theater when the uproar started back by the door. They arose with the rest of the audience and were carried out by the rush of the crowd. When they finally emerged into the lobby—Elgin swore that he had left a good-sized piece of skin from his face on the edge of the door—the place was filled with men, yelling and fighting like maniacs. They were so busy forcing their way to the street that neither had been able to get a look at the cause of the disturbance. Both were hit several times in the face, and had naturally smashed back. On reaching the sidewalk, they had left the place at once and returned to the hotel.

Brennan was slightly nonplused. The story rang true. It agreed perfectly, moreover, with Fargo’s account of the affair, and the manager knew that his catcher was not at all on friendly terms with either Elgin or Ross. Lastly, he was confident that neither of them had pugilistic skill or nerve enough to stand up before such a crowd after the manner which every account agreed that the unknown had done.

Puzzled, with a vague feeling that there was something about it which he did not understand, Brennan was obliged to content himself with a strict order that the entire squad forego shows of any description in the future, under penalty of heavy fines.

Later in the day he instituted inquiries throughout the town, with equal lack of success. The majority of people who had been at the theater had lost their heads, and could tell him nothing that he wanted to know. Three men there were who swore that they had obtained a good look at the mysterious individual, but their descriptions were so totally at variance that the manager gave up his quest in disgust.

“A lot of dough-heads!” he growled. “Sounds as if they were each describing a different person.”

Which happened to be exactly the truth.

CHAPTER VII
WITHOUT GRATITUDE

“Well, it worked all right, kid,” remarked Buck Fargo as he caught up with Lefty on the way out to the field. “I’ll guarantee the old man didn’t even ask you a question, did he?”

“No. I was waiting for him to brace me, but it never came off. What the deuce did you tell him?”

Fargo grinned. “The truth—only not quite all of it,” he chuckled. “Wonder how our friend Elgin’s going to get out of it?”

Lefty hazarded no guess. He had more than a suspicion that his old acquaintance would manage to evade the responsibility somehow. That had always been his strong point, for he was not overburdened with scruples about sticking to the letter of the truth.

Fargo explained briefly what he had told Brennan, and then dropped back to his own crowd, leaving Locke alone. The latter was just turning into the gate of the field when some one touched his arm, and, turning, he saw Bert Elgin beside him, a frown of anxiety on his thin face.

“Look here,” the man began abruptly, “Brennan’s just put it up to me about last night, and I had to give him a song and dance to steer him off. He’s mad as a hornet, and I couldn’t very well tell him I was mixed up in that fool business. I wanted to put you wise, so if he asks you, your story can fit in with mine.”

Locke’s eyes were fixed coldly upon the other’s face. “And what was the story you told him?” he asked shortly.

“Said I was down in front with Ross, and got these scratches getting out of the place. Didn’t know anything about what started the muss, or see the fellow who—”

“And you expect me to back you up in this lie?” Lefty broke in, his eyes narrowing. “You’ve got another guess coming, Elgin. I came mighty close to lying for you once, and it’s the last time.”

Elgin’s face darkened. “You’ll blab it all to him, then?” he burst out. “I might have known you wouldn’t let slip a chance like this to get back at me. You always were a—” He stopped abruptly and bit his lip, a slow flush rising in his face.

Lefty’s eyes flashed ominously. “Well?” he snapped. “Let’s have it. What were you going to say?”

Elgin’s gaze dropped to the ground, and he kicked a pebble awkwardly. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “I—wasn’t thinking—of what—you did for me last night.”

Lefty’s lips curled scornfully. “Don’t let that worry you,” he retorted. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it to save my self-respect, and because you were one of the boys against a crowd of muckers. You don’t owe me anything. Get that? I don’t want you indebted to me. As for this story you told Brennan, it’s up to you. I won’t go out of my way to put him right, but if he asks me questions I’ll tell him the truth.”

Elgin threw back his head, furious under the lashing contempt of the other’s voice.

“If you’re such a good little boy,” he sneered, “how do you explain traveling under a name which isn’t yours? Strikes me that’s a lie, all right.”

“That’s my business,” returned Lefty curtly. “Anything more?”

“No,” snarled Elgin; “but if Brennan gets wise through you, I’ll settle your hash for good and all.”

Lefty shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Try it,” he laughed. “If you don’t have any better luck than you did the last time, I guess I’ll survive.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked across the field, leaving Elgin glaring after him in speechless rage.

For a moment or two Lefty was conscious of an unpleasant feeling, more like a bad taste in the mouth than anything else. He had not really expected any fulsome expressions of gratitude from Bert Elgin. He was quite sincere in not wishing the man to feel indebted to him in the slightest. And yet, inconsequentially enough, when it was all over he could not help wondering how any one could be so lacking in a sense of decency. At least the fellow could have kept his mouth shut, if nothing else.

The whole matter was swept swiftly out of his mind, however. Brennan, still somewhat peevish at his lack of success in reaching the bottom of the riot affair, was decidedly short of temper, and he started the day’s practice with a rush and vim which kept everybody on the jump.

“Get a hustle on you, Locke!” he snapped, as Lefty approached at a dogtrot. “I want to see what some of the cubs can do with a stick,” he went on, in a lower tone. “Get out there and loosen up a bit; a little smoke, you know. You was full enough of it yesterday.”

Lefty caught the ball with outward calm, but as he turned and walked out to the pitcher’s box he groaned to himself. He had been hoping that he might be spared this to-day, for he had a bruise on his left shoulder as big as a silver dollar, and his whole upper body was stiff and sore from last night’s experience.

There was nothing to do but grin and bear it, however, unless he wanted to rouse Brennan’s suspicions. While the cub batters were being gathered in, he tried warming up a little, but had no more than sent two balls over before he was brought up sharply by the manager’s roar:

“Stop that, and get down to business!”

The first delivery went so high that the cub backstop had difficulty in pulling it down. The second was equally erratic. Lefty flashed a swift glance at the stocky manager, whose face was set in a fierce scowl, and decided that he would have to take a brace at any cost.

With an effort which sent a stinging twinge of pain through his bruised shoulder, he whipped over a speedy straight one, which the batter missed, following it by a drop that was quite as deceptive. Brennan’s scowl relaxed slightly, but more than once during the succeeding twenty minutes it deepened again; for Lefty managed to intersperse wild pitches with good ones in a manner which could not help being exasperating to one who knew nothing of the cause.

“That’ll do!” growled the manager, at length. “You’re a winner, you are! What’s the matter with you to-day?”

Lefty mumbled some excuse about not feeling very fit, and Brennan’s lips curled. “Huh!” he snorted. “Delicate, are you? Rot! Hey, Cy, come over and give this cub a few lessons in first principles.”

There was a general grin from the watching group of cubs, and Lefty felt his cheeks burn. He recovered himself swiftly, however, and, at Brennan’s order, took his place with the batters. The fact that he smashed out a clean single the first time he was up before the Hornet’s star pitcher went far toward restoring his own self-respect, even though it had no visible effect on the Argus-eyed manager.

Once during the course of the morning’s work Lefty caught Buck Fargo’s eyes fixed upon him, and as he was leaving the park toward noon the big backstop stepped out from the group of regulars and came over to him.

“Looks like you were getting in bad with the old man,” he remarked seriously. “First impressions go a long distance with him. I’ve been thinking mebbe we made a mistake in keeping quiet about last night. He’d roar for a bit, but he couldn’t sling it into you like he would if you’d started that rough-house.”

“You think it would be a good idea to tell him?” Lefty asked gravely.

“That would put him wise to what was the matter with you.”

The cub pitcher’s lips twitched. “Don’t you think it would be more sport to see if he could find it out by himself?” he suggested.

Fargo let out a guffaw and brought one fist down on Locke’s shoulder with a force which made him wince.

“For a cub, you ain’t half bad, kid,” he chuckled.

That was all he said. The next instant he had turned away and rejoined his companions, leaving Lefty to jog on back to the hotel alone.

But somehow, though he was alone, the cub was far from feeling that depressing isolation of the day before. The morning seemed to have been spent principally in stirring up an old enmity and getting in bad with the manager. But these things did not worry the bush pitcher as they might have done if he had not fancied that he had also made a friend, and one who was well worth while.

CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN WHO KNEW

Lefty had barely stepped inside the Hatchford Hotel lobby when some one leaped at him like a human whirlwind, and a vaguely familiar voice chortled in his ear:

“Well, you old lobster! If I’m not glad to see your ugly mug again! Put it there, old fellow!”

Whirling swiftly, Locke saw standing before him a short, slim, wiry chap of about his own age, with a deeply tanned and freckled face, and a big mouth stretched to its utmost in a wide grin of delight.

“Jack Stillman!” he exclaimed joyously, grabbing the outstretched hand. “Well, what do you know about this! Last time I ran into you was on Broadway, over a year ago. What the mischief are you doing down here?”

“That’s easy. I’m the only original live wire on the sporting page of the Star. Ran down to look over Jim Brennan’s live stock and give the fans something to think about. You don’t mean to say you’re one of ’em, Phil?”

“Guessed right the first crack, Jack,” Lefty laughed. “You always were an awful clever boy.”

“But how the deuce— I didn’t even know you’d taken up baseball. Thought you were scratching away in a lawyer’s office.”

“So I was until last spring. I played the season under the name of Lefty Locke. It’s a long story, but—”

Stillman’s eyes widened. “You’re Locke?” he exclaimed interestedly. “Wouldn’t that get you? I heard a few things about his pitching out in the bush last summer, but I hadn’t any idea you were it. Let’s have the yarn. Any good copy in it?”

“I hope not,” Lefty said hastily. “Come on upstairs and I’ll tell you the story of my life while I’m making myself respectable.”

The newspaper man accepted with alacrity, and when they reached Lefty’s room he made himself comfortable while the latter proceeded with his toilet and the recital of the summer’s doings at the same time.

“It’s a shame that Blue Stocking scout showed up just too late,” Stillman said regretfully. “Of course Jimmy Brennan is all right. He’s got more baseball under that dome of his than most managers in the country, and if you get in right you’ll be all to the merry. I’d hate like thunder to lose that coin though. Any more cub twirlers in the outfit?”

“Bert Elgin,” Lefty returned quietly.

Stillman stared, and an expression of incredulity flashed into his face. “What?” he gasped. “Not—”

Locke nodded. “The same. Funny, isn’t it, we should run up against each other this way?”

“Funny? I don’t see it. The cur!”

Lefty turned swiftly from the bureau, a queer look on his face. “Just what do you mean by that, Jack?” he asked slowly.

Stillman snorted. “You know very well what I mean,” he retorted forcibly. “I’m not supposed to be wise, but Bob Ferris told me the whole story, and it’s my opinion you were blamed fools to keep still about it. Any man who’ll steal from one college mate and then deliberately work to throw the blame on another isn’t fit for decent fellows to associate with. When you had him where you wanted him, why didn’t you come out with it, and let everybody know what kind of a mucker he was?”

Lefty slipped into his coat, and dropped down beside his friend.

“You know why we didn’t,” he said quickly. “He’d have been fired, and the varsity would have lost about every other game that season. You don’t suppose it was on Elgin’s account we kept still after we’d found how he was trying to throw the blame on me?”

“I’m not quite a fool. All the same, you were wrong. We might have dropped a game or two, but you could have jumped into his place, all right.”

“You know I couldn’t. I was slaving about ten hours a day to make up work I missed on account of that beastly typhoid. How long would I have lasted at Princeton if I tried to play ball, too? No; Bob and I thrashed it all out, and, though it came mighty hard, we decided it was the only thing to do, unless we wanted the team beaten to a frazzle.”

“Why didn’t you come out with it the next year?” demanded Stillman. “You could have pitched then, all right.”

“That would have looked fine, wouldn’t it? How would we have accounted for keeping quiet so long? I will say, Jack, that we were both sorry more than once afterward; but, having started out, there was nothing else to do but keep on. I don’t see how Bob came to tell you. It was understood that we should keep it entirely to ourselves.”

“It wasn’t till a year after we’d graduated,” the reporter explained, his face still clouded. “It was one right at the Princeton Club. I don’t remember just how the subject came up. I suppose he thought there wasn’t any need of keeping still any longer.” He paused and glanced at his companion. “How’s he acted since you showed up? Same old Elgin, I suppose?”

For an instant Lefty hesitated. He could picture Stillman’s sarcastic reception of the story of the night before, and, knowing his friend’s impulsive, quick-tempered nature, he decided that it would be wisest to keep silent.

“He wasn’t overjoyed to see me,” he returned quietly.

The newspaper man arose. “I should say not!” he commented briefly. “Afraid you’ll let the other fellows know what sort of a rotter he is. If I were in your place, I’d be hanged if I wouldn’t.”

“Where would be the sense?” Lefty retorted. “It was all over and done with years ago. Of course, if he should try anything like the same game again, it would be different. You’re not thinking of—”

“It’s none of my business,” Stillman put in. “I don’t want to have anything to do with the mucker. Let’s go down to dinner.”

As luck would have it, stepping out of the elevator, they came face to face with Bert Elgin himself, talking earnestly with big Bill Hagin, a regular outfielder. For an instant the former stared blankly at Stillman. Then, with a great affectation of heartiness, he thrust out a hand.

“Well, I’ll be hanged if it isn’t Jack Stillman!” he exclaimed. “Glad to see you, old hoss!”

The reporter made no attempt to withdraw his hands from his pockets. He seemed, in fact, to thrust them deeper, and as his eyes met Elgin’s there was a look of withering, contemptuous scorn in them, which cut the ball player like a knife.

“How are you, Elgin?” he said curtly, and passed on toward the dining room with Lefty.

For a second Elgin stood staring after them, his face flushed and his eyes gleaming angrily.

“Your friend don’t seem choked with joy at seeing you,” Hagin commented maliciously.

Elgin came to himself with a slight start, and shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “No special friend of mine,” he said shortly. “Used to see him now and then three years ago.”

Nevertheless, when he dropped into his place at the table a short time later, his face was still flushed and angry.

“Stillman was friendly enough at Princeton,” he thought furiously. “That dog has turned him against me with his lying stories, that’s what’s happened.” He ground his teeth viciously. “If I don’t put it all over him, good and proper, I’m a liar!”

CHAPTER IX
SOMETHING SUB-ROSA

“Five-inning practice game at eight-thirty sharp,” announced Manager Brennan, at the close of the day’s work.

Instantly every tongue stopped wagging, and each man turned an eager, inquiring face in his direction. After nearly two weeks of monotonous training, the prospect of a real game, even if it was only among themselves, was very welcome.

The new recruits, especially, quivered with anticipation. It was a foregone conclusion that the game would be played between the regulars and the “Yannigans,” as the cubs are sometimes termed; and the chance of pitting themselves against their more experienced rivals thrilled each one of the youngsters through and through.

The older men were more indifferent. They had played many such games in past training seasons, and knew that these were organized by the manager mainly for the purpose of watching the cubs in action and studying their possibilities. Still, there would be a chance to try their hitting skill against the bush pitchers, and any ball player will willingly go without a meal in order to bat.

“You can try your hand at being field captain to-morrow, Cy,” Brennan said, glancing at Russell, “and make up your own team.” He pulled a pencil and rumpled piece of paper from his pocket and turned his attention to the expectant youngsters. “We’ll see how you make out bossing a team, Ogan,” he went on, as his eyes lighted on the promising young first baseman from Ohio. “I’ll want these men to start in playing. Afterward you’ll use your own judgment about keeping them in the game.”

He began calling out the names of nine cubs, with the positions they were to take, jotting them down as he did so. When he finished with the words, “Whalen, catcher, and Locke on the slab,” Lefty beamed.

He had worked hard for two days to atone for the bad impression he had made at first, and this looked as if he had succeeded. “And I’ll do even better to-morrow,” he resolved, tossing up his glove in sheer exuberance of spirits. “I’ll try to show him Toler wasn’t such a bad judge of pitchers, after all.”

A glimpse of Bert Elgin’s scowling face only added to Lefty’s good spirits, and he departed from the field feeling very cheerful indeed.

At the supper table Jim Brennan was conspicuous by his absence, and curious inquiries revealed the fact that he had taken a late afternoon train to Fort Worth, from which he did not expect to return until early morning. “Pop” Jennings, the oldest and most settled pitcher in the organization, was the source of this information. He added that he had been left in charge of the squad, and hoped he would not have to break too many heads to keep order.

The announcement caused no immediate effect beyond a certain noticeable relaxation. There were a few more or less joshing remarks concerning Pop’s new job, but they were comparatively mild. Before entering the field of professional baseball Jennings had dallied with the four-ounce gloves to an extent which gave him something of a reputation in sporting circles on the Pacific coast. He was noted for a dogged determination to carry out orders at any cost—a trait which made him invaluable at the crucial moment of a hard-fought game. The players had learned from experience that there would be no slurring of Brennan’s instructions, and that any laxity of training would bring with it swift retribution.

Happily, Pop had a praiseworthy habit of retiring promptly at nine o’clock. Jesters said it was because he was getting old and had to be careful of himself. The truth was that Jennings, raised on a farm, had been imbued from earliest years with the value of the old adage, “Early to bed, early to rise,” and couldn’t help himself.

During the early part of the evening the behavior of the Hornets was unexceptionable. Some lounged in the lobby, reading papers, or chatting lazily. Most of the cubs were gathered in a corner, discussing the morrow’s game, and perfecting a system of signals for use on the field. Quite a number of the regulars, gathered about the pool tables, indulged in an innocent game of penny ante, or shot craps. A few drifted off early to their rooms. Pop, making a round of inspection a little before nine, decided that all were harmlessly employed, and departed to bed.

Instantly the click of cues and balls ceased, card games languished, and a state of general restiveness ensued. Lefty and two or three companions, who had drifted in a few minutes before from the lobby, wondered what was going to happen. They were not kept waiting long. At the end of fifteen minutes Bill Hagin sprang to his feet.

“He’s safe,” he announced. “Come on up to my room, fellows. It’s the whole length of the house from his, and we can have a little racket without his getting wise.”

The response was instantaneous, for the Hornets, as a crowd, were nothing if not lively. Every regular in the room arose promptly and started toward the door. The three or four cubs present followed more slowly. They had been long enough with the organization to learn the wisdom of not being too pushing.

Hagin, glancing back from the doorway, sensed the situation, and grinned. “Everybody come along,” he invited good-humoredly. “We’ll teach you kids the first principles of draw poker.”

His remark was general, but his eyes happened to rest lightly on the face of Lefty Locke in a manner which was distinctly challenging. Now, Locke was a very normal young chap, and the tone of condescension rasped him slightly. He fancied he played pretty good poker, and had an idea that even the famous Hornets couldn’t show him a whole lot about the game. Consequently he accepted the invitation with alacrity, and was presently seated at a table in the big double room which Hagin shared with one of the other members of the team.

Buck Fargo was on one side of him and Pollock, the red-headed shortstop, on the other. Cigars were produced and lighted, cards appeared, and presently, amid the babble of talk and laughter, Hagin’s voice sounded:

“What’ll you have to drink, fellows? Speak up sharp, now; the boy’s waiting.”

As he cut for deal Lefty glanced up and saw one of the hotel bell boys standing near the door, order-blank in hand. From the character and number of the drinks he put down, it became swiftly evident that the crowd was certainly making the most of Jim Brennan’s absence. Calls for high-balls, fizzes, gin-rickeys, whisky straights, beers, and ales came from every side. If there were any scattering orders for soft drinks, Lefty did not hear them. The Hornets seemed to agree with Red Pollock that “them soft slops was the worst things a man could put into his stummick.”

When his turn came to order, Locke hesitated an instant. With the examples set him on every side by men so much more experienced in the game, he need scarcely feel any compunction in taking something he was used to in moderation. A single glass could scarcely do him any harm.

“Light beer,” he said, at length.

Glancing hurriedly over his cards, he quite missed the odd side glance which Buck Fargo flashed at him. But perhaps it was not meant for him to see.

CHAPTER X
“WHEN THE CAT’S AWAY”

The liquid refreshments arrived while they were in the midst of an unusually animated hand. Everybody had dropped out but Cy Russell, Siegrist, the first baseman, and Lefty. The latter, with three kings and a pair of tens, was half conscious that Fargo had taken a glass from the tray and set it down beside him. It was one of those cases, however, where one gets an impression without really seeing, and he could not have told afterward whether it was actually the big backstop who put it down, or the waiter. And when it came to that, he did not notice whether it was the hotel employee himself who held the tray, or some one else.

He played his hand for all there was in it, and won the good-sized jackpot. Siegrist groaned as he flung down three queens and a pair of eights.

Russell shoved over the chips with a grimace. “I was trying to get by with two pair, aces up. You don’t work that innocent-appearing face on me again, kid.”

Lefty chuckled and took a long drink from the glass as he shuffled the cards to deal. The beer had an unusual flavor, and he sipped it again, trying to make out what was the matter with it. “Bum stuff,” he reflected. “Tastes sort of queer.”

As the game progressed, however, he gradually drained the glass without thinking much about it. He was having unusual luck, and played his cards with a skill which put him away in the lead of the others.

Presently Hagin sauntered up to the table. “What’ll you have, boys?” he asked. “Time for a second round.”

Most of them ordered; one or two declined, among them Lefty.

“No, thanks,” Locke said firmly, when Hagin pressed him. “I’ve had enough.”

“I reckon you have had enough,” put in Buck Fargo, in a tone which seemed so significant that the cub pitcher glanced swiftly at him. The big backstop was busy with his cards, and did not look up; but Lefty noticed that his face was oddly serious. He noticed also the half-emptied glass of seltzer standing beside Fargo’s scanty pile of chips, and a sudden qualm struck him.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken that beer, after all,” he said to himself. “I thought everybody was drinking something in that line.”

A quick survey of the table told him that everybody else was, and, somewhat reassured, he went on with the game. Perhaps the catcher was a little peevish because he was losing so heavily. Adversity at cards brings out the good and bad points of a man’s character better than almost anything else.

The game progressed. More drinks were brought, more cigars produced and lighted. No one got befuddled, for the Hornets were a hard-headed crowd, and each one knew his limit; but there was a general warming up throughout the room. Joshing and laughter sounded continuously. Now and then some one would burst into song, only to be sat upon instantly by three or four others. The tobacco smoke hung in a thick pall midway between ceiling and floor, stirred fitfully by soft breezes from the open windows.

For a time Lefty continued to win. Then gradually luck seemed to turn against him. He still held much the same run of cards, but several times he made bad errors in judgment. Presently he became conscious of an extraordinary sensation of lightness in his head, like nothing else he had ever experienced. It was not especially disagreeable. On the contrary, it seemed as if his senses had become suddenly more acute, as if he could play two small pairs so cleverly that he would bluff out stronger hands. Instead, he lost, and kept on losing.

It was most puzzling and annoying. He could not understand it. That first odd exhilaration passed in a little while, and was succeeded by a dull depression. His head began to ache. Was it the smoke? he wondered. Several times he caught one of the fellows eyeing him curiously, and it brought him up with a jerk, determined to stick it out and let no one know there was anything the matter with him.

How long it continued he never knew. For seeming hours he went on his raw nerve, playing the cards dealt to him instinctively, his whole being occupied in fighting off a clogging sensation which constantly threatened his brain like a smothering blanket.

It was Buck Fargo who made the first move to break up, and Lefty could have hugged him had he not been so taken up in keeping a grip upon his consciousness.

“Well, fellows, I’m going to hit the downy,” the big backstop announced, with a cavernous yawn. “Let’s settle up.”

There were protests, of course; but Fargo was firm.

Released from the tension of playing, Lefty sat stupidly staring at the three red chips in front of him. He was aroused by Russell’s voice: “Come across with seventeen bucks, Locke. You made a bad finish.”

Without a word, the cub pitcher fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a roll of bills. The numbers in the corners were blurred and indistinct. He picked out several at random, tossed them on the table, gathered in the change Russell handed him, and arose slowly to his feet.

For an instant he stood gripping the chairback. The room was going around; the floor tilted dangerously.

“What’s the matter, kid?” came in Fargo’s voice. “You look sort of funny.”

Lefty straightened himself with a great effort. “Nothing,” he said, with laboriously distinct enunciation. “I’ve got a sort of headache. The bad air, I guess.”

Then the men drifted over to the other table, bent on breaking up the game there, and Locke was left alone. He had given up wondering what was the matter with him. His one thought was to get out of the room while he could. Slowly he turned and faced the door. A shout of laughter, followed by the sounds of a good-natured rough-house, told him that the attention of the others was occupied for the moment. He let go his hold on the chair, reeled, recovered himself with an effort, and, with set teeth, slowly, laboriously crossed the room.

It seemed an eternity before his hand touched the panels and fumbled for the knob. The next he knew he was in the still darkness of the hall, steadying himself against the wall. Somewhere in his head a sledge hammer was beating on an anvil. He wondered hazily how long flesh and bone could stand it. He took a step forward. Where was his room? Was it on this floor or the next?

At last he remembered, and began a slow, painful progress down the hall. Several times before reaching the stairs he fell, but at last he struck the bottom step and began to crawl up on hands and knees.

His room was directly opposite the elevator, or he would never have reached it. The door was, luckily, unlocked, and he managed to step in and close it behind him. As his finger instinctively pressed the electric button close at hand, flooding the room with light, he gave a sudden stifled cry.

He was to pitch to-morrow in the first practice game of the season. The remembrance stabbed through his fading senses like a knife. He had meant to show Brennan what there was in him. He had planned to strain every effort in order that the manager should forget his first unfortunate fiasco. And now—

He groaned aloud. Then, with a long, shuddering sigh, he felt his legs crumple under him. A black curtain fell before his eyes.

CHAPTER XI
ALL IN

When Lefty came to himself the electric lights were still blazing in sickly opposition to the bright sunshine which poured through the two windows. For a moment or two he lay wondering what had happened and why he was stretched out on the floor, fully dressed. Then the dull, throbbing pain in his head brought him to a sitting posture, with a groan.

He glanced at the bed and saw that it was untouched. He looked up dazedly at the cluster of lights, then down at his rumpled shirtfront. The glitter of his gold fob caught his eye, and, with an effort, he pulled out his watch.

“Twenty-five minutes to eight,” he muttered. “Time I was getting—”

He broke off abruptly and drew his breath with a swift intake as he remembered. The game was to begin at eight-thirty. He was to pitch for the Yannigans!

Staggering to his feet, he went over to the washstand and plunged his face into a hurriedly drawn bowl of water. Nothing had ever felt so good before. He dashed it on his hair, regardless of the streams running over his shirtfront. Again and again he dropped his face back into the grateful, cooling contents of the bowl before he finally reached for a rough towel.

He remembered everything now—the absence of Brennan, the adjournment to Hagin’s room, the cards, the smoke, the drinks, and—last of all—that horrible attack which had come upon him.

What had brought it about? It couldn’t have been the beer. That was wretched stuff, to be sure, but a single glass of it would hardly produce such an effect. He had thrown his coat hastily to one side and was ripping the collar from his neck when suddenly he stopped abruptly.

“Doped!” he exclaimed, aloud.

It was an almost incredible supposition, but it explained everything perfectly. No single glass of ordinary beer could have the effect of that one upon a man in Lefty’s splendid physical condition, and there was the odd, repulsive flavor which he had set down to the poor quality of the brew.

But who would do such a thing—and why? Locke’s first thought was of Bert Elgin, but the fellow had not even been in the room. Hagin had no motive—or, so far as he knew, any opportunity. Who else, then, could have been responsible?

The answer did not come readily, for Lefty’s mind was working only by fits and starts as he flung his clothes right and left, threw a dressing gown over his shoulders, and darted down the hall to the shower which Brennan had caused to be put in for the benefit of his men. The tingling reaction of his blood under the icy spray meant much more to him than breakfast, for an intolerable lassitude seemed to grip his limbs, while the very thought of food was almost nauseating.

Lingering under the shower as long as he dared, he dashed back to his room and began to drag on his baseball clothes. It was not until he was buckling his belt, however, that the significance of Buck Fargo’s remark when Lefty refused the second glass of beer came to him: “I reckon you have had enough.” Why had he said that? Was it because he knew that the first glass was quite sufficient to do the business? There had been more to the big backstop’s tone, somehow, than just plain, casual agreement.

“Rot!” snapped Locke, snatching up cap and glove and making for the door. “I’m loony! He hasn’t a single motive, and, besides, he’s not the sort of chap who’d do a dirty thing like that.”

Nevertheless, the thought returned to torment him at odd moments during the hasty choking down of a little breakfast, followed by the jog out to the field—and afterward. It was the bitter disappointment and humiliation of that afterward, which Lefty never forgot.

The cubs were in high spirits, eager for the chance to win their spurs. As he watched their antics on the way out to the park, Lefty felt a pang of envy. He would have given anything to have that same snap and ginger, instead of feeling the lassitude and weariness which gripped him.

Several of his teammates asked if he wasn’t feeling well, but he forced a laugh, and put them off. He would rather have died than give up his place to Bert Elgin. When the time came for him to go into the box surely he would brace up and be more himself.

Halfway out to the field Andy Whalen, the cub catcher, came up, and they discussed briefly the signals which had been talked over the night before. Lefty wished desperately that he had gone off to bed directly afterward, instead of strolling into the pool room and allowing himself to be drawn into that game in Hagin’s room.

