LEFTY O’ THE BLUE STOCKINGS

THERE WAS A SHARP, CLEAN CRACK, AND THE HORSEHIDE WENT HUMMING INTO THE OUTFIELD.

LEFTY
O’ THE BLUE STOCKINGS

BY

BURT L. STANDISH

Author of “Lefty o’ the Bush,” “Lefty o’ the Big
League,” “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 | The Unlucky Seventh | 11
II | Stopping a Rally | 19
III | Tied In the Eighth | 24
IV | Real Pitching | 33
V | One For Lefty | 39
VI | A Summons from the Manager | 45
VII | A Girl and the Girl | 52
VIII | At the Theater | 59
IX | “In Bad” | 68
X | The Grouch | 78
XI | On the Raw Edge | 85
XII | Uncertainty | 90
XIII | Suspense | 96
XIV | A Wild Heave | 102
XV | Thrown Away | 108
XVI | Hot Words | 113
XVII | The Unapproachable Locke | 120
XVIII | Under a Cloud | 127
XIX | The Stranger | 136
XX | The Retired Manager | 144
XXI | Back In the Game | 150
XXII | Building Up the Team | 155
XXIII | The Man Who Denied Himself | 161
XXIV | Perplexed | 167
XXV | Stranger Gets a Job | 173
XXVI | Mighty Queer | 179
XXVII | Did He Remember? | 184
XXVIII | A New Pitcher | 192
XXIX | At the Field | 199
XXX | Baseball Luck | 206
XXXI | Pitchers’ Waterloo | 212
XXXII | Filling the Breach | 218
XXXIII | The Man on the Mound | 222
XXXIV | The Other Pitcher | 227
XXXV | The Steal Home | 233
XXXVI | Stranger Is Annoyed | 238
XXXVII | The Doctor’s Doubts | 244
XXXVIII | First Position | 249
XXXIX | A Troubled Mind | 256
XL | The Reporter | 262
XLI | The Man Who Knew | 266
XLII | Failure | 271
XLIII | The Come-back | 274
XLIV | Back to His Own | 280
XLV | The Girls In the Box | 287
XLVI | The Game of His Life | 292

LEFTY O’ THE BLUE STOCKINGS

CHAPTER I
THE UNLUCKY SEVENTH

It was “Bush” Aldrich, of the Specters, who started the trouble by smashing out a two-base hit in the seventh. Bush was one of the latest acquisitions of that hard-hitting, snappy, scrappy aggregation of Big League talent which had fought its way into the first division, and was giving last season’s pennant winners, the Blue Stockings, a decidedly uncomfortable time holding their all too scanty lead.

Bush had already shown his ability to stay with fast company by getting two clean singles off Grist, the Blue Stocking twirler, but fine fielding had prevented either bingle from being effective. Now, however, with one out, and a man on first and third, either through luck or cleverness, he hit again at the psychological moment to cause a break in the hard-fought game.

Grist, sure that he had fathomed the youngster’s weakness, tried his sharp outdrop, which had pulled the right fielder more than once before. This time, however, Aldrich was ready for it. Poising a bat that was a bit longer than any he had used before, he stepped in as the ball curved and smote it a crack which brought half the spectators in the crowded stands to their feet with a concerted gasp of dismay.

As the sphere whistled out on a line, Larry Dalton, the Blue Stocking second baseman, flung up his hands in a ludicrous gesture of despair. Brock, the slim, speedy center fielder, had already turned his back on the home plate, and was flying toward the fence like a deer that has heard the whistling whine of a hunter’s bullet. Unfortunately, the ball held up better than he expected, and, though he strained every nerve, he saw that there was little chance to make the catch.

With a last desperate spurt, he launched himself through the air like a catapult, both hands outstretched. The horsehide struck the ends of his fingers, and a despairing groan rose from the staring fans as it fell to the ground and rolled to one side.

Brock snatched it up, and whipped it back into the diamond. Bugs Murray was just jogging over the plate. Logie, the Specter shortstop, had rounded second, and was flying toward third, urged on by staccato promptings from the coaching line. Aldrich was fairly tearing up the ground between first and second. As the sphere came whirling toward the waiting Dalton’s eager hands, Bush slid.

The umpire, squatting to watch the play, put his hand out, palm downward; and another groan arose from the stands, punctuated, by protesting yells and bitter comment.

“They’re gone!” shouted the Specter captain joyously. “They’re up in the air! Hit her on the nose, Rowdy; you can do it!”

Kenyon, the visitors’ clever second baseman, pranced, grinning, to the plate, seemingly inspired with new life. Grist caught the ball deftly, apparently undisturbed by the unfortunate break. As he paused to drive Logie back to third, however, he discovered that Carson, the new manager, had left the coaching line and returned to the bench, from which he could get an accurate view of the entire field.

“He needn’t worry,” muttered the pitcher to himself, as he turned back to face the smiling batter. “We’re still one run to the good, and this little flurry is going to have the kibosh put on it right here and now.”

He had little fear of Kenyon doing anything; so far Rowdy’s hitting had been of a decidedly negligible quality. Perhaps it was this touch of unconscious carelessness which proved Pete Grist’s undoing; perhaps it was due simply to the mysterious hitting streak which comes at the most unexpected times, and without apparent reason. At all events, after playing the waiting game to the last moment, Kenyon finally smashed a sizzler through the short field, scoring Logie, and himself reaching first by a great sprint.

Instantly the entire Specter visiting team began openly to rejoice:

“Up in a balloon!” “Got him going!” “Here’s where we lock it up in a valise!” “Murder it, Ted, old man!” “Laminate it! Only one down, you know.”

A low, concerted growl began to sound from the spectators who crowded the stands. Ready to shout themselves hoarse for a man pitching a winning game, their displeasure was even more swift, and quite without mercy. Here and there a shrill voice bawled admonition and biting criticism, which sounded above the barking chorus of the Blue Stocking infield:

“Get into him, Pete, old man!”

“Kill him, old boy! You can do it!”

“Warp ’em round his neck!”

A spot of red glowed dully in each tanned cheek as Grist dug his copper toe clip into the earth and cuddled the ball under his chin. The sudden yelping from his teammates told the pitcher that they were not sure of him. They were seeking to brace him up, as if he had been a raw recruit instead of the bright particular star of the Blue Stocking pitching staff. Moreover his quick eye had not failed to notice the hasty appearance of two men from the sheltered players’ bench, who loped off to the right, shedding sweaters as they went.

There are times when it takes very little to upset the equilibrium of the most seasoned twirler, and apparently this was one of them. For six innings Grist had pitched an almost errorless game, and there was every reason why he should do his best to finish it.

Dillon was laid up, Bill Orth had a bad shoulder, and both Reilly and Lumley were notoriously independable at a moment like this. There was Lefty Locke, to be sure, but the thought of this brilliant young southpaw who had, in a few short months, pushed his way upward until he rivaled Grist himself in the esteem of players and fans alike, made the older pitcher squirm inwardly, and brought a dogged, determined expression to his face.

A moment later there was a crack, a yell of joy from the Specters, a groan from the despairing fans. In spite of his self-control, a smothered gasp of dismay burst from Grist’s lips. Knowing Red Callahan’s impetuosity, he had tried to tempt him with a teasing outdrop. That he managed to connect with it was probably quite as much a surprise to the sorrel-topped third baseman as to anyone; but connect he did in beautiful style, smashing out a single which sent Aldrich across the rubber with the leading run.

Above the uproar of hoots and yells and catcalls from the stands, the new manager, half rising to signal Orth to go into the box, heard a sound he had rather been expecting for the past few minutes:

“Carson! One moment!”

It was the sharp, incisive voice of the Blue Stockings’ owner, who sat with his daughter in one of the boxes just behind the bench, and there was an imperative note in it which brought the manager hurrying in that direction.

“Did you call me, Mr. Collier?” he asked, as he reached the box.

The tall, broad-shouldered, keen-faced man bent swiftly over the railing.

“I did,” he replied, in a low tone. “Grist is going to pieces. Why don’t you take him out?”

“I was just going to. I’ve had Orth warming up for three or four minutes.”

Charles Collier frowned. “Orth!” he exclaimed. “But his shoulder’s lame. This is no time to put in a cripple. Why don’t you use your southpaw, Locke?”

“He pitched a hard game yesterday and—”

“And won it,” interrupted the owner swiftly.

“Quite so; but my idea was not to work him too hard,” returned the manager suavely. “Of course, if you wish it—”

“I do. In my opinion he’s the only man who can stop the break and pull things together. He’s got the measure of every one of these fellows. I don’t think you need worry about three innings hurting his arm.”

“Very well,” said Carson. “I’ll send him out there at once.”

His expression was bland and pleasant, but the instant his back was turned he frowned. “Butting in as soon as this, are you?” he muttered, striding toward the bench. “Picked a favorite already, too. I s’pose Pete’ll be sore as a crab, but it can’t be helped. Locke!”

There was a quick movement, and from the players’ bench appeared a tall, lithe, cleanly built, long-armed youngster of twenty-three or so, his cap pushed back on a mass of heavy, dark brown hair, a look of inquiry in his keen, brown eyes.

“Want me?”

“Yes,” said Carson sharply. “Get into the box as quick as you can. I meant to use Orth, but his shoulder’s bad. You’ll have to go in without warming up. And hold ’em, kid. We can’t afford to lose this game, you know.”

Lefty had already yanked off his sweater. Even as the manager finished, he caught the glove tossed out by the second catcher.

“I’ll do my best,” he returned, jerking his cap forward over his eyes.

An instant later he was walking out upon the diamond with a lithe, springy stride which told of splendid muscles under perfect control. And as he came into view of the grandstand, the hoots and yells lessened swiftly, merging with amazing abruptness into a shout of delight, accompanied by a thunderous stamping of feet.

“Oh, you Lefty!” shrieked the fans fondly. “Oh, you kiddo! Kill ’em! Eat ’em alive! Nothin’ doin’ now, Specters. Good night for yours!”

CHAPTER II
STOPPING A RALLY

By dint of playing for time, and putting over a couple of wide ones, Pete Grist had prevented Forbes, the Specter left fielder, from adding to the damage already done. Knowing that he would be taken out, he had the wit to seize every possible chance to delay the game, and thus run no risk of making any further errors.

He supposed, however, that his successor would be Orth, whom he had seen start to warm up a few minutes before. When Lefty appeared on the field amid the delighted roars of the spectators, Grist’s face turned a brick red, and for a second or two he looked as if he could have committed murder with the greatest possible enjoyment.

It is provoking enough, in all conscience, for a pitcher to have to leave the box on account of bad control. But to be superseded by a youngster whose Big League experience is limited to a few months, yet who, in that time, had set the fans yelling for him as if he were a Mathewson, is sufficiently humiliating to stir the mildest man to wrath.