Regrets were unavailing, however. Though some one had given him the double cross, Lefty realized that he alone was to blame for making the opportunity. Then and there he registered a silent vow that nothing under heaven should ever again induce him to deviate a hair’s breadth from his manager’s rules of training. And then he wondered whether that resolution had been made too late.

The teams had ten minutes’ practice in which to warm up; then the coin was tossed. The Yannigans won, and, choosing the field, romped gayly out to their positions, tossing up gloves, yelling persiflage at one another, and altogether behaving coltishly.

Lefty was with them, but not of them. He had never in his life felt in poorer condition for pitching. His head ached, and he was as tired and drooping as if he had not slept in forty-eight hours. But he could not bring himself to beg off, and there was no other way out. He caught the ball from Brennan, who acted as umpire, shot a swift, appraising glance at the manager’s impenetrable face, and then took the signal from Whalen.

CHAPTER XII
LEFTY’S FAILURE

The call was for a curve ball, and Lefty did his best to respond. Unfortunately he put so much curve into it that the sphere missed the plate by at least two feet. Whalen looked surprised, but said nothing. Lefty felt the blood rushing into his face and making his head pound more than ever.

The backstop then signaled for a fast straight ball, indicating with one hand that it was to cross the batter’s shoulders. It was straight enough, but woefully lacking in speed, and Carl Siegrist promptly hit it on the trademark and dusted to first.

Had this been a championship game, the rangy infielder, who had hit well over three hundred for several seasons, would have made it good for two bags, or even three. Siegrist, like all the other old men, did not believe in straining himself unduly, however. He took things easy, and camped on the initial sack.

“Rotten!” snapped Ogan, from first. “What in Sam Hill’s the matter with you, Locke?”

“Yes,” chimed in Tom Burley, at short; “this isn’t croquet. Wake up.”

“Let’s have a little of that smoke you had up your sleeve the other day,” added the third baseman.

Lefty made no reply to these remarks. He was watching Brennan’s face as the manager left the plate to take up his position behind the pitcher. Brennan looked anything but pleased, and, though he made no remark, Locke fancied he knew what was passing through his mind.

The next batter drew two balls in succession, and then created a momentary respite for Lefty by flying out to center field. His successor, however, smashed the first pitched ball over the infield, and romped down the line amid a howl of delight from the regulars, whose interest in the game was warming up.

Instantly a gatling fire of sarcasm was turned on Lefty by his teammates. Ogan raced into the diamond and caught the pitcher’s arm.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed fiercely. “Are you trying to throw the game away?”

Lefty shook his head. His face was white now, his eye desperate. He knew he was making a miserable exhibition. He should not have started; he should have gone to Ogan before the game and told him he wasn’t in fit condition to pitch. His head was splitting so that he could scarcely see. He seemed to have no strength left in his arm.

“Perhaps you’d better take me out, Al,” he muttered. “I seem to be on the fritz.”

“You bet you are!” retorted the captain hotly. Then, catching a glimpse of Lefty’s wretched face, he hesitated an instant. “I’ll give you one more chance, Locke,” he went on shortly. “If you don’t make good, out you go. I’m not going to have this game handed over on a silver tray if I can help it. You’ve got the goods, Locke; brace up and hand ’em out.”

When Ogan had gone back to his position, Lefty turned and glanced at the plate. His heart sank when he saw that Buck Fargo stood there, swinging his bat negligently. Nevertheless, with set teeth, the southpaw toed the rubber and pitched.

It was a straight, high ball that cut the plate in half, and Brennan’s voice droned out “Strike!” as the batter let it pass. Lefty was heartened, and, at a signal from Whalen, he tried an outcurve. As before, this curved too far out even to cut a corner. Another ball followed, and then another strike. Then Fargo swung above a drop ball, and was declared out.

As the big backstop tossed his bat aside and strolled, grinning, to the bench, there was a sigh of relief from the Yannigan infield. Perhaps their pitcher was taking an almost-despaired-of brace. One or two gave voice to brief words of commendation; but Lefty did not hear them. He was staring after Fargo in a puzzled way. No one knew better than he—unless it was Andy Whalen—how far those deliveries had fallen short of his usual form. He could not understand why Buck had failed to make connections.

There was no time to think of that, however, for Bill Hagin was strutting to the plate. To Lefty his expression seemed more cocky and self-assured than ever, and the bush pitcher felt a sudden ardent longing to send him back to the bench as his predecessor had gone.

Whalen signaled for a drop, but Lefty had watched Hagin batting the day before, and felt that a straight, speedy one, placed high, would bother him more. He notified the catcher to that effect, toed the rubber, tried to forget his pounding head, gathered every muscle for the effort, and pitched.

The horsehide whirled toward the plate with speed enough, but crossed it a good foot below where Lefty intended. The bat met it squarely, with every ounce of the big fielder’s muscle behind it, and Lefty uttered a stifled groan of despairing surrender as the regulars began to circle the bases blithely.

What had gone before was as nothing to the roar which rose from the cubs when they saw three grinning players jog, one after the other, across the plate. As one man, they turned on Lefty and poured out the vials of their wrath in vivid, soul-stirring, mouth-filling phrases, which left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Interspersed with these gusts of abuse were yells of: “Take him out! Take—him—out!” which were quite unnecessary. Lefty realized that he was done for, and did not even glance toward Ogan as he walked toward the bench. He heard the latter’s angry voice, however, yelling after him: “Get off the field, you boneheaded quitter!” And that seemed to hurt more than anything else.

He wasn’t a quitter. He had done his best, and it was not his fault that he had failed. No doubt he should never have gone out there at all, but how many of those others, face to face with the alternative he had met that morning, would have decided differently?

Head down and hands tightly clenched, he made his way toward the bench, not even looking up as he passed Bert Elgin, racing out to take his place. He flung himself down on the turf and lay there, chin propped in his cupped hands, eyes staring blindly out across the diamond.

More than once the regulars glanced curiously in his direction, but no one spoke. A little later, when the Yannigans trooped in, having succeeded in holding down the score, Lefty fully expected a storm of bitter reproaches to be hurled at him; but nothing came. The fellows took their places on the bench or the coaching lines without so much as a glance toward the chap lying there on the grass. For all the attention they paid to him, he might have been a log of wood.

As inning after inning passed amid that same studied silence and marked avoidance, Lefty felt that he would rather have endured sneers, blows, anything else. His head still throbbed and he was feeling wretched, mentally and physically. He was a fool not to have left the field at once; but, being there, his innate stubbornness kept him to the end.

Presently Jack Stillman came up and chatted casually for a minute or two, but Lefty was so mortally averse to pity that his replies were short almost to ungraciousness; and the reporter walked away, a puzzled look on his face.

By dint of fast, strenuous playing on the part of the cubs, assisted by the easy-going ways of their opponents, the regulars were kept from further scoring, while the Yannigans made two tallies before the end of the last inning. But for Locke’s errors they would have won the game. The realization did not tend toward soothing their ruffled spirits.

As the teams mingled on the field at the end of the fifth inning, the one crowd grinning and joshing, the other responding with defensive sarcasm, Lefty caught an angry glare from more than one pair of eyes among the disappointed youngsters.

“I s’pose they all have it in for me,” he muttered.

The next instant he saw Jim Brennan bearing down upon him, his face more florid than ever, his sharp eyes glinting.

“Good night!” the southpaw murmured. “Here’s my finish.”

Instinctively he rose to his feet and stood there, nervously juggling his glove, his eyes fixed upon the approaching manager, waiting for the storm to break.

CHAPTER XIII
THE DISCHARGED WAITER

Lefty drew one sleeve across his perspiring face, and stared at the square, sturdy back of the retreating manager.

“Whew!” he muttered. “And then some!”

On second thought, he withdrew the comment. Jim Brennan had left nothing to be said, nothing to the imagination. In stinging phrases, which bit like acid and made the pitcher wince and grit his teeth, he had told his latest recruit exactly what he thought of such a disgrace among ball players.

He applied to Locke every epithet in his repertory—he had a vocabulary the width and breadth and startling nature of which was unusual even among Big League managers—and Lefty was obliged to stand there and swallow everything. He had nothing to say, no excuse to make for his behavior. He might have explained everything by telling Brennan of the glass of beer which he was certain had been drugged. But that would have put the whole crowd in bad, and Lefty was no telltale.

So he set his jaws, clenched his fists, and took everything the manager had to say, fully expecting the tirade to end in his being thrown out of the squad.

When Brennan finally concluded his spirited monologue with a pyrotechnic burst to the effect that he proposed taking the blankety-blank bonehead personally in hand the next morning for the purpose of beating a little elemental baseball into his thick skull, and then strode away with eyebrows twitching, it was a full minute before Lefty realized that it had not come. He had not been fired!

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed aloud, his eyebrows drawn together in a puzzled frown. “Why didn’t he do it? What use can he have for me after to-day?”

For a while he stood there, trying to fathom the reason. Then he gave it up and started for the gate. The others had long since left the park, and he made his way back to the hotel alone, took his shower, and came down to the dining-room ten minutes late.

For all the comfort he got out of his companions Lefty might as well have been alone at the table. From the beginning of the meal to its long-drawn-out finish not a single word was addressed directly to him. The others talked over him, around him, at him, but never to him. Among themselves, but in tones which plainly showed that their remarks were aimed at Lefty, they discussed that miserable first inning in detail, pointing out how different the result would have been with any one but a quitter in the box. They made many other scornful comments, and the southpaw was hard pressed to maintain a stolid, impassive demeanor. Not for the world would he have them guess how much they were hurting him.

By supper time the determined ostracism of his cub companions had so worked on Lefty that his nerves were raw. He even caught Stillman regarding him queerly, and that was the last straw. He felt, somehow, that if he did not confide in some one he would blow up; so, after supper, he cornered his classmate in the lobby, and poured the whole story into his astonished ears.

When Locke had finished, Stillman gave a long whistle of incredulous astonishment.

“That’s the rottenest thing I ever heard of!” he exclaimed indignantly. “No wonder you went to smash that way. But look here, old fellow, are you certain about the drug part of it? Isn’t it possible that you had some sort of an attack of indigestion or something?”

Locke shook his head. “No indigestion would ever give a fellow feelings like that. Besides, I was fit as a fiddle before I went into that card game. Something was put into that beer, Jack; take my word for it.”

“But who would do such a thing? You say Elgin you’re sure wasn’t even in the room. Did you notice anything queer about any other man’s behavior?”

For an instant Lefty hesitated, the thought of Fargo’s odd remark, with its odder inflection, in his mind. The next instant he gave a start as the big backstop strolled lazily up and paused beside his chair.

“Sort of off your feed to-day, ain’t you, kid?” Fargo inquired, with a grin.

“I certainly am,” Lefty answered. He hesitated a second, and then went on with deliberate purpose: “I reckon midnight poker games with all the fixings don’t agree with me.”

“Cut out the fixings and the poker won’t hurt a baby,” the catcher returned swiftly. “It’s all right for the regular bunch to make fools of themselves swilling hard stuff if they want to, but you kids can’t afford to do that sort of thing. I was watching you last night and wondering if you was going to fall for that nonsense.”

A flash of sudden comprehension leaped into Locke’s mind and brought the color swiftly to his face.

“So that was why you said I’d had enough!” he exclaimed.

Fargo looked slightly puzzled. “Sure! Why did you think I said it?”

Lefty’s face was brick-red and his eyes dropped before the steady, open scrutiny of the catcher. “I—didn’t realize you were—paying so much attention to me,” he stammered. “I might have known, though, when you struck out to-day—to—to help me out. That was good of you, Fargo.”

The backstop laughed. “Chase that notion out of your nut right off, son,” he chuckled. “I ain’t that crazy—yet. Reckon I must have been a bit off my feed, too, or else you took a spurt while I was up to the plate. I s’pose the old man sailed into you good and proper. He looked dangerous when I saw him heading your way after the game.”

Locke explained briefly that the manager had raked him over the coals in a manner which left nothing to be desired. “I thought sure he’d end up by firing me out on the spot,” he confessed in conclusion.

“Not him,” grinned Fargo. “He’s too sharp. You want to toe the mark, though, from now on. He’ll have them snappy optics of his on you every minute of the day to see whether this was a fluke or your regular way of doing things. You’ll have to show him, that’s all.”

As the backstop strolled off, Lefty’s eyes followed him for a moment. He had been a fool to suspect for an instant that this big, rough-and-ready, but thoroughly straight, dependable fellow could be mixed up in anything so underhanded.

Stillman, whose trained mind had missed no point in the conversation, quickly broke the silence.

“You surely didn’t think he had anything to do with it?” he questioned.

“I couldn’t understand why he said something he did last night,” Lefty explained. “I was an idiot, of course.”

“You certainly were. Buck Fargo is one of the squarest men in the crowd, even if he is a little rough outside. He’d do anything in the world for a fellow he likes, and you’re mighty lucky he’s taken a fancy to you.” He paused for an instant, his brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Look here, old fellow,” he went on slowly, “why don’t you get after the man who served those drinks! I’ll bet he knows a thing or two, and you ought to be able to sweat it out of him.”

Lefty’s eyes brightened. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “That’s a good idea, Jack. I shouldn’t wonder if he did. At least it’ll be worth trying. He ought to be on duty now.”

Without further delay, he arose and walked over to the desk. Though he did not know the fellow’s name, he remembered perfectly what he looked like, and the clerk recognized his description at once.

“Oh, you mean George Miller? Why, the proprietor fired him this morning, Mr. Locke. He was stewed last night, and had a holdover this morning. He’s left the hotel, and I don’t know where you can find him.”

Lefty turned from the desk, with a shrug. “That’s settled,” he thought disconsolately. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I suppose I wasn’t thinking of anything this morning, though.”

As he walked back to where the newspaper man sat, he saw Bert Elgin crossing the lobby toward the door. For an instant he was moved to brace the fellow then and there and accuse him of playing that dirty trick the night before. Almost as quickly, however, he realized how futile that would be. Though Elgin was the only man with a motive strong enough to make him suspected, Lefty had no shred of proof against him.

“Let him go,” the latter muttered frowningly. “I haven’t got anything on him—yet. I’ll be hanged if I don’t think he was at the bottom of it, though, and if I don’t dig up the truth somehow, I am a bonehead.”

CHAPTER XIV
BERT ELGIN’S LUCK

Bert Elgin was decidedly a ladies’ man. A pretty face in any of the front-rows of the grandstand never escaped his attention, and, no matter in what part of the country his team was playing, he seemed to have an almost uncanny faculty of scraping an acquaintance with the best-looking girl in town.

His teammates growled and grumbled enviously, making sarcastic references to luck and bluff and working the rah-rah racket to perfection, but Elgin remained undisturbed by their comments. There was no questioning the fact that he could be very charming when he chose to exert himself. He had a ready tongue, the knack of subtle flattery, and knew how to utilize the glamour which most girls throw about a prominent athlete who has had a college education.

Before he had been three days in Ashland Elgin maneuvered an introduction to Miss Molly Wendell, a charming young person with a penchant for baseball, and obtained permission to call. Within a fortnight he had availed himself three times of that permission, and they were on very friendly terms, indeed.

This evening he arrayed himself with especial care, and sallied forth about half past seven, alone, from the hotel. Miss Wendell lived in the best residential section of town; but, as he made his way thither, Elgin was not so occupied with thoughts of the pleasure in store for him as to be blinded to the feminine charms of any chance passers-by. That was not his way.

Having bestowed appreciative and very open glances on several attractive factory girls hurrying along the main street, the cub pitcher struck into a quieter thoroughfare which led toward his destination. He had almost reached High Street when a rickety, swaying hack, looking as if it might have seen its best days in some Northern city a decade ago, passed him and came to a stop in front of the corner house.

Before the negro driver had time to open the door the horse—a big, raw-boned animal—took it into his head to back. Quite undisturbed and rather amused at the coon’s flow of language, Elgin watched the ancient vehicle tilt dangerously until it seemed as if another moment would see it topple over. Then he came opposite the door, glanced curiously into the hack, and the next instant became transformed.

With a single leap he reached the horse’s head, gripping the bit with muscular fingers and dragging the animal forward a step or two.

“Get down here and hold the beast, uncle!” he ordered. “You’re a nice one to take people out behind a dangerous animal like this. Hustle, now!”

The colored man hurriedly descended, muttering something about “interferin’ w’ite trash,” and sulkily obeyed. Elgin sprang to the door, hat in hand, and held it open.

“It’s all right now, sir,” he said deferentially. “Just take my arm, if you please, and let me help you out.”

An elderly man, white-haired, frail-looking, and dressed in a clergyman’s suit of black, obeyed tremblingly. He was followed much more swiftly by a young girl, a glimpse of whose lovely face had been the cause of that sudden transformation in Bert Elgin.

She barely touched the pitcher’s arm as she leaped from the cab, the color bright in her cheeks, a glint of anger in her wonderful eyes.

“It’s outrageous bringing us up with a horse like that!” she exclaimed indignantly. “You know I asked particularly if he was gentle, and you said he was.”

“’Deed he am, leddy,” the negro affirmed hastily. “Dis hyer am jes’ his playful way. If dat gemman hadn’t come—”

“If he hadn’t so kindly come to our help,” the girl put in emphatically, “we should have been upset.”

As she stepped forward to pay the cabman she cast a glance of gratitude at Elgin, which started the blood tingling through his veins.

“What a peach!” he thought fervently.

Nothing of this appeared on the surface, however. Instinctively he schooled himself to retain the same respectful, deferential attitude he had assumed from the first. Still bareheaded, he seemed to be devoting all of his attention to the father, who was palpably nervous and upset by the incident. It was not until she turned from the negro and came back to them that his eyes met hers.

“I cannot thank you enough for what you have done,” she said quickly. “My father is not very strong, and if the cab had upset it would have been simply dreadful.”

“It was really nothing,” Elgin protested. “I saw the horse was a bad-tempered brute, and got to his head in time. I’m glad I happened to be passing.”

“You cannot be more thankful than my daughter and myself,” the older man put in rather weakly. “Your quick wit undoubtedly saved us from a serious accident. Just now I am too tired after a long journey to express my gratitude properly, but I hope you will give me the opportunity at some future time. I am the Reverend John Harting, and I shall be staying here a week or more with my friend, Henry Forsythe.”

He held out a slim, white hand, which the ball player clasped firmly yet not too strenuously.

“My name is Bert Elgin,” the younger man returned in respectful tones. “I’ll be very glad indeed to come and see you some evening before you leave town.”

“Yes, yes,” the clergyman agreed, with impatience. “Janet, my dear, I think we had better go in. I am feeling—a little faint.”

Without a word Elgin took one arm solicitously. The girl sprang to the other side of her father, and in silence they helped him up the steps of the veranda. A big, broad-shouldered man of middle age answered the ring, and, amid the bustle of greeting which followed, Elgin tactfully departed.

At the gate he paused, glancing back at the closed door, the remembrance of a pair of wonderful violet eyes and a perfect mouth curved in a rather absent smile still vividly in his mind.

“A queen!” he said aloud. “Molly Wendell can’t touch her for a minute.” Slowly he moved on a few steps; then he chuckled: “That was a cute trick, all right, and pulled off to perfection. I ought to hand that old bag of bones a square feed for giving me the chance. Will I call to-morrow night and let the old geezer thank me? Will I? Ask me!”

CHAPTER XV
THE REASON WHY

Out on the field next morning Lefty Locke threw himself heart and soul into his work. He was conscious that Manager Brennan was watching his efforts with the eyes of a lynx, and though that made him slightly nervous at first, it presently came to have the opposite effect, stimulating him to greater endeavor.

“Kid ain’t doing bad to-day,” drawled Buck Fargo critically to Jack Stillman, sitting beside him on the bench. “He certainly was rotten in the game, though. I wonder what ailed him? Don’t seem like one glass of beer would knock a fellow out like that.”

“Depends on what’s in it besides the beer,” the newspaper man replied impulsively.

The big backstop straightened up and flashed a keen glance at him.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded shortly.

Stillman hesitated an instant, his face slightly flushed, “I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything about it,” he returned slowly. “Lefty didn’t want it to get out, but I can’t see any harm.”

And forthwith he proceeded to enlighten Fargo concerning the trick which had been put over on Lefty the night Brennan was in Fort Worth. When he had finished, the catcher made some vividly picturesque comments. Then he relapsed into a thoughtful silence. Finally he turned curiously to his companion.

“What’s the trouble between Elgin and Locke?” he asked briefly. “Don’t tell me if it’s a secret, but it sure looks to me as if that was at the bottom of the whole muss.”

“There isn’t a doubt of it in my mind,” Stillman answered. “Elgin hates Lefty like poison, and has every reason in the world to do him dirt. It happened when we were all at Princeton. Elgin was pitching on the varsity—pitching mighty good ball, too. He and Lefty had always been rivals, but Lefty couldn’t go out that year because of the back work he had to make up on account of an attack of typhoid. Just the same, Elgin seemed to have it in for him, and he never lost any chance to sneer about him to other men, and make things generally disagreeable.

“Well, about the middle of the season a chap named Bob Ferris had his pocketbook, watch, and a lot of little trinkets stolen. Somebody swiped ’em out of his room while he was at a lecture. He and Lefty were great friends and were in and out of each other’s rooms all the time. Ferris couldn’t find a single clew as to who had taken the stuff, but a few days later Lefty came in from a recitation unexpectedly and caught Bert Elgin in the hall right outside his door. He didn’t say anything then, but went in and looked the room over. Nothing seemed out of place except a table drawer which was a little way open. When he jerked it out, there were two of the stolen scarfpins lying right on top of a notebook belonging to Ferris, which he would probably have come in to get that very afternoon.”

“The cur!” rasped Fargo. “He put ’em there a-purpose to throw the blame on Locke.”

“Exactly. Lefty followed Elgin to his room, told him what he’d found out, and started to give him a nice comfortable thrashing. In the process of the scrimmage a watch fell out of Elgin’s pocket. It was Ferris’ watch. Lefty told Ferris afterward that the sight of it made him ashamed to be soiling his hands on such a mucker. He let up right away, told Elgin that unless the stolen goods were returned in twenty-four hours he’d go to the dean and tell him everything, and got out. Ferris was in New York that day, but when he got back next morning the stuff was all on his bureau.”

Fargo stared at him an instant. “Well?” he queried sharply. “Is that all? Didn’t they put anybody wise to what the sneak had done?”

Stillman shook his head. “No. He’d have been fired out of college, and there wasn’t anybody to take his place on the nine. Lefty and Ferris talked it all over and decided to keep still for the sake of the varsity.”

“Humph!” grunted the big backstop. “I’ll be hanged if I’d have done it!” He paused a moment, interlacing his strong, brown fingers. “Well, there ain’t any doubt that’s what started things going here,” he went on. “Elgin’s sore as a boil, of course, to have Locke around, knowing what he does about this stealing. How he worked this dope trick gets me, though.”

The newspaper man started to explain his theory of the waiter’s complicity, but in the midst of it the manager roared out an order to Fargo to get into the game and limber up some. The big backstop obeyed and was kept busy for the rest of the morning. Later on, however, he sought Stillman again, to hear the remainder of the story.

When it had been told he made no comment. His face showed plainly, however, that his interest was aroused to an unusual degree; and the reporter congratulated himself on having secured a valuable ally for Lefty.

CHAPTER XVI
THE PURLOINED LETTER

It was rather difficult for Lefty to tell what sort of an impression the day’s work had made on Jim Brennan. That astute individual was thoroughly proficient in the art of keeping his thoughts to himself, and it was almost impossible for any one to guess what was going on in his mind. Those who knew him well had long ago ceased to guess.

He had watched Locke all day as a cat does a mouse, picking at the least fault, hurling criticisms in that brusque, snappy way of his at the slightest opening, and never once giving his cub pitcher a word of praise. There seemed to be nothing in this to encourage the southpaw.

Nevertheless, Lefty knew that he was in good form. He felt that between his work of to-day and that disgraceful exhibition of twenty-four hours ago there was a vast gulf, and he was comforted. And when, along toward the middle of the afternoon, he began to notice quite lengthy periods of silence on the part of his mentor—spaces of five minutes, or even longer, in which the manager could find absolutely nothing to carp at—his spirits began to rise.

On the way back to the hotel several of the older men who had been up before him during the afternoon paused and made brief, half-joshing comments on his improvement. Stillman was enthusiastic in his praise, and even one of his brother reporters delivered himself of a more guarded opinion, practically to the same effect. To be sure, the silence of the other cubs was deep and absolute. Not one of them opened his head to Lefty on any subject, much less to tell him that he was doing well. Evidently the ban against him was still in force.

In spite of this, however, Locke was feeling more hopeful, more assured, more satisfied that he could make good, than at any time since his arrival at training camp.

“I’ll write Janet to-night,” he thought, while he was dressing, “and tell her all about it. I should have done it before, but things have been pretty uncertain.”

Janet might have been a sister, but—she wasn’t. Any one observing the length of the letter Lefty wrote after dinner, and the pains taken with its composition, would have guessed that instantly. A fellow rarely sends more than four pages of closely written hotel paper to a relative, and as for tearing up a nearly finished sheet, and rewriting it—well, that settled the question.

When the epistle had been carefully sealed and the envelope directed, Locke found he was out of stamps, and purchased some at the desk. He had just affixed one to the letter when Buck Fargo appeared and pounced on him.

“Been looking for you, kid,” the backstop announced, taking Locke by the arm. “Come out with me for a little walk. I want to talk to you.”

Locke acquiesced readily and, without turning, reached back for the letter he had left lying on the desk. He was so taken up with wondering what Fargo had on his mind that his action was really little more than mechanical. His fingers closed over an envelope which he thrust into a side pocket, and the two walked briskly away.

Unfortunately for Lefty the proprietor of the Hatchford was of an economical turn of mind. Having been considerably fretted by every Tom, Dick, and Harry in Ashland dropping in and using his letter paper ad libitum, he instituted the system of having a supply at the desk, and nowhere else. When a guest of the house wanted stationery he helped himself. A townsman could do the same, if he wished. But the mere fact of having to face the argus-eyed clerk, instead of slipping quietly to a well-furnished desk, acted as a strong deterrent.

When Lefty bought his stamps the supply of envelopes had dwindled to three, two of them stuck inside the flap of the third. They lay close beside his letter on the desk, and when he reached back without looking it was the three empty envelopes, stuck together as one, that he picked up and put into his pocket.

His carefully composed epistle lay, face upward, where he had left it. The clerk was busy with his books, and no one else happened to see it until Bert Elgin, as immaculately garbed as he had been the night before, on his way to the street, paused to light a cigarette.

The match flared up and he had conveyed it halfway to the weed between his lips when suddenly the motion was arrested, and he stared downward with widening eyes. For an instant he could scarcely believe his senses. Before him lay a letter addressed to the very girl whose charms had so smitten him the night before, and on whom he expected to call within fifteen minutes.

There was no doubt about it. “Miss Janet Harting,” written in a strong, masculine hand, stared up at him like a basilisk. Some one in this very hotel was corresponding with her—some one who did not know that she had arrived at Ashland the night before; for the address was a New England town.

“Kingsbridge!” The word came hissing through his clenched teeth as he remembered suddenly that this was the name of the team on which Lefty Locke had pitched during the past summer.

The forgotten match burned his fingers, and he flung it to the floor. A second later, however, he reached over to where a box of them lay, and struck one, leaning close against the desk as he did so. When he moved away, the cigarette alight, his face was still slightly flushed, but his expression was once more composed. The letter had disappeared.

Once in the street, he hurried along, scarcely able to restrain his impatience. Twice he hesitated by a lighted window, but each time the place seemed too public for his purpose. At last he stopped before a little store on a corner, glanced swiftly and suspiciously around, and drew the letter from his pocket.

For a moment he stood scowling at the superscription before he ripped the envelope open. The frown deepened as he noticed the length of the inclosure, and then, with narrowed eyes, he sought the signature.

“Hazelton!” he muttered hoarsely. “I knew it!”

Rapidly, with now and then a nervous glance around, his eyes flew over the closely filled pages. The letter had evidently been written by one very good friend to another. There was little in it which any one might not have read, yet its very tone, with those references to past experiences together, to mutual friends, to hopes and fears and interests held in common, sent Bert Elgin off into a spasm of rage. He had plumed himself on having, with great dexterity and presence of mind, obtained the inside track with quite the most fascinating girl that he had ever seen, only to discover that the man he hated with every fiber of his being seemed to have the inside track.

“Confound him!” he cried, crushing the letter between his fingers, “I can’t seem to get away from him.”

For a moment he stood there hesitating, his fingers busy tearing the purloined letter into shreds. Then he turned the corner, and began to walk hurriedly toward High Street.

“I’ll beat him yet!” he vowed. “I’ll put him out of the running here, or I’m a dub!”

CHAPTER XVII
GUILE

“Really?” exclaimed Janet Harting, her eyes sparkling. Then she laughed. “It’s luck you didn’t tell father. He has an idea that professional ball players aren’t quite respectable.”

Bert Elgin bent slightly forward, a hurt expression in the eyes fixed upon her face. During the fifteen minutes in which he had labored strenuously to ingratiate himself with her father, and succeeded beyond his hopes, he had gathered, by skillful probing, the impression that the older man was just the sort to look askance on professional athletics. Not a hint of this now appeared on the surface, however. His voice was regretful, with just the proper touch of indignation in it.

“I hope you don’t share his prejudice, Miss Harting?” he said quickly.

“Not at all,” the girl hastened to assure him. “I adore baseball, and could never understand why a man shouldn’t take it up just as he would any other profession. It’s much better paid than many, and I’m sure it must be a great deal pleasanter than being cooped up all day in a stuffy office.”

Elgin’s sigh of relief was unmistakable. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that,” he returned, his face clearing. “Your father is a clergyman of the old school, and I can quite understand his prejudice. But professional baseball to-day is very different from what it was in his time. There isn’t a cleaner, decenter sport going, or one more free from crookedness. Of course, there are people who look down on it. There are even players”—his voice took on a sneering tone—“who go into it under fictitious names, but they’re cads and bounders. I notice they’re not ashamed to draw their salary checks on the dot. I’ve played ball ever since I left college, and I can truly say, Miss Harting, that I’ve never once had reason to regret my choice of a profession.”

For a moment there was silence. The girl’s cheeks were faintly flushed and she was plucking absently at the fringe hanging from the upholstered chair arm.

“I’m sure you haven’t, Mr. Elgin,” she murmured presently. There was another momentary pause before she raised her eyes to his face. “I believe that what you say about a man’s playing under a false name is generally true, but don’t you think that once in a while there may be a perfectly good reason for it?”

The pitcher shrugged his shoulders. “Once in a thousand times, perhaps,” he admitted. “It’s easy enough to invent a plausible reason, but I’ve noticed invariably that fellows do it because they’re ashamed, not of playing professional ball, but of having their friends know it. There’s an instance of this right here in the Hornet squad, a chap who graduated from Princeton the year after I did. He tried making his living as a lawyer, fell down hard, and then took up baseball. There isn’t an earthly reason why he shouldn’t use his own name, and yet he’s masquerading as Tom Locke.”

“Locke!” the girl gasped, staring in startled amazement. “You don’t mean to say that Phil Hazelton is here?”

Elgin’s jaw dropped most realistically, and he drew his breath sharply.

“You—know him?” he faltered.

“Of course I do. Why, he pitched all last summer for the Kingsbridge team. That’s where I’ve always lived, you know, until father’s health began to fail, and he was sent South by one of his wealthy parishioners. Philip Hazelton is a perfectly splendid fellow, and we’re great friends.”

Elgin’s face was the picture of confusion. “I—beg your pardon, Miss Harting,” he stammered. “I—I had no idea—you knew him, or I should never have mentioned his name.”

His expression was so contrite that the girl laughed merrily.

“Of course you didn’t,” she returned. “How should you when I haven’t even told you where I lived? I’ll forgive you, though, for otherwise I might never have known he was here. I’m sure, Mr. Elgin, if you knew Phil Hazelton as well as I do you’d admit that he was the thousandth man you spoke of a while ago who has a perfectly legitimate reason for not playing under his own name.”

“Very likely,” Elgin returned hastily. “I don’t doubt that you’re right.”

His voice was quite lacking in conviction, however. It was the tone of one agreeing out of mere politeness and because he was anxious to get away from a disagreeable subject.

Miss Harting, being keen of perception, noticed this, and her smile faded.

“You don’t really mean that?” she said abruptly.

Elgin spread out his hands depreciatingly. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he returned. “A fellow can’t help having his opinions, you know. Let’s change the subject.”

“But I don’t want to change the subject,” she retorted warmly. “I insist on your telling me why you don’t agree with me.”

The pitcher’s long lashes drooped over his eyes, and he bit his lip.

“I knew Hazelton very well at college,” he began slowly. “We were friends until—certain things—came up which showed me—” he threw back his head, and looked her full in the eyes. “I can’t do it!” he burst out. “Please don’t ask me, Miss Harting. I’ve said more now than I should have. No matter what my opinion of him may be, I won’t talk about a fellow behind his back.”

His attitude of manly embarrassment was so well done that the girl was completely deceived. She was angry at herself for having led the conversation into this channel, but her estimation of this man who would say nothing against another with whom he was evidently not on friendly terms, increased by leaps and bounds.

They chatted on various other topics for a little while, but the conversation could not fail to be slightly constrained, and Elgin soon took his leave.

After he had gone Janet Harting returned to the parlor and stood for a space leaning thoughtfully against the mantel.

“It’s absurd!” she exclaimed aloud presently. “There’s been some misunderstanding between them. I won’t believe that Phil is anything but straightforward and absolutely honorable. He couldn’t do or think a mean thing. I’ll forget that I ever heard a whisper against him.”

But this was not quite possible. In spite of her determination, a nagging little doubt returned more than once to trouble Janet Harting. Somehow, she could not forget that Bert Elgin had known Hazelton at college—known him for years probably, with chances for seeing phases of his character which the intimate life at a big university alone can give; while her own acquaintance with that selfsame individual was limited to nine brief months.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN IN THE CORRIDOR

“Hang such weather!” grumbled Buck Fargo, gazing disconsolately out of the dripping window.

It was not a strictly original remark, considering the fact that it had been uttered, in some form or another, on an average of every five minutes since breakfast time. Nevertheless, it was fervently echoed by each one of the players who lounged within hearing distance in the lobby.

It had been pouring all day, a cold, driving rain, which kept some forty-odd active, vigorous athletes cooped up in the confines of the hotel.

It was not so bad in the morning, but by the middle of the afternoon pool had lost its charm, craps failed to interest; and even the inveterate poker players were becoming satiated with that game.

“I can feel myself putting on pounds and pounds,” mourned “Splinter” Jones, one of the outfielders, whose winter of luxurious idleness had resulted in about fifteen pounds of troublesome and unnecessary weight. “It’ll set me back a week.”

“Too bad there ain’t a Turkish bath in this blooming village,” yawned Cy Russell. “If we was only in little old New York you could sit in a steam room and lose all the weight you wanted to.”

Fargo turned suddenly from the window, his eyes sparkling.

“Gee whiz, Cy!” he exclaimed. “That ain’t a bad idea. Why can’t we fix up one?”

The pitcher’s eyes widened. “Fix up what?” he inquired. “A Turkish bath? You talk nutty, Buck.”

“Nix! It’s a cinch! One thing good about this hash house is they’ve always got plenty of hot water. What’s to prevent our hiking up to one of the bathrooms, stopping the cracks with towels, and turning on the hot water full. I’ll guarantee in ten minutes you couldn’t see across the room. Moreover, the radiators are all red-hot to-day, and if we wrap Splinter up in blankets and set him down on one in the bathroom, we’ll see him oozing away to a shadow before our very eyes.”

Jones straightened up in his chair, his lips pursed disapprovingly.

“Not me,” he declared firmly. “Mebbe I’ve done some fool things in my life, but I never yet set down on a red-hot radiator without my clothes on, and I ain’t going to begin now.”

“You loon!” grinned Fargo. “Did you think I meant without something under you to keep you from getting scorched? I ain’t got it in for you that bad. A bunch of bath towels’ll do the trick and make you so comfortable you’ll be going to sleep. Come on, boy! Be a sport.”

The others added their persuasions, and at length the stout outfielder yielded. The thought of parting with five or six pounds at one fell swoop was irresistible. He presently arose and, escorted by eight or ten fellows, made his way to the upper regions.

Lefty Locke did not happen to be in the lobby to see them go. He had gone up to his room soon after dinner, read several chapters in a volume of Dickens, and taken a sudden notion to write to his kid brother. By the time the letter was finished and he had pottered around a little longer, fretting at the downpour and regretting that he had not been able to keep up the good work commenced on the field the day before, it was nearly half past four.

“Reckon I’ll go down and scare up somebody for a game of billiards,” he thought.

As he opened the door and stepped into the hall, he saw the figure of a man walking briskly away down the corridor. For a moment he paid no attention to the unknown. Presently something about the set of the fellow’s shoulders struck him as vaguely familiar, but even then he would probably have thought nothing of it had not the other swiftly turned his head, and as swiftly jerked his face around again.

It was George Miller, the discharged waiter who had served Locke that fatal glass of doped beer two nights before.

Without delay, Lefty started to run. The waiter took to his heels, also, whirled round a corner toward the servants’ staircase at top speed, and disappeared.

Sprinting after him, Locke reached the corner just in time to see his man halfway down the long stretch of carpeted hall. The next instant a wild yell of pain and rage from somewhere close at hand broke the stillness with startling abruptness. A door at Lefty’s right was flung open. Buck Fargo, his face contorted with mirth, rushed out, flung himself against the door of the next room, and slammed it behind him, all in the twinkling of an eye.

Lefty, bewildered, had no time even to wonder what had happened. Close upon the heels of the flying catcher came a strange figure, clad in blankets and nothing else, and giving vent to a continuous bellow of rage. He did not halt or pause. The whole impact of his big body struck Locke squarely, and they landed together on the floor with a crash which seemed to shake the building.

CHAPTER XIX
NOT QUITE PROVEN

“Blue blazes!” roared Splinter Jones, his hands clutching Lefty’s windpipe. “You bonehead! You mutt! I’ll teach you to pull them towels from under me! I’m scalded—parboiled—burned to a crisp! Wough!”

Lefty grabbed the other’s wrists and, with a twist and a wriggle, freed his throat from the choking grasp.

“Let up!” he panted. “What do you think you’re doing, Jones? Are you nutty?”

The outfielder gasped and grunted with surprise. An instant later he had rolled over so that the cub pitcher’s face was plainly visible, and his eyes fairly popped out.

“By thunder!” he groaned. “I thought you was Fargo.”

A roar of delight issued from the open doorway. As Lefty sprang up, he saw that it was crowded with members of the Hornet squad, several of them in next to nature’s garb, and all convulsed with mirth. Behind them rose vagrant eddies of what looked like smoke, but had the hot, suffocating tang of steam.

“Come and see our Turkish bath, Kid,” invited Cy Russell when he had recovered his power of speech. “Buck invented it, but something kind of went wrong, and he beat it.”

“Went wrong!” snapped Jones, stung afresh by a sense of his injuries. “The pirate did it on purpose! Just wait till I get my hands on him. I’ll make him smart!”

He looked so ridiculous as he stood there, scowling fiercely and trying to gather the inadequate folds of the scanty blanket around him, that another burst of laughter commenced. It was cut short, however, by the whirring of the elevator.

“Come inside, you loon!” ejaculated Russell, grabbing the outfielder by the arm and hustling him into the room. “You ain’t decent. What if a woman should come along!”

At the suggestion the men all scuttled out of sight. Lefty followed them. The interruption had given Miller ample time to make himself scarce, and, besides, Locke was curious to learn more of the trick which had been played on Jones.

It proved to be simple to a degree. The improvised Turkish bath had been an unqualified success, as Lefty realized the instant he entered the superheated bathroom, where the atmosphere made him fairly gasp for breath. The water still boiled from the tap, sending up clouds of steam. In one corner was the fateful radiator that had aided Fargo in the perpetration of the prank which justly aroused the wrath of Jones.

Until Buck Fargo’s unfortunate propensity for joking had got the better of him, everything had gone smoothly. Jones and several other players who thought they could stand a little less weight stripped, swathed themselves in blankets, and took turns sitting on the sizzling radiator, well protected by several thicknesses of bath toweling. Perspiration streamed from every pore as superfluous tissue oozed away.

After each man had indulged in several rounds of the sweating process, it was observed that Jones was monopolizing the newly discovered boon. Protests were unavailing. He simply sat on the radiator until he could stand the heat no longer, regardless of the clamorous waiting list, and Russell was on the point of using force when he received an unmistakably insignificant wink from Buck Fargo, which made him refrain from butting in.

When the outfielder’s turn came again, he carefully adjusted the blankets about him and approached the radiator. The others were all gathered around, uttering various joshing comments. The big backstop leaned carelessly against the wall close to the heated coils. The room was hazy with steam pouring out of the faucet of the bathtub.

Cautiously Jones parted the blankets, and let himself down slowly, quite oblivious to the fact that Fargo had removed the towels with a dexterous twitch. The next instant a fearful yell rent the air, and the outfielder shot up as if galvanized, caught sight of the catcher slipping out of the door, and flung himself after in hot pursuit, with the resultant upsetting of Lefty Locke’s plans.

The latter was not quite so entertained by the joke as he might have been had it not caused him to lose the waiter. He was swiftly becoming more and more convinced that, if he could only once get hold of the fellow and bring a little pressure to bear upon him, Miller might tell him a lot.

What was the man doing back in the hotel, anyway? Lefty wondered as he took the elevator downstairs. The mere fact of his presence in that corridor after he had been fired looked suspicious.

“It’s a shame I didn’t come out of my room a minute sooner,” the cub pitcher grumbled to himself as he entered the lobby. “I’d have nailed him. By Jove, Jack! You’re just the chap I want to see.” He caught Stillman by the arm, and propelled him toward a couple of empty chairs near by. “Who do you think I saw up in our corridor about fifteen minutes ago?”

“That waiter who was fired yesterday morning,” the newspaper man returned without an instant’s hesitation.

Lefty gasped. “What! Did you see him too?”

“No; but I heard him talking to Elgin. Our rooms adjoin, you know, and there’s a connecting door which is locked. I was up there, doping out some stuff to send to the paper, when I began to hear scraps of talk coming through the door. Didn’t pay much attention at first, for I wanted to get my story off in the five-thirty mail, but I made out that somebody was trying to get money out of our friend. That made me sit up and take a little more notice. The chap wanted fifteen dollars to take him to Dallas. Elgin balked, of course, and then the waiter said it would be the last touch he’d make, and, anyhow, it was little enough, considering all he’d done for Elgin. They scrapped back and forth for a bit, and then I reckon Elgin shelled out, for I didn’t hear anything more.

“The fool part of it was that I never wised up to who he was till afterward. I was thinking about my news dope, I suppose. Anyhow, it wasn’t till after I’d got that out of the way that I began to wonder whether the strange guy might not have been this man we want to get hold of. It certainly looked a bit like it, his bleeding Elgin that way.”

“Didn’t he say anything about what he’d done for Elgin?” Lefty asked eagerly.

“No, or I’d have woke up in a jiffy. It was only that he’d done something which put him personally to the bad. I haven’t a doubt now as to what that something was, but I’m afraid there isn’t anything you could call real proof.”

Locke shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he agreed slowly.

More than ever he regretted that he had missed the rascal in the corridor by a hair’s breadth. Truly, luck seemed to be with Bert Elgin in everything he undertook.

CHAPTER XX
JANET HARTING WONDERS

Lefty did not devote much more thought that night to Bert Elgin and his doings. Just before supper a letter arrived which drove every other idea from his head. For a second or two he stood staring at the familiar handwriting, wondering how in the world Janet had found out where he was. When he hastily slit the envelope and took in the meaning of the few lines on that single sheet of paper, his astonishment knew no bounds.

First he gave a long whistle. Then a wide grin overspread his face. It did not much matter what had brought the girl to Ashland, the fact remained that she was here and that he would see her that night. That was all that really counted.

He ate his supper hurriedly, oblivious for the first time to the continued coldness of his companions. His thoughts were elsewhere. Afterward he hastened up to his room and changed his clothes. Half an hour later he was running up the steps of the house on High Street.

Janet received him alone, her father having retired directly after dinner. To Lefty she seemed prettier than ever, and there was no mistaking her pleasure in seeing him. After the first greetings were over, they sat down on the sofa, each eager to hear all about the other’s doings.

“Father hasn’t been very well all winter,” the girl explained in answer to Lefty’s first question. “You remember my writing to you how he kept catching colds so easily, and couldn’t seem to shake them off? His rheumatism was worse than it had ever been before, too, and I was beginning to get really worried about him when one day, about a week ago, Cyrus King came in, and told father he’d arranged for us to go South and stay till spring. You know that gruff, positive way he has? Well, he’d planned it all out before he said a word to us, insisted on paying our expenses, and wouldn’t even let us thank him. Of course, he has quantities of money, and he and father are such old friends I didn’t mind much taking it from him.”

“It was good of him!” Lefty said warmly. “But how in the world did you happen to pick on Ashland to come to? That’s what I don’t quite understand.”

“We didn’t. At least, that’s not where we’re going to settle down. Doctor Lansing knew about some wonderful mineral springs at Billings, farther south in the State, and advised us to go there. We’ve only stopped off here for a week or ten days to see father’s old friend, Mr. Forsythe.”

Lefty nodded and leaned back, his muscular fingers linked loosely over one knee.

“I see. But what gets me is how you knew I was here. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I got your note. I suppose you must have seen my name in some paper that listed me as one of Brennan’s new recruits.”

She shook her head. Her lips were half smiling, but her eyes were fixed on his face with an odd sort of intentness.

“No,” she returned quietly. “Mr. Elgin told me.”

“Elgin?” Locke repeated incredulously. “You can’t possibly mean Bert Elgin? I know you can’t mean that man!”

Annoyed by the astonishment and involuntary disapproval in his voice, she drew herself up the least bit. If there was one quality on which Janet Harting prided herself it was her judgment, and she had never allowed any one save her father to criticise a person on whom she chose to bestow her friendship.

“Why not?” she retorted. “I like him very much. Besides, he was the means of saving father and me from a serious accident.”

She went on briefly to tell how the acquaintance had come about, and Lefty listened in frowning silence, gnawing his under lip with firm white teeth.

Perhaps it was just as well that he had been prevented from giving vent to that first natural outburst of indignation which leaped up within him. The discovery that Elgin, of all men, had made the acquaintance and apparently won the liking of this girl filled him with intense anger. The cur wasn’t fit even to speak to her, and in that moment Lefty detested him as never before. Only the impossibility of interrupting Janet kept him from pouring out an impulsive account of what he knew about the scoundrel, and the even more contemptible things he suspected.

But, with the passing of that first throb of anger, Locke felt that this would merely make matters worse. Certain as he was in his own mind of Elgin’s complicity in the plot against himself, he had no real proof, and anything he might say against the man would seem like the product of jealousy.

“He came to call last night,” the girl concluded, “and father was quite charmed with him.” She hesitated an instant, and then went on slowly: “I’m afraid you’re not very good friends, are you, Phil?”

“Oh! You gathered that, did you?” Lefty said stiffly. “I suppose he blackguarded me to beat the band.”

“He did nothing of the sort. He never said a word against you. I simply got the impression from his manner, and thought it was a pity you shouldn’t be on better terms.”

“That’s out of the question,” Lefty retorted shortly. He was perplexed over his inability to let her know exactly what sort of a man Bert Elgin was, and that added no little asperity to his manner. “We could never be friends.”

Janet sighed a little. She was very human, and where is the girl who is not thrilled by the thought of reconciling old enemies and healing old sores by her influence? She did not give up hope of some day accomplishing it in this case. She only realized that nothing more could be done at present, and, womanlike, tucking it away in her mind for future use, changed the subject abruptly.

“You really didn’t deserve to have me write you,” she said more lightly, “after the way you’ve neglected me lately. You must have got my last letter over two weeks ago, and I haven’t heard a word from you since.”

“I know it,” Lefty acknowledged. “I ought to have written, but everything came about so unexpectedly, Janet, that I put it off till I could have something definite to tell you. Just because I’m with a Big League team now doesn’t mean I’ll stay. I’ve got to make good, and there were two or three things at first which handicapped me so that I had very serious doubts of ever doing it. I did write you a long letter last night, though, but naturally I sent it to Kingsbridge. You’ll probably get it in a week or so.”

“Yes; all my mail is forwarded. But of course you’ll make good, Phil. I don’t see how you can have any doubt of it. Just look at the wonderful way you pitched last summer.”

Lefty smiled whimsically. “It’s very nice of you to think that, Janet,” he said. “But there’s a lot of difference between last summer and now. This crowd is one of the fastest in the country, and I’ll have to be on the jump every minute of the time to keep up with them. I really do think I have a show, though, and that’s what made me write to you.”

“I’m sure you have,” the girl returned positively. “Do you have any games? I’m crazy to see you pitch.”

“There’s a short practice game every day, but I don’t know how soon they’ll give me a chance on the slab. I’ll tell you what: If I find I’m going to be used, I’ll tell you or send you word, and you can come out to see the game. If that doesn’t happen before you leave here, you’d better come, anyway; for the playing is worth seeing.”

“Good!” returned Janet. “I’d love to come, and I can bring Jean Forsythe. She’s awfully nice, and crazy about baseball.” She paused for an instant, and then went on, more slowly: “I should think, now that you’re in the Big League, Phil, you’d play under your own name. You’re not ashamed to, are you?”

“Great Scott, no!” Lefty exclaimed. “What put that notion into your head? You know how impossible it was to use my own name last summer, and, now that I’ve made what reputation I have under the name of Locke, it wouldn’t be good policy to change. You should remember that I have a father, also, who is strongly prejudiced against baseball, and I see no need of dragging the name of Hazelton into it. There’s not much in a name, anyhow. Many fellows take a different one, or have one thrust upon them by the fans.”

There was a note of finality in his voice which made the girl realize the futility of continuing the subject. She was wise enough not to try, but after he had gone she could not help remembering Bert Elgin’s scornful remark that a professional could always find plenty of plausible excuses for playing under a name which was not his own.

CHAPTER XXI
THE YELLOW STREAK

“Believe me, fellows,” Bill Hagin said fervently, “that cub, Elgin, is some scrapper.”

There was a sniff of incredulity from the half dozen regulars gathered near the plate waiting their turn. They had heard before of these pugilistic prodigies, and were inclined to be doubtful.

“I’m from Missouri, Bill,” drawled Russell.

“Well, if you’d been up in my room last night, you’d been shown good and proper,” Hagin retorted. “Elgin put it all over One-round Nolan in the prettiest way you ever saw.”

At this announcement several of the men began to sit up and take notice; for Ed Nolan, the Hornet’s crack third baseman, was also renowned for his skill with the gloves.

“Quit your kidding, Bill,” admonished Red Pollock. “You can’t tell me no cub put it over Ed.”

“Truest thing you know,” averred the outfielder fervently. “Ask Monte Harris, or Dutch, if you don’t believe me. We was all talking downstairs about the match between Kid Baker and Young Glover in Memphis to-morrow, and Ross—he’s that punky cub fielder—says he’d back Elgin against any amateur in his class. Nolan picks up his ears, and, one word leading to another, we goes up to my room to call his bluff. Take it from me, there wasn’t any bluff about the kid, though. He’s got science and speed to burn, and the dandiest left hand wallop you ever saw. It sent Nolan sprawling in the third round as nice as could be, and Ed ain’t no slouch. I sure wish you all could have seen it.”

“Why in thunder didn’t you put us wise, then?” demanded Russell indignantly. “You’re a hot sketch, pulling off a scrap and letting nobody in.”

A chorus of similar reproaches were hurled at Hagin from all sides, mingled with eager queries about Elgin’s other good points, and calls for a more detailed description of the bout.

Buck Fargo alone sat unmoved and apparently incurious, a look of incredulity on his face. He was thinking of that night in the Palace Theater when Elgin had slipped away, leaving Lefty to face the wrathy mob alone. He remembered, also, the story Jack Stillman had told him of the beating Locke had started to give his college mate three years before at Princeton, and he smiled a wide, disbelieving smile as he listened to Hagin’s vivid description of the cub pitcher’s prowess with his fists.

But when, later in the day, Monte Harris and Carl Siegrist backed up the statement, and even Nolan himself admitted sourly that “the kid wasn’t so worse,” Fargo grew puzzled.

“Something queer about this,” he thought. “Looks like I’d have to do a little investigating on my own hook.”

All morning he was preoccupied and thoughtful, only arousing himself when Brennan’s eye was upon him, and even then quite lacking in his usual joshing repartee. Once or twice he noticed with a sort of absent approbation that Lefty was showing some steam and curves in the work-out with other pitchers; but aside from that he paid little attention to anything.

During dinner his abstraction continued, but afterward, on the way back to the field, he might have been observed suddenly to slap one thigh with his hand, and mutter something under his breath. After that he was the old Buck Fargo again.

The daily practice game now took place in the afternoon, leaving the morning for batting practice, throwing, running, and various other exercises. Ogan, the captain of the cubs, put Redmond, a fairly promising young twirler, into the box, but at the end of the second inning withdrew him, and substituted Bert Elgin.

The latter seemed to be in fine form, and started off by fanning Cy Russell. The second man up flied out to center field, and then Fargo came to the bat. Elgin’s first delivery just missed the outside corner of the plate. He then put over a straight, swift one, and Fargo, seemingly “playing the game,” let it pass. The cub pitcher then wound himself up for the elusive curve which was one of his pet specialties.

The ball whirled toward the pan, apparently heading straight at the batter. Fargo took a quick step back, then lunged forward. The next instant he dropped his bat with an exclamation of anger and pain as the sphere struck his arm with a dull impact.

His face contorted, the big backstop trotted toward first, rubbing the injured member, and shooting at Elgin some extremely vivid and forceful comments out of the corner of his mouth.

The incident flustered the latter to such an extent that he whipped a straight one over, which cut the center of the pan, and it was smashed out by Siegrist. The next man up sacrificed Fargo home, but Elgin took a brace; and shut out the regulars from further scoring.

The game progressed in comparative peace and harmony for two innings. Then, strangely enough, Fargo was hit again by the second pitched ball, and instantly the air was blue. His previous remarks were as nothing to the words which now issued from his lips as he glared at the offending youngster, and they only ceased when Jim Brennan ordered sharply: “Quit that blackguarding, and take your base.”

In spite of these two unfortunate happenings, the cubs nailed the game by a single run; for their opponents had not yet reached the point where they were willing to exert themselves overmuch. That run was scored in the last inning by Elgin, cleverly assisted by Ogan and Andy Whalen; and the instant the game was over the players streaked across the field toward the gate.

Elgin alone lingered behind to get his glove, which he had tossed over near the bench. Oddly enough, it was nowhere to be seen. Having been much too occupied to notice anything outside the diamond during the past ten minutes, he had failed to see Fargo scoop up that same useful article when returning from the pursuit of a foul, and toss it over into the grandstand.

Thus it happened that, while Elgin was searching vainly for his property, the field was deserted by all save himself and one other man. The latter was Fargo, who had started out with the rest, and then, halfway to the gate, paused, and turned back.

He was within ten feet of the cub twirler before the latter glanced up, giving a slight start as his eyes took in the expression of cold menace on the big backstop’s face.

“You common mucker!” rasped the latter fiercely, his big fists clenched as he strode rapidly forward. “If you think you can put a trick like that over me a-purpose, you’re a bigger chump than you look.”

Elgin took a step backward, his face blanching. “I—didn’t do it on purpose,” he stammered. “It was—”

“You lie!” snapped Fargo. “Once might have gone, but not the second time. You’ve got a big thrashing coming, if I can give it to you. Put up your fists, you boob!”

His eyes seemed to blaze, and Elgin, after an involuntary motion to guard himself, dropped his arms and retreated a few steps. He was trembling and his lips quivered.

“I tell you—I didn’t—mean—” he stammered, and then was silent.

“You’re a liar!” was the retort. “Ain’t you going to put your fists up, or must I make you?”

There was no reply, and, with a swift forward motion, Fargo lunged and brought his open palm against Elgin’s cheek with stinging force. The youngster staggered back, straightened, and stood there, head hanging, the picture of terror.

For a moment Fargo stared in silence at the marks his fingers had left on the now crimson cheek. Then he burst into a laugh so full of scorn and contempt that the other winced.

“A quitter!” the big backstop sneered. “A rotten quitter, that’s what you are! You haven’t got an ounce of grit in your whole hulking carcass. I thought there was something queer about your being such a wonder with your fists. If you had any nerve you could have knocked me endwise—but you haven’t. You’re yellow straight through. I let you hit me with the ball a-purpose, so’s I could see what you were made of. I’ve found out. Your glove’s over in the stand, where I fired it.”

Without another word, he turned and strode toward the gate, leaving Elgin standing as if rooted to the ground. Bert’s face turned from red to white, from white to deep, purpling crimson. He gnawed his lips until the blood came, and his eyes were full of bitter shame at the humiliating discovery that he had been caught in the backstop’s trap to test his nerve.

CHAPTER XXII
LEFTY’S CHANCE COMES

Al Ogan, the promising cub first baseman and captain of the Yannigans, was not a bad fellow at heart. He had been as disgusted as any of his companions at Locke’s apparently inexcusable behavior which had lost them the first game with the regulars, and had joined heart and soul in the cold ignoring of the southpaw twirler from that time forth. But at the end of three or four days, during which he had watched Lefty’s work closely, he began to wonder whether he was right or not.

“Maybe he was sick or something that day,” he thought to himself late one morning, as he stood watching Lefty pitching to Buck Fargo. “He hasn’t been the same chap since. He’s certainly got smoke, and he can put the stuff on the pill when he tries.”

Presently a bit of friendly joshing between Locke and Fargo, in which Red Pollock and another of the regulars joined, made Ogan still more thoughtful. He kept his eyes open during the dinner lay-off, and at length he realized that Locke was on friendly terms with almost the entire regular crowd, and actually chummy with the gruff, rough-and-ready backstop.

“I’ll be hanged if I know how he’s done it,” Ogan thought with some slight annoyance. “They don’t bother much about the rest of us. I reckon I must have made a mistake. That bunch would never take up with a quitter.”