Mildness was not Pete Grist’s long suit, nor was this the first time he had writhed in the grip of the green-eyed monster. As Locke reached him his face was like a thundercloud. He fairly flung the ball at the southpaw, and, without a word, turned on his heel and strode toward the bench.

Lefty stood for an instant staring after him, a touch of sympathy in his eyes. He knew from experience precisely how it felt to be benched under such circumstances.

“Tough luck,” he murmured, as he mounted the hill. “I don’t blame him for being sore. I would myself.”

Directly, however, he had thrust the disgruntled pitcher from his mind, and was bringing all his skill and cunning to bear on the task before him. He knew the importance of winning the game to-day. It was one of those close seasons, with three teams fighting like bulldogs for first place.

At first the struggle had seemed to lie between the Blue Stockings and their old-time rivals, the Hornets. Well into July these two organizations had it nip and tuck, and the Blue Stockings had no sooner forged definitely ahead than they were menaced by the speedy Specters, who were playing this year as they had never played before. Back and forth they zigzagged, until at length the Blue Stockings, thanks in no small measure to the astonishing work of their young southpaw wonder, managed to accumulate a scanty lead, and hold it by the skin of their teeth.

If they could only manage to pull through this series in good shape, they could afford to lose a game or two of the return series, and still enter on the last Western circuit with a slight advantage.

Lefty lined a few to Dirk Nelson, and, having found the plate, nodded to the batter, who stepped up to the rubber again. The Blue Stockings’ owner had been right in saying that Locke had taken the measure of the opposing team. The ability to size up swiftly and accurately a batter’s strong and weak points, likes and dislikes, was something which had contributed much to the southpaw’s extraordinary success. He believed he knew the sort of ball Forbes could not hit safely; and promptly, though without any appearance of haste, he proceeded to hand it up.

To the delight of the fans, the batter missed. The second one he fouled. Then he let two go by. Finally he missed again, having been fooled at last by a sudden change of pace and a slow drop when he expected speed. As he sauntered toward the bench in elaborate affectation of indifference, the spectators chortled gleefully, while a ripple of returning confidence swept over the Blue Stocking players.

“Never mind that!” cried Murray, the visitors’ captain, from the coaching line. “Get off that hassock, Rowdy. On your toes! Now, Jim, let’s have one of the old-timers mother used to make.”

Donovan, the famous Specter twirler, was also a clever stickman. During the past season his hitting average had been little short of the three-hundred mark, and he was especially noted for helping along a streak of luck. He walked up to the plate, bat swinging nonchalantly, on his face that confident grin which annoys many a pitcher who pretends that he is not disturbed.

Lefty eyed him coolly for an instant; then his eyes dropped to where Nelson crouched, giving a signal. He shook his head. With some slight reluctance, the catcher responded by calling for another ball, and shifted his position the barest trifle. A second later the sphere came whistling, with a slight inswerve, across the batter’s shoulders. Forbes’ bat found nothing but empty air.

“Str-r-rike!” called the umpire, flinging up his right hand.

“Look out for those, Jim,” called Murray. “Make ’em be good!”

Donovan let the next one pass. It was a ball. Then followed a slow one, delivered with a swing and snap that fooled the batter into striking before the lingering, tantalizing horsehide was within reach.

Donovan frowned and regained his balance, annoyed slightly by the burst of raucous delight from the stands. When he faced the pitcher again the grin still curved his lips, but it had grown somewhat thin.

Silence settled over the field. Ten thousand straining eyes were turned anxiously on the quiet figure in the pitcher’s box.

Lefty’s hand drew back slowly, cuddling the ball for a second as he poised himself on one foot. Then, like a flash, his long left arm swung flail like through the air.

The ball was high—almost too high, it seemed at first. But suddenly it flashed downward past Donovan’s shoulders, and across his breast. Too late the batter saw it drop, and tried weakly to hit. There was a swish, a plunk, and—

“Batter’s out!” bawled the umpire.

CHAPTER III
TIED IN THE EIGHTH

“Pretty work,” commented a blond young man on the reporter’s bench, pushing back his rakish green hat. “There’s one thing about Locke, you can always bank on his using his head. He certainly stopped that rally in great shape.”

“Huh!” grunted the stout, bald man beside him. “I can’t see anything very wonderful in that.” He took off his glasses, and began to polish them. “It don’t take any extraordinary amount of skill to outguess Forbes, and Donovan’s never very dangerous to a pitcher who knows him.”

“Oh, come now, Eckstein,” protested the blond reporter. “Jim’s no slouch at the bat, and you know it. What have you got against Locke, anyhow?”

Eckstein replaced his glasses, and yawned. “Nothing special, Dyer,” he drawled. “I’ve been too long in the business, though, to lose my head over every infant phenom who butts into the Big League. More than half of ’em can’t keep up the pace they set themselves at first.”

“I’ll bet Locke does,” Dyer said energetically. “He’s got too much sense to use himself up the way some of the cubs do. He plays the game for all there is in it, but he plays it with his head even more than with that corking portside hooker of his. Anyhow, he’s the Blue Stockings’ one best bet this season, take it from me, Eck. Only for him they’d be in the second division, with all this monkey business of new owner and new manager right in the middle of the season. That plays hob with a team even if the old manager’s a bum, which Jack Kennedy wasn’t, by a long shot. By the way, Eck, where’s he gone?”

“Who? Kennedy?” grunted the stout man, his eyes fixed on the diamond. “Back to his farm, I reckon. He’s got one somewhere in the Middle West.—Pretty work, Jim. That’s the way to pull ’em.”

With a sudden flush at the realization that he had missed a trick, the young reporter hastily subsided, and turned his attention to the diamond. Whatever might be said of Jim Donovan’s hitting ability, no fault could be found with his skill in the box. Encouraged by the success of the last inning, he evidently realized that it was up to him to see that the Specters kept their lead of one run, and the result was an exhibition of clever pitching.

Dirk Nelson, the Blue Stocking backstop, was beguiled into popping to second. Jack Daly, unsurpassed as a third baseman, but an erratic stickman, fanned ignominiously. It looked as if Lefty would follow Daly’s example, but, with two and two called, he connected with a tricky drop, and beat the ball to first by a hair. Taking a good lead, he went down on the second ball pitched to Spider Grant. It was effort wasted, however, for the Blue Stocking first baseman presently fouled out back of third. This brought the inning to an abrupt termination, amid much rejoicing on the part of the visitors, and low grumbling from the disappointed fans.

“Well,” said Dyer defensively, “it was the tail end of the list. Anyhow, Locke got a hit.”

Eckstein chuckled. It amused the veteran newspaper man to note the violent fancies and prejudices of callow cub reporters.

“Still harping on the virtues of your miraculous southpaw?” he smiled. “I’ll ask you just one question, Dyer: If he’s such a triple-plated wonder, how did Jim Brennan, of the Hornets, come to release him outright? I never yet knew the hard-headed old vet to let any ten-thousand-dollar beauties slip through his fingers.”

“Still something to learn, Eck, strange as that may seem,” drawled a voice, before Dyer had time to answer. “Squeeze up a bit, and give a chap some room.”

A leg was thrust over the back of the seat, followed swiftly by another, and, as Eckstein’s eyes lighted upon the tanned and freckled face of the newcomer, his own face expanded in a fat smile.

“Well, well, well!” he chuckled, thrusting out a plump hand. “Back to the treadmill, eh? Have a good vacation?”

“Fine!” returned Jack Stillman, settling down between the two. “How are you, Dyer? Spent ten days up in the woods about a thousand miles away from anywhere, and then I began to get worried for fear this understudy of mine wasn’t sending the dope in right. How about it, kid? Old man have any kicks?”

“A few,” grunted the cub reporter. “He’d kick if he had the Angel Gabriel writing up games.”

“You bet he would!” laughed Stillman. “Swell lot Gabriel knows about baseball. Did I hear you running down my friend Locke?” he went on, turning to Eckstein. “Oh, I know you didn’t mean anything personal. It’s just your pessimistic mind, that can’t see anything good in a youngster. Well, let me tell you what Jim Brennan said the last time I saw him, which was about three weeks ago. ‘Jack,’ he said—it was after that last game of the series with the Blue Stockings when the Hornets got the pants licked off ’em—‘Jack,’ he said, ‘don’t send this to your paper, but if ever there was a dumb one manhandling a baseball team I’m it. I’d give two of my best men to have Lefty Locke back again. If I hadn’t been such a thick-headed dope as to let him go, the Hornets wouldn’t be where they are to-day. No, sir! They’d be at the top of the heap, with that position just about nailed. That boy’s a wonder. It makes me sick at the stomach every time I think he might be on my payroll to-day just as well as not.’ That’s going pretty strong for old sorrel-top, isn’t it?”

“A trifle,” Eckstein returned. “Well, why did he let him go? There must have been some mighty good reason.”

“There was. A rotten sneak named Elgin—a Princeton man, by the way, and a disgrace to the college—had it in for Lefty, and turned every dirty trick he could think of to put Locke in bad with Brennan. He succeeded temporarily, but he got his at last. After Brennan released him Lefty went to the Blue Stockings, and of course the first time Jim ran up against them he realized how he’d been fooled. It all came out, and he sent Elgin back into Class C with the Lobsters. I’ve heard Elgin didn’t even stay there, but is pitching back in the bush, which, if true, is good enough for him.

“By Jove! See that drop? Fooled him nicely, didn’t it?”

If Donovan was on his mettle, the opposing southpaw was in equally fine trim. In the first of the eighth only four men faced him, in spite of the fact that the heavy hitters were coming up again.

“Don’t seem to have lost any of his cunning,” smiled Stillman, as the Blue Stockings romped in from the field like colts. “Things appear to have been didding while I was gone,” he went on in a lower tone to Eckstein. “I knew Collier was dickering for the team, but I thought he’d hold off till the end of the season. And what in thunder does he mean by canning a manager like Jack Kennedy?”

The stout man shrugged his shoulders. “Collier got the idea that the team wasn’t pulling well. He seemed to think that was Kennedy’s fault.”

“Bah!” snapped Stillman. “What could Kennedy do with his hands tied? I know for a fact that when he wanted to get rid of a certain trouble-maker who was keeping the boys riled up all the time, Beach, the old owner, put his foot down, and wouldn’t let him. And what’s Al Carson ever done, anyhow, that he should supersede an experienced man like Kennedy?”

“Not much,” admitted Eckstein.

“Nor ever will. He’s one of those promising characters who’s always promising and never making good. Collier has sure picked a lemon this time, and it wouldn’t surprise me a lot if it cost him dear.

“Now, fellows, get busy, and hammer out a couple of runs. Only need one to tie, and two to win.”