That afternoon he took occasion to speak to Lefty in a careless sort of way which seemed to indicate he had momentarily forgotten the boycott; and when Locke answered him without any signs of pique or soreness, they talked casually for a moment or two.

At the end of the day Manager Brennan called Ogan to him.

“I’m going to try an experiment to-morrow afternoon,” he said shortly. “We’ll lengthen the game to the full number of innings, and about the first of the seventh I’ll put Elgin into the box for the regulars. I want to see what he’ll do with that kind of support.”

Ogan restrained his surprise, and nodded. “I suppose I’d better not use him early in the game, then?” he said.

“No; take some of the others. He’d better be fresh when he goes in. The old boys are waking up and beginning to play ball.”

This Ogan had observed the day before with some chagrin. Up to that time the cubs had won every game except that first one, and had come to have a pretty good opinion of their ability. Yesterday, however, they had been unaccountably nosed out in the last inning, while to-day their defeat had been even worse.

Apparently there was no reason for it. They were in splendid condition and playing harder than ever. Their opponents did not seem to be exerting themselves a bit more than they had done from the very first. They still contented themselves with letting a hit go as a single when it might have been stretched for two sacks. Time and time again their pitcher let the bases fill, only to pull out of the hole by some wise old trick—the product of hard experience—which prevented the cubs from piling up runs.

Some of the latter did not realize that they were the victims of inside baseball; that the regulars were regaining and perfecting the teamwork which was to count for so much a couple of months later on. But they would learn it soon, for that was the principal reason why they were there.

As Ogan turned away from the manager a sudden thought flashed into his brain, and he looked swiftly around. The crowd was streaming toward the gates, intent on a refreshing bath and supper, but Ogan’s keen eyes soon singled out Locke in the rear, and in a couple of minutes he had sprinted over to him.

“Want to go in to-morrow?” he asked abruptly.

A faint flush stained Lefty’s face, but his voice was perfectly composed as he answered readily:

“I sure do!”

“I’ll put you in at the beginning of the seventh. The old man’s going to lengthen the game, and wants to run Bert Elgin in to pitch for the regulars. When he does, you can come out for us. We’ll talk it over to-morrow.”

That was all he said, but as he walked away Lefty felt as if he could have hugged the fellow for giving him this chance. To pitch again for the cubs was enough in itself, but to be pitted against Elgin was more than he had hoped for; and it was with difficulty that he restrained the exuberant joy which welled up within him.

He could scarcely wait until supper was over, so eager was he to tell Janet the good news. She was as pleased as he over it, and they were so busy planning her coming to the field that she quite forgot the little hint she had intended dropping of how glad she would be if he and Elgin would only make up their differences.

The latter had called again the night before and conducted himself so tactfully that she found him even more pleasant than at first. She could not believe that either he or Lefty could have done anything very dreadful. It seemed rather as if there must have been some misunderstanding to turn them from friends to enemies, and her heart was set on being the means of bringing them together again. It was only after Lefty’s departure that she realized her omission and determined to rectify it on the morrow if even the slightest opportunity presented itself.

CHAPTER XXIII
THERE’S MANY A SLIP

In company with Jean Forsythe, a pretty, breezy Texas girl, Janet reached the baseball park the next afternoon about half past two. They drove down in Jean’s runabout, and the little car had no sooner come to a stop on the turf back of first base than Miss Harting forgot everything but her enthusiasm at the sight she beheld.

The whole field seemed filled with brown-skinned, clear-eyed athletes engaged in the usual practice. A number of them were scattered over the diamond in their regular positions, while some one batted to them. At a little distance others were practicing bunting. Back by the grandstand an old pitcher was warming up easily. Farther on a couple of cub twirlers were doing the same thing, with much more snap and speed. The crack of wood meeting leather sounded rhythmically, intermingled with shouts and joshing laughter. Balls curved gracefully into the sunlight. The air was soft and balmy, and full of the fragrance of growing things. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, and it was springtime.

As the girl’s eyes took in the scene, her heart began to beat a little unevenly; her gloved hands lay quietly in her lap, the fingers tightly interlaced.

“It’s splendid!” she whispered to herself.

It was deeply interesting to one who could delve beneath the surface, and see a little of what lay under that smiling, sunny crust. Here was a veteran whose name was famous from sea to sea, and to whom baseball was the very breath of life, struggling with every fiber of his being against the inevitable. Perhaps no one else had a suspicion that he was passing his prime, but some day—and that soon—his throwing arm would lose its vigor, or his legs fail to take him down to first in the marvelous way they had done for years. After that the toboggan slide; back to the minors for a while, and then to the scrap heap.

To the seeing mind the field was full of little tragedies like this, which might seem cruel, but which were really inevitable. There is no sentiment in professional baseball. One unvarying law of the Big League is the survival of the fittest. As long as a man can fill a position a little better than any other player the manager can secure—and that individual is always on the lookout for new material—he stays on the crest of the wave. Once let him slip back a very little, however, and he sinks beneath the surface, never, or at least rarely, to struggle into sight again.

Happily Janet did not realize all of this, though perhaps she sensed intuitively a little of the hopes and fears, the jealousies and heartburnings, which were inevitable in such a gathering. Presently she saw Lefty waving to her, and answered him with a quick smile and nod. A little later, when the game began, he hastened over to the car, bringing Buck Fargo with him; for he was anxious that his friend should meet the two girls.

The big backstop could stay only a moment, but Lefty remained for several innings, enjoying the enthusiasm of the girls over the game. Toward the end of the fourth inning, however, he arose reluctantly from where he had been sitting on the step of the car.

“I’ll have to start warming up,” he explained. “They’re going to put me in with the beginning of the seventh.”

They both smilingly urged him to win the game for the cubs, said they would wait for him afterward, and watched him cross the field with a lithe, springy step.

“He’s fine, isn’t he?” remarked Jean Forsythe enthusiastically. “I like that Mr. Fargo, too. Where’s the other one you were telling me about? I wonder he doesn’t come over.”

Janet had been wondering herself. Quite early in the game she had picked out Bert Elgin over by the grandstand pitching to one of the youngsters who was not playing. It seemed rather odd that he could not spare a moment to run over and see them.

“Oh, he’s warming up,” she explained carelessly. “He’s going in with the regulars at the seventh inning. It’ll be awfully exciting to see which does the better.”

Lefty talked for a moment or two with Al Ogan, and then, corralling a fellow to catch for him, started to limber up his arm. He felt that he had never been in better form, and the realization inspired him. So far the game was very close, for the Yannigans were having a streak of hitting, of which they took every advantage, so that they were one run to the good at the end of the fourth inning.

If Lefty could help them win the game it would be a triumph, indeed, and would more than atone for his losing the first time.

At the end of the fifth inning the score remained unchanged. In the last half of the sixth, however, the regulars secured the tying run. A little later Lefty slipped into his sweater, walked to the bench, and sat down. Elgin had stopped warming up a moment or two before, and stood near; but neither paid any attention to the other.

As the inning ended, Lefty saw Jim Brennan beckon to Ogan and engage him in conversation. He seemed to be laying down the law in that sharp, decisive manner of his, and something in the cub captain’s face sent a momentary thrill of apprehension through the southpaw.

He thrust it from him, however, and when Ogan finally turned away from the manager and walked slowly in, Lefty moved to meet him.

“Old man changed his plans?” the cub pitcher asked carelessly.

Something, he knew not what, prompted him to put the question. It never really occurred to him that Brennan had changed his mind, but afterward he was more than thankful that the suggestion had come from him.

“Yes!” snapped Ogan. “He wants Redmond to go in. I told him I’d promised you, and Redmond’s arm wasn’t limbered up, but that didn’t make any difference. Sorry, old fellow, but I’ll make it up to you another time.”

Lefty turned away with a shrug, and tossed his glove up, catching it deftly as it fell. Then he laughed. Ogan could have no idea, of course, how difficult it was to make that laugh sound natural.

“Sure!” Lefty said lightly. “You won’t want me at all, then?”

“Not this afternoon. I’ll put you in to-morrow, though, if it takes a leg.”

He passed on toward the bench, leaving Locke to follow more slowly, his face still indifferent, but his mind full of bitter disappointment. To-morrow! That promise was poor consolation when he had set his heart on pitching to-day. He would never have another chance like this to pit himself against Bert Elgin.

The next instant he raised his head and met Elgin’s eyes fixed upon his face with a look of malicious satisfaction. For a fraction of a second Lefty stared. Then he smiled, and, turning, made his way straight toward the runabout containing the two girls.

It had suddenly come to him that he would have to go back and explain to them. He hated the necessity intensely; but, since it had to be done, it might as well be gotten over swiftly.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE UNEXPECTED

The remainder of the afternoon was one long trial for Lefty Locke. He was under the necessity of keeping up an appearance of light-hearted indifference before the girls, when all the time he simply ached to be out there on the diamond.

He saw Redmond pitching the sort of ball to delight the veterans, who batted him mercilessly. He saw Elgin, backed by the whole strength of the regular team, make a showing such as he had never made before. He saw the cubs mowed down, snowed under, beaten to a frazzle; and all the time he had to laugh and joke and fight down any signs of the bitter disappointment which filled his soul.

Janet, knowing him as she did, realized something of what he must be feeling, and tactfully refrained from any comments on Elgin’s pitching. Neither did she tell Lefty how sorry she was at the way things had gone, and for that he was thankful. It seemed as if Janet Harting’s pity would have been the last straw.

When the last inning ended, with a score of nine to three in favor of the regulars, she further won his gratitude by suggesting to Jean that they leave the field at once, before the crowd started, and take Lefty with them.

He accepted with alacrity. When they put him down at the hotel, he said good-by to Miss Forsythe, then held out his hand to Janet.

“Thank you,” he said in a quiet voice as she took it.

The girl smiled understandingly into his eyes. “Come and see us soon,” was all she said, as the car moved away.

Of course, the principal topic of conversation that night was the wonderful exhibition of pitching shown by Elgin. Some of the newspaper men, in particular, were more than enthusiastic, hailing him as the most promising youngster Brennan had discovered, and predicting a bright future for him. The older players had seen too many “infant phenoms” to be in the least impressed; they knew, moreover, how much of his success had been due to their own assistance. The cubs were too downcast over their defeat to think of anything else. Redmond was wearing a grouch, and Locke’s stock began to soar when Ogan expressed a belief at the supper table that if the southpaw had been put in, as he desired, the result would have been quite different.

Lefty missed Jack Stillman and was beginning to wonder where he was when the reporter suddenly issued from the elevator, about eight o’clock, and hurried over.

“Had to get my copy off,” he explained. “Say! Have you seen old Oggie?”

“You don’t mean Oggie Wilmerding!” Lefty exclaimed incredulously.

“Surest thing you know! The old lobster was here when we got back from the field this afternoon. He’s traveling for the Wood’s Hoisting Engine Company. Talk about class! Oh, hush!”

Lefty grinned. “Oggie always did have a hankering for lugs,” he chuckled. “But he’s all right, just the same. Where do you suppose he’s gone?”

“Give it up. He said something about seeing a man the first thing in the morning, but perhaps he’s hunting him up to-night.”

This surmise proved to be correct. About half an hour later a tall, well-groomed, prosperous-looking chap entered the lobby, and was instantly seized by the two Princeton men and mauled after the fashion of college mates who haven’t met each other in some time.

He was unfeignedly glad to see Lefty, and when the first exuberant greetings were ended they settled down in a corner of the lobby to talk over old times.

“You’re fat as a pig, Oggie,” Lefty remarked, with fond bluntness. “I’d like to have you on the squad for about a month.”

Wilmerding waved away the suggestion with horror. “No, thanks! I never took to exercise. I’m very well satisfied as I am. Never did like to see every bone in a fellow’s body.” He paused an instant, and then chuckled. “But this is the best ever, running across you three old Princeton plugs in a bunch. Where’s Elgin? I was talking to him before supper, and I’ll be hanged if he isn’t a pretty decent chap. Never cared very much for him at college, but he seems to have improved a lot since then.”

The silence which followed his remark was eloquent. Wilmerding glanced from one frowning face to the other, and raised his eyebrows.

“What’s the matter?” he inquired. “Have I struck a false note?”

“You certainly have if you sized up that cur as decent,” Stillman retorted impulsively.

“You don’t mean it!” Wilmerding exclaimed. “Why, he seemed very pleasant. What’s he done to get you two on his neck?”

“What he did at college was enough to get any self-respecting fellow down on him, let alone the dirty tricks he’s tried since then.”

The plump chap looked puzzled. “At college?” he repeated. “I don’t understand, Jack.”

“You will when I tell you that he was the one who stole Bob Ferris’ watch and money, and then tried to put the blame on Lefty.”

The effect of his words on Wilmerding was extraordinary. The healthy glow faded swiftly from the plump cheeks, leaving them pale and mottled. His jaw dropped, and for an instant he sat staring at the reporter with startled eyes.

“Impossible!” he gasped at last, in a hoarse, trembling voice.

“It’s not impossible,” Stillman retorted sharply. “The whole thing’s as plain as print. Lefty caught him with the goods.”

Slowly Wilmerding turned his eyes on Locke. The look in them was that of one who is unable to credit the evidence of his senses.

“It’s true,” Locke affirmed, wondering curiously what brought that extraordinary expression into the other’s face. “I saw the watch in his possession.”

Wilmerding dropped his lids and swallowed hard. For a moment or two he sat staring at his lap, where his plump, well-cared-for hands lay, the fingers tightly interlaced. His mouth was twitching nervously and his face was still pale. At last he raised his head again and glanced at Stillman.

“It isn’t possible, Jack,” he said unevenly. “You’ve made a big mistake.”

“Don’t be a fool, Oggie,” the reporter snapped. “There isn’t a chance of that. What the deuce do you know about it, anyhow?”

Wilmerding moistened his dry lips. “A great deal,” he said slowly. “I—was the—thief, myself.”

“You?” exclaimed both men together.

Then Locke laughed oddly. “Jove! That was well done, Oggie,” he exclaimed. “We both bit beautifully.”

Wilmerding shook his head. His eyes were tortured.

“You’re wrong,” he said, more clearly. “I’m not fooling; I mean every word I say.” He reached out, and gripped the edge of a small table standing beside his chair; somehow, the action seemed to steady him. “It’s mighty hard to tell you fellows,” he went on slowly. “I thought the whole wretched business had been buried forever. I never expected to hear of it again, but I can’t let you go on thinking what you do about Elgin. As true as I sit here, I stole those things from Ferris. I didn’t mean to do it, but I took them just the same. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been cursed with a sleepwalking habit, and not the ordinary sort, either. When I’m asleep I do things I’d never dream of doing in my right senses. You remember Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”

Lefty nodded silently. He was too amazed to speak.

“Well, in a way I’m a Jekyll and Hyde. I’ve often thought that, sleeping and waking, I have two just such different personalities as those. I’ll never forget the awful sensation of finding out the first time that I’d been into somebody else’s room and stolen a scarfpin off the bureau. It was at a summer hotel, and I managed to put it back without any one finding out. At college I did the same thing every now and then, but never very much, and always managed to get my loot back undiscovered. I thought I’d done the same thing with Ferris’ belongings.”

“But, Oggie, this is all rot!” Lefty burst out. “You’re worrying yourself over something which is utterly impossible. I tell you I saw Ferris’ watch fall out of Bert Elgin’s pocket.”

“Could you swear to the watch?” Wilmerding asked wearily and without conviction.

“Well, it looked exactly like it.”

“Must have been some other watch,” Wilmerding returned positively. “Did he ever confess to you that he did the stealing?”

“N-o, I can’t say that. In fact, he denied it up and down; but of course he’d do that. I told him unless the things were returned in twenty-four hours I’d go to the dean. They were back on Ferris’ bureau the next morning.”

Wilmerding nodded. “Naturally, when I put them there myself. In my sleep I had hidden them behind some books on a shelf, and I didn’t find them until that night. I tell you fellows, you’ve made a terrible mistake. I never cared much for Elgin in the old days, and had very little to do with him, but I can’t keep still and let any man suffer for my own wrongdoing.”

There was no mistaking the deadly earnestness of his tone, and, as he realized what the disclosure meant, Lefty experienced an odd, sinking sensation. Thoroughly upright and straightforward himself, the thought that he had been the means of branding an innocent man as a thief was intolerable to him. Moreover, if Elgin was not guilty of that theft, what proof had they of his complicity in recent underhanded doings?

With a feeling that the earth was dropping away under his feet, Locke turned toward Stillman. He saw on the reporter’s face that same expression of groping blankness which he knew was on his own.

CHAPTER XXV
THE STRUGGLE

Lefty went to his room rather early that night, but not to bed. The discovery of the terrible mistake he had made regarding Elgin bewildered him at first, and then made him feel as if he wanted to get away by himself to think it all over.

For three years he had felt absolutely certain of Bert Elgin’s responsibility for that theft at Princeton. He had felt the scorn and contempt for his college mate which any decent man would naturally feel for a person guilty of what Elgin had done. He had, moreover, from the very first, never hesitated to show those feelings. Now it would seem that he had been totally in the wrong.

It was a most disagreeable discovery. Lefty would have felt glad indeed had there been a chance of believing Wilmerding mistaken, but such a thing was hardly possible. Oggie had never been on friendly terms with Elgin in the old days, so there was no earthly reason to suspect him of making up the story in order to shield the real culprit.

“And, anyway, he couldn’t have told it the way he did unless it were true,” Locke thought to himself. “It isn’t in him to fake a thing so realistically.”

Frowning, Lefty moved restlessly about the room, picking up an article here and there and replacing it without a realization of what he was doing. Of course the only proper course for him to follow was to go straight to Elgin and apologize for having misjudged him so greatly, but the thought of doing so was intolerable.

He detested the fellow as much as ever. His suspicion of Elgin’s responsibility for the doped beer remained unshaken. Whether the man had stolen or not, did not affect that question.

“I can’t do it!” Lefty burst out, at length, a vivid picture of the sneering reception which would greet an apology on his part flashing into his mind. “I detest that man, and I won’t give him a chance to crow over me. He’d seize it gleefully.”

For a time he deluded himself with the idea that, after all, it wasn’t up to him to do anything. The matter had never been made public. With the exception of Ogden Wilmerding, Stillman and Ferris were the only ones who knew anything of it. It had long ago been relegated to the past. Why should it be dragged out into the light at this late day? He would write to Bob Ferris that very night and put him straight about the matter. That should be enough.

Deep down in his heart Lefty Locke knew that it was not enough. Because he was clean and straight and honorable, he knew that it was up to him to apologize to the man he had so cruelly misjudged, whether he detested him or not. He had been responsible for the stigma resting on Elgin’s good name, and that responsibility could not be shirked. Common decency made it imperative for him to acknowledge his mistake.

The decision was not an easy one. In fact, Lefty had never struggled harder against the temptation to take the simple course and let things slide. If he kept silent, the chances were a thousand to one that Elgin would never hear a whisper of Wilmerding’s story. The latter was not likely to repeat it to others, and Stillman would certainly keep the matter to himself.

In spite of all these plausible arguments, however, the southpaw knew that there was really only one thing for him to do, much as he hated it; and, having come to that conclusion, he lost no time in ridding himself of the unpleasant duty.

A glance at his watch told him that it was not yet eleven. Possibly Elgin might still be up, and if the task could be done that night, so much the better.

Stepping out into the corridor, he walked to Elgin’s room, noticed the light streaming through the transom, and, without further delay, knocked firmly on the door.

“Come in!” called a voice impatiently.

Elgin, partly undressed, stood in the middle of the room. As his rival entered and closed the door behind him, a look of surprise flashed into his face, followed swiftly by a scowl.

“Well, what in blazes do you want?” he snapped with pointed emphasis.

Lefty bit his lips to keep back the retort he longed to utter. He realized that it was going to be even harder than he had expected.

“I’ve found out that I was wrong about that affair at college, Elgin,” he said stiffly. “I came to tell you that I am sorry for having misjudged you.”

For an instant Elgin stared at him in silence, the shirt he had just taken off trailing unheeded on the floor. His face was an odd mixture of astonishment and suspicious incredulity.

“You mean—about the Ferris—business?” he asked jerkily.

Locke nodded. “Yes; I was mistaken in thinking you mixed up in it. I’ve been mistaken for three years.”

Elgin’s brows came together in a scowl. His lids drooped until they quite hid the expression in his dark eyes.

“Humph!” he grunted. “And when did you find out what an ass you’ve been making of yourself?”

Lefty flushed, and set his jaws. “I learned the truth to-night,” he admitted.

Suddenly Elgin’s face relaxed from its rather tense, searching expression, and he laughed harshly.

“And so you’re sorry?” he sneered. “That puts you right, I suppose! Without a shred of evidence, you accuse a man of stealing. For three years you blackguard him every chance you get, and then, when you find out the truth, when you wake up to the fact that you’ve been all kinds of a blackguard, all you can do is to come around whining about being sorry. Bah!”

Lefty drew his breath sharply, his self-control strained almost to the breaking point.

“What more can I do?” he demanded.

Elgin’s lips curled. “Oh, nothing—nothing,” he sneered. “It’s what you should have done before that gets me. Anybody but a fool would have waited till he could prove it before he called a man a thief. But no; you had to jump in and show how smart you were without giving a thought to the damage you might be doing to a person’s character.”

Lefty felt that argument would be futile. Besides, he knew that if he stayed any longer he would most certainly blow up and say something he might afterward regret.

“I’ve told you I’m sorry, and I am,” he repeated briefly. “I’ll write to Bob Ferris to-night, and put him straight about the matter. I fail to see what more there is to do.”

Without further words, he turned abruptly to leave the room. He had almost reached the door when Elgin’s sneering voice broke the silence:

“If you think this squares everything between us, you’ve got another guess coming. I haven’t forgotten how you’ve slandered me, and I never will, even if you should crawl like this every day for the rest of the year.”

Lefty whirled, his eyes blazing. “I don’t give a rip what you remember or forget!” he retorted sharply. “I apologized because I had to save my self-respect. If you imagine I want to have anything more to do with you than before, get rid of the notion right away. I don’t like you or your methods. You may not be guilty of stealing, but there are some other things fully as rotten that you have done.”

Before Elgin could reply the southpaw had jerked the door open, stepped swiftly through, and slammed it behind him.

CHAPTER XXVI
GAINING GROUND

“What the deuce did you go and tell him for?” Jack Stillman demanded pettishly.

“Because I had to,” retorted Lefty, with some asperity. He was tired of the whole subject, and desired to forget it. “Don’t be a fool, Jack. There wasn’t anything else to do.”

The reporter shrugged his shoulders. There was a note of finality in his friend’s voice which he knew better than to disregard.

“Well, all I can say is I’m thankful my conscience isn’t so blamed sensitive,” he sighed. “He’ll be so swelled up there won’t be any enduring him. Heaven knows he’ll be chesty enough, as it is, when he sees the papers.”

“What do you mean, Jack?” Lefty asked curiously.

The reporter scowled. “Same old dope about ‘Marvelous Cub Twirler Discovered by Astute Manager,’” he explained sardonically. Stillman had a trick of talking in capitals which made one fairly see the glaring headlines. “It’s the same every spring, only this year there are a lot more kids around than usual who can handle a murder case or robbery a heap better than they can a Big League training season.”

Lefty grinned. “Oh, you mean they’re giving him a puff on account of yesterday?”

“A puff isn’t quite the word. I wish you could have seen some of the rot Temple, of the Blade, doped out. He wanted my opinion on it; said he was a bit new to this, you know. I smoothed down the story a little, but I’m dead sure a lot more will rant as bad, or worse. Most of ’em seem to think because the regulars had a landslide it was due to Elgin’s pitching. They don’t figure out that Redmond’s bum work had anything to do with it.”

“What’s the odds?” Lefty laughed. “You did the same thing last year, didn’t you?”

“Not quite. I knew something about baseball to start with, and Johnny Hargreaves tipped me off to a whole lot more.”

“Still, Elgin really did do pretty well,” Locke remarked slowly. “Anybody must concede that much.”

“No better than he has half a dozen times before,” the reporter retorted. “That’s all I said in my story, but when I found the way the rest were piling it on, I had to stick in another paragraph. Otherwise I’d be getting a wire from the chief to wake up and take notice.”

“After all, I don’t believe it amounts to a terrible lot,” Lefty said carelessly. “You can’t fool Brennan, and his opinion is really the only one that counts.”

Nevertheless, as he joined the squad a little later for the morning jog out to the grounds, Lefty could not help feeling a twinge of regretful envy. If he had only been allowed to go on the slab for the cubs the day before, he had a notion that Elgin’s performance would not have seemed quite so brilliant. Those laudatory newspaper notices might have had someone else as the object of their praise, and, though he knew how little such plaudits really counted, Lefty was a very human sort of fellow, after all.

According to his promise, Al Ogan put the southpaw in the box that afternoon, and Locke pitched for six innings to such purpose that the game resulted in a tie in spite of the fact that the regulars were in as good a form as ever, and seemed to work a little harder than usual.

From that time on, Locke’s companions began to thaw. Once they realized that Lefty’s first disastrous exhibition had not been a sample of his usual form, they endeavored to make up for past unpleasantness.

Perhaps their new friendliness was hastened by the newspaper prominence of Bert Elgin. Few men can view unmoved the sudden elevation to fame of a comrade, especially when they feel that this elevation has not been especially merited. Newspapers began to drift in from all the big cities, in which Elgin was heralded as “Brennan’s New Find,” “A Second Matty,” “By Far the Most Promising Recruit of the Season,” and so on.

Then followed pictures of the new pitcher in every variety of pose; his style was dissected and analyzed; his progress was noted; for, having launched this boom, the reporters felt under the necessity of pushing it along.

All of these things were not calculated to soothe the spirits of the other cubs, whose existence was noted by scant sentences scattered thinly throughout the sporting columns. They looked askance on Elgin, and the latter, not bearing up well under prosperity, gave them plenty to criticize. He developed an irritatingly jaunty air, which was flaunted at all times. He grew very familiar with most of the newspaper men, and when on the slab gave decided evidence of mannerisms, which tried the patience and aroused the ire of his fellow players.

Unfortunately for them, his ability to pitch increased rather than lessened, so that their sarcastic utterances rather lost point. A man can make all sorts of a fool of himself off the slab, he may even go through ridiculous posings and posturings while winding up, but when his work is as uniformly good as Bert Elgin’s was, criticism is usually superfluous.

The days passed swiftly, with the most of the squad showing an increase in efficiency. They were hitting better, running faster, and throwing more accurately. The regulars were rapidly perfecting their teamwork, and the cubs beginning to learn the importance of something more than the rudiments of “inside” baseball. Some of them took to it like ducks to water, and absorbed intricate secret signals and caught on to the theory of certain movements as if they had been brought up on nothing else from their cradles. These were the men who would push forward to the front ranks. The slower-brained recruits were doomed.

Lefty Locke enjoyed that week more than any similar space of time he could remember. Baseball as a science had always interested him tremendously. He had spent a great deal of time studying out different plays and the reasons for them, but up to now these mental exercises had been generally limited to the more obvious sort, though he did not realize that at the time.

He knew it, however, the moment the Hornets began to pick up and show what they could do when they were in trim; and, though the discovery was something of a blow to his self-esteem, it only goaded him to constant effort and increased mental agility to keep up the pace.

Therefore his work steadily improved. While, perhaps, not so spectacular and dashing as Bert Elgin’s, it showed evidence of thought and clear judgment; and very soon it became apparent that he was crowding his rival close, if not actually surpassing him in general ability and resourcefulness.

The one drawback to an otherwise pleasant period was Janet Harting’s behavior. She and Lefty had come perilously close to their first quarrel, and all because of his absolute refusal, not alone to make up his differences with Bert Elgin, but to tell her of what those differences consisted.

After her first coolness she had been very nice about it, but somehow Lefty had a feeling that she was not quite the same. She was pleasant and cordial, and went twice to the baseball park to see him pitch before she and her father left Ashland for the mineral springs at Billings. In spite of all that, however, Lefty sensed the faint rift in their friendship, and it troubled him.

Instinctively he laid it to Elgin, whom he knew visited Miss Harting almost as frequently as he did, and he despised the man more than ever for it. It was one of those cases, however, in which a person can do nothing. Locke simply had to sit still and let events take their course. He worried and fussed a bit at first, but presently his whole mind became so engrossed in the struggle to make good and win out that he ceased to be actively troubled over something which he could not remedy.

After all, if he could only manage to outpitch Elgin on the diamond and prove himself the better player, there was more than a chance of his showing, at the same time, the girl he cared for that he was the better man.

CHAPTER XXVII
A CHANCE TO MAKE GOOD

Jack Stillman lolled in the big cushioned chair, his eyes fixed on the backs of two men, carrying suitcases, who were just leaving the hotel in company with half a dozen of their fellow players.

“Back to the hay fields for yours,” he murmured sardonically. “Another couple of years, and you may be ready for fast company. This is the beginning of the exodus, Lefty.”

For an instant Locke’s face was rather serious. Then he smiled faintly.

“You’re a stony-hearted ruffian, Jack,” he said. “I feel sorry for them. After working hard and getting your hopes away up, it’s a beastly disappointment to be told you haven’t made good. I suppose you’ll think it’s a joke when I pack my little bag and go forth into the cold world.”

“I’d laugh myself sick,” chuckled the newspaper man. “At present, however, I don’t see any chance of that coming about. At the risk of giving you a swelled head, I’ll tell you, old chap, that you’re liable to stick around.”

“This from the oracle!” laughed the southpaw. “I’m overwhelmed. But seriously, Jack, if I have improved a little, so has Bert Elgin. Of course, I’d never admit it to any one else, but it’s my private opinion that he’s the better pitcher.”

“I don’t agree with you,” Stillman returned decidedly. “There’s no denying that Elgin’s good. He’s got speed and fine curves and very fair control, but the combination of all three doesn’t always make a first-class pitcher. He’s got to pitch with his brain as well as his arm, and he’s got to have plenty of nerve, both of which qualities I’ve noticed in you. I’m curious to see what Elgin will do when he’s up against a real team.”

“Well, I hope the old man agrees with you,” Lefty returned. “It looks to me as if it would be a fight between us two as to which will be kept and which farmed out.”

“Why shouldn’t he keep you both?” the newspaper man inquired.

“Look at the corking bunch of regulars he has already,” Locke protested.

Stillman laughed. “Haven’t you got wise yet to the fact that a team can’t have too many good twirlers? A Big League season is a whole lot different from the ball you played last summer. It begins in April, and doesn’t end till October. It’s fight, fight, fight, week after week, month after month, with the knowledge that a single game, a single inning, sometimes even a single play, may start a slump. It’s hard, grilling work, and Brennan knows well that any minute one of his star twirlers may be down and out. He’s not running any chances, and you take my word for it that, if you and Elgin don’t fall down, he’ll keep you both.”

“You’re a real comfort, Jack,” Lefty said. “I’ll try not to slump. Wish I knew who was going on to the slab first to-morrow.”

“Don’t you?” the reporter asked, with sudden interest. “I thought he picked the team this afternoon.”

“So he did, all but the battery. Perhaps we’ll hear before bedtime. I’d sure like to go in. This will be rather different from the usual practice game.”

Stillman nodded emphatically. “You bet your boots! The first game with an outside team is usually an eye-opener. You fellows think you’re pretty hot stuff because you’ve trimmed the regulars a few times, forgetting that the old men take things so easy during training season that you’d hardly know they were working at all. Cy Russell lets you hit him a dozen times in a game; so does old Pop. I’ve seen you fan Dutch Siegrist twice running. Do you s’pose you could do that a month from now? Forget it! This game to-morrow is going to be a jolt for some lads, if what I hear about that wild Texas bunch is right. I wonder the old man would consent to a match so early. They usually aren’t pulled off till just before we start north.”

“Buck told me their manager had sent in a challenge, and the chief didn’t feel like turning it down,” Lefty remarked. “I s’pose he didn’t want to give ’em a chance to crow.”

“Very likely. Well, it’ll be some fun, anyhow. I understand their pitcher has a reputation for rough-and-ready baseball. I’ll be hanged, old man, if I wouldn’t be just as well pleased to see Elgin up against that sort of thing if I were you.”

“I’ll take a chance,” Lefty laughed. “I’ve been up against some tough characters before, and perhaps even this Texas steer can’t put much over me.”

“That remains to be seen,” chuckled Stillman. “The old man’s heading this way with Ogan, and from the expression on his face I should say you’d been chosen for the goat.”

His surmise proved to be correct.

“You’ll start the game to-morrow, Locke,” the manager said abruptly, as he halted by Lefty’s chair. “I’m told this Schaeffer is a roughneck, so look out for squalls. No matter what he does, don’t let him badger you into anything. I’ll see to it that he’s kept within bounds, but them kind of ball players is so full of tricks you can’t catch ’em all. You and Ogan and Fargo better get together to-night and fix up your signals.”

After Lefty and the cub captain had departed to hunt up their backstop, Jim Brennan stood for a moment looking at Stillman out of the corner of his eye. The latter was one of the few reporters with the squad that year who knew baseball from the ground up, and the stories he sent home to his paper usually had the manager’s entire approval.

“You don’t seem much fretted about putting your cubs up against this young sagebrush fellow,” the newspaper man remarked presently.

Brennan’s eyes twinkled a bit.

“I ain’t,” he admitted. “Likely they’ll get the pants licked off ’em, but that’ll do ’em good.”

CHAPTER XXVIII
A BAD BEGINNING

As the Broncs spread out on the field for preliminary practice, their opponents looked them over with undisguised interest. They saw nine husky, sunbrowned fellows, quick, lithe, and snappy in their movements, who scooped up grounders, smothered flies, and lined the ball from one to another without any bungling, hesitation or wooden headwork. They had been playing all winter in the Southern States, and certainly showed the fact in their efficiency and teamwork. They were not really Texans, although posing as such, but, instead, players gathered from various parts of the country.

“Looks like a pretty swift crowd,” Al Ogan remarked to Lefty. “If any one should ask me, I’d say we had our work cut out for us.”

Locke smiled faintly.

“I reckon we can handle them,” he returned. “With Fargo and Pollock in the infield and Hagin at center, I’m not worrying. Each one of those men hit over three hundred last season.”

“Exactly,” the cub captain said significantly, “but that was last season. Their averages have been pretty punk this spring. I’m not so sure that the team is strengthened a whole lot by running them in at the last minute.”

“Personally, I’m mighty glad to have Fargo behind the pan,” said Lefty. “Whalen isn’t bad, but there’s not another backstop in the country who can teach Buck anything. Well, there goes the umpire. It’s up to us to show these bucking broncs that they’re not the whole shooting match.”

Though he spoke confidently, Lefty did not feel quite as nonchalant and undisturbed as he pretended to be.

The Hornets had the field, and it was up to their pitcher to keep the heavy hitters, who would almost certainly head their opponents’ batting list, from doing too much damage before he had discovered the strength and weakness of each man, and could govern himself accordingly.

Lefty knew that Fargo would help him out to the best of his ability, but even the experienced backstop could not be counted on to gauge accurately the batting capabilities of men he had never set eyes on before. There was nothing to do but proceed cautiously, sounding the batters as best he could and relying on his support to take care of the hits.

The first man up was “Cinch” Brown, one of the Texan outfielders, a tall, rangy fellow with a hawklike nose and a pair of keen, dark eyes which seemed to miss nothing. For a second the southpaw hesitated, trying to fathom just what sort of a ball would be “meat” to this Southerner.

Something—intuition, perhaps—gave Lefty the notion that a low, straight one, close to the knees, would be less palatable than any other, and his judgment was strengthened when Fargo crouched behind the pan and made a signal beneath his huge mitt.

Without delay, the southpaw put it over, straight, swift, and cutting the near corner just above the batter’s knees—and Brown lashed it out as if he preferred that kind of a ball to any other.

But for the fast fielding of Bill Hagin, the hit would have been good for two cushions. The Big League man, however, got after the ball in splendid style, and made a running, one-handed stop, which prevented the sphere from getting away into the remote distance of center field.

“That’s the stuff, Cinch!” came in a harsh voice from a little to the left of the plate. “That’s the way to start her off. This kid’s easy fruit. We’ll have him going. Smash it out, Bull; you can do it.”

There was an odd, unpleasant quality to the voice which made Lefty dislike it intuitively. He cast a swift, curious glance in that direction, and saw, as he had surmised, that it came from the notorious Zack Schaeffer. The Texan twirler stood with his hands on his hips, his powerful legs spread wide apart. When his eyes met Lefty’s, a slight sneer curved his full red lips, and, with an unpleasant laugh, he turned to say something to the man near him.

That sort of thing did not bother the southpaw in the least. With an inward determination to settle Schaeffer’s hash if he possibly could when the latter came to the bat, he turned his attention to Bull Kenny, the backstop of the Broncs.

The latter looked dangerous as he squared himself at the plate, poising his bat over his shoulder. He was a big, square-jawed, heavily built fellow, and wielded a massive club. Ordinarily Locke would have looked for a bunt, but it was evident from the way he held himself that Kenny had no intention of sacrificing.

He quite ignored a coaxer which Lefty tried him with, and the latter, taking a signal from Fargo, sent over a whistling high inshoot.

Kenny smashed it full and fair, driving it out on a line over the head of Sandy Rollins at second. Then he dug his spikes into the ground, and went flying down the line to first at a speed which showed that hitting was not his only accomplishment.

As before, it was Hagin who raced forward, scooped up the ball on the run, and lined it to second. Brown had taken a fair lead, however, and made the second sack by a hair’s breadth, amid a cloud of dust.

“Got ’em going, boys!” yelled Schaeffer. “They’re e-easy. Now, Pete, you know what to do.”

Nevens, third baseman, evidently did. He was prepared to sacrifice, but Locke kept the ball high so that it was difficult for him to bunt effectively. He was finally forced to hit, and hit he did, though not safely. Nevertheless, he pounded the ball into the diamond, and the two runners advanced, while he was thrown out at first.

“That’s the stuff,” laughed Schaeffer, as he stepped out with his bat. “Here’s where we pull the Hornet’s stinger.”

He had a peculiar swaggering gait, and carried himself in a manner which showed how thoroughly he appreciated his own ability. Lefty felt an intense desire to fan the fellow, who seemed so cocksure of himself. He was glancing at Fargo, ready to take the signal, when he saw that Schaeffer had crowded up to the plate, his toes well over the box line.

“Get back,” Locke said sharply.

“Aw, pitch the ball!” snapped Schaeffer. “What’s bitin’ you?”

“You’re out of your box,” declared Lefty. “I’m liable to hit you.”

“I’ll take a chance, Willie,” the Texan retorted offensively. “I ain’t seen you pass up anything very dangerous so far.”

Nevertheless, at the umpire’s command, he edged back grudgingly, but persisted in keeping a bit of his toes over the line.

“The close ones for him,” Lefty decided swiftly. “With that reach of his, he can hit anything a foot outside the pan.”

He therefore shook his head when Fargo signaled. When the big backstop changed the sign, Lefty, after a glance at the base runners, used a short, swift delivery, and passed up an inshoot, intending to keep the ball close to the knuckles of the batter.

Schaeffer stepped in, and was unable to dodge that shoot. It caught him glancingly, high up on the body, and made him stagger a bit. Then, growling a few choice epithets, he obeyed the umpire’s signal to take his base.

“That man stepped out of his box, Mr. Umpire,” Fargo protested. “He wouldn’t have been hit if he’d kept his place.”

“Aw, cut that out!” snarled Schaeffer, limping in an exaggerated manner. “I was hit a-purpose. Just wait, my young squab,” he added out of the corner of his mouth to Lefty. “I’ll get you.”

The umpire refused to reverse his decision.

As he took the ball from Fargo, Lefty’s blood was tingling, and his face flushed. He managed to keep a grip on his temper, however. With the bases full and only one out, coolness was at a premium.

CHAPTER XXIX
TAKING A BRACE

“Sickening!” growled Bert Elgin sitting on the bench. “But what can you expect with a dub like Locke on the slab?”

Andy Whalen, a little sore at having been left out of the game, nodded absently. Next instant, however, he turned his eyes from the diamond for a second to glance at his companion.

“It isn’t altogether his fault, though,” he said. “It’s no cinch to start in pitching to a perfectly strange lot of batters, and Schaeffer shouldn’t have had that base.”

“Don’t you believe it,” snapped Elgin. “If we had a real pitcher—”

“A hit!” Whalen cried. “No, it isn’t, either. It’s going straight at Burley.”

Springing to his feet, he watched the ball soaring out into left field; saw Tom Burley running back to get under it; held his breath as the white sphere dropped swiftly, apparently straight into the fielder’s hands; and then sank back on the bench with a groan as the fellow muffed miserably.

“Butterfingers!” he said bitterly. “Why didn’t you hold it, you chunk of solid ivory!”

Cinch Brown trotted easily over the plate, and Kenny, covering the ground with tremendous strides, rounded third, and was urged on by the coacher.

Lefty knew the sphere would be relayed. Disappointed by the unexpected muff, it seemed to him as if the ball would never reach the diamond. In reality, Burley, trying to atone for his miserable error, made a swift throw which sent the horsehide straight into the baseman’s hands; and Daly, whirling, lined it to the waiting backstop.

“Slide! Slide!” shrieked the spectators.

The advice was unnecessary. Kenny had already launched himself, feet forward, at the plate, and so great was his speed that he almost overreached it. He managed to stop himself with one leg across the rubber just as the ball plunked into Fargo’s big mitt, and he was declared safe.

Amid the yell of delight which greeted this decision, Locke turned just in time to see Schaeffer streaking toward third. Apparently he hoped to steal the base in the general excitement.

Lefty shouted warningly to Fargo, but the big backstop, on the job, had already lined the sphere to Terry Daly. The latter caught it astride the base, but Schaeffer slid feet foremost straight for the sack, and spiked Daly, who dropped the ball.

A chorus of protest arose from the Hornets. Schaeffer got up, slapping the dust from his clothes and volubly voicing his regret at the incident.

“Too bad,” he said, as Daly limped off the field. “Accidents will happen, you know. He should have watched out for spikes, anyhow.”

As he spoke he caught Locke’s eye, and the latter brought his teeth together with a click. He felt sure that the thing had been done with deliberate intention, and, in the fleeting glance he exchanged with the Bronc twirler, a sudden determination filled him to repay the man in the way it would hurt the most.

As he walked slowly back to the slab and stood waiting for Brennan to send out a new man to take Daly’s place, a curious calm descended on him. The outfielder’s error, coming on the heels of all that went before, had brought Lefty to a state of nervousness which would have been fatal had it continued.

It did not. In a flash it had vanished, leaving him cooler and more composed than he had been at any time since the game began. His face was so quietly indifferent that more than one player, catching a glimpse of it, frowningly recalled the day he had thrown away that first game to the regulars, and wondered with sinking hearts whether he really was the quitter they had thought him then.

“He’s done for,” muttered Elgin on the bench. “They’ve got his goat. He’s given away the game in the first inning.”

Andy Whalen made no reply. He was watching Lefty keenly, and something in the southpaw’s face made him doubt if Elgin was right. There was no question of the sudden change which had come over the pitcher, but whether it was for better or worse seemed a question. With furrowed brow, the cub backstop dropped his chin into his hands, and waited.

Tony Vegaro, the wiry little Mexican shortstop, was at the bat. Schaeffer jumped away from third as Locke pitched, making a fake start for the plate. He stopped short, and retreated almost instantly, but behind him, Monte Harris, the experienced third baseman whom Brennan had put in, streaked to the sack like greased lightning, and was ready for business. Lefty had pitched the ball high to prevent bunting, thus sending it into Fargo’s hands in such a way that the backstop did not have to waste a fraction of a second in lining it to third.

There was a shout of warning from the coacher, but it came too late. Schaeffer flung himself back with outstretched hand, but the ball plunked into Harris’ grasp, and he tagged the Texan an instant before the latter’s fingers reached the sack.

“Well, what do you think of that?” chuckled the delighted Whalen. “Locke’s not so worse, after all.”

“He had nothing to do with it,” snapped Elgin, concealing his disappointment with an effort.

Schaeffer arose with a fierce scowl, protesting that he had got back to the base safely. When the umpire motioned him toward the bench, he snarled out something about robbery, and moved grudgingly away.

Lefty then proceeded to fan the next batter with swiftness and dispatch; and the Hornets romped in from the field, their spirits beginning to rise at this unexpected finish of the inning.

CHAPTER XXX
THE TRICKY TWIRLER

Lefty approached the bench in a very dubious state of mind. He was not at all sure that this first inning might not prove his last, and when he saw Ogan hurry up to the manager and say something in a low tone of voice, he fully expected to be told that he might ornament the bench for the remainder of the game.

He tried to gain some idea of what was passing through Brennan’s mind by watching his face, but swiftly came to the conclusion that this was hopeless. A mask of carved and painted wood could not have been more impassive. The manager listened to what the cub captain had to say, without moving a muscle of his face. Then he spoke a few rapid sentences, and Ogan turned away with a nod.

“You’re up, Buck,” he said shortly. “Start us off with a good one, old fellow.”

Fargo grinned, sauntered to the plate, and tapped the rubber indolently with his war club. Then he stood back, when Schaeffer, who seemed to have been unnecessarily slow in starting, requested permission to limber his wing a bit. The reason for this was soon apparent. The first ball fairly made the air smoke, and it cut the plate in half. The next was quite as speedy, but took a sharp hop as it neared the pan. The third was a whizzing curve.

“Showing off,” Fargo commented, as if to himself, but in a voice which penetrated to Schaeffer’s ears. “I thought that was it.”

Then he stepped into the box again, smiling at the Texan twirler in a manner which seemed to aggravate that individual not a little.

With a sneering uptilt at the corners of his mouth, the slab man took Kenny’s signal and whipped the ball over with terrific speed. The speed was so great, in fact, that Fargo, in spite of the exhibition he had witnessed a moment before, struck a bit too late.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” shouted Pete Nevens from third. “He didn’t know it went by, Zack, old Bronc!”

“Give him another sample,” urged the player on first.

“Mebbe you’d like him to toss you one,” suggested Kenny. “He’s got a nice little lob ball that mebbe you can hit.”

Buck Fargo simply smiled that wide smile of his, and waited quietly, his eye on Schaeffer.

“Look out!” shouted the pitcher, as the ball left his fingers the second time.

Fargo dodged instinctively, for the horsehide had started straight at him with burning speed. Only by bending swiftly and holding his bat far over the plate did he escape being hit.

This was one of Schaeffer’s little tricks to disturb the nerve of a batsman. With the finest sort of control, he could usually put the ball wherever he desired, and he chose on this occasion to send it as close to Fargo as possible. He shook his head with an air of relief as if he had feared he might hit the backstop, and was glad he had not.

As he straightened up, Fargo made no comment. He still smiled a little, but a close observer would have noticed that his jaw was a bit firmer and his lids slightly more drooping. If Schaeffer had only stopped to think, he might have realized how many, many times this Big League player had faced just such tricky pitchers before, and how perfectly he must have learned how to treat them.

This thought did not come to him, however. Balancing himself on his toes, he took a wide swing of his arm for speed, and lined the ball over. It seemed to start exactly as the last one had, but, as Fargo quite expected, it took such a sharp shoot that it cut the plate almost in twain.

The big backstop was ready for it. He met it directly over the pan, and sent it whistling above the head of the Texan first baseman, who leaped desperately and in vain for it.

By rapid work, the right fielder got the ball in time to cut the hit down to a single.

Bill Hagin stepped blithely to the pan, and Fargo danced away from first.

The Hornet backstop was a fast man on the paths. To play for Jim Brennan a single season a man had to be that, and Fargo had been three years with the organization. Quick as a cat on his feet, he seemed to know by intuition just when the pitcher meant to deliver the ball to the batsman. For this reason he was able to get under headway in base stealing even before the horsehide left the pitcher’s fingers. Although Schaeffer drove him back several times, Fargo got his start on the first ball handed up to Hagin, and was off like a racer. Kenny made a fine throw the length of the diamond, but it was a fraction of a second too slow.

Warned by the disastrous results of the last attempt, Schaeffer made no effort to intimidate the second batter. Hagin had the look of a man who eats speed, and his record quite bore out that impression. The Texan worked so carefully that he succeeded in getting two strikes on the outfielder, but this seemed simply to put the latter on his mettle. He finally placed his bat against the horsehide with precision and force for a long drive into deep center, which the fielder missed by less than a foot.

Hagin was ready to take second on the throw-in, while Fargo, hitting the high spots, rounded third, and was urged home by the coacher. The ball was sent to second, and Hagin was driven back to the first station.

“Here’s where we tie up!” cried Ogan jubilantly. “Here’s where we take the lead! Smash her out, Sandy.”

Rollins, second baseman, stepped up with the expression of one who has every intention of making connections with the horsehide. Schaeffer had recovered from his momentary annoyance, and was on the job. He pulled the batter with the first ball pitched, which curved beyond Rollins’ reach. Then came a foul tip, that counted as a strike, and Sandy flushed a little as he stepped into the box again.

“This time he’ll send over a hummer,” he thought, taking a fresh grip on his stick.

Schaeffer went through the movements which seemed to indicate that he was going to whip the ball over with terrific speed, but now, instead of a scorcher, he sent in a ball that seemed to hang and drag in the air, and Rollins struck too soon.

“You’re out!” said the umpire.

“That’s the goods, Zack!” laughed Kenny, pounding his mitt. “They can’t touch you. Put this sorrel-top in cold storage for me.”

“Only one down!” cried Fargo. “Show this bunch of panhandlers what you can do when you try, Red.”

Pollock stepped briskly to the plate, waited for a ball which looked good to him, and smashed it out for a single.

Hagin, fleet as the wind, had been held at second. When Tom Burley came up, determined to atone for his fielding error, the runner took advantage of the catcher’s fumble of the first pitch, pilfering third for all of the backstop’s quick recovery and fine throw to the sack.

Burley evidently wanted to bunt, but Schaeffer kept the ball too high, finally forcing the batter into popping a weak infield fly, which was smothered with ease.

“It’s up to you, old man,” Fargo said, in a low tone, as Lefty passed him. “We’ve got to tie up the score, anyhow.”

As Lefty faced the Texas twirler, the latter’s lip curled in that irritating sneer, and he promptly returned to his tactics of trying to get the batter’s nerve. Unfortunately for him, Locke did not rattle. He ducked a couple of whizzers sent straight at him, and then, when Schaeffer handed up his famous inshoot, he lashed a sharp grounder into the diamond, which smacked the pitcher squarely on the instep.

There was a roar of pain, followed by a volley of furious language from Schaeffer. Then, recovering himself, he dove after the ball, secured it, and lined it home.

It is probable that he had lost his head for an instant. Had he remembered that two men were out, he might have thrown to first and stopped the score; for he could have caught Lefty. Apparently he seemed to think that the only way to stop it was to put the ball to the plate.

Bill Hagin had not been napping, however. At the first crack of leather meeting wood, he shot like a rocket toward home, slid feet foremost, and Kenny got the ball on him only when his spikes were shining above the platter.

In his rage Schaeffer poured forth a volley of blackguarding language which got the umpire after him, and he might have been put out of the game had not his backstop hustled out into the diamond and grabbed him by the arm.

“Don’t be a fool, Zack!” he snapped. “Keep your trap shut, or you’ll be canned. Can you go ahead with the game?”

The twirler, managing to choke down his wrath, limped around the slab a few times, and then toed the rubber again. He was still furious, however, and Al Ogan landed on the first ball for a line-drive over the head of the shortstop. But for a phenomenal catch by Cinch Brown the Hornets might have scored more tallies.

As Lefty came in from the field, he passed close to the disgruntled pitcher, and if looks could kill he would have been finished then and there.

“I’ll get you yet, you swelled-headed squirt!” Schaeffer hissed. “Wait, that’s all—just wait!”

Locke smiled blandly. “Quit your beefing,” he advised. “You’re making everybody tired.”

CHAPTER XXXI
ONCE TOO OFTEN

The Hornets were in high spirits as they took the field. To be sure, the score was no more than tied, but the expedition with which those two runs had been made was most encouraging. The sudden and effective brace Locke had taken in the last inning removed, in a measure, the fears some of his teammates had entertained concerning his ability to handle the situation; and, as they scattered to their places on the field, they urged him to “go in and eat ’em up.”

Apparently that was just what Lefty meant to do. The first batter seemed unable to connect fairly with any of the balls passed up to him, and he finally hoisted a foul back of the pan, which Fargo smothered without difficulty.

When his successor, Gash Benkard, fanned, it looked as if that half of the inning was going to be a tame one.

In any game it is unwise to make predictions of that sort, however. Games have been won with no men on bases and two out, and this one was still young.

Cinch Brown walked up to the pan, cool, confident, ready to duplicate his performance of the inning previous. He did not find it quite so easy, however. He slashed ineffectively at two balls pitched to him, but finally succeeded in dropping a dopy little Texas leaguer over the infield.

Kenny followed him. He, too, had done well on his first trip to the plate, and hoped to do better now. He declined to nibble at Lefty’s teasers, but stood, grimly immovable, waiting for one which suited him. Nevertheless, the southpaw fooled him with two handsome shoots, and then, having a bit of leeway, tried a high, wide one.

Kenny did an unexpected thing. Reaching far over the plate, he caught the ball within an inch of the end of his bat, and sent it into deep right field.

With perfect handling, it would not have been dangerous. “Dolly” Walker had taken many such drives with ease, but perhaps he was too confident. At all events, the ball did not strike his mitt quite squarely, seemed to hesitate an instant, and then trickled unaccountably over the edge of the leather, falling to the turf.

By the time the amazed and discomfited fielder had snatched it up and lined it to first, Kenny was safe on the sack, while Brown, who had apparently forgot that two were “down” already, slid to second just ahead of the flying horsehide.

Schaeffer was exultant. “Got him on the run!” he jeered. “He’s a cinch. Get in there, Pete. A little single is all we want. A little safety’s the goods! You know where to put it.”

Nevens hit into the diamond. The inning would have ended then and there had not Sandy Rollins, at second, fumbled the weak grounder and spent valuable time chasing it around his feet.

Lefty felt a hot rush of anger stir within him. Two such errors are enough to try the temper of any pitcher, especially when he is working his hardest. The inning should have ended minutes before, and now the bases were full, and Zack Schaeffer was swaggering to the pan, a confident grin on his face.

The sight of him cooled Locke as swiftly and completely as it had done once before that day. He shifted the ball in his fingers, taking his time. He hoped to fan this fellow.

Suddenly he pitched, and the ball shot upward with a little jump, rising over the Texan’s bat as he struck.

“Strike!” droned the umpire.

“That’s the stuff!” cried Ogan from first. “Got him swinging like a garden gate, Lefty.”

Schaeffer set his teeth, and the flesh seemed to harden over his jaws. His eyes gleamed.

As before, Lefty took his time. When at length he poised himself on his right foot, flung back his arm, and brought it forward with a whiplike motion, the sphere came humming over with speed which almost made the air smoke.

Schaeffer struck again. This time he missed, as before, but even as he swung he let go his hold on the bat, which went spinning through the air straight at Locke.

“Look out!” cried Fargo.

The southpaw ducked just in time to let the bat pass over him. When he straightened up, he stood for an instant, his eyes fixed on Schaeffer’s face with an expression in them which showed a little of the contempt that filled him.

“Beg pardon,” mumbled the batter. “Accident.”

Lefty knew the Texan lied. To be sure, a man sometimes throws his bat in striking, but almost never straight out into the diamond. Besides, Schaeffer did not have the least appearance of regret, unless it was regret that the stick had missed its mark.

Locke made no comment, however. After the man had recovered his bat, the southpaw stood for a moment, ball in hand, looking fixedly at him. When he finally pitched, he used a delivery which seemed to promise a swift one, but instead it was the slowest sort of a slow ball. In spite of everything he could do, Schaeffer struck too soon.

As the umpire’s voice sounded in his ears, a snarl broke from the Texan’s lips. For an instant it seemed almost that he meant to launch his bat again straight at Locke’s head. Perhaps he might have done so had it not been for the warning clutch of Gash Benkard’s fingers on his shoulder. Then, with a furious motion, he cast the stick to the ground, and walked out to the slab.

“Looks devilish, don’t he?” commented Whalen, on the bench. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked a fight with Locke after the game.”

“Wish he would!” growled Bert Elgin.

He had been growing more and more disgruntled as the game progressed. The first ten minutes had filled him with satisfaction at the apparently poor showing made by his rival, but as the latter improved Elgin’s temper became more and more unrestrainable.

“You seem to have it in for him,” Whalen remarked pointedly. “Strikes me he got out of that hole pretty neat.”

“Bah!” retorted Elgin. “What did he get into it for? Any pitcher who knows his business would never let the bases fill with two out, the way he did.”

“Wow-wow!” barked the cub backstop. “I s’pose it’s his fault that Walker dropped that fly and Sandy muffed a grounder that any kid should have nailed. Whew! Did you see that? That fellow had better be careful. One of these days he’ll bean a batter and put him out of business. Sore as a crab, I reckon, at being fanned.”

Schaeffer was certainly vicious. Twice Monte Harris had barely escaped balls sent straight at him. He was no quitter, but he had a notion of his own value in the Big League, and did not relish being put out of business by a wild busher who had lost his temper. Having protested to the umpire without avail, he reached for a wide outcurve, popped a weak fly into the diamond, and retired to the bench.

“That gink is going to get his one of these days,” he remarked to Brennan. “Why don’t you make him behave, Jim?”

The manager made no reply, but, rising to his feet, walked slowly toward the plate. He had not taken half a dozen steps when the accident happened. Dolly Walker had stepped into the box, and apparently Schaeffer sized him up for easy meat. He promptly launched one of his cannon-ball whistlers at him, and the fielder was either too slow or too obstinate to get out of the way.

There was a sickening thud; a smothered sound, half groan, half cry. Half a dozen men leaped forward to catch the swaying figure, from whose nerveless fingers the bat had slipped. No one was quick enough. It was the startled backstop of the Texans who thrust out his arms instinctively, and then stood helplessly holding the limp body and staring down at the white face resting against his chest protector. All could see that the man was seriously hurt.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE SPIKING OF SCHAEFFER

Instantly the whole field was in an uproar. The Hornets, fighting mad, invaded the diamond in a body. Schaeffer, his face white as that of the unconscious man, half turned as if to run. Then he straightened up and faced the music.