All over the great stands men were rooting for runs—begging, pleading, crying for them. As Donovan stepped into his box a perfect bedlam of hoots and catcalls arose, but he was too old a bird to be affected in the least by this sort of thing. To win the game it was only necessary to hold the Blue Stockings for this inning and the next, and the clever Specter twirler looked as if shutting out his opponents was, at this precise moment, merely a matter of time with him.

In baseball, as in many other things, it never pays to discount the future; which is just as well, for otherwise a good deal of thrill and excitement would be lost. The best players are certain sometimes to make mistakes, and countless games have been won or lost by little slips, so small as to pass unnoticed by the majority of spectators.

Rufe Hyland, well known as a “waiter,” was the first man up. In spite of the frantic urgings of the excited fans to “Slug it out!” he delayed until he had three and two on him. Finally he hit between first and second. He should have been an easy victim at first, but, for some unaccountable reason, Rowdy Kenyon juggled the ball, and then threw low, dragging Murray off the sack.

For a moment or two the entire infield resounded with sulphurous comment. When Donovan faced the next batter he was still flushed with irritation. He took revenge by fanning Larry Dalton, but during that process Hyland managed to steal second, a proceeding which did not tend to increase the pitcher’s good humor.

Nevertheless, he retained a perfect grip on his feelings, and exerted his skill so well that Herman Brock whiffed fruitlessly at three balls in succession.

It happened, however, that Joe Welsh, who followed, was one of the most dependable hitters in the Blue Stocking organization. His specialty was neither home runs nor three-baggers, but his skill at placing the ball had long been a source of comfort to his fellow-players. As he faced the plate, Hyland edged off second as far as he dared, and when Joe connected with the third ball pitched Rufe shot down the line like a streak.

Due, no doubt, to Donovan’s skill, this was one of the rare occasions that Welsh slipped up. He had intended to dump the pill into the diamond by a bunt, but he succeeded only in sending it spinning erratically just inside the third-base line.

Like a flash the Specter backstop raced out, snatched at it, fumbled horribly, and then, in an effort to get Hyland, threw four feet over the third baseman’s head. By the time the left fielder, slow in backing up, had secured the sphere, and lined it back to the plate, Hyland had one foot on the rubber. And the delirious fans were shrieking themselves speechless.

CHAPTER IV
REAL PITCHING

“Talk about horseshoes!” grinned Stillman, when the first mad uproar had begun to lessen. “That’s the greatest ever. Looks as if the boys had a mighty good chance of cinching the game now.”

Manager Carson had emerged from the obscurity of the bench, and was on the coaching line again. Over by first base Captain Grant was capering about, a broad grin on his face.

“Going up, going up, going up!” he chanted to the air of a popular ditty. “Tied her nicely, but we won’t stop there. You know what to do, Kid. Beat it off that cushion, Joe!”

Kid Lewis hustled to the plate, and Welsh pranced away from the sack, ready to go down on the first slim chance. Unfortunately for the Blue Stockings, Donovan seemed unaffected by the two blazing errors which had permitted the locals to even up the tally. Instead of going to pieces, he tightened up wonderfully, holding Welsh at first, and fanning the batter with swiftness and dispatch.

As the Blue Stockings took the field for the opening of the ninth the fans were on tiptoe with excitement. If Lefty could hold the visitors down, there remained a chance for the home team to break the deadlock in the last half. Could he hold them?

Bush Aldrich was the first man up. The crowd remembered vividly what Bush had done to Pete Grist. Besides, the batters who followed were none of them slouches. As Locke walked briskly across the diamond the stands echoed with encouraging, beseeching shouts. Then a sudden, tense silence fell upon the great inclosure.

Calm and steady, Lefty stepped into the box. He paused a second, his eyes on the batter, and then handed up a high one. Aldrich started to strike, but checked himself, and a ball was called. Then the southpaw tried an outcurve. Bush still declined to bite.

“That’s right, Bush,” cried Murray. “Make him put ’em over. He’s got to.”

An elusive drop followed, which Aldrich barely missed. The next ball looked good, and he hit it. It was a line drive to right, which Rufe Hyland should have taken with ease, instead of muffing. Aldrich stretched himself, and reached the initial sack a second before the ball, quickly recovered and thrown by the discomfited fielder, spanked into Spider Grant’s mitt.

There was a groan from the fans, a spasm of joy from the Specter coachers. Rowdy Kenyon hurried to the plate. True to his record as a waiter, he prolonged the agony till the last moment, during which time Aldrich, upholding the reputation of his team for being “ghosts on the bases,” got down to second. Finally the visiting infielder hit a weak scratch between second and short, on which he reached first by great sprinting. A wave of tense uneasiness swept over the field.

Lefty’s eyes narrowed the least bit; his jaw seemed to tighten. In a few minutes, through no fault of his, the situation had changed from easy security to uncertain hazard. With none out, and a man on third, every bit of judgment and skill he possessed was needed to save the day. Driving Aldrich back with a threatening motion, he turned his attention to Callahan, and the impetuous Specter Irishman, after fouling twice, failed to touch a speedy shoot that clipped a corner.

A gasp of relief came from the stands, but lapsed swiftly into tense silence; for this was an admirable opportunity to try the squeeze play, and evidently from the way John Forbes held his bat he meant to do his part.

The infield crept into the diamond, balancing on their toes, alert and ready. Lefty pitched, and almost as soon as the ball left his hand he was on the jump. Forbes shortened his bat, and chopped one down the foul line straight into the flying pitcher’s glove on the first bound. Lefty Locke flashed it to third. But, for some reason, Aldrich had faltered, and now he dove back to the sack in time to save himself.

“Safe!” bawled the umpire, his flat hand extended.

The decision brought an avalanche of hoots and yells and taunting insults down upon his head, but he stuck to it; and when the fans settled back to take count their hearts sank within them. With the bases full and only one out, the situation was not exactly hopeful.

Lefty made short work of Donovan. The visiting pitcher did not touch the ball once, missing the last bender by more than a foot. As he strolled back to the bench, however, there were few sounds of rejoicing. The end of the batting list had been reached. The bases were still densely populated, and Dutch Schwartz, the mighty hitter whose average the year before had come close to equaling that of the amazing Wagner, was sauntering out with his war club.

Apparently he had no weaknesses with the stick, and his ability to outguess pitchers had made him a terror throughout the Big League. Cautious twirlers usually walked him when it was possible to do so at a dangerous time without forcing a run; but, even had he wished to do it, such a course was not open to Lefty now.

Whatever anxiety the southpaw might have been feeling, he faced the batter without a tremor. The first ball was a trifle close, and Schwartz let it pass without suffering a penalty. The next, delivered with a long side swing, came over at an odd angle. The batter fouled it, evening up the score.

Lefty then tried an underhanded delivery that was productive of another foul. Then the big Specter center fielder refused to nibble at a coaxer, which evened things once more.

“Two and two,” muttered Stillman on the reporters’ bench. “I wonder if he’ll do it? By Jove! He’s got to!”

With anxious, admiring eyes he watched his friend’s cool, deliberate, yet not in the least dragging, work. Lefty’s perfect control enabled him to bend the ball over the rubber from any angle.

Foul after foul resulted with a nerve-racking regularity which brought the fans to the edges of their seats in tense, breathless suspense.

Three balls were called, but the struggle continued. With each swing of the southpaw’s long arm, Schwartz swung his bat, and the ball caromed off in a foul. One could almost have heard a pin drop in the vast inclosure. Even the raucous voices of the coachers had been momentarily stilled.

The end came at last, suddenly. When it seemed almost certain that Locke had exhausted every trick at his command, the pitcher, with his toe on one end of the slab, stepped straight out to one side with the other foot, and brought his arm over. The ball left his fingers at the moment when his hand seemed to be extended at full reach above his head. Apparently it was not a curve he threw, but from his extended fingers the sphere shot downward on a slant, to cross the outside corner of the plate.

Schwartz struck at it with a sharp, vicious snap—and missed!

CHAPTER V
ONE FOR LEFTY

The roar which went up fairly shook the stands, and testified to a sudden slackening of the tension which had been gripping thousands of loyal fans for the past few minutes. Jack Stillman leaned back in his seat and reached for his cigarette case.

“Pretty smooth,” he said, proffering the case to his companions. “That’s what I call pitching out of a hole, and Phil can sure do it to beat the cars.”

“Phil?” queried the cub reporter quickly. “Oh, you mean Locke. I keep forgetting that isn’t his real name.”

“So do I, to tell the truth,” returned Stillman, drawing in a lungful of smoke. “He took it on account of his father’s prejudice against baseball when he started pitching in the bush last year. When I ran into him this spring in the Hornets’ training camp it was hard as the mischief at first to get used to hearing him called anything but Hazelton. I got over that mighty quick, though, and now it’s just the other way. Well,” he went on, glancing at Eckstein, “if this doesn’t stir the boys up enough to make them hammer out at least one run, they’re not the crowd I take them for.”

From the way things started, it looked very much as if the newspaper man had gauged the Blue Stockings correctly. After having two strikes called, Dirk Nelson reached for one of Donovan’s wide slants, and caught it on the end of his bat for a nice single. The crowd roared, the coachers chattered, and Jack Daly pranced to the plate with every apparent intention of carrying on the good work.

Unfortunately for him, the Specter twirler was not quite ready for the stable. Coolly, and with the consummate skill for which he was famous, he lured Daly into swinging at a deceptive bender, fooled him with a wonderful inshoot, and then, when the batter, grown wary, refused to bite at the doubtful ones, Donovan wound himself up and sent over a curve which cut the heart of the plate.

With two and three called, Daly swung, with all his might. There was a sharp crack, and the ball sailed high in the air, foul back of third base. Dillingham jerked off his mask, and started for it, but Red Callahan’s spikes were already drumming the turf as he raced to get under it. Heedless of the shrill taunts and yells with which the fans sought to make him fumble, he fairly flew over the ground. He made the catch while stretching himself to the utmost, and Daly, flinging down his stick with a muttered exclamation of disgust, slouched toward the bench.

“Never mind that!” cried Grant optimistically. “Only one down, boys. Now, Lefty, old man, get into him! We need a hit. Get off, Dirk! Get going! Drift away from that sack, man! On your toes, now!”

During Daly’s turn at bat Nelson had stolen second, beating the catcher’s throw by a hair, and now he pranced off the hassock, taking every bit of lead he dared. Twice Kenyon darted behind him, compelling the runner to dive back to the cushion, but each time he was up and off again the instant the ball was returned to Donovan.

Lefty stepped up to the plate and stood swinging his bat gently back and forth. The shouts of the excited fans seemed faint and far away. In reality he heard them clearly, and was young enough to be stimulated a little by this evidence of faith in his ability. But he showed nothing of this. His mind was occupied solely in trying to fathom what Donovan would be likely to hand him.

The first was an outcurve, and he let it pass. The second was high; evidently Donovan was trying to prevent a bunt. The third also seemed high at first, but Lefty’s quick eyes saw it begin to drop as it neared the plate, and he swung at it.

In spite of his swiftness, however, he was a fraction of a second too late. The ball hit his bat glancingly and caromed at right angles. It struck Locke’s head with force sufficient to make him stagger backward, the stick slipping out of his relaxed fingers.

A sharp, hissing intake of concern swept over the crowded stands. As Lefty reeled, catcher and umpire both leaped forward with outstretched arms; but their aid was unnecessary. The southpaw was conscious of a single brief instant of blackness, which passed like a lightning flash, leaving him a bit dizzy, but otherwise quite himself.

“I’m all right, Spider,” he said quickly, as the Blue Stocking captain rushed up and slipped an arm about him. “It was only a glancing tap.”

“Are you sure?” persisted Grant anxiously. “Hadn’t you better lay off, and let me run someone else in to bat for you?”

Lefty laughed aloud, and took his stick from Dillingham. “Not on your life!” he retorted emphatically. “Think I’m going to quit now?”

As if to prove that the accident amounted to nothing, he shook off the captain’s detaining hand, stepping quickly back to the rubber. The fans shouted their relief and their appreciation of Lefty’s nerve. Donovan’s face wore a slightly strained look. Though no stretching of the imagination could have laid a shred of blame upon his shoulders, the hitting of a batter often disturbs a pitcher’s nerve. This may have had some effect on his next delivery, or may not. At all events, when Locke swung at the ball in fine shape, there was a sharp, clean crack, and the horsehide went humming into the outfield midway between Aldrich and Schwartz.

With a concerted roar, which eclipsed every sound that had gone before, the great mass of people crowding the stands leaped to their feet, and followed with straining eyes the progress of the tiny sphere of white. Away it sped to the right of deep center, both fielders racing like mad to get under it.

Having a big lead to start with, Nelson was off like a streak of light for third. He had crossed the base, and was being urged on down the home stretch before Schwartz snatched up the horsehide, whirled, and sent it whizzing straight toward the plate, with that wonderful sweep of his powerful arm for which he was famous.

It was a perfect throw. For a second or two thousands of hearts stood still, fearing it would be successful. Locke’s brain and muscle had done its work well, however. An instant before the ball plunked into the catcher’s waiting mitt Nelson flung himself across the rubber in a cloud of dust, and the umpire shouted:

“Safe!”

CHAPTER VI
A SUMMONS FROM THE MANAGER

Lefty, having rounded first, pulled himself up abruptly, and trotted toward the clubhouse, the whoops and yells of many thousand delirious baseball “bugs” ringing in his ears. A wave of white-clad players surged after him, but Locke had almost reached the gate before the crest of it overtook him. An expression of happy contentment illumined most of the faces. “Laughing” Larry Dalton, the happy-go-lucky, brown-eyed second baseman, was grinning broadly as he flung one arm over the southpaw’s shoulder.

“Pretty punk to-day,” he chuckled. “Can’t hit, or put the ball over—or anything.”

“Perfectly rotten, he is,” chimed in Dirk Nelson, still breathing a bit unevenly from his rapid sprint to the plate. “Carson oughta tie the can on him for the rest of the season.”

Lefty chaffed back, and the whole crowd, laughing and joshing like a lot of kids, pushed into the clubhouse. As they stripped off their soggy uniforms, and scrapped good-naturedly for the showers, they whistled and sang light-heartedly, living over the excitement of those last three innings.

There were one or two exceptions. Some of the Blue Stockings’ old guard had viewed Locke’s swift rise from the ranks with anything but favor. In their opinion it was up to the busher to scrape along in meek and lowly insignificance for a season or two before he leaped into such scintillating prominence in the galaxy of stars. According to them, to “ripen” and acquire baseball sense he should spend some months sitting on the bench and watching the work of the veterans.

Lefty had upset every precedent. At each added laurel won by the southpaw the old-timers shook their heads dubiously, declaring that such a pace could never last, that success would swell the youngster’s head, and making a dozen other pessimistic prophecies, none of which as yet showed signs of coming true.

With the bulk of players Lefty was on the best of terms. He found them a clean, decent crowd of young men, much in love with their profession, somewhat addicted to draw poker and craps as a pastime, but temperate as a rule in most things, generous to a fault, and very likable. Three of them could write letters after their names as well as before, if they chose—which they did not. Some of the others were a bit rough on the surface, perhaps, but deep down underneath were made of the right stuff.

The long, grilling struggle, which began with the opening of the season, had brought them all very close together; and when a crowd of men are fighting shoulder to shoulder day after day, having the same goal, each giving the best that is in him to attain that end, they size up one another’s good points and failings with a thoroughness possible under few other conditions.

The new southpaw stood the test well. In spite of his six generous feet of lithe, well-muscled frame, he was still very much of a boy at heart, with a boy’s adaptability for making friends and a boy’s light-hearted, fun-loving nature.

This did not mean that he lacked the capacity for taking things seriously when the need arose, but he believed thoroughly in relaxing between whiles, and in extracting all possible enjoyment out of life. This trait, helped by a fine baritone voice, quick wit, the ability to “put it over” any member of the club with eight-ounce gloves, and almost as great a skill in coaxing popular airs from the strings of a banjo, made him, within a month, the life of the bunch in Pullmans and hotels on the road, no less than at odd moments of relaxation in the clubhouse at home.

All this was, of course, of small importance compared with his performance on the diamond. After he had proved his efficiency there, however, by snatching victory from defeat in three or four close contests, the majority of his teammates accepted him without question as one who would “do.” The only exceptions were Pete Grist, whose fame as the most reliable member of the Blue Stockings’ pitching staff Lefty was rapidly dimming, and three or four old-timers who formed a little clique among themselves.

“Pipe the old crab!” commented Larry Dalton, as he and Lefty raced in from the showers, and began to get into their street clothes. “Some grouch there, believe me!”

Laughing Larry had stepped from a fresh-water college into professional baseball three years before. Being a natural player, he did not stay long with the minors. In Locke he found a kindred spirit, and the southpaw had not been more than two weeks with the Blue Stockings before the two were chumming it as if they had known each other since the bottle days of infancy.

At his friend’s remark, Lefty glanced sideways at the scowling pitcher, who was dragging on his clothes in taciturn silence.

“Can’t blame him much,” he murmured. “If there’s anything that makes a fellow feel rottener than getting the hook in a game, it hasn’t come my way yet.”

“Especially if the man who’s put in happens to be a guy that’s made good in the same way before,” Dalton grinned.

“Rot!” snorted Lefty, buttoning his shirt. “When Grist’s right he can pitch the pants off any man in the club.”

“Maybe.” Larry’s tone was decidedly skeptical. “I haven’t noticed him putting anything much over you the last month or more. Trouble with him, he’s worrying for fear he’ll lose his reputation of being the one and only genuine old reliable; and when a guy starts in with that sort of ragtime, you can be pretty blamed sure— Well, Colonel, what’s on your mind?”

“Colonel” George Washington Jones, the Blue Stockings’ negro rubber and general handy man, showed his ivories in a glistening smile.

“Mist’ Carson says he done laik to see Mist’ Locke in his office right smart, suh,” he explained.

“All right, Colonel,” Lefty returned briefly from where he was struggling with a refractory collar button. “I’ll be there in about three minutes.”

“Some class there,” Dalton murmured, as the darky hurried away. “When Jack wanted a man he’d stick his head in the door and make the fact known. Nothing like that for this bird, though. First thing you know he’ll be having a bell boy in brass buttons, and one of those ‘Private-no-admission-except-by-appointment’ signs on the door.”

From which it may be gathered that the new manager and his methods had not scored a great hit.

Lefty nodded agreement, and went on tying his scarf. From the first Carson had not appealed to him. The man knew baseball from the ground up—there was no questioning that fact. His ability at handling men, however, was much more doubtful.

Most professional ball players have to be managed with infinite tact and judgment, and, though he kept his mouth shut on the subject, Lefty held the opinion that the qualities which had made Jack Kennedy so successful were lacking to a conspicuous degree in his successor. So far the players had betrayed no signs of a let-down, but Locke had noticed a number of insignificant straws, some no greater than the remark of Laughing Larry, which pointed the direction of the wind pretty accurately.

“I’ll wait for you,” Dalton said, as Locke slipped into his coat and gave it a settling shake. “Cut it as short as you can. Don’t forget we’ve got tickets for the theater to-night.”

Nodding, the southpaw picked up his hat and left the dressing room. As he walked briskly toward the manager’s office he was wondering with no little curiosity what was wanted. Carson could scarcely mean to put him into the box to-morrow, after having pitched him ten innings yesterday and three to-day; and aside from that Lefty could think of nothing which would require a special interview.

CHAPTER VII
A GIRL AND THE GIRL

Pushing open the door in response to a crisp invitation in the manager’s familiar voice, Lefty stopped on the threshold, an expression of surprise in his brown eyes. Then he removed his hat, with a swift, graceful movement.

Carson was not alone. The owner of the club, himself, leaned easily against one side of the desk. Seated in a chair on the other side of the room was one of the prettiest girls the young pitcher had ever seen.

Lefty had only time to see that she was very blond and very tiny, with a pair of wonderful deep-blue eyes, which were fixed on his face from the moment the door opened. Then Charles Collier stepped forward, his hand outstretched.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Locke,” he said heartily, “for pulling us out of a hole this afternoon. It was especially nervy to keep on at the bat after being hit by that ball.”

Lefty smiled as he shook the magnate’s hand. “That little knock didn’t amount to anything,” he protested, in his low, pleasant voice. “It only staggered me for a second.”

“That was lucky,” said Collier. He hesitated, and the pitcher saw his glance flash for a second to the girl in the chair. “This is my daughter,” he went on quickly. “Virginia, this is Mr. Locke, whose pitching you were so enthusiastic about.”

Lefty, turning swiftly to acknowledge the introduction, saw that the girl had risen to her feet and was holding out her hand impulsively.

“I’m glad indeed to meet you, Mr. Locke,” she said, in a pleasant voice, which held an undercurrent of earnestness in it. “I suppose you get very tired of being told how splendid your pitching is, but I can’t help it this time.” She smiled charmingly. “If you could have any idea how utterly thrilled I was during those last three innings, I’m sure you wouldn’t blame me.”

Her eyes, with their long, curling lashes, were really very wonderful, and there was a trace of something in their depths which brought a touch of color glowing under Locke’s healthy tan.

“You’re more than kind, Miss Collier,” he returned. “I don’t think any man really minds being told that he’s done well, but in this case I didn’t deserve much credit. You see, Grist held them down for six innings, and when I came in fresh at the seventh we were only one run to the bad. It was still anybody’s game.”

“How about yesterday?” asked the girl quickly. “I wasn’t here, but they tell me you won the game in spite of a lot of errors made by your team.”