“It—wasn’t my fault,” he stammered. “He was out of his box. He couldn’t get away from my inshoot.”

“You lie!” said Buck Fargo. “You tried to hit him. You’ve played that trick once too often, and I’m—going to hand you something!”

He lunged at Schaeffer, who stepped back swiftly and threw up his hands. In an instant the crowd surged around him, shutting out those of his friends who were racing to his assistance. Fargo was on the point of swinging at the Texan’s jaw when suddenly the fellow staggered, his face contorted with pain, a yell issued from his bloodless lips.

“I’m spiked!” he cried furiously. “Lemme get my hands on the dog that did it! I’ll—”

His eyes met those of Lefty Locke, who stood close beside him on the right, and in a second both arms shot forward, his muscular fingers fastening with a convulsive grip on the southpaw’s throat.

“You hound!” he frothed, emphasizing each word by a vicious shake. “You’ve put me out of business. I can’t play for weeks. It’s my left—”

At this point Locke recovered from his astonishment, and, with a desperate effort, managed to tear the hands from their choking hold.

“I never touched you,” he denied. “I wouldn’t—”

Wild with pain and rage, Schaeffer frothed out an insult, and Lefty promptly dealt him an open-hander on the mouth.

Cries of approval greeted the blow. Fargo was trying to get into the mix-up, and others showed their desire to have a hand in the Texan’s punishment. The latter’s fist shot out, but Locke parried skillfully. Three or four of the visiting team arrived on the run, and a general fight was imminent. The crowd was suddenly thrust aside, and Jim Brennan appeared.

“Stop that!” he roared, grasping Lefty’s wrist and stepping between the men. His face was purple with anger, and his eyes glowed like twin sparks. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“He spiked me!” snarled Schaeffer. “The cur spiked me! Look at that foot.”

The manager glanced downward, and saw instantly that Schaeffer was not bluffing. Across his left shoe, the gouging marks of spikes were plainly visible. On one of them a faint crimson smear was showing. Brennan frowned and raised his eyes.

“Somebody stepped on you by accident,” he said shortly.

“It’s a lie!” rasped Schaeffer. “He done it a-purpose. I felt his foot jab down on me. He had it in for me all along.”

“Who are you talking about?” Brennan asked.

“Him!” retorted the pitcher, glaring at Locke. “I knew he’d be up to some dirty trick.”

Lefty met the manager’s searching glance with perfect calm. “I never touched him,” he averred emphatically. “I was itching to smash one into him for knocking Dolly out, but spiking isn’t my style.”

“Humph!” Brennan’s keen eyes roved around the circle of faces. “Anybody know anything about this?” he demanded.

There was a chorus of denial, and the manager turned back to Schaeffer.

“I’ll look into it,” he promised. “I’ll stand for anything but dirty business, and any man who’d do a thing like this gets the gaff, I don’t care who he is.”

He hesitated for an instant, and his jaw squared. “As for you,” he went on harshly, his keen eyes boring the Texan’s flushed face, “you’re rotten. Talk about dirty playing! If I’d had any idea what sort of a cheap roughneck you were, this game would never have started. You can bet your boots I’ll take pains to let people know just what you are, and I kind of think you’ll have a hard job finding a decent team after this that’ll have anything to do with you. See?”

He stood glaring at the Texan, who for once had nothing to say. Presently Brennan’s eyes swept the circle again.

“No rough-house!” he snapped shortly. “You boys better beat it back to the hotel. There won’t be anything more doing to-day. Dolly’s come to and gone along with a couple of the men. This game’s finished. Get started now. There’s been enough monkey-shines to-day.”

Reluctantly, and with many savage glances at Schaeffer, the Hornets obeyed. It came hard to leave the scoundrel that way, but they knew Brennan meant what he said, and so they gave in.

“Serves him good and right,” said Andy Whalen, as he caught up with Elgin. “I’m blamed glad the cur got something to cook him, and I’ll be hanged if I blame any fellow for spiking him. Wonder who it was? Didn’t you see anything, Bert?”

He looked curiously at Elgin, who shook his head promptly.

“Not a thing,” the latter answered. “First I knew anything was wrong was when he yelled he was spiked. I wouldn’t wonder if it was an accident, anyhow. With everybody pushing and shoving, somebody likely stepped on him without meaning to.”

“Nix!” retorted the cub backstop. “I took a good look at his foot, and, believe me, it wasn’t no accident. It was a good hard stamp, done on purpose.”

This seemed to be the opinion of those who had been near the Texan when the incident occurred, and much curiosity was expressed as to who could have been the perpetrator of the affair.

The general sentiment was that Schaeffer had been well repaid for his dirty work on the slab; but the more thoughtfully inclined, knowing Jim Brennan’s temperament, wondered what would happen if the manager ever found out who had done the spiking.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE TELEGRAM

The days passed without the truth coming to light. At first Brennan set about systematically interviewing every man who had been on the field that day, but without avail. Having failed to arrive at the truth in this manner, and other and more important matters coming up to take his time, he seemed to drop the subject. Those who knew him, however, realized that it would always remain tucked away in some corner of his brain until he had finally solved the mystery.

The work of training proceeded rapidly and successfully to its conclusion as the end of March approached. Each afternoon the cubs fought out their losing battle with the regulars on the diamond. The latter were getting into splendid shape, and their opponents had almost forgotten what it felt like to win a game.

Nevertheless, they never gave up, or slackened their efforts, for the net was drawing closer and closer about them day by day. Every now and then a youngster would drop out of the race. He was not yet ready for the big game, and had either been sold by the manager, farmed out to a minor league, or released unconditionally.

Of the cub pitchers, only two remained, Locke and Elgin. They were both remarkably good in their way, and the other players were divided as to their relative merits. The almost universal conclusion was that Brennan would keep both with the organization unless something unexpected occurred to give him reason for changing his mind.

Lefty worked strenuously without a let-up. He knew his doubtful points almost as well as the manager himself, and strove with all his might to correct them.

Hard as the labor was physically, the southpaw found it anything but disagreeable. He was well liked by most of the regulars and a great many of the cubs. In Buck Fargo he found a real chum whom he came to admire and think better of every day. When the diminishing number of players made a readjustment of rooms at the hotel desirable, Locke accepted with alacrity the big backstop’s invitation to come in with him, an arrangement which proved pleasant and satisfactory.

With Bert Elgin and his little group of cronies, the southpaw had nothing whatever to do. The former had apparently resigned himself to the inevitable, and, since it looked as if both cub pitchers were going to be retained, he seemed to have given up his efforts to injure his rival.

There were just two things which marred Lefty’s pleasure and absolute peace of mind. The first was Jim Brennan’s attitude of noncommittal impassiveness. Try as he would, the southpaw found it impossible to break down the barrier of reserve between them. No matter how good a showing the cub might make on the field, he never succeeded in eliciting a word of praise from the manager. The latter always gave the young twirler an impression of withholding judgment, a feeling that he was continually searching for something in Locke which he was constantly expecting but had failed to find.

At first Lefty thought it was simply his ordinary manner. Then, when he noticed the manager unbend time after time to others, he reached the conclusion that Brennan had never forgotten the circumstances of the recruit’s arrival at training camp, and that he still felt resentment at the manner in which Locke had been, as it were, thrust down his throat.

The explanation of this latter fact had been absurdly simple. Lefty learned in a roundabout way that Jimmy Toler’s letter had traveled to Ashland, Tennessee, and drifted on to the Texan town a couple of days after the busher’s arrival. It seemed incredible that any man could harbor such a thing so long, but Brennan was peculiar in many ways, and Lefty could think of no other reason for his conduct.

The other matter which marred his contentment was the fact that Janet, while actually in the same State, was just beyond his reach. It was more tantalizing than if she had remained in that far-away New England town. They corresponded regularly, of course, but letters are always more or less unsatisfactory. Only once had he obtained permission to be away over Sunday, and Brennan’s grudging acquiescence to his request made him resolve never to repeat it.

And so the time passed until there remained less than two days more at Ashland. On the twenty-fifth the training quarters would be deserted, and the teams, separating, would commence their homeward march by easy stages and different routes, playing exhibition games with minor-league organizations along the way.

The days had sped with such swiftness that Lefty could scarcely believe the end to be so near when he arose that morning, and could say that to-morrow they would start. There was no doubting the fact, however, and, what was more, that very afternoon, a game had been arranged with one of the most prominent teams of the Southern League. It was the first chance the Hornets had been given to play against outsiders since that brief, disastrous contest with the Broncs, and they were agog with eager anticipation. The Flamingoes were in quite a different class from the bush organization of so-called Texans, and the game was likely to be exceedingly close. Lefty was to start off on the slab, so Brennan had briefly informed him the afternoon before. The youngster wondered whether the manager had any special motive in picking him.

As the squad started for the field after breakfast, Lefty discovered that he had forgotten his glove, and hurried upstairs for it, telling Fargo that he would be along shortly. When he came down he raced through the lobby and almost upset a small boy in uniform who was coming up the steps.

“Say, mister,” the latter inquired, as he recovered his balance, “is Tom Locke inside?”

“That’s my name,” Lefty answered swiftly. “What is it?”

The boy drew a yellow envelope from his pocket, and Locke snatched it with that queer, sinking feeling which an unexpected missive of the sort usually arouses. Tearing it swiftly open, he brought forth the sheet and unfolded it with a single motion.

As his eyes took in the contents at a glance, he drew his breath swiftly, his face turning a shade less brown. The message had been sent from Billings, Texas, that morning. It read:

Father is dying. Come at once. I am all alone.

Janet.

CHAPTER XXXIV
NOTHING ELSE POSSIBLE

“Any answer?”

Lefty raised his head and stared stupidly at the boy for an instant. Then he came to himself.

“Yes! Give me a pencil—quick!”

Snatching the stub from the other’s hand, he turned the message over, placed the paper against the side of the building, and hastily scrawled a few words.

“There!” he exclaimed, thrusting it at the boy; “send that off right away. Don’t lose a minute. Here. Keep the change.”

It was a silver dollar he handed the boy. Without waiting for thanks, he darted back into the hotel, hastily secured a time-table, and found that there was a train leaving in less than half an hour. It was only after he had reached his room and begun to strip off his baseball togs that he realized he must let Brennan know in some way of what he planned to do.

“There’s no ’phone at the park,” he muttered, throwing a shoe into a corner. “I haven’t time, anyway.”

He tore off his stockings, flung shirt and trousers on the floor, and made a dive for his street clothes.

“Still, they’ll all be back here for dinner,” he went on aloud. “If I leave a note with Buck, he’ll put the old man wise. It’s tough! Poor little girl!”

His voice broke just the least bit, but he went on rapidly with his dressing, and in less than ten minutes was ready to go. He gave no thought to the consequences of his leaving in this manner and at this time. Janet had called him for help; he must go to her. Besides, even Brennan, though he might growl and grumble a little, would understand how impossible it was for him to take any other course.

Finding a sheet of paper, Lefty hastily scrawled a note to Buck, telling his chum where he had gone and why, and asking him to inform the manager. Having folded the paper and written Fargo’s name on the outside, he placed it on the middle of the table, where the big backstop could not fail to see it the instant he entered the room.

That finished, he snatched his hat, and darted down the stairs without waiting for the elevator. At the station he had nearly fifteen minutes to wait, but at last the train pulled in.

Lefty thought that the journey would never end. The train seemed to crawl along at a snail’s speed, stopping at every little hamlet by the way. He blamed the doctor at Kingsbridge for having suggested such an impossibly out-of-the-way place as Billings. He kept looking at his watch till he might better have held it in his hand. He bought a paper, and tossed it away unread. He opened a magazine, only to fling it aside impatiently. And all the time the thought of Janet, alone and helpless in this terrible situation, never left his mind.

At Flat Rock Junction he had to change to another road. There was an exasperating wait of three-quarters of an hour, during which he nearly wore a rut in the wooden platform. Another weary, interminable hour followed; but at last, shortly after one, he flung himself off the still-moving train at Billings, and dashed up the main street.

The air was soft and warm and caressing. Trees and shrubs were bursting into leaf; flowers were everywhere. Here and there a bird caroled joyously, and the sound stabbed Lefty like the thrust of a knife. How could any living thing be joyful when her father lay dying?

Rounding a corner, he scarcely dared look at the house where they had taken lodgings. Perhaps he had come too late. Perhaps it was all over.

He reached the wooden gate and thrust it open. A rustle of skirts sounded on the vine-clad porch, the quick catching of a breath, then a cry of glad surprise:

“Why, Lefty!”

She started up from the rocking-chair, her face pink and her eyes sparkling. A little smile curved the corners of her tender mouth, bringing out the dimple which had always fascinated him.

The man stared up in petrified astonishment. What did it mean? Was he dreaming, or had she gone daft?

“Why, Lefty!” she exclaimed again. “This is splendid! How did you ever manage to get away?”

He swallowed hard and, without knowing what he did, wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead.

“I came,” he gasped. “Your—father, Janet?”

A little frown of perplexity came into her forehead.

“Father?” she repeated. “Why, he’s all right. The springs are doing him no end of good. He’s taking his nap just now. Did you—”

“You didn’t send me a telegram this morning, then?” Locke interrupted in a strange voice.

“No, of course not. Why should I? I wrote you last night, but it was only— Lefty! What is it? For goodness sake, tell me what has happened.”

The skin over his jaws was hard as marble. The blood had rushed into his face, turning it a dull crimson under the brown, and bringing out a throbbing vein in his temple in bold relief. His lips were pressed tightly together, and the eyes fixed on the girl were not his eyes. They were wide open and almost black, full of cold, consuming wrath. They frightened Janet Harting, and made her step back involuntarily.

“Lefty!” she cried again. “What is it? What makes you look so?”

For an instant he did not answer. He had realized the bitter truth. The telegram was a forgery, sent for the sole and only purpose of getting him out of the way at the very time of all others during his baseball career that he should have been on the job. In a flash an illumination which comes too seldom to a man told him that Brennan’s reason for putting him on the slab to-day was in the nature of a final test of his ability. The other game had shown the manager nothing. This would have been the ultimate proof of his fitness to be retained as a member of the squad—and he would not be there to take advantage of the chance.

Swiftly he glanced at his watch, the girl staring anxiously at him the while. He took out a crumpled time-table. The first train left at two-twenty. As he thrust the time-table back into his pocket, his face relaxed a little and a faint smile twisted the corners of his mouth.

“There’s been an unfortunate—mistake, Janet,” he said quietly. “I’ll come up and tell you about it.”

He had remembered the one consoling feature of the whole miserable business. Buck would surely find the letter and explain the matter to Brennan. The manager would doubtless be angry, but, after all, it was not as bad as if no word at all had been left.

CHAPTER XXXV
FOR WANT OF A LIE

Locke would scarcely have been so self-contained had he known what had taken place at the hotel about the time he was feverishly pacing the platform at Flat Rock Junction.

Through some pretext, Bert Elgin managed to leave the ground a few minutes ahead of the others. He had concealed his nervousness all morning, taking hope from the nonappearance of Lefty on the field, and reveling in Brennan’s openly expressed anger at the puzzling occurrence. But now he felt that he must find out something definite.

Arriving at the hotel, he hastened up to the corridor above his own, taking care to use the stairs for the last flight, and made his way to a certain door, which he pushed open without ceremony.

For an instant he stood staring curiously around the disordered room. Then a triumphant smile curved his lips, and his eyes danced maliciously.

“Looks like the kid worked it, all right,” he said, in a low tone. “I was afraid he might slip up on something. What’s this?”

Striding over to the table, he picked up the note addressed to Buck Fargo, opening it without hesitation. Having read it hastily through, he smiled again and thrust it into his pocket.

“‘Tell Brennan all about it,’” he quoted, in a jeering voice, “‘and make him understand how I had to go.’ I guess we won’t tell anybody; it’ll be lots more fun to keep ’em guessing till you come back.”

He hastened to the door, and stepped out into the hall. “I should say your goose was cooked nice and brown,” he muttered, with venomous satisfaction. “I wouldn’t give a whole lot for your chances with the Hornets after this little performance.”

Happily for Lefty’s peace of mind, he guessed nothing of all this. As it was, he had worries enough to keep him company during that maddeningly slow trip back to Ashland. Time and again he went over the situation from the beginning, trying his best to see it from Jim Brennan’s point of view, and always he ended by a despairing grasp on that one frail straw: the manager might forgive the desertion as long as the absent man had done his best to let him know about it beforehand.

Stepping off the train shortly after seven, the southpaw went at once to the hotel. The first man he ran into in the lobby was Buck Fargo. The expression on his chum’s face made Lefty’s heart sink into his boots.

“Where the deuce have you been?” the backstop inquired directly, and with force. “How’d you happen to duck?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Buck,” the young pitcher appealed fervently, “don’t tell me you didn’t get my note?”

“If it explained what in thunder made you do such a fool trick as this, I most certainly didn’t,” Fargo returned.

Locke groaned aloud. “I left it on the table. I told you just what had happened and why I had to rush off. I asked you to explain to the old man—”

Catching a sudden warning in Fargo’s eyes, Lefty stopped abruptly and turned slowly around. Brennan stood just behind him, his hands on his hips, an expression on his square, heavy-jowled face which even the big backstop had rarely seen there before.

“Well?” he questioned in an ominous voice, his sharp, deep-set eyes boring into Lefty’s brown ones. “Did I hear you say anything about an explanation? Strikes me it’s about time something of the sort was dished up.”

His voice, cold, hard, and unrelenting, sent a flicker up and down Locke’s spine. If the man had only flared out at him, roared, bellowed, it would have been better than this. But that harsh, flinty, absolutely pitiless tone struck a chill to the youngster’s heart, and quenched the last spark of hope in him.

“I had—a telegram—this morning,” he explained unevenly. “It came just as I was leaving for the field. It was from—a close friend of mine who is at Billings, with her father. She said that her father was dying, and asked me to come at once. She was all alone in a strange place. They knew no one. They had been in the South only a few weeks. I had to go.”

He hesitated an instant, glancing desperately at Brennan’s face. Something in it—the flicker of an eyelash, perhaps, or the faintest possible relaxing of that steely, set expression,—made a tiny spark of hope revive in Lefty’s breast.

“Well, go on,” growled Brennan.

“There wasn’t time to send you word,” Locke continued. “I had to make the nine-five train. So I wrote a note to Fargo explaining things, and asked him to tell you about it. I left it on the table in our room. You must have missed it, Buck, or didn’t you go to the room?”

He turned eagerly to his friend, but the latter shook his head.

“There wasn’t any note,” he said slowly. “I was up there at noon and again to-night. There ain’t nothing on the table but a couple of magazines and a lamp. Mebbe it got blown off.”

“Perhaps that was it,” Lefty agreed. “I wrote it and stuck it up where you’d see it the first thing.”

He glanced again at Brennan and met the man’s searching gaze unflinchingly. For an instant there was silence as the manager scowled deeply to hide his annoyance.

“You’d ought to have sent word,” he snapped. “You knew you was to pitch this afternoon. Why didn’t you leave a letter with the clerk, addressed to me?”

“I never thought of that,” Lefty apologized. “I was so shaken up and worried and rushed that I couldn’t seem to think of anything but making that train.”

The spark of hope had been fanned into a little blaze. Brennan was certainly relenting. Everything about him pointed to that. He stared at the cub pitcher from under his bushy eyebrows for a moment or two as if vainly searching for something more to find fault with.

“You seem to have got back mighty sudden,” he said presently, in a tart voice. “Must have taken the first train. Didn’t your friend’s father die?”

It had come, the question which Lefty had been dreading from the beginning and trying to get away from! For an instant he was tempted—desperately tempted. The manager was plainly influenced in his favor. If he lied and told some plausible story of Mr. Harting’s sudden recovery, all would be well, and the matter would probably be dropped. If he told the truth and admitted that no message had ever been sent—

In that second of hesitation, many things flashed through his mind. He was already morally certain that he had Bert Elgin to thank for the trick. He told himself that a lie which would result in foiling the plotter would be no lie at all. The very words of a glib falsehood were on his lips when suddenly he brought his teeth together and threw back his head. He would tell the truth at any cost.

“He was never sick at all,” he said swiftly, his face rather pale.

Brennan stared. “Never sick!” he repeated sharply. “Then what in time did she send the telegram for, I’d like to know?”

Lefty thrust both hands behind his back, gripping the fingers tightly together. His eyes met Brennan’s squarely.

“She didn’t. She knew nothing about it. It was sent by some one else.”

“What for?”

The words came from Brennan’s lips like bullets. Suspicion, incredulity, anger, showed in his piercing eyes.

“I don’t know,” Lefty answered. “It looks as if some one wanted to get me away from the game.”

Brennan’s laugh was harsh and mirthless. “That’s likely, ain’t it? That’s a clever idea, that is! Where’s the telegram? Show it to me.”

With leaden heart, Locke remembered what he had done with it. “I haven’t—got it,” he stammered. “I wrote a message on the back—and gave it to the boy to send.”

“Is that so?” sneered the manager. “Did it get to the girl? Did it come while you were there?”

“N-o.”

“I thought so. It never went. Just so the other never came.”

“But it did come,” protested Lefty, though he had a feeling that further words were futile. “The boy handed it to me on the steps. I opened it, and wrote an answer right there. That’s the truth.”

“Is it?” retorted the manager incredulously. “Just you wait a minute and I’ll find out if it is or not.”

Turning abruptly, he hurried over to a telephone booth and shut himself in. The instant the manager’s back was turned Buck Fargo groaned.

“What the devil did you tell him for?” he said sadly. “I’m afraid you’ve gone and done for yourself, kid. I have never seen the old man in such a temper since Billy Smith sold a game to the Pinks last spring.”

“I wanted to lie,” the youngster confessed, “but I simply couldn’t, Buck.”

“You’re awful particular! Who do you s’pose done it, that cur Elgin?”

“I can’t think of any one else equal to it,” Lefty answered. “It wouldn’t be the first miserable trick he’s worked.”

He broke off as a door slammed and Brennan came striding toward them, his eyes savage and his face the color of a beet.

“I knew it!” he said. “No such message went through the office.”

He paused a second, his legs spread wide apart, regarding Lefty with a cold, contemptuous scrutiny.

“I’m through with you!” he burst out, at length. “I can put up with a lot, but I haven’t any use for a quitter. I thought you was one when I first saw you, but now I know. You skipped out to-day because you were afraid—nothing else. You pretty near pulled me with that tale of yours—but not quite. You fooled me with that dirty spiking trick, too, but I’m wise now. I’m done with you! Go back to the bushes or the hot place, whichever you prefer!”

He wheeled round and took a few steps across the lobby. Suddenly he turned back.

“Mebbe you’re thinking of that fine offer you say was made by the Blue Stockings?” he sneered. “I wouldn’t give much for your chances with Jack Kennedy.”

Lefty’s eyes were blazing. His lips parted for a hot retort, but he seemed to change his mind and choke it down. For an instant he stood absolutely still. Then, slowly, he turned and looked at Fargo.

Neither man spoke.

CHAPTER XXXVI
DROPPED OUT OF SIGHT

The quickness with which a man can be forgotten is never flattering to his self-esteem. For a full month Lefty Locke had been a member of the Hornets’ training camp squad. During all that time he had been well liked by the majority of the older men, and admitted by some to terms of intimacy which are rarely accorded a new recruit. Ever since the strenuous contest with the team of Texas bushers his fellow cubs had also made him one of them in every sense of the word.

Then came the catastrophe. For a brief space his name was in every mouth. The players took sides on the question of Brennan’s judgment, some contending that the manager was right, others voicing their continued faith in the disgraced player.

But with the departure of Locke from Ashland, followed swiftly by that of the entire squad, the subject soon palled. There was so much else of vital personal interest that even those who had championed the unfortunate pitcher’s cause became more and more indifferent. Some, even, hearing the cleverly phrased traducements which Bert Elgin never lost a chance to utter regarding his former rival, came to the conclusion that they had been deceived. Jim Brennan rarely made a mistake in sizing up a man. There must, after all, have been a yellow streak in the young pitcher which he successfully concealed from all save the lynx-eyed manager.

So at the end of one short week it is doubtful whether more than three men out of all that number wasted a single thought on the youngster who had, a brief time before, been so popular with them.

Buck Fargo did not forget; he was not built that way. Esteemed as he was among players generally, and adored by the fans, it was, nevertheless, a fact that the big backstop did not usually make friends quickly—that is, what he called real friends, as opposed to pleasant but casual acquaintances.

Somehow, Lefty had attracted him from the first. He liked the way the boy had taken Elgin’s part that night at the Palace Theater and stood up unflinchingly against heavy odds. He liked Locke’s attitude with his fellow recruits when they started the boycott against him early in the season. The way the southpaw set out to conquer his faults and improve his playing appealed strongly to Fargo, who had been obliged to labor quite as steadily and strenuously himself before reaching his present enviable position. And when, little by little, he had come to know the youngster better, the Big Leaguer’s liking changed to something deeper and more abiding, which made it quite impossible for him to forget.

At first he had been openly angry. He berated Brennan for a blind idiot, and had to be forcibly restrained from punching Elgin’s head. Then he wanted Lefty to stay with the crowd on a chance of the manager coming to his senses. He soon saw, however, what an impossible condition of affairs that would bring about, and reluctantly, though with much outward brevity, said good-by.

“You’ll write, of course, and let me know how you make out?” he urged. “I ain’t much of a hand with the pen, but I’ll guarantee to answer every letter right off.”

There was a queer expression in Lefty’s eyes. He was finding the phases of the situation even more difficult than he had supposed. It was not easy to keep in place the mask of indifference he had assumed the night before.

“I’ll write when I make good, Buck,” he returned quietly. “There won’t be anything to tell you till then.”

Argument was futile. His mind was made up. He told no one his plans. It seemed doubtful whether he had made any. He simply said good-by and went his way, leaving behind ripples of discussion and conjecture, which swiftly spread out with ever-lessening volume until, like the departed pitcher, they vanished as if they had never been.

Fargo’s one consolation was in Jack Stillman. He found the newspaper man’s feelings in perfect accord with his own. There was one difference, however: while the big backstop was ready and eager to do anything in his power to rehabilitate his friend, no way occurred to him; it was Stillman’s brain, trained by three years of reporting on a metropolitan newspaper, which hit upon the only possible manner in which that could be done.

“We’ve got to find the boy who delivered that message,” he said tersely as they left the station. “If we can get hold of him and manage to choke the truth out of him, we ought to be able to nail this crooked trick fast to the man who put up the job.”

He began working to that end at once. But the time was very short. The two squads—cubs and regulars—were leaving that very afternoon, and the task of finding an unknown boy in the few hours remaining, even though he had been foresighted enough to obtain an accurate description of the fellow from Lefty, was next to impossible.

As it was, Stillman risked a call-down from his editor by staying over a day at Ashland. When he finally left to catch up with the team he was scheduled to accompany North, he had found no clew, but had placed the matter in the hands of a retired member of the San Antonio police force living in the smaller town.

William Bowers was shrewder than the ordinary run of officers. He had been a sergeant for years, and time hung heavily on his hands. He might succeed, and he might not. Stillman felt that the result would be a toss-up. But it was the best he could do.

CHAPTER XXXVII
OPENING THE SEASON

Slowly and leisurely the Hornets zigzagged their way northward, pausing here and there to play an exhibition game with some minor-league team, which was usually won by headwork and experience rather than by any extraordinary display of hitting. Even after the regular period of work at the training camp, the big fellows were not wielding the hickory with special effect.

They shaped rapidly into condition, however, and, when the time came to face some of the stronger teams of the minor-league clubs above what was once known as Mason and Dixon’s line, they did not disgrace themselves.

Finally, with much rejoicing, the metropolis was reached and the two squads reunited. Jim Brennan, his mind finally made up after weeks of close watching and weighing, proceeded to discard the few remaining recruits who, in his opinion, had shown themselves not quite ripe.

Then, with the squad trimmed down to the number at which it would remain throughout the season, a week or more of hard, strenuous work ensued. A new infielder had to be broken in by his veteran comrades to the finer intricacies of the game. New signals were devised and perfected. Various pitchers were tried out, one after the other, in a full nine-inning game, and their condition studied by the astute manager. The batting order was decided on. In fact, everything was done which could be done in preparation for that great occasion to which many thousands of enthusiastic fans had been looking forward so ardently—opening day.

It came at last, with its tricky April breezes giving the lie to cloudless skies and brilliant yellow sunshine. There were the same joyous, pushing crowds, the same blaring bands. Some of the men had heard them many, many times before; but even they, though they might dissemble and pretend a careless nonchalance, were conscious, nevertheless, of that indescribable, irresistible thrill which they had always felt, and would continue to feel to the end of time—their time.

Their opponents were the Terriers, an organization of scrappy players who had fairly won their name. The fans got the worth of their money in a snappy game which was not decided till the ninth inning, and then only by an infielder’s error, which let in the single tally made that day.

The second game was lost by the Hornets; but they made up for it by having a streak of hitting in the third contest, and hammering out six runs to their opponents two.