Lefty shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, that was different. I hadn’t pitched before in a week. So I was ready to sail in and massacre them.”

Miss Collier shook her head, laughing deliciously. “I’m afraid you’re altogether too modest. After this I’ll have to trust to someone else for the real facts. All right, dad. I suppose it is time we were going. Well, good-by, Mr. Locke. I shall probably see you again. Now that I’m back in town, I don’t mean to miss a game.”

Lefty murmured his pleasure in courteous, well-bred terms, shook hands with her father, and, when they had disappeared into the corridor, stood for a second staring after them. When he turned suddenly back to the manager he surprised on that person’s face an expression of distinct annoyance, mingled with disapproval.

“Is that all you wanted?” the southpaw asked briefly.

“Yes,” retorted Carson, almost snappily. He hesitated for an instant, and then went on abruptly, his lips curling the least bit: “I s’pose after this you’ll go around swelled out of all human form.”

There was a decidedly sneering undercurrent in his voice, rasping Locke’s sensibilities, and making it difficult for him to keep from flinging back a sarcastic retort.

“Do you?” he murmured, with tantalizing coolness, as he paused for a second in the doorway. “Perhaps I will. After all, you couldn’t blame me very much, you know.”

Dalton, waiting in the dressing room, at once asked for details of what had happened in the manager’s office. More for sport than any other reason, Lefty kept him on the anxious seat all the way back to the hotel, fully intending to tell him while they were having dinner together. That thought, as well as every other, was driven out of his head, however, by a penciled message the desk clerk handed him as he passed through the lobby.

“Call Miss Harting, at 10224 Morris,” it read; and the six commonplace words brought a rush of vivid crimson to the pitcher’s face, a sparkle of amazed delight into his eyes.

“Janet in town!” he muttered, as he eagerly sought a telephone booth, leaving Dalton to stare blankly after him. “Well, wouldn’t that get you! Not a word about it in her last letter. I suppose she wanted to work a surprise. She’s sure put one over, all right.”

Hurriedly giving the operator the number, he entered the booth, and, a few minutes later, heard the familiar tones of the “only girl in the world” clearly over the wire.

Just what they said is neither here nor there. The door of the booth was tightly closed, and if the operator listened she did not betray the fact by a sign. Lefty and Janet Harting, who lived with her father in a thriving New England town, had been very good friends indeed for something more than a year. Though they corresponded with extreme regularity, their positions made actual meetings tantalizingly infrequent. Given these premises, the reader may reconstruct their conversation to suit himself.

Suffice it to say that Janet had come on to the city for a two weeks’ visit to an aunt, leaving her father, who was better than he had been in a good many years, in the care of a distant cousin, who had volunteered that office so that the daughter might take a brief vacation. After retailing this information, Miss Harting hinted delicately that she would be at home all evening.

“I’ll be there with my hair in a braid!” Lefty returned promptly. Then he stopped abruptly, stung by sudden recollection.

“Sh!” reproved Janet, as a sibilant vibration reached her attentive ears. “On the ’phone, too! What’s the matter? Have you thought of an engagement?”

“Beg pardon,” apologized Lefty contritely. “It slipped out. Why, yes. You see, some of the boys planned a little theater party to-night to see ‘The Girl from Madrid,’ and they’ve got the tickets. It doesn’t matter a bit, though. I’ll just tell ’em I can’t go.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” Miss Harting’s tone was emphatic. “I’m not going to have you breaking engagements and throwing over your friends for me. There’s plenty of time. You can come and see me to-morrow.”

The young man protested vehemently, but Janet remained quite firm. In the end she had her way, though she compromised to some extent by saying that Lefty could come up the next day and take her out to lunch.

With this the young pitcher had to be content, and, when he came to think it over, he was not wholly sorry. The dinner and theater party had been planned a week before to celebrate Larry Dalton’s birthday, and, considering Dalton’s peculiar sensitiveness, Lefty would have disliked being reckoned a quitter on account of “a skirt.” Besides, Janet would be in town long enough for him to see her many times.

Comforted by this reflection, Locke paid the triple call, made a bee-line for the elevator, and five minutes later was hurrying into his evening clothes.

“Moonlights?” Laughing Larry had chuckled, when the question of clothes was broached that morning. “You bet! We’ll show this bunch of city rounders how things ought to be done, eh?”

CHAPTER VIII
AT THE THEATER

When the quartet piled into a taxi about half past six, and started for an exclusive downtown restaurant, their appearance would have been a revelation to those who picture a professional ball player as a pugnacious, rough-mannered individual who fits in well enough on the diamond but is quite out of his element when he attempts anything in the social line.

It would have been difficult, in fact, to find four finer-looking specimens of manhood anywhere. Their faces glowing with perfect health and physical well-being, they showed not the slightest signs of being awkward or ill at ease in their evening togs. Add to this the fact that two of them, Lefty Locke and Billy Orth, were men of unusual good looks, and it is small wonder that their arrival at the restaurant caused a little stir of interest among the diners already present.

They were swiftly recognized, of course, and the stir increased to a bustle; for even society doesn’t often have a chance of studying two pitchers, the catcher, and second baseman of a national organization at close range. The four athletes, however, paid scant attention to the interest they were exciting. They were too well accustomed to that sort of thing to let it interfere with their enjoyment. They were out for a good time, and meant to have it, regardless of rubbernecks.

There was nothing in the least boisterous in their behavior. They laughed and talked and joshed one another, to be sure, but their manner was not a whit different from that of a dozen other parties about them. They consumed the well-ordered dinner—conspicuous by the absence of anything to drink—leisurely. Then, it being close on to eight, they paid the sizable check, tipped the waiters, and departed, having shown from the beginning a breeding and a refreshing lack of self-consciousness which opened the eyes of not a few observers.

The theater being only a few blocks away, they walked, arriving in the lobby just as the overture was beginning. There was the usual crowd jostling to get in. As the four friends stood waiting for an usher to take their checks, Lefty heard his name called in a slightly familiar voice.

For a second he stared around in a puzzled way, failing to locate the owner of that voice in the crowd. Dalton’s elbow dug into his ribs, and Dalton’s voice whispered in his ear:

“The Big Chief! Get busy, kid.”

Then it was that Lefty discovered Charles Collier, the distinguished-looking owner of the Blue Stockings, standing near the wall at a little distance; and beside him, more charming than ever in her evening gown of shimmering white, was his daughter, Virginia.

“You’re just the man I’m looking for,” Collier said, as Lefty stepped swiftly over and bowed his greetings. “See here, boy, is it possible that you’re a son of the Reverend Paul Hazelton, who went through Dartmouth and the New York Theological Seminary, and has a parish somewhere out in Jersey?”

Lefty’s eyes brightened. “Quite possible,” he smiled. “He’s been in Summit for the last twelve years. Do you know him?”

“Know him?” echoed Collier emphatically. “I should say I did! Why, we were chums at college, and kept up our friendship for a number of years afterward. I must have been wool-gathering. I knew your name was Hazelton, but somehow the connection never occurred to me till my daughter suggested it at dinner to-night. I suppose it was because I couldn’t associate Paul’s son with baseball.”

“Yes; Dad has a perfect horror of the game. He had a friend who was killed while—”

“Yes, of course. Poor Brandon! It was in our junior year. Your father could never bear even to see a game after that. I must have a chat with you about him soon. Just now I’m—”

He paused abruptly, his eyes roving over the immaculate figure of the young man, and then veering swiftly to his daughter’s face.

“By Jove, Virginia!” he exclaimed. “I don’t see why Hazelton can’t help us out.”

Miss Collier’s color deepened a trifle and she made a quick, protesting gesture with her white-gloved hands. “How absurd, Dad! Mr. Hazelton is here with friends. I couldn’t think of asking such a thing.”

“Nonsense!” chuckled the older man. “I don’t believe he’ll mind shaking them for a little while.” He turned to Locke. “I’ve just had a message from a real-estate man,” he explained, “whom I expected to see in the morning. He’s got to take the midnight back to Boston, and it’s essential that I should talk to him before he goes. Virginia can’t very well stay here alone, but if you would take my place—”

“I should be delighted,” Lefty said swiftly, as the older man paused questioningly. “The fellows I’m with are just three men from the team.”

In reality he was very far from being overjoyed, but he was much too courteous and well-bred to allow any sign of this to appear in his face or manner. Having given up an evening with Janet to keep his previous engagement, he did not particularly fancy spending it with even so charming a person as Virginia Collier.

Under the circumstances, however, there was nothing to do but accept with the best possible grace the situation forced on him; and, though she was watching him closely, the girl saw nothing in his face but ready acquiescence and well-simulated pleasure.

Collier breathed a sigh of relief, handed over the seat coupons, and departed hastily, with the assurance that he would be back before the performance was ended. Still giving his clever imitation of one in the throes of unalloyed bliss, Lefty explained to his friends, and then escorted Miss Collier down the aisle, conscious as he passed the eighth row of the concentrated stare of three pair of observing eyes. He did not glance round, however, and he was settled in the third-row aisle seat when the curtain began to rise.

Few men can resist a thoroughly charming woman when she sets out deliberately to make herself agreeable. Lefty was not one of the few. Of course, he did not realize that Miss Collier’s manner with him was a bit different from what it might have been with any other man.

The girl was much too clever to let him see that. But there are ways and ways, most of them too subtle for the clumsy masculine intellect to grasp, which are part of every woman’s mental equipment. The result of their application in the present instance was the swift transformation of Lefty’s pose of enjoyment into one of reality.

It must not be supposed for an instant that Virginia Collier’s manner showed a trace of vulgar coquetry; quite the contrary. Apparently there was no particle of sentimentality in her make-up. She talked mainly of baseball, tennis, motoring, and kindred subjects, in a way which showed that she was more than familiar with her ground; and the contrast between her daintily feminine appearance and her evident liking for almost every sort of sport was very taking—as, no doubt, the young woman fully appreciated.

By the end of the first intermission Lefty felt as if they were old friends. Before the third act had commenced he found himself discussing the baseball situation almost as if she had been “one of the fellows.” One did not have to do much explaining. Her grasp on conditions was surprising, her judgment almost flawless. Yet, underneath it all, and ever present as the oft-recurring theme of a symphony, was the lure of feminine personality, stronger, perhaps, for its very subtlety.

Lefty felt its pull, but did not realize the nature of the attraction. He told himself that he had never before met anyone quite like Virginia Collier. She was like a good pal, a chum to whom one could talk almost as one talked to another man. She was a good sport in the best sense of the word, and he was vaguely glad that the real-estate man from Boston had appeared when he did.

Just before the final curtain an usher appeared with a note which Lefty was able to read by the light from the stage. It was hastily scrawled from a near-by club, and in it Charles Collier—explaining that he was still in conference with his business man—requested that Locke escort his daughter home, and then send the car back for him.

“It really isn’t a bit necessary,” the girl protested, as she glanced at the paper. “If you’ll find the motor and put me in, I can manage the rest quite well.”

“Then why didn’t your father ask me to do just that?” Lefty asked.

“Because he’s foolishly silly about my going about at night alone, even in our own machine.” Miss Collier paused an instant, and then dimpled charmingly. “You mustn’t judge him by his behavior to-night. He’s usually annoyingly strict with me. I’m quite sure if you hadn’t happened to be the son of an old college chum I should have been taken home without seeing the play.”

The young pitcher laughed. “I’m awfully glad I happened to have the proper credentials, and I think we’d better follow out Mr. Collier’s wishes. Besides, if I take you home it will give us a chance to finish that discussion about Marquard’s work in the box this year.”

“Since you put it that way, I’ll give in,” the girl said, as she arose to let him place the opera cloak carefully about her shoulders.

Lefty slipped on his coat, secured hat and gloves, and stepped into the aisle. There was the usual crush of people to block the way, and as they moved slowly forward he half turned to make a laughing remark to his companion.

The jesting words were never spoken; the very smile froze on the young man’s lips as his eyes fell on the face of a girl in the sixth row over near the boxes.

It was Janet Harting, and there was something about her expression which held Lefty stupidly silent for a second or two. Then he bowed eagerly, and smiled. There was absolutely no response.

For an appreciable moment Miss Harting stared at him, her chin uptilted, her color a little high, perhaps, but her gaze as coldly impersonal as if he had been an utter stranger. She gazed at him, over him, through him, without the quiver of an eyelash. Then she rose leisurely, deliberately turned her back, and began to help her older companion into a coat.

CHAPTER IX
“IN BAD”

Lefty’s face turned a dull red, for in a flash he had realized how intolerable the whole affair must seem to Janet Harting. He had assured her that his engagement at the theater that night was with some of his teammates, yet here she found him the only escort of a very charming young woman, of whose identity she could naturally have no idea.

Moreover, Lefty’s being in full dress did not savor altogether of a stag party. Worst of all, the young man remembered, with a sickening sense of irritation, how swiftly he and Miss Collier had come to be on almost chummy terms. An onlooker would never have supposed their acquaintance to be only a few hours old, and Janet had been sitting near enough to miss nothing.

All this passed through Lefty’s mind with a rush. For an instant he had an almost uncontrollable impulse to push his way through to Miss Harting’s side and explain the innocent facts, which must have looked so condemning. Then he realized how impossible was the time and place for explanations, and, pulling himself together, moved slowly on toward the entrance.

Miss Collier could scarcely have missed the little incident, swiftly as it had taken place; but apparently she was possessed of tact, along with a number of other good qualities, for she made not the slightest reference to it. During the ride uptown she chatted unconcernedly on various topics, but it must be confessed that she had to uphold the burden of conversation; about nine-tenths of Lefty’s mind was taken up with a consideration of his predicament, and with planning a way out of it.

“Thank you a thousand times, Mr. Locke,” Miss Collier said, when the car had stopped and he had helped her out. “I’ve had a perfectly splendid evening.”

“It’s been corking,” Lefty returned, trying to force a little enthusiasm into his voice. “I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

“I don’t believe it,” smiled the girl, holding out her hand. “Have Pagdon drive you wherever you want to go. Dad won’t want him yet, I’m sure. Come and see me some time when you haven’t anything better to do. We’ll finish our talk about Marquard. Good night.”

Without giving him time to answer she ran lightly up the steps to the already open door, which closed quickly upon her slim, graceful figure, leaving Locke to return slowly to the limousine, give the address of his hotel to the chauffeur, and step frowningly in.

“What a thundering jackass I am!” he muttered, leaning back against the leather cushions. “Why in Heaven’s name didn’t I cut out the party and go see Janet in spite of everything? How the deuce did I know that Collier was going to rope me into a game like that, though—or that Janet would be there to misconstrue everything? I s’pose she went to get a glimpse of me. Well, the sooner I chase up there and explain things to her the better. I wonder if it’s too late to go to-night?”

He glanced at his watch. It was decidedly too late.

“I’ll hike up the first thing in the morning,” he thought. “She’ll understand that I couldn’t do anything else under the circumstances.”

There was some comfort in the reflection that Janet had plenty of sound common sense in that shapely little head of hers. Nevertheless, the more he thought of it, the more Lefty realized what a scurvy trick fate had played him.

“It certainly must have looked bad,” he admitted to himself as the car stopped before the hotel. “I wouldn’t blame any girl for getting up on her ear.”

In the lobby he was met by his three deserted companions, who instantly let fly a Gatling fire of comment.

“Horning in with the management, are you?” grinned Nelson. “Just the same, I like your taste, kid. Some class there, all right!”

“You bet!” chimed in Billy Orth. “What do you want to be such a hog for, though? Might have given somebody else a chance with one of ’em.”

“Spilled the beans that time, old man,” Dalton added significantly. “Hard luck, boy. Who’d ever have thought the other one would turn up that way, and pinch you—”

“Oh, go to blazes, the lot of you!” snapped Lefty, his face crimson.

Without another word he strode toward the elevator, leaving Dalton—who had met Miss Harting in Boston, and shrewdly guessed that there was something more than passing friendship between the two—eying his companions with lifted brows.

“Our genial southpaw seems somewhat peeved,” Larry murmured. “Have we touched upon a raw spot unawares?”

Orth yawned. “Must be in a pretty bad way,” he commented. “I never knew him to give up like that without a word to say. Let’s hit the hay; I’m sleepy.”

Rather silently the others followed him toward the elevator. Though there were no further remarks on the subject, they were all wondering what had happened to make the usually quick-witted, even-tempered Locke flare up the way he had at a little good-natured joshing, which ordinarily would have brought forth nothing more than a grin and a retort in kind.

The object of their solicitude was thinking pretty much the same thing. He had scarcely set foot in the elevator before he regretted that silly burst of temper.

“Looks as if I was bound to make a fool of myself to-night,” he thought. “I reckon I’m in bad all around.”

He did not sleep well, and was up early. Having hurried through his breakfast, he dawdled around with a newspaper until eight o’clock, and then sought the telephone booth. A woman’s voice—Janet’s aunt, no doubt—answered his call.

“Is Miss Harting in?” he asked quickly.

“Who is this, please?”

“Mr. Hazelton. I won’t keep her for more—”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted the voice, with a curt, crisp intonation which belied the words, “but Miss Harting is too busy to come to the telephone.”

“Will she be at home— Hang it all! She’s cut off.”

Lefty slammed up the receiver, and sat scowling for a moment at the instrument.

“Might think I’d committed a crime,” he growled at last. “Won’t even give me a chance to say a word in my own defense.” His jaw squared stubbornly. “I’ll make her listen to me,” he went on. “I’ll go up there and see her, whether she’s at home or not. I’ll go now, too.”

This was easier said than done. Emerging from the booth, Lefty was waylaid by Spider Grant, captain of the team, who wasted a good half hour in desultory discussion of their chances for winning the third game of the series from the Specters that afternoon. It might have continued for an hour and a half had not Locke departed unceremoniously in the very midst of one of Spider’s most elaborate arguments.

“If hot air would win the game, we wouldn’t need to go out to the park,” he muttered grumpily as he leaped aboard an open car.

Of course there was a block; equally of course, Lefty fretted and fumed and wasted his good energy and invention in uncomplimentary remarks about the road and its operators. He was compelled to walk the last twelve blocks. When he at last arrived at the apartment house his mental condition was far from enviable.

“Not at home,” said the maid, with cool brevity.

As she started to close the door Lefty placed one foot over the sill, with apparent carelessness. His earnestness of purpose was dimming the brightness of his manners.

“Are you sure?” he asked suspiciously. “I only want to see Miss Harting for a minute.”

“Indeed!” sniffed the girl. “Well, you’ll have to wait some time before you get the chance. She and Mrs. Manning are leaving on the night train for the Adirondacks.”

“The Adirondacks!” gasped Lefty. “To-night!” He stood staring at the maid for a moment in utter dismay. “But I must see them before they go. Haven’t you any idea where they are now?”

“No more’n a fly,” returned the girl, evidently softened a little by his distress. “They went right after the trunks was took—shoppin’, I s’pose. Anyhow, Mrs. Manning said they wouldn’t be back.”

How Lefty went through the rest of the morning he did not know. What had been started by a trivial trick of chance seemed to be growing more serious every moment. Evidently Janet believed the worst of him. It was equally evident that she was determined to give him no opportunity to explain the mix-up. Her behavior hurt Lefty desperately. It seemed unfair and unjust that she should have so little faith in him, in spite of appearances.

For several hours he wandered about the shopping district, in the vague hope that somehow he might run across the girl. Failing in that, he lunched in gloomy solitude, then made his way to the ball park.

For six innings he sat on the bench in grim silence while “Slick” Lumley held down the Specters to a shut-out score. Slick was one of those pitchers who are unsurpassed when they are good, but who seldom last through an entire game. Evidently Carson did not propose to run any chances of his blowing up this time, for at the beginning of the seventh, with Lumley showing sudden wildness, he took him off the mound and substituted Billy Orth.

It was during that inning that Lefty got up from the bench to stretch his legs, and became aware for the first time of the presence of Miss Collier in the box with her father. She nodded cordially, and it seemed only natural for him to step up and say a few words to her.

The few words lengthened into a prolonged conversation. The club owner had a good many questions to ask about Lefty’s father, and Virginia herself was so bright and cheery and interesting that the young pitcher was raised from the depths of despondency in spite of himself.

For three innings he stood leaning against the rail of the box. Toward the end he was talking and laughing almost as if he hadn’t a thing on his mind to worry him. Several times his glance wandered back into the stands to where sat a young man of about his own age, who seemed much more interested in the party in the box than in the game. The fellow’s expression was so bitter, and he stared so fixedly at the famous southpaw, that Lefty wondered if he had ever met the chap before, or whether it was simply one of those curious dislikes certain fans seem to take to a player every once in a while.

Locke was still wondering when Orth struck out the last man, winning the game by a score of two to one, and the crowd began to pour out of their seats to jam the aisles and runways.

The next second Lefty gave a start, and the color drained swiftly from his face. He had caught a brief, fleeting glimpse of a girl who had been seated well back in the lower stand. Her face had been invisible all through the game, but now, as she arose and stepped into the aisle, he saw it clearly for an instant before she was swallowed up in the mob. It was the face of the girl he had been seeking all day in vain.

Before he realized what he was doing, he had leaped for the nearest gate, and swung it open. Then he stopped, with a groan. It would be like hunting a needle in a haystack to try and find her in this crush. She might leave at any of a dozen exits before he could reach even one of them.