It was during this last game that Brennan tried out his cub pitcher, Bert Elgin, for a couple of innings, and was so pleased with the showing made by the youngster that he determined to put him on the slab two days hence when they met the Blue Stockings for the first time that season.

“I’m going to take a chance with him, and do the unusual thing,” the manager confided to Jack Stillman while talking it over afterwards, as he had a way of doing with this particular reporter. “I need a youngster to work now and then until the old men get their wings well oiled up, and I’ve got to take the chance. I’m banking on Elgin.”

“Hum!” muttered Stillman.

The manager detected the doubt in Stillman’s mind. “You’ll have to allow that he’s shown form and class for a youngster.”

The newspaper man shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll admit that, all right,” he returned. “Still, that doesn’t prove him Cy Russell’s equal, for instance.”

“Did I say he was? All the same, I wouldn’t be surprised if he pushed Cy pretty hard one of these days. What you got against him, anyhow? He’s speedy, and he’s got a fine change of pace. He’s brainy, too, that boy.”

Stillman raised his eyebrows. “Well?” he drawled.

“Well, what?” retorted Brennan. “What more do you want than speed, and control, and brains?”

“Sand,” the reporter said succinctly.

The manager laughed. “I ain’t seen any signs of his lacking grit. He was up against some proposition to-day, too, and he pulled out. I guess I ain’t making any mistake trying him out against the Blue Stockings. He’s as good as any of Jack Kennedy’s string of cripples. He ain’t made of the same stuff as that quitter, Locke, I fired in Ashland.”

A faint touch of color tinged Stillman’s face.

“You’re right there, Brennan,” he said briefly. “There’s no comparison between them. Well we’ll see how he pans out on Saturday.”

As he turned away, a frown wrinkled his smooth forehead. He was thinking of Lefty, and wishing fervently that he might be there. What a chance it would have been! There wasn’t a question that, if he had remained with the Hornets, Locke might have had the opportunity which had been given to Elgin. Stillman knew baseball, and there was no shadowy doubt in his mind as to which of the two was the better man. He felt that Brennan could not have failed to see it, too, if he had not been tricked into turning the southpaw away.

However, that was all over and done with. Not only had Locke been fired, but at this moment Stillman had not the least idea where his friend was. He had heard nothing from him since the day they parted at the Ashland station. The pitcher had promised to write when he made good, but he had not written.

“Maybe he’s working for some fourth-rate bush league,” Stillman thought regretfully. “I can’t say I blame him for not wanting us to know. Maybe he hasn’t got any job yet. I’d give a farm to get that crook Elgin where I want him, and show Brennan what a mistake he’s made.”

Unfortunately the ex-sergeant at Ashland had, so far, failed signally in finding a single clew to the mystery, and Stillman was beginning to grow discouraged. It looked as if Bert Elgin had won out, in spite of the fact that truth and honor and decency were all opposed to him.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE TWO MANAGERS

A door opened, and a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop, stood on the threshold, looking down upon the manager of the Hornets. His dark eyes glimmered and a smile stretched his wide mouth, which transformed the almost homely face into one that was positively good-looking.

At the sight of him, Jim Brennan sprang up from his desk so hurriedly that he came near upsetting the revolving chair, and leaped toward the newcomer with hand outstretched.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed. “Put it there, Ken, old boy! It sure does a man good to see your smiling face again. How’s things?”

“Fine!” returned Kennedy, of the Blue Stockings, gripping the other’s hand. “Couldn’t be better, in fact. You’re looking blooming yourself, Jim. Taken on a few pounds over the winter, haven’t you?”

“A few, maybe. I can stand it, though. Once fat, a little more never cuts any ice. Sit down and rest your face and hands. I see you’ve had a clean sweep so far.”

Kennedy dropped into a chair beside the desk, crossing one long leg over the other. Though antagonists on the diamond, in private life the two men were the best of friends, and always enjoyed talking things over in this way whenever they met.

“We have,” rejoined the taller man when Brennan had settled himself at the desk again, “won four games straight, which isn’t so bad to start in the season with.”

Brennan grinned. “Well, you’re up against a team of real ball players to-day, Ken,” he chuckled. “Doing some stunts with a bunch of has-beens on the firing line. I’ve a sort of hunch that we’re going to break up that streak of luck.”

“I should worry,” smiled Kennedy. “I’ve never seen the men in better shape. We’re going to make ’em all take our dust this year.”

“Humph!” grunted Brennan. “That remains to be seen. Who you going to dish up for us to knock the stuffing out of—Pete Grist?”

“Nope. I’ve got a man I had farmed out to a Southern independent team, with a string attached. He turned out to be a regular bush wonder, so I pulled the string the other day, and yanked him in here to try him out on you. It’s always best to give a youngster something easy to start with.”

Brennan laughed. “Say, Ken, that’s sort of funny, though. I was counting on putting in a dark horse myself. He’s a kid I picked up last fall. I’ll guarantee right now that he’ll lick the pants off your Southern wonder.”

“If it wasn’t so much like highway robbery, I’d make you back your talk up with cash,” Kennedy returned calmly. “As it is, I’ll have to content myself with a sight of your face after the game.”

Brennan was scoffing at Kennedy’s folly in imagining he could take a fall out of the Hornets with a raw busher on the slab, when suddenly he stopped abruptly, frowning.

“Say!” he burst out the next moment. “Did a fellow named Locke come around for a job within the last month? I meant to drop you a line about him, but I’ll be hanged if I didn’t forget it. He’s a southpaw, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he applied under another name.”

Kennedy shook his head. “No, he didn’t change his name. He couldn’t, seeing as I knew about him before. He blew in the day before we broke camp in Georgia; but I was a bit wary when I found out you’d dropped him that way. He didn’t stay long.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t get stuck with him,” Brennan exclaimed emphatically. “I’d sort of felt it was my fault if you had, seeing as I forgot to put you wise about him. Believe me, Ken, he isn’t any use, but he shows up good at first. It took me the whole training season to get on to the fact that he’s yellow right through—one of the worst quitters I ever saw. We’re both well rid of him. Say, look at the time! I didn’t think it was so late.”

He sprang up as he spoke, and slammed his desk down. Kennedy arose more leisurely, and together they left the office for the dressing rooms of their respective teams.

CHAPTER XXXIX
THE MEETING IN THE GRANDSTAND

Three games had been insufficient to take the edge from the enthusiasm of the fans, intoxicated with the wine of spring and bubbling with the joy of looking down once more upon that diamond after their long winter deprivation.

Moreover, in point of strength there was no comparison between the Blue Stockings and the Terriers. To be sure, the latter had made a hot start this year, but the former were old rivals of the Hornets, who, year after year, had pushed them close in that desperate fight for the pennant, and last season had beaten them out by a hair. Consequently this first struggle between them drew almost as many spectators as the game which had opened the season a week before.

The day was perfect. A sweep of blue sky, clear save for a few wispy clouds, was overhead. A trifling little breeze lurked here and there at sharp turns or corners, but it blew from the south, and held no chill undercurrent which was not offset by the warm, grateful sunshine.

The fans rejoiced as they sped toward the grounds by every possible car line and conveyance. Those of them who had witnessed the opening game told one another how much better this one was likely to be.

Long before one o’clock great throngs had assembled at the gates, and when those gates were finally opened there was a wild rush past ticket-takers into the clattering emptiness of the vast stands. Down over the tiers of seats they stumbled, struggling for the desirable front rows. Hats were smashed here and there, and there were occasional wordy altercations; but, as a rule, laughter and joshing and good-natured horseplay prevailed.

By two o’clock, the bleachers were crowded, and the more expensive seats were filling fast. Half an hour later it looked as if every place, save in the reserved sections, was occupied; and still the crowd streamed in like a swollen river.

Tramp, tramp, tramp! Regular, rhythmic, the sound of their marching was like the thunder of a great army. Ogden Wilmerding, hurrying toward a coveted place in the lower stand, felt the thrill which that sound brings to the heart of every fan who has hibernated reluctantly for six long months.

“Nothing like it,” he chuckled as he was swept along. “This looks a lot like opening day,” he went on, peering over the top of the last row of seats. “I’m not so sorry as I was over getting back too late for that.”

He soon saw that it would be impossible to get the seat he wanted. The section directly behind the plate was filled in solid. For a moment he stood there peering down at the reporters’ bench in a vain hope that some one he knew—Jack Stillman, perhaps—might find room for him there. He saw places enough; but neither Stillman nor any other of his newspaper friends had yet appeared.

“Hang it all!” he muttered. “Why didn’t I start half an hour earlier, or wire from Boston for a box?”

“Because you’re the same lazy old slob you were three years ago,” chuckled a voice in his ear.

Wilmerding whirled, his eyes popping, stared for a second in speechless amazement at the young man against whose shoulder he had been almost leaning. Then he fell upon him with a roar of delight.

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he gurgled. “Snow, you old cut-up, where in time have you been? I thought you’d croaked years ago. Shove along and give me a chance. You’re spread over two seats, easy.”

Snowden Pell obeyed laughingly. The man beside him, taking in the situation with a good-natured grin, likewise moved, and Wilmerding was accommodated with a seat.

“It takes a lot to put me out of business,” Pell chuckled when his friend had settled beside him. “I’m very far from being a dead one, as they’ll tell you out in Seattle.”

“But why didn’t you write and let somebody know how you were getting on? Last I heard, your father failed, or something, and you slipped out of Princeton right in the middle of the spring term without saying a word to anybody. To this day I never knew how much of the tale was truth and how much fiction.”

“It was pretty much all truth,” Pell returned quickly. “My governor’s partner got playing the Wall Street game, and smashed the business to bits. There wasn’t enough left even for me to keep on and finish the term, and when I found out how bad things were I just faded quietly away. I didn’t want any of the boys to be sorry for me, or to think that I was an object of charity, the way—”

“Rot!” broke in the stout chap emphatically. “You make me sick! At least, you might have said a word to your old friends. Look over in the bleachers. They’re firing one of those sandwich-chewing-gum-cigar baskets at each other. Next thing you know they’ll be tossing some kid around.”

For a moment they watched the wicker basket rise and fall as the bleacherites employed their time in playing a sort of handball with it. Here and there in a distant part of the stand men were throwing paper at one another, sporting with the inevitable straw hat which some one always seems to bring along for the purpose, and otherwise enjoying themselves.

Presently Wilmerding turned again to his friend.

“Well, where’d you go?” he asked. “What you been doing ever since?”

“I had a job offered me in Seattle, which I snapped up. It was a good opening for me, and I’m certainly glad I got with that particular concern, even if I had to borrow money to get out there. I had the first letter from them the very day I left Princeton; and, by Jove, Oggie!”—he threw back his head and laughed at the sudden recollection—“you came mighty near being the goat.”

“What do you mean?” the stout fellow inquired tartly. “You didn’t touch me, that I remember. Of course, I’d have turned you down”—his tone was one of heavy sarcasm—“but at least I’d liked to have had the chance.”

“You were the first person I thought of when I realized I’d have to sting somebody,” Pell laughed. “Trouble was, I couldn’t locate you. Went to your room, and stayed a deuce of a while in hopes you’d come in. Then, when I couldn’t wait any longer, I hunted up Victor Wood, and he did the business.”

He hesitated an instant, and then went on swiftly, a note of sudden curiosity in his voice:

“That reminds me of something I’ve always wanted to ask you. What sort of a game did you and Bert Elgin have together about that time?”

Wilmerding stared. “Game?” he repeated blankly. “Bert Elgin? I don’t get you, Snow. Elucidate.”

“Well, I thought it was a joke of some kind,” Pell returned. “Only it seemed funny that all of a sudden you should be as chummy as that with Elgin. While I was waiting for you, I strolled into your bedroom to brush my hair. I was standing before the bureau when I heard the outside door open. Thought it was you, of course, until some one called out your name. I didn’t feel in the mood for gassing with any one else, so I said nothing and slipped back to one side of the door.

“To make a long story short, I heard the fellow moving around the sitting room, and pretty soon I happened to catch sight of him in the dressing-table mirror. It was Bert Elgin, and he was heading for the bookshelves in the corner.”

Wilmerding gave a slight start, the color flaming into his face.

“Go on,” he urged, as his friend, glancing at him, paused in his narration. “What—happened?”

“He took something out of his pocket and dropped it behind the books,” Pell continued. “I didn’t see what it was; but as it fell there was a clink that sounded like metal—a chain or—— Great Scott! What is it, Oggie? What’s the matter with you?”

The color had vanished from Wilmerding’s face, and he was staring at his companion with a strained, incredulous expression in his eyes which testified to the emotion he was undergoing.

“What—books—were they?” he gasped at length, in a hoarse voice.

“The books he put the stuff behind, you mean?” queried Pell. “I don’t remember, but I think it was the second shelf from the top. I know they were over on the extreme right-hand end of the case.”

Wilmerding drew his breath with a whistling sound. For an instant he sat silent. Then he moved his hand unconsciously, and caught Pell’s arm in a grip which made the man wince.

“What day was that, Snow?” he breathed.

“The twenty-sixth of May,” was the quick response. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that date. It was about three in the afternoon. But what in thunder was it all about, Oggie? I never supposed it was anything but a joke. Can’t you put a fellow wise?”

The big man at his side did not answer. He was staring out across the diamond toward the bleachers, black with their crowds of restless fans. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He could not speak for the joy which filled his soul as a realization of the truth came to him at last.

He was not a thief!

For years he had been so absolutely convinced that it was he who had—unconsciously, perhaps, but still none the less certainly—stolen those things from Bob Ferris’ rooms, that Pell’s story struck him as almost incredible.

There could be no mistake, however. The details fitted too perfectly to admit of a coincidence. Lefty had been right, it was Elgin who was the thief, not he. And Elgin it was who had done a thing which would have been impossible in Wilmerding, waking or sleeping; he had deliberately stolen, and as deliberately planned to throw the blame upon an innocent man.

Sudden, furious anger flamed up within the Princeton man. He felt as if he must search out that contemptible coward and give him a little of what was coming to him. He half rose from the bench, his face livid; and then he realized that all around him a wild uproar had arisen. Men yelled and cheered themselves purple; they stamped and shouted and waved their hats.

Pell’s hand caught Wilmerding by the arm and dragged him down, but not before the angry man had caught a glimpse of the line of athletes in their immaculate uniforms, leaving the shadow of the distant bleachers and trotting briskly into the brilliant April sunshine on the field.

CHAPTER XL
THE SURPRISE

Amid the roaring of the crowd, the Hornets made their way across the diamond. Brennan was in the lead, with Cy Russell beside him; and, at moments when the scurrying phalanx of photographers permitted, the manager talked to his star pitcher in low tones.

“You’d better keep your arm limbered, Cy,” he said. “I shall send you in if they get to Elgin. The gink Kennedy’s going to open with ought to be soft for us.”

“Who is he?” Russell asked curiously.

The manager paused until a camera had been snapped and the reporter had retreated to a little distance.

“Some busher,” he explained. “Ken seems to think he’s a find, but I’ve seen them kind before. Grist’ll take his place when we bat him out, and we want to get away to a flying start.”

As they neared the bench, the fans gave a yell for Russell, and several newspaper men came up to inquire perfunctorily whether it was not true that he was to go on the slab first for the Hornets.

“You boys’ll find that out in time,” Brennan returned evasively. “Don’t you know that I ain’t the kind to give out that information before the announcer? Chase yourselves.”

He turned to Bert Elgin, who was standing not far away, looking as cool and nonchalant as if he had never played on anything but a Big League team, and proceeded to give him a few last bits of advice.

While this was going on, another cheer went up from the stands as the Blue Stockings’ contingent appeared and rapidly crossed the field.

Brennan’s back was towards them, and he was consequently surprised to see Elgin give a sudden start and stare fixedly at the approaching squad.

For an instant Elgin’s face remained fixed; then into his eyes there leaped an expression of such utter astonishment, mingled with hate, that the manager’s words ceased abruptly, and he grasped the young pitcher by one arm.

“What is the matter with you?” he asked sharply.

Elgin swallowed hard, and his face, which had turned slightly pale, now flamed crimson.

“Look there!” he said hoarsely.

Brennan whirled and stared at the approaching players. For a second he saw only the line of blue-stockinged men, headed by Jack Kennedy. Then, as his eyes focused on the tall, lithe, graceful figure walking beside Spider Grant, the famous first baseman of the rival organization, his jaw dropped.

“I’ll—be—hanged!” he gasped. “Tom Locke!”

It was Lefty, browner than he had been a month ago, and with, if possible, an easier swing in his carriage. His face glowed with health. His teeth gleamed as he smiled at some sally of his companion. He showed no trace of the awkwardness or embarrassment which one might naturally expect at his first encounter with the team from which he had been dropped in such disgrace. True, his brown eyes flashed a single questioning glance at one man among the Hornets, but it was seen by no one save that man, who leaped forward as if propelled from a catapult.

“Lefty, you old lobster!” he cried, as he gripped both of the southpaw’s hands in his. “What you deserve is a good larruping; and I’d like to hand it to you right now.”

There was an odd expression on Lefty’s face as he grasped Fargo’s big fists firmly. For an instant he did not speak.

“I didn’t make good, Buck—honest I didn’t,” he said at length in a low tone.

“G’wan!” retorted the backstop. “What you giving us? Ain’t you with the Blue Stockings?”

“Yes; but I’ve been with them only two days. Kennedy farmed me with the Badgers, down South. I never knew what he thought of me, or what he meant to do, till I got a wire telling me to come on at once. I had a streak of great luck down there, and I suppose—”

“Luck be hanged!” interrupted Fargo forcibly. “You made good, just as you would have with us if that miserable sneak— Say! You ain’t going into the game to-day?”

Locke hesitated an instant, and then nodded. “Yes,” he said, lowering his voice. “Kennedy’s going to give me a chance.”

Fargo grinned. “Glory be! The old man’s going to put Elgin on the slab. You’ll be up against him at last; and, if you don’t make him look like a rotten lemon, it’s all up between you and me.”

For a second Locke stood looking at his friend, with sparkling eyes and swiftly reddening cheeks. His face took on a look of firm, indomitable purpose. Unconsciously both brown, muscular hands, hanging straight down at his sides, clenched themselves until the knuckles showed white through the skin. Then he pulled himself together with an effort, and laughed.

“You’re a hot ball player to talk like that,” he joshed. “You sure don’t want your own pitcher to fall down, do you?”

“I’m not keen about losing the game,” Fargo returned. “But I shouldn’t shed tears if Elgin was hammered out of the box.”

Up on the reporters’ bench a telegraph instrument had suddenly ceased clicking, and a rush and bustle followed as a slim fellow in a long tan coat and rakish soft hat pushed hurriedly past his fellow reporters.

He paid no heed to their comments and questions, but, reaching one of the gates, thrust it open, and hastened out upon the field. A moment later he, too, was shaking hands with Lefty and upbraiding him in unmeasured terms.

Presently several more of the Hornets’ players strolled up and joined the little group about the young twirler. The fans, realizing that something was doing which they did not understand, gave vent to caustic comments and various sarcastic remarks about the folly of delaying the game.

Brennan, still scowling, called peremptorily to his men, and sent them loping on to the diamond for preliminary practice. Locke took a position over to one side, and commenced warming up. The field was soon a picture of animated motion.

“What kind of a game is this you’re giving me, Ken?” Brennan inquired tartly as Kennedy strolled up a moment later. “You told me you’d thrown down that fellow Locke when he applied for a job.”

“No, I didn’t, Jim,” retorted the Blue Stockings’ manager mildly, a faint twinkle in his dark eyes. “I said he didn’t stay with me long. He didn’t. I let the Badgers have him. Hadn’t time to bother with him myself, so I shipped him to them for a try-out, with one of my scouts to keep an eye on him. The boy won every game he pitched, and did such brainy work that I pulled him in. The reason I didn’t tell you his name was because he asked me this morning not to say anything about him to any of your crowd.”

“Humph!” growled Brennan. “Thought he was goin’ to jar me, I suppose. So this is the bush wonder you were telling me about. I wish you joy with that quitter. Better have an anchor ready to hitch to him about the third inning. You’ll need it.”

“We’ll see if you’re right,” smiled Kennedy.

Brennan turned away, grumbling incoherently. Evidently he was still feeling somewhat sore. The gingery fielding practice continued to the delight of the spectators, who applauded every snappy throw or pretty catch.

When the Blue Stockings took their places on the diamond their efforts were cheered almost as much as had been those of the home team. The great crowd seemed to be in a jovial, good-natured mood; though, when the practice was over and the batteries for the day announced, there was a concerted growl at the discovery that two unknowns were to take the slab instead of the old favorites.

Nevertheless, there was no great amount of kicking. The game was about to begin; that was the main thing. Besides, it would be rather interesting to see which of these cubs proved himself the better man.

The photographers were shooed away and the field cleared. The Hornets pranced out upon the diamond like a lot of colts, eager for the fray. Elgin got a cheer all to himself for the cool, confident, and business-like way in which he took the slab. The umpires got into position, one of them tossing out a clean, new ball to the young pitcher. The fans yelled again, just for the sake of letting off steam.

Then came a tense, breathless hush as they waited for the first ball to be pitched.

CHAPTER XLI
THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME

Rufe Hyland, the visitors’ right fielder and one of their crack hitters, stood at the pan, calm and smiling, swinging his stick with a short, gentle motion, which seemed to denote tense muscles and a brain alert and ready to take advantage of any pitched ball that should nick the platter.

In spite of his seeming coolness, Bert Elgin had really never been more nervous in his life. He took his time, even after Fargo had given the signal, and, as he dug away the soil near the pitcher’s rubber with his copper toe, he heard his teammates coaching behind him.

He was heartened by the sound of their friendly voices; but, nevertheless, the straight, low one he sent over seemed to lack his usual cannon-ball speed. Hyland lashed it out in a manner which sent the pitcher’s heart down into his boots. For an instant he thought it a two-bagger, at least. Then, as he whirled round, he saw that Dutch Siegrist, sprinting at full speed, had scooped it right off the blades of grass.

The superb catch brought a yell of delight from the Hornets’ rooters, and seemed to brace Elgin amazingly. He took a long breath, and his nerves ceased to flutter as he surveyed the next batter. He felt a new confidence in himself in the realization that the team was behind him, ready to back him up with their wonderfully perfect organization. He lost instantly that sense of isolation he had been conscious of at first—the feeling that the entire weight and responsibility of the game lay on his shoulders. The boys were there, ready to cover any blunder or mistake he might make; and, though this did not bring about laxness in his pitching, it was infinitely consoling.

Again he took the signal from the big backstop, but this time the ball he put over had burning speed, and a little jump to it which completely fooled Pink Dalton, the Blue Stockings’ second baseman.

It was followed by an incurve that cut the corner of the plate.

Dalton fouled back of the pan.

Then came a couple of teasers which the batter ignored; and finally, with two and two, the Blue Stockings’ man hoisted a high fly into left field, which was easily caught by the guardian of that pasture.

The roaring approval of the crowd caused the blood to tingle in Elgin’s veins. Before the end of the game he meant to have them shouting his name as loudly as they had yelled for Russell, or Pop Jennings, or any other of the old favorites, on the opening day. It wasn’t such a hard matter, after all, to pitch in a Big League contest.

By carefully following Fargo’s signals, he struck out Brock, the visitors’ center fielder, and then walked toward the bench with a little, unconscious swagger. One or two of his fellow players told him how well he’d done. Brennan, even, added his approval.

Elgin fancied that he had made a very good start, indeed, and that there wasn’t a doubt of his form improving as the game progressed. He was quite satisfied with his cleverness in letting only three batters oppose him. He gave no thought to how much the man behind the pan had contributed to this result. Neither he nor any one else had the least conception of the fight which had gone on in Buck Fargo’s mind between loyalty to his team and the contempt and hatred he felt for the pitcher his brains and experience were helping so greatly.

The caustic comment and jeering criticism which had greeted Elgin’s appearance were as nothing to the disparaging chorus that arose when Lefty walked out into the diamond. Baseball fans are extremely partizan, and the supporters of the Hornets outnumbered those of their opponents ten to one.

The southpaw could not help being a bit affected by the unflattering remarks hurled at him from the bleachers and grandstand, even though he knew how little such things counted and how fickle the average rooter is. He felt, too, and rather painfully, the lack of encouragement from his own team. He knew he was not one of them. They had shown him that only too plainly. With the exception of one or two, they had made him perfectly aware of the fact that they regarded him as a man who had yet to win his spurs, and on whom the honor of opening the first game with the Hornets had devolved more by accident, or through a whim of their manager, than from any real worth or proven merit. Their silence as he toed the slab was in vivid contrast to the behavior of their opponents in the first half of the inning.

It made him set his teeth and resolve desperately to make good; to show them that he had something in him; to vindicate Jack Kennedy’s judgment; incidentally, to prove to the latter how grateful he was for having been given this chance.

For a second he waited for his catcher’s signal, but none came. Dirk Nelson seemed to be occupied in settling down behind the pan and making sure that his mitt was in place. Lefty wondered whether the backstop’s well-known chumminess with Pete Grist, the popular Blue Stockings’ twirler, had anything to do with this unusual state of absent-mindedness. Grist had shown unmistakable signs of ill humor on discovering that he was not to start on the slab to-day.

There was but a momentary hesitation. Bill Hagin was at bat, and Lefty had played too many practice games against the capable outfielder not to know pretty well his strong and weak points. Unfortunately the latter were few. The southpaw was satisfied, however, when he finally got Nelson’s belated signal. A slow floater was what he handed up for a starter.

Hagin, doting on speed, could not restrain himself, and struck too soon. Lefty then tried a curve. The batter swung at it, making connections and bumping a slow grounder towards short.

Eddie Lewis made the mistake of waiting for the ball, and was then forced to throw hastily in order to get it across the diamond in time. That hasty throw was wide, and Spider Grant had to leap off the cushion. Hagin was safe because of bad judgment and an error.

The crowd cheered, and urged Dutch Siegrist to carry on the good work.

The first baseman of the Hornets took no chances. In spite of Lefty’s efforts to prevent it, he managed to lay down a bunt which corkscrewed along the base line, ever threatening to roll foul, but in the end coming to rest a couple of inches on the right side. Locke snatched it up and lined it to Grant, but the delay had made it possible for the German to reach the sack in safety.

Jim Brennan smiled significantly. He had watched Locke closely and expectantly, waiting for signs of the yellow streak to show. With two men on bases and none out, it looked very much as if the southpaw’s first inning would be his last.

“We’ve got him going,” the manager of the Hornets muttered jubilantly. “Ken’ll have to yank him sudden. I reckon he’ll have more faith in my judgment after this.”

When Nolan, his left fielder, presently sent a foul back of first and was put out by Grant’s wonderful sprinting and equally amazing catch, Brennan’s conviction was in no wise altered. This was pure luck, helped on by the skill of the first baseman, and reflected no credit on Locke.

Buck Fargo was advancing to the plate, too, which boded well for the Hornets.

“You know what to do, Buck,” the manager said, in a low tone, as the backstop passed him. “We’ve got this green portsider on the run already.”

It was a curious situation. The two men facing each other were friends. Fargo’s sympathy for the young pitcher was such that he wanted him to make good almost more than he desired a victory for his own team. The big backstop could help very materially, if he wished, without any risk to himself; and he realized that this was a crucial moment in the inning when a hit might mean a run, while an out would go far toward killing the Hornet’s chances for scoring.

To his honor, he walked to the pan with the fixed determination to forget that Lefty was pitching, and to give his manager the very best that was in him.

And now Locke realized that the thing which had hitherto been in his favor was going to work the other way. If he knew intimately the likes and dislikes, the batting strength and weakness of each member of the opposing team, the man who faced him now was in a position to know quite as much, or more, about himself.

Lefty’s face was a shade less brown as he toed the rubber, but his nerves were quite steady, his courage unabated. He would do his best; no man could do more.

The cheering and comments in the stands had ceased. Even the murmur of voices died away as the spectators bent forward in breathless suspense.

The first one was not over, and Fargo refused to go after it.

“Ba-a-ll!” drawled the umpire.

“He’ll put it over now,” thought Fargo, swinging his stick gently. He had ceased to think of Lefty as his friend; he was now simply the pitcher of the rival team.

He was mistaken, however. Though it seemed to be Locke’s intention to cut the pan, Fargo saw the ball break for a curve which would carry it just outside, and again he refrained from swinging.

“Two-oo!” said the umpire.

In the silence of the breathless crowd some one was heard to say:

“He’s afraid of him. He don’t dare let him hit it.”

These words did not reach the southpaw’s ears. The latter, however, had no intention of pitching himself into a hole if he could help it. He bent over a sizzler.

Fargo swung and missed, although he almost fancied that he felt the bat lightly touch the whistling ball. A murmur rose from the Blue Stockings’ rooters.

A moment later, Lefty shot the ball back with a quick return, and, though he was not taken off his guard, the batter missed again.

The murmur rose.

Then Locke tried that slow, lingering ball which he could so cleverly deliver after going through movements which seemed to promise great speed.

Unfortunately Fargo had seen him try that same trick more than once, and he refused to be fooled. Watching the horsehide as it came up and dropped toward the ground, he let it settle into the catcher’s hands without having moved his stick.

The Hornets’ fans had a chance to yell, but their uproar was swiftly cut short. Now was the moment of greatest suspense. The next ball delivered would be decisive.