For a moment he stood there, a scowl on his face, bitterness in his heart. Why had she come to the grounds at all? Was it to see him without the chance of being seen? Well, she had accomplished her purpose with a vengeance; she had beheld him chatting and laughing intimately with the same girl she supposed he had taken to the theater last night.

With a groan of disappointment and mental pain, Lefty whirled around and tramped sullenly across the field toward the clubhouse. He did not give a single backward glance at the charming Miss Collier. He had forgotten her very existence in the irritation and trouble which this new complication had brought upon him.

CHAPTER X
THE GROUCH

A modern Big League team is very much like an overgrown family. The men are together every day, and all day. At intervals they spend long hours cooped up in Pullman cars, always putting up at the same hotels while on the road, and frequently the majority of players belonging to a club stop at one particularly favored place at home. They miss little going on about them. As a result of this intimacy it was not long before Locke’s altered demeanor became a topic of discussion among the Blue Stockings.

“I’d like to know what’s worrying the boy,” remarked Spider Grant early one afternoon in the dressing room. “He’s been going round for three or four days with a face a mile long.”

He paused in his leisurely preparations for the game, and glanced inquiringly from one to another of the half dozen men who lounged about the room in various stages of undress.

“He’s sure got a grouch,” agreed Rufe Hyland, intent on the adjustment of his sliding pads. “Ain’t seen him crack a smile in so long I’ve forgot what he looks like grinnin’. Mebbe he’s peeved at the way Carson’s been runnin’ him in at the tail end of games to pull us out of holes. Bein’ a life-saver an’ gettin’ no credit’s enough to get any man raw.”

“That’s true enough,” agreed Grant. “He hasn’t had a whack at a straight game for over a week. Still, that wouldn’t turn a decent fellow like Lefty into a chronic grouch; he’s got too much sense. No, he acts to me like he was in love, and his girl had given him the double cross or something. How about that, Larry? You ought to know.”

Dalton, wearing little more than his usual smile, shrugged his muscular shoulders and bustled among the contents of his locker.

“Wouldn’t wonder if you’d hit it, Spider,” he returned, straightening up with a flannel shirt in his hands. “He has got a girl—regular peacherino, too—and I’ve got an idea that she has cross-signaled him lately. He spends half his time writing letters, and tears most of ’em up. That’s a bad sign, you know.”

“Huh!” growled Hyland. “This skirt business makes me sick. There ain’t a thing in it. I’ve been hitched twice, and divorced the same number—an’ never again. I wouldn’t make sheep’s eyes at the best-lookin’ dame in this town, believe me. They git a fellow so fussed that he don’t know whether he’s afoot or horseback. If some female’s throwed the kid down, an’ that’s what he’s grouchin’ about, take it from me he’ll be bustin’ up on the mound one of these days—an’ then where’ll he come off at?”

“Where’ll we come off, you mean,” retorted Grant, with a frown. “He’s the best all-round flinger in this outfit, and if he goes to seed then go-o-od night post-season series.”

There being no other pitchers present, the statement passed uncontradicted. Grant slipped out of his street trousers, carefully folded them, and turned again to Dalton.

“Can’t you find out if that’s it, Larry?” he asked. “If it is, we ought to do something to—”

“Cheese! Cheese!” warned Kid Lewis. “Here he comes.”

A moment later the young southpaw entered the dressing room, curtly responded to jovial greetings—somewhat forced—from the other men, and strode over to his locker. His forehead was corrugated by the frown which had become habitual of late. His eyes were somber. He made no attempt whatever to join in the conversation which swiftly started up again, seeming, in fact, to be almost oblivious to what was going on. He answered two or three direct questions in monosyllables, stripped off his clothes with an absent sort of haste, got into his uniform in much the same manner, and departed, wrapped in gloom, without having volunteered a single remark.

As he disappeared into the corridor, the other players eyed each other significantly.

“I never thought to see Lefty Locke with a face like that on him,” commented Dirk Nelson mournfully. “Why, the boy used to be the life of the whole crowd.”

“If it is a girl who’s responsible,” growled Hyland viciously, “she’d ought to be massecreed. There ain’t a woman livin’ that’s worth makin’ all that fuss about.”

Spider Grant finished lacing his shoes, and stood up, stamping.

“Try if you can’t get wise to the game, Larry,” he said abruptly. “I don’t know as we can do anything, but it’ll be something to be sure. He’ll loosen up to you sooner’n to any of the rest of us.”

Dalton agreed, but without any great exhibition of confidence. He had noticed a marked reserve on the part of Lefty Locke lately, which did not augur well for the extraction of confidences. There was a little more talk on the subject, but it ceased with the arrival of Pete Grist and his bunch of cronies. Soon afterward they all sauntered out to the diamond.

The game that day was the last of a series with the Hornets, and the last which would be played on the home grounds for some time. That night would see the Blue Stockings bound for the territory of their greatest rivals, the Specters, after which would follow the final Western circuit.

Either the home club had weakened, or the Hornets improved noticeably since their last encounter. The Blue Stockings had won every game, to be sure, but they had won them only by the hardest kind of work; and on two occasions the phenomenal pitching of Locke, put into the box for two and four innings respectively, was all that saved the day.

To the fans it seemed a certainty that the young southpaw would start off on the mound to-day, and a murmur of surprise arose when the umpire announced “Pink” Dillon’s name.

Dillon was, at times, a brilliant pitcher, but he had been on the sick list for some weeks; and the manager’s mistaken judgment was proved by the fact that he lasted for just two innings, during the last of which the Hornets succeeded in pounding out three runs.

In spite of vociferous yells for Locke on the part of the bleacherites, Carson sent Grist into the box. He lasted until the end of the seventh. Then, owing in part, perhaps, to the carping criticism from a group of leather-lunged fans, to whom nobody but Lefty Locke looked good, he made a sudden and pyrotechnic ascension which let in several more tallies.

Lefty was hurried into the gap with the score eight to three against the home team, and, though the portsider kept the Hornets from further scoring, the Blue Stockings were able to get only two more runners across the rubber. Therefore the game was lost by a tally of eight to five.

The tramp and thunder of departing thousands had been going on for several minutes, yet Miss Collier still sat in a box, her eyes fixed on the throng of white-clad players just disappearing through the fence on the farther side of the field. All afternoon the young southpaw had not so much as glanced in her direction, yet to-night he was leaving the city, to be gone for several weeks. It seemed as if he might at least have said good-by.

“I wouldn’t take it so hard if I were you,” smiled Mr. Collier, turning away from the friend with whom he had been chatting. “We can afford to lose this game, you know. The boys will make it up when they meet the Specters.”

The girl arose leisurely and turned her back on the field.

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” she said quietly. She paused for a second, her slim, gloved hands straightening her hat. “Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you, Dad, that Mr. Locke pitches so few games?”

“Few!” repeated the magnate in amazement. “Why, he’s been in the box twice this week, and twice last!”

Miss Collier shrugged her shoulders gracefully. “Precisely,” she returned calmly. “He’s been in the box for anywhere from two to four innings. Three times out of those four he won games some other pitcher tried to lose. He pitched a full game the day before I got home. Since then he’s been doing the most thankless sort of relief work. You see my point?”

Mr. Collier’s jaw dropped. “Well, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed. “You certainly put one over on me that time, Virginia—or was it Locke who put you wise?”

“Certainly not,” the girl retorted emphatically. “He isn’t that sort at all.”

“Hum! No, of course not. I’m very glad you mentioned this, my dear. Such a thing is neither fair to the boy nor good judgment. I’ll see Carson before he leaves to-night, and tell him a little something.”

CHAPTER XI
ON THE RAW EDGE

The train had been in motion for twenty minutes or so, and the occupants of the Blue Stocking special car were beginning to settle down for the evening when Al Carson appeared in the doorway of his stateroom. For a moment or two he stood there, frowning, his glance passing indifferently over the brisk poker game with its several interested onlookers which was going on near him, past the lounging players engaged in idle talk or immersed in newspapers. There was a sudden tightening of his lips, however, as his eyes finally came to rest on the sprawling figure of Lefty Locke, hunched in the corner of a seat well forward. A moment later the manager stood looking down on the southpaw, with narrowing lids.

“Been whining around a petticoat, have you?” he sneered.

Lefty’s eyes veered suddenly from the window to the manager’s face.

“What’s that?” he snapped.

“I said you’d been whining around a skirt, complaining that I was using favoritism with the pitchers. You weren’t man enough to put up your kick to me; you had to go bawling about it to Collier’s daughter, so she’d work her father—”

“That’s a lie!” rasped Locke, his face crimson. “A lie, and you know it!”

His eyes were flashing, his fists were doubled; every muscle of his big frame had suddenly become tense and hard as a panther’s crouching for a spring. The manager himself turned suddenly livid with anger. For a moment, to the three or four players sitting near enough to observe what was going on, it looked as if another second would bring about a rough-and-tumble scrap.

Just in time, however, Carson, realizing the danger of the situation, managed to get control of his temper.

“Is that so?” he sneered. “Perhaps you can explain how Miss Collier came to draw the old man’s attention to the fact that you hadn’t pitched a straight game in over a week.”

“Not being a fool,” Lefty snapped back, “it’s quite possible she discovered it by simple observation. Everybody else is wise to the fact that ever since you took hold of the team you’ve been using me to win games for the precious pitcher you’re so stuck on.”

Carson caught his breath swiftly and turned white with rage. “What the deuce—” he blustered. “Who—”

“You know well enough who I mean,” retorted Locke. “If you don’t, then ask any man on the team, and you’ll find out quick. I’m not kicking; I’m simply stating facts. You’re manager of this team, and you’ve got the right to run it any way you choose. But there’s just this, Mister Carson: in future we’ll dispense with any more talk about my currying favor with the owner, either through his daughter or in any other way. When I’m ready to kick about anything, I’ll come to you and do it. Believe me, you’ll know it!”

“What do you mean by such talk?” frothed Carson, his face purple. “I’ll fine you—”

“Fine and be hanged!” defied Locke. “Only shut up! You started this, not I. You asked a question, and I answered, so cut out the hot air and leave me alone. I’m sick of the sound of your voice.”

For a second or two the manager stared in dazed fury at the scowling face of the young pitcher, and then—he wilted. Lefty’s remarks had hit the nail on the head only too accurately, and Carson knew it. He and Pete Grist had been on friendly terms for a number of years, and Grist had been favored by the manager at every opportunity, though Carson flattered himself that it had been done too skillfully to be obvious. The shock of discovering the contrary, and also the realization that Locke was apparently in a state of mind which necessitated handling with gloves, caused the official to back water. With a snappy retort or two, and a very fierce expression, he turned on his heel and sought the seclusion of his stateroom.