After what seemed an eternity, but which was, in reality, the briefest sort of pause, the southpaw pitched.

Fargo met the sphere on the trademark and sent it humming out on a line with the speed of a bullet.

CHAPTER XLII
THE TRUTH AT LAST

Like a flash, thousands of fans were on their feet. The roar which reverberated back and forth in the great inclosure was enough to shake the row of eagles ornamenting the roof of the grandstand. Hagin was off like a rocket. Siegrist was not far behind. Fargo himself showed that backstopping was not his only strong point.

As for Lefty, after that first awful moment of sinking which had followed the fatal crack of leather meeting wood, he brought himself together with a jerk, and whirled round.

Rufe Hyland, in right field, had not wasted an instant. Covering the ground with tremendous strides, he scooped the ball cleanly, spun around, and threw even while still in motion. It was meant to be a straight throw to the plate, but in a second Lefty saw that the fielder’s forced turn had lost him every particle of body motion which might have helped out his arm, and knew the sphere would fall short.

Like a flash, the southpaw darted to one side, leaped into the air, and forked the ball with one hand. As he did so, Hagin, running like a racehorse, flung himself feet foremost to the ground, and slid over the plate.

Siegrist had raced down to second, and crossed the sack at full speed. When he saw Lefty intercept the ball and whirl toward third, he sought to turn back. Locke whipped the sphere straight into the hands of Pink Dalton, who was covering the second anchorage; and the latter, after jabbing it on to the lunging German, snapped it to first with a lightninglike motion, not even taking the time to straighten up.

It was one of the most surprising double plays ever seen on the New Grounds. Fargo, having rounded the sack and seen the ball speeding apparently toward the plate, naturally did not halt until he was nearly halfway to the second hassock. Even then he might have got back safely had it not been for the extraordinary accuracy of Dalton’s throw. As it was, the finish of the play was close. The keen-eyed umpire declared Fargo out.

The applause of the Hornets’ rooters suddenly ceased. It was followed by the cheers of their rivals. The home team had made a run, to be sure, but this abrupt and unexpected ending of the inning rather took the wind out of their sails. They gave vent to their annoyance by heaping abuse on the umpire.

As Lefty walked to the bench his eyes sought the face of his manager questioningly. He felt no doubt that only for the success of this last play he would have been taken out of the game at once. Only one hit had been made off him, to be sure, but he knew that a pitcher is frequently removed when the game is going wrong through no fault of his own. Jack Kennedy showed no such intention, however.

“That was a heady play of yours, Lefty,” he said. “I saw the ball would fall short the minute it left Hyland’s hand. If you hadn’t had your thinker working, we’d likely have had more than one tally to buck against.”

“It was Dalton who put a kibosh on them,” Locke returned. “That was some throw of his to first.”

“Sure. But you used your nut and made it possible. One minute, Grant. You’d better—”

His voice dropped to a whisper, and Lefty walked away, his face slightly flushed, his eyes bright. Jack Kennedy was a manager who never hesitated about blowing up his men, and he could do it in a cutting, caustic manner much more thorough than mere loud-mouthed ranting. He had also the much rarer trait of judicious praise, which was, perhaps, one of the reasons why he was so popular with his players.

The second inning presented no such spectacular features as had appeared in its predecessor. Elgin, cool, confident, and a little cocky, did not let a man pass second. The fans were beginning to yell rough pleasantries at him, and reporters who had been with the Hornets through the spring training harked back to the prophecies they had sent home regarding this youngster’s exceptional ability.

Locke, on the other hand, was touched up for two singles, and had men on first and third with only one out. One of these was caught while trying to steal second, and put out by Nelson’s beautiful throwing. The other was cantering toward the home plate, with the full expectation of scoring, when he discovered that the southpaw had reached forth a bare hand and plucked the batted ball out of the air, thus spoiling a base hit and ending the inning.

“Great work,” chuckled Jack Stillman, up at the reporters’ table, as he reached for his tobacco pouch.

“Great luck, I should say,” retorted the newspaper man next to him. “Looks to me like a fine case of horseshoes.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” put in the sporting editor of the Blade, who sat on Stillman’s other side. “The boy seems to have a little gray matter, and there’s a bulldog expression about his mouth and chin which makes me think he’ll stand the pace longer than this Elgin, who’s beginning to strut a little already. You saw quite a little of him down at Ashland, didn’t you, Jack?”

Stillman did not answer. With the leather pouch, he had pulled from his pocket a crumpled envelope bearing the postmark of that very Texas town. For a second he stared at it in a puzzled way. Then he remembered. The hotel clerk had handed it to him just as he was leaving for the game with a bunch of fellows, and he had put it aside, intending to read it later, only to forget its existence completely.

With a swift jerk of one finger, he tore the envelope open. There was a long letter in the cramped, laborious handwriting of William Bowers, the ex-sergeant, but that was not what his eyes were fixed on with such curious intentness. He had received many of those letters in the past month, and all to no purpose. What he had never had before was this inclosure, an affidavit bearing the seal of a notary public and signed by one Edward Black, and several witnesses.

With a swift-drawn breath, Stillman fairly raced through the document, his face flushing, his eyes snapping, an expression of the most intense satisfaction swiftly overspreading his countenance.

“By Jove!” he breathed, when he had finished. “He’s got him at last! I knew that cur Elgin was responsible, and this proves it.”

He half rose from his seat, only to drop back into it again as he realized the impossibility of reaching Brennan now.

“Afterward will do as well,” he muttered. “If this doesn’t blow the scoundrel clean out of water, I’m a lobster!”

CHAPTER XLIII
THE LUCKY SEVENTH

Unconscious of the gathering storm, Bert Elgin continued his fine work. Inning after inning he held the visitors down, rising to his highest pitch of excellence in the fifth by striking out the opposing batters in one, two, three order.

His rival was equally successful so far as results went, but his methods were not as spectacular. He seemed not to exert himself until forced to the wall, and then, as likely as not, his manner of getting out of the hole was such that the bulk of spectators put it down to luck or the wonderful support back of him.

Thus it was that, while the metropolitan fans were howling themselves hoarse with praises for Elgin, the Blue Stockings’ supporters could never be quite sure that the southpaw was not on the verge of “blowing up,” and their rooting was more for the team as a body than for the man on the slab.

There were a few in the vast crowd, more observant than their neighbors, who realized the truth. Elgin was clever, to be sure, but little by little they saw how much of his success on the mound was due to the knowledge and experience of his fellow players.

Buck Fargo was a born backstop. Absolutely perfect in the mechanical side of his position, he was able to give his whole attention to the batter and, therefore, seemed to possess, almost uncannily, the power of sensing the sort of ball which would be, at any particular moment, most distasteful. Happily for Elgin, the pitcher had the sense to follow his catcher’s signals implicitly.

In addition to this, the others of the team were in thorough sympathy with their pitcher. He had been one of them from the beginning of the season, and had deported himself with cleverness that won the liking of not a few. There were no jealousies and heartburnings to combat. They were beginning, also, to feel a certain measure of confidence in him, and their support was of the finished Big League sort, plus enthusiasm, which was a joy to see.

It was quite the contrary with their opponents. Though they might not realize it, the majority were still sore at having this busher put on the slab for such an important game. They had no confidence in his ability to pull out successfully, and, though their playing was mechanically perfect, their support was that of men who are thinking of themselves and their averages.

During the last of the sixth the Hornets scored another tally on an error of the opposing shortstop, and the fans sat back comfortably, assured that the game was safe.

With the opening of the seventh, there was a sudden billowing up of the crowd throughout the entire circle of stands and bleachers. They stretched themselves and stamped their feet until the noise was like the deafening rattle of stage thunder. The visitors, though fearful of defeat, nevertheless raised the stentorian cry of “Lucky seventh! Lucky seventh! Here’s where we do it!”

Eddie Lewis, the Blue Stockings’ shortstop, was the first man up. Elgin eyed him critically, and, remembering that he had caught the man with an inshoot once before, decided to repeat the trick. He had been growing more and more cocksure as the game progressed, so, when Fargo called for a straight, fast high ball, Elgin responded with his own views on the subject. It was time, he decided, that he cut loose from the backstop’s apron-strings. He had been hitched to them too long already.

Fargo repeated his signal, but Elgin shook his head obstinately. Finally he got the signal he wanted. Lewis stepped swiftly back; there was a ringing crack; the horsehide whizzed straight at Elgin, who—ducked!

He had never done such a thing before, but the total unexpectedness of the hit, and the fact that the sphere was humming straight at his head with the speed of a cannon ball, deprived him for a second of reason, and made his act instinctive.

Lewis got to first easily. The entire Hornets’ infield made various caustic comments. From the stands the fickle crowd showered insults which brought the color flaming into Elgin’s face and made him drop the ball when he received it from the outfielder.

The incident so disturbed him that he proceeded to present Nelson with a free pass, which brought loud cheers from the Blue Stockings’ rooters, and more unflattering comments from the upholders of the home team.

“He’s going up! He’s going up!” chanted the visiting fans, grasping at a straw. “Send him to the stable! Put the blanket on him!”

Elgin gritted his teeth and faced Jack Daly as he toed the scratch, bland and smiling. Men were yelling advice to the batter; others flinging taunts at the man on the mound. The tumult was increasing steadily. Fargo, catching a glimpse of Elgin’s face, dropped on one knee and deliberately adjusted his shoe-lace.

Daly let a wide one pass, and then banged out a grounder which, but for splendid fielding, would have been a hit. As it was, Dirk Nelson, forced from the initial sack, was put out at second by a hair. Daly reached first safely, and Eddie Lewis executed an impromptu jig on third.

By this time a perfect pandemonium had broken forth all over the stands. The visiting rooters, seeing hope for the first time, seemed trying to rattle the pitcher, while the fickle metropolitan fans howled at the unfortunate twirler they had been cheering so vociferously a short time before.

“Take him out! Take him out!” they bawled. “Russell! We—want—Cy!”

Amid this turmoil, Lefty Locke approached the pan, his heart pounding unevenly and his face glowing dully under the tan. So far he had shown little ability with the stick; nevertheless, the hopeful Blue Stockings’ adherents greeted him uproariously.

“Kill it, Locke!” was the stentorian cry. “Kill it, old boy!”

The sound of their voices thrilled the southpaw. Only an abnormally cold-blooded youngster would have felt no thrill. It exalted him and made him confident that he could hit anything Elgin ventured to whip over.

There was a momentary pause as Fargo hurried into the diamond and spoke a few reassuring words to the white-faced twirler.

While he waited, leaning on his stick, Lefty cast a casual glance along the wide sweep of stands and boxes crowded with yelling, cheering humanity. The next instant his heart stood still. He was staring fixedly at an upper box that was filled with a gay party of men and women. As Lefty gazed with unbelieving wonder, a woman suddenly arose, straight and slim and girlish, her face flushing and her eyes bright. Smiling down at him, she waved a tiny handkerchief.

It was Janet Harting!

His face crimson, Lefty pulled off his cap a little awkwardly. How she happened to be there he had no idea. Who she was with he did not know—or care. She was watching him pitch his first Big League game, watching his trial by fire, and she believed in him. He toed the slab, believing more than ever in himself.

Elgin’s face was still pale and set. A moment before he had caught a glimpse of Brennan talking earnestly with Cy Russell, after which the pitcher peeled off his sweater and loped across the turf, beckoning to the second catcher. It looked as if the end were in sight.

Nevertheless, he ground his teeth and scowled fiercely at the hated Locke. He must get him—he must! The words rang dully through the pitcher’s brain until he wondered whether he was speaking them aloud. He paused, looking beseechingly at Fargo, who repeated the signal.

Reluctantly Elgin wound up and pitched.

The southpaw’s bat met the horsehide with a smash that sent it flying over Nolan’s head toward the left field bleachers.

With a mingled cry of anguish and joy, the spectators leaped to their feet and followed the progress of the flying sphere with straining eyes. For a moment it looked as if the fielder might get it by fast sprinting, and Lewis halted an instant on third, head twisted, gauging the rapidly falling dot of white.

Then it was seen that Nolan must fail to make the catch, and the runner was sent home with a rush, while voices accelerated Daly’s flying progress from first. The latter rounded second without a pause just as the fielder made a beautiful recovery and lined the ball to third. There were frantic shrieks of “Slide! slide!” which Daly obeyed without hesitation, skimming over the ground amid a cloud of dust, to hook the hassock with his foot as the sphere smacked into Monte Harris’ mitt.

The latter sent it humming back to second, for Lefty was coming down the line with the speed of a racehorse. But he, too, slid safely; and the breathless stillness was rent by the loud rejoicings of the great crowd of Blue Stockings’ admirers who had come over from the neighboring city to watch their team open against the Hornets.

“Oh, you Locke!” they shrieked fondly. “What’s the matter with Lefty? He’s—all—right!”

When the thunder of their accompanying stamping had died away, they turned their attention to Elgin, calling for airships and the like, until their voices were drowned by the howls of the disappointed opposition:

“Take him out! Take him out! Take-him-out! He’s yellow!”

The pitcher, white-faced, beads of perspiration besprinkling his forehead, stood shifting about near the slab, with downcast eyes and lips which trembled in spite of his efforts to steady them. Once he cast a swift glance toward the manager, but received no hoped-for sign.

He wanted to be taken out. He was afraid.

CHAPTER XLIV
THE LEADING RUN

Brennan’s reason for not doing at once the thing which was inevitable was not quite apparent. He had an obstinate streak in his make-up, and no doubt it went very much against the grain to see the man he had depended on and boasted about fall down so disastrously, though ordinarily that would have made no difference.

At any rate, he held his hand, and it cost him another run. Rufe Hyland landed on the second ball pitched, and sent out a long fly to right field. The moment Johnny Burns caught the ball Daly darted for the plate.

There was a momentary lull in the excitement as Burns made a great throw to Buck Fargo. Then the racket broke loose again as Daly slid over the dish in the nick of time; for Fargo had made a fruitless sweep of the hand to tag him.

With the score tied and Locke on third, the visiting fans yelled without interruption as Pink Dalton came to the plate. Fargo again tried to brace Elgin up, but with poor success; and it was no credit to the pitcher that Red Pollock scooped up a red-hot grounder and lined it, sizzling, to the sack in time to end the inning and prevent further scoring.

A storm of hoots and catcalls greeted Elgin as he walked slowly and dejectedly toward the bench. Brennan said nothing, but the look he cast at the twirler was more expressive than many spoken words could have been. Elgin, his face as flaming now as it had been pale, hurried past him, and slunk thankfully to the obscurity of the bench.

When Lefty took his place on the slab, a roar of applause greeted him. He shot a glance at that upper box, and was even further heartened by the wave he received in return. His form was so perfect, and the support of his backers so full of new life and snap, that he retired the Hornets without letting a man reach second.

A lull followed. Cy Russell, in splendid shape and aching to retrieve the blunders made by his predecessor, easily disposed of the batters who faced him during the eighth and ninth innings.

Lefty was equally fortunate; and the tenth inning opened with the spectators on tiptoe with excitement, and some of them so hoarse they could scarcely speak above a whisper.

Again it was Eddie Lewis who came up first, and the sympathizers with the Blue Stockings seemed to take it as a good omen. All around the field the visiting rooters were waving hats and yelling like demons. Russell put the first ball squarely over for a strike, and followed it with another. Lewis cracked the third one to left field for a two-bagger.

With a concerted yell, every fan leaped to his feet. When Lewis made second safely they seemed to forget to sit down, so great was their excitement.

“Lay down a bunt, Dirk,” Kennedy said quietly, as Nelson came up.

The catcher obeyed the injunction to the letter. He bunted the ball within two yards of the plate just as Lewis started for third. Russell was on the alert and ready, and, rushing swiftly toward the horsehide, he snatched it up and shot it with the speed of a bullet into Harris’ hands. Lewis beat the throw, however, and was called safe, while Nelson reached first without difficulty.

“Here’s the run! Here’s the game!” came from the crowd as Jack Daly walked coolly to the plate. “Lewis will score!”

A safe hit or a long fly meant victory, if Locke continued his fine work and shut out the home team in the last half of the inning. Lefty, swinging two bats to make one seem lighter when he should hit, felt his heart thudding like a trip-hammer.

On all sides men were waving their arms wildly and making a tremendous tumult. If only Daly could do it! Locke followed Daly, and he wondered vaguely whether he could make good if the third baseman failed.

Russell’s first ball went wide of the plate. Another one came across waist high, and Daly fell on it with all his might. There was a twist on the sphere, however, and, instead of a smashing line drive, a short fly to right field resulted.

Burns called out that he would take it, and Russell raced behind Fargo to back up a throw to the plate. Burns made the catch easily, and was ready to throw Lewis out if he attempted to score.

The Blue Stockings’ fielder was taking no chances, however. He stuck to third, waiting for something safer to take him home.

The witnesses who favored the Hornets applauded the catch, while the opposition strained their lungs rooting for Locke.

The latter felt a queer tightening of his throat as he toed the line. Again the opportunity had come for him to show what he could do.

Russell had never been cooler or less flurried. He worked skillfully until two strikes and as many balls had been called. The fear came to Lefty that he was going to whiff, and he set his teeth, watching the pitcher like a hawk.

Russell took his time. As the sphere left his fingers, Locke suddenly remembered a certain fast curve he had seen the Hornet man working up down in Texas, but which he had not used thus far in this game. The conviction flashed into his mind that it was being used now, and in an instant he had taken a single step forward, bringing his bat around with a powerful swing as he did so.

The connection was perfect, and the ball went curving out toward the left wing of the grandstand, looking for a second or two like a home run. It was too high for that, however, and fell in front of the stand a couple of yards inside the foul line.

The fielder got under it and smothered it effectually, making a long, powerful throw to the plate, toward which Lewis had sprinted the instant the catch was made. The ball went wide, however, and Lewis slid across the rubber in safety with the leading run.

CHAPTER XLV
LEFTY’S TRIUMPH

Again the crowd cheered and yelled like lunatics, shouting Locke’s name over and over as he walked toward the bench. His teammates surrounded him, patting him on the back and uttering brief, friendly words of praise. He was one of them now. He had won his spurs and fairly earned the right to their esteem.

But the game was not over. Russell fanned the next batter with swift precision, and the Blue Stockings took the field. Their supporters in the stands urged the southpaw, in frantic terms, to “Hold ’em!”

The Hornets’ sympathizers were equally vehement in their entreaties to the home team to “Get in there and smash it out!” The uproar was deafening. It subsided only when Ed Nolan walked up and squared himself at the plate. There were a few last shouts of encouragement, and then silence, tense and absolute, fell upon the vast inclosure.

Lefty knew that the Hornets’ fielder was a man to fear. He could hit almost any kind of ball with ease. In fact, the southpaw, in spite of his having played so many practice games against the fellow, had never yet fathomed his hitting weakness. He wished that almost any other man in the batting list could have been the one to face him now, but there was no use pining for the impossible, so he proceeded to send over a tempting feeler.

But Nolan declined to be fooled. He disdained the first two balls, and the crowd began to shout for a free pass.

Then Lefty whipped over a good one, following it with a whizzer with a perplexing jump just before it reached the pan. But the batter was there with the goods, and, though he did not strike the horsehide quite squarely, he lashed it out between second and short.

Lewis lunged for it, and his fingers almost touched the sphere, but not quite. Nolan rounded first to the accompaniment of much joyful clamor.

And now came Fargo, the man who knew Locke’s methods better than any other on the team. The southpaw worked him with the utmost care, pitching as he had never pitched before; and then, just as he fancied he had the backstop in a hole, Buck suddenly and unexpectedly bunted, sending the ball rolling slowly toward first.

Lefty got the sphere, but secured it in bad position to throw. Without attempting to straighten up, he jerked it past Fargo, who was making the final long strides for the sack.

Grant should have caught it, for the throw was good. Perhaps he was too confident. Perhaps there was no excuse at all, for even Big League players make errors of that sort now and then. At all events, he dropped the ball. The spectators fairly made the stands shake with their raucous joy.

“Hit it out!” they shrieked. “Smash it on the nose! Here’s where we get two runs and the game!”

Pollock did his best, but only succeeded in sending up a high fly into short center which the fielder secured with ease. Then Johnny Burns hurried up, eager to help things along, and confident that he could do it.

Lefty felt that the man was positively itching to hit. He could read it in the fellow’s face and manner, and he determined to play upon the batter’s eagerness. A high drop across Burns’ shoulder deceived him, but did not shake his confidence. It was followed by another high ball, which was, however, an inshoot, and again the Hornet fielder missed.

“Hit it, Johnny!” pleaded the local fans. “Don’t let him fool you. Smash it out.”

“Fan him!” shrieked the Blue Stockings’ supporters wildly, their hopes beginning to rise again. “Fan him, Lefty! You’ve got to do it.”

Lefty hesitated a second, his face cool and impenetrable, the muscles of his jaw sharply defined. He felt that the batter would expect him to try a coaxer; for, with no balls called, most pitchers would feel that they could afford to waste one or two.

He glanced round, his foot on the slab. When he turned back, he pitched without the slightest preliminary swing, sending over a high, straight, speedy ball. It had been his object to catch Burns unprepared, and he succeeded. The batter struck a second too late, and the ball spanked into Nelson’s glove.

“Out!” called the umpire.

But the word was not heard because of the deafening roar which rose from the delighted visitors.

Lefty was scarcely conscious of the turmoil. It sounded faint and far away, like the beating of breakers on a rocky coast, and mingled insensibly with the words he was saying over and over to himself:

“One more! Only one more! I must get him—I’ve got to!”

He dared not risk a glance at that upper box. The moment was too tense. And yet in his mind he pictured the girl leaning breathlessly over the railing, her tiny gloved hands clasped rigidly together, her face a little pale, her violet eyes wide open and almost black with excitement. She must not be disappointed—she should not!

How Sandy Rollins missed the first ball he reached for was something he never understood. When he struck, he felt absolutely certain that he would meet it full upon the trademark. His failure brought a ludicrous expression of surprise to his face.

The Blue Stockings’ rooters yelled madly. Most of them were on their feet now, staring down into the diamond. The opposing fans, beginning to lose hope, divided their efforts between hurling caustic comments at the batter and trying to break the pitcher up.

In this latter attempt they were unsuccessful. Locke paid absolutely no attention to them. It is doubtful whether he was conscious of their presence. He was not faltering now. He was wasting no time, yet he did not hurry. He put over an erratic curve that fooled Rollins even more than had the first one. Indeed, the ball seemed actually to dodge the bat as the Hornets’ baseman slashed at it.

Another roar went up which drowned the umpire’s voice. Nolan, quivering with eagerness, held himself ready to run, working off third. Lefty drove him back.

A hush settled upon the field. It almost seemed as if each little human atom of the thousands which overflowed the wide sweep of stand and bleacher had ceased to breathe. Even the coachers were silent for the instant—and Locke pitched.

Rollins’ judgment told him that the ball would cut a corner when it broke. He was not mistaken. It came over; but, instead of crossing the outside corner, as he expected, it took such a sharp, amazing shoot over the inside that the batter missed cleanly.

“Out!” shouted the umpire, flinging up one hand.

CHAPTER XLVI
HOW IT ALL HAPPENED

Cheer after cheer went up from the throng of visiting fans. Hats and canes and newspapers were thrown into the air with careless abandon. Men brought their fists down on shoulders and heads of persons they had never seen before; and these persons merely pushed out the tops of crushed derbies, and grinned.

Down from the stands they poured like a cataract, yelling Locke’s name. They caught and surrounded him before he could flee to the shelter of the clubhouse.

Jack Stillman was one of the first to reach the field. Though he longed to hurry over to Lefty and shake his friend’s hand, there was something more important which must be done first. He headed straight for Brennan, who, with gloomy countenance, was about to leave the field.

“Wait a second, Jim,” the reporter called swiftly. “I’ve got something to tell you. You fired Lefty Locke because you thought he was a quitter,” he went on when they came together.

“You needn’t rub it in,” snapped the sorely tried manager. “If that’s all you’ve got to say—”

“It isn’t,” returned Stillman quickly. “Locke said he never wrote that fake telegram which called him away from Ashland the day of the game he was to pitch. He told the truth. It was sent by one of his own teammates, who hated him and wanted to put him in bad.”

“What?” exploded the stocky manager. “I don’t believe it!”

The reporter pulled a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Brennan. “There’s the proof,” he said quietly.

The manager jerked it open and cast his eyes hurriedly down the sheet. Wrath clouded his face.

“Elgin!” he growled throwing back his head. “Where is he? Just let me— Hey, you Elgin! Come here!”

His voice and manner had drawn several curious players near, among them Buck Fargo. The disgruntled pitcher, hearing his name uttered in that tone, came reluctantly over, expecting a call-down for his work on the slab. What followed was totally unexpected.

“You can pack!” Brennan snapped, eying the fellow with a look of scathing contempt. “I’m going to send you down to the ‘Lobsters.’ They want a pitcher, and they can have you—for keeps, if I can’t sell you.” The Lobsters were a much scoffed-at minor league club.

Elgin’s jaw dropped and his face flamed scarlet. “You’re going to send me down to the—the Lobsters?” he stammered.

“I am. I’ve found out the dirty trick you played on Locke in Ashland, and I wouldn’t have a scoundrel like you on my team if you was the best pitcher in the country—which you ain’t, by a long shot.”

For an instant the pitcher stood staring at him, an indescribable expression on his face. He cast a single swift glance at the players standing around. Then, without a word, he turned and walked hastily away through the gathering crowd.

“Good riddance!” growled Brennan.

He stood chewing meditatively on the stub of an unlighted cigar. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders and pushed his way through the crowd to where Lefty and a few of the Blue Stockings were hemmed in by the throng.

“You did a fine job, kid,” he said gruffly, thrusting out a square, stubby hand. “Shake!”

Without hesitation Lefty gripped his fingers. Brennan’s treatment had caused him some bitter hours, but this was no time to harbor resentment. The short manager turned to Kennedy, his mouth twisted in a wry smile.

“You can kick me good and hard, Ken,” he said. “I sure fell flat on this deal.” His eyes twinkled, and the smile broadened to a grin. “I sort of think this boy belongs to me. I had the first rights to him, and I reckon I’ll pull him back now.”

“Not if I know it!” laughed Kennedy. “You were thick enough to release him unconditionally. He belongs to me now, and you bet he’s going to stay.”

But old Jack could not foresee the approaching wave of change that was to leave him stranded as a baseball manager. Nor was Lefty Locke, in spite of the splendid beginning he had made, to find it all fair sailing in the Big League. With Kennedy retired and Lefty missing, following his suspension by the new manager, the Blue Stockings were destined to have their troubles in the fight for the pennant. How old Jack and the young southpaw star returned to the field of battle barely in time to save the day is dramatically told in “Lefty o’ the Blue Stockings,” the third volume of The Big League Series.

Brennan chuckled a little over Kennedy’s retort, and then turned to Lefty, his face suddenly serious.

“I’ve found out about that fake telegram,” he said, in a low tone. “Jack Stillman ferreted out the truth, and the Hornets won’t have any further use for Elgin.”

He walked away without waiting for a reply, leaving Lefty almost bewildered at the events which were coming so thick and fast. In the midst of everything, however, he kept thinking of Janet and wondering whether there was any possible chance of her coming down upon the field.

The question was swiftly answered by the appearance of Jack Stillman, elbowing his way through the crowd.

“Some pitching for a starter in the Big League, old man,” he laughed, his face glowing; “you were pretty fair! I can’t keep you now, though; there’s somebody over by the stand who wants a word with you. See you in the clubhouse, later.”

Taking his friend by the arm, he piloted him through the throng, now beginning to stream toward the gates, to a point from which he could see the girl he had been thinking about so much. She stood near one of the lower boxes of the center stand, a slim, graceful figure in a blue tailor-made gown. At a little distance her friends were gathered, watching the animated scene interestedly.

Janet herself was talking earnestly to Buck Fargo, but her eyes were quick to spy out Lefty as he approached. The glad smile she gave him was something to be treasured long in his memory.

“Lefty!” she exclaimed, in a low voice, which vibrated with emotion. She took a quick step forward; their hands met. “I can’t tell you how glad and proud I am—and sorry.”

The man held her hands for an instant. His face was puzzled.

“Sorry?” he repeated. “What have I done to make you sorry?”

Her lovely eyes were fixed earnestly on his. Fargo had slipped away.

“Nothing,” she returned hastily. “What you have done is splendid—wonderful! It’s what I did that makes me sorry. Mr. Fargo has just told me everything, and I hate myself when I think how I—liked that dreadful Mr. Elgin—and tried to make you friends, and—and—”

She stopped abruptly and bit her lip. Lefty looked around. Never before had he detested a crowd with such intensity. His eyes flashed back to hers, and something in their expression brought a vivid rush of crimson flaming to her face.

“You mustn’t think about it,” he urged softly. “You weren’t to blame, and, anyway, it’s all over now. Everything’s turned out right. Please forget it.”

His fingers tightened about hers. Her lids drooped. They had forgotten the crowd pouring out of the field. The clatter and tramp in the swiftly thinning stands, the last few cheers from the departing rooters, fell upon deaf ears. In that single moment they were conscious of nothing else in the whole wide world but just each other.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

Inconsistent hyphenation and compound words were made consistent only when a predominant form was found.