The slamming of the door was followed by a hush more eloquent than many words. The altercation had been conducted with no soft pedal on, and almost every word had been audible the entire length of the car. For a few minutes even the poker game was in abeyance, as the men glanced significantly at one another with lifted eyebrows, shaking their heads.

“He’s sure enough sore,” whispered Kid Lewis. “Maybe it isn’t the girl, after all.”

“Mebbe,” agreed Rufe Hyland, glancing at his cards again. “Lucky Grist’s in the smoker, or there’d be a rough-house for fair.”

“What he said was nothing but gospel,” protested Nelson. “Carson’s been favoring Pete every chance he got. Lefty won two games for him within a week, and didn’t get any credit; for Grist, going to the bad, was drawn with us leadin’ by a run.”

“Oh, sure! I know that. But Petie’s a peppery gink, and no fellow likes to hear that kind of truth blabbed out in so many words.”

Of course, Grist heard all about it before many hours had passed. In the dressing room on the Specter grounds, next afternoon, he made some sneering remarks on the subject in a loud tone, which could not help reaching Locke’s ears. Instantly Lefty retorted savagely. Grist snapped back viciously, and but for the swift interference of the other men, there would have been a fight then and there.

Five minutes later Carson appeared and curtly informed the southpaw that he was to start the game.

It was in this mental condition that Lefty received instructions to pitch. He made no comment beyond a surly nod, but his teammates glanced dubiously at one another, and shook their heads.

One and all were conscious of an unpleasant feeling of suspense and unrest. It was as if they were walking on the thin crust of a volcano which was likely at any moment to burst into violent eruption.

CHAPTER XII
UNCERTAINTY

Contrary to the fears of a good many Blue Stockings, Lefty still seemed to be “there with the goods.” To be sure, he stalked out to the mound with a gloomy face and wrinkled brow, which was the very antithesis of his usual cheerful, good-humored expression; but when it came to bending them over, he showed every bit of his old-time skill for the first three innings.

It was in the fourth that Larry Dalton, who had been watching his friend closely, began to notice a change. Red Callahan, an uncertain hitter, was at the bat. The southpaw pulled him with a pretty outcurve, following with a clever drop; and then, with two strikes and only one ball called, he whipped over a fast, straight ball, which would have cut the heart of the plate had not Red fallen upon it joyfully, smashing it out for a canter to first.

It was not a very bad slip; pitchers fail every day through underestimation of a poor hitter. But carelessness had never been one of Lefty’s faults, and Dalton’s eyes widened with surprise as the Specter infielder romped down to the initial sack, and stood there grinning.

The look of surprise deepened on Larry’s face when Locke gave the next batter three balls in succession, meanwhile allowing Callahan to steal second.

“That’s the game!” barked the Specter coachers jubilantly. “Make him put ’em over, Jack. He ain’t such a wonder, after all. Too bad, Lefty, old boy. Losing your control?”

“Make those dubs shut up!” snapped Locke, turning to the umpire. “They can talk to their own men, but not to me.”

The coachers received a perfunctory warning, and naturally, when they saw that the pitcher objected to their remarks, they redoubled their efforts, simply altering the person.

Dalton could scarcely believe his ears. To think of Lefty Locke being bothered by a little hot air! Ordinarily he simply grinned aggravatingly, or gave an excellent imitation of a deaf mute. It seemed incredible, and a furrow of anxiety flashed into place between Larry’s brown eyes.

Lefty managed to pull out of the hole, but the mere fact that he had allowed himself to get into it was enough to cause his teammates to worry.

The fifth inning passed with the score still one to one—both runs had been made at the very beginning of the game. In the sixth the Blue Stockings scored another tally, a lead which they held in spite of the desperate efforts of their opponents in the final half of the inning.

During the seventh and eighth Lefty’s pitching came near giving a number of people heart failure. It was by turns mediocre to a degree, and superbly brilliant. He would get himself into holes by inexcusable carelessness, and then, when he seemed on the point of blowing up, he would steady down and make the spectators shout joyous approval.

Throughout this erratic performance Billy Orth sat on the bench, watching the work of the grim, frowning portsider with alternate dismay, delight, and wonderment.

“Good Lord!” Billy muttered to himself. “I never saw him so shifty. First he’s careless and wild as a hawk, then, just when he seems going up for fair, he tightens like a drumhead. He’s got Carson squirming.”

True, the manager of the Blue Stockings was squirming. Even when Locke fanned dangerous hitters in the pinches Carson, though showing some relief, did not look wholly happy. At no time was the angry frown wiped clean from his face. For through it all he was troubled by a nagging conviction that the man on the mound was playing on his feelings as well as toying with the opposing batters.

It really seemed that Lefty invited and sought threatening situations—in any of which the slightest slip would give the Specters what they desired—in order that he might make a display of his skill by balking the enemy when they were almost grasping the coveted prize. A pitcher who could “monkey” in such a manner, with the result of a single game meaning so much, was not worthy of trust under any circumstances. Had Carson felt absolutely assured that Locke was doing this, he would have braved the wrath of the owner by benching the man in one of those tense, threatening moments.

But Carson was not sure. Much as he disliked Lefty for certain reasons, he could not bring himself to believe that a youngster with Locke’s promise in the Big League would, through malice or spite, toy inanely with his future prospects.

Nevertheless, even when Lefty succeeded in pulling himself out of the holes, and came to the bench amid the approving uproar of the great crowd, the manager could not bring himself to give the grim and sullen man a word of encouragement and approval. True it was that Locke did not invite anything of the sort, and actually seemed, by his cold and distant manner, to repel the advances of his own friends and intimates on the team. In every way he was thoroughly unlike the open, jovial, likable youngster he had seemed to be earlier in the season.

Even Laughing Larry, than whom no one had been more intimate with the young southpaw, wore an expression of troubled anxiety each time he came to the bench following those pinches.

Billy Orth saw this, and signaled for the perspiring, disturbed Dalton to sit beside him in the pit.

“What’s the matter with Lefty, Dalt?” asked Orth guardedly. “Do you think—”

“Dunno what to think,” muttered Larry, in a perplexed way; “but I don’t believe he’s right. The whole team feels it, too; and, with our slim margin of one run, it wouldn’t take only the smallest break to put the bunch off their feet.”

“Of course you’ve noticed how queer he’s been acting the last few days?”

“Huh! Couldn’t help noticing it. A blind man or a fool could see that. He seems to be sore with himself and the whole world generally. That quarrel with Carson didn’t improve his condition any. He’s in bad there.”

“But he stands well with the skirt, and she seems to be the real power behind the machine.”

“The skirt? Oh, you mean Collier’s daughter?”

“Sure! She seems to be running things.”

Dalton shook his head soberly. “And that’s unfortunate. Women may vote, hold office, and go to war if they want to, but baseball is one thing they’d better keep their noses out of. No team ever did well with a female monkeying with it.”

“Do you know,” murmured Billy, “I’ve got an idea that I can locate Lefty Locke’s weak spot. It’s skirts. We all have our failings, and that’s his.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” nodded Larry. “I’ve always thought he had a level block, till lately. Now he’s mixed up with two dames, and—”

“Why don’t you talk to him, Larry? You’re the one to do it. He ought to listen to you.”

“Maybe he ought to listen, but he won’t. Once I wouldn’t have hesitated, but now I can’t open my face to him without his being ready to jump down my throat. I confess it has made me a bit raw, too. Once he had plenty of friends, but if he keeps on he will lose the sympathy of everybody.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” admitted Billy sadly. “I’ve been figuring to get my fingers on some of that post-season money, but if Locke goes to pieces now we won’t be in the running at the wind-up. Let’s hope for the best.”

CHAPTER XIII
SUSPENSE

The Specter twirler having become practically unhittable, the ninth inning gave the Blue Stockings nothing further than their slim lead of one tally. The final half opened with Dutch Schwartz, leading the Specter’s list, the first man to face Locke.

“Whiff him, Lefty!” begged a few fans. “You can do it! Oh, you Lefty! You’re the boy!”

With an expression of mingled determination and disdain for these pleading rooters, Schwartz planted himself at the plate, having first knocked the dirt out of his spikes with the butt of his heavy club.

“Take it easy, son,” called Spider Grant, getting into position to cover plenty of territory in the vicinity of first. “You know him. If you can get him to start with, it will be as good as two down.”

Locke gave his captain a cold stare, and his lips moved. It seemed that he muttered some sullen retort, but Grant could not distinguish the words.

So long did the pitcher stand in that position, gazing straight at Spider, that the tense crowd began to wonder, and the umpire called “Play” twice. Finally, lifting his “meat hand” with the soiled horsehide gripped in his fingers, Lefty turned his eyes on Nelson, who crouched promptly, and signaled.

Wagging his bat loosely, almost lightly, Dutch Schwartz was in position to step into anything handed up. Possibly delaying in an effort to get the batter’s nerve, Lefty made no further move until he provoked a protest from the Specter captain. Then, like one awaking from a half trance, the pitcher balanced himself on one foot, swung far back, brought his body over and forward, and made the delivery. Never had anyone present witnessed a wilder pitch. It was a wonder that the ball did not go clean over the top of the grandstand.

“Oh, oh, oh!” shouted the coachers, while the startled crowd broke into exclamations. “Look a’ that! Get a scaling ladder, Schwartzy.”

The Dutchman grinned and tapped the pentagon with the end of his bat.

A boy recovered the ball and threw it to Nelson, who made a pretense of looking it over before he tossed it to Locke.

On the bench the watchful Billy Orth, actually shivering, whispered to himself: “Now, I wonder if he did that on purpose—I wonder. It doesn’t seem likely. If he did, he’s getting to be a good subject for the foolish factory.”

Others beside Billy were wondering. While they were thus engaged Locke pitched again. This time he whipped a smoker over, and Schwartz fouled it against the right-field bleachers.

“That makes you even, old boy!” called Grant, ere he turned to receive the ball from the fielder who had chased it down. But, somehow, his voice seemed to lack the ring of genuine cheerfulness.

Even the least astute spectator could see that the Blue Stockings were all keyed up to a point of tension little short of snapping. Something in the very air seemed to presage a break. And that meant—disaster.

It was such a situation, however, as provides one of the intense thrills of the game, the sort of a thrill and suspense which makes it so fascinating to its thousands upon thousands of followers. It is the desire to feel just this keen distress and uncertainty, intensely delicious in its poignant pain, that lures a fan to the ball park day after day to witness dead and uninteresting games, hoping always for the pinch that will set them swallowing hard to keep their hearts from choking them.

Frowning, Lefty pitched again. The ball seemed to make a yellow streak through the air, and Nelson, though he held it, was actually set back the least fraction by the terrific impact of the sphere in his big mitt.

Schwartz had struck again—and missed.

“Smoke! Smoke!” shouted Dalton, laughing suddenly in his old-time way. “He couldn’t see it, my boy! Once more, and you’ve got him!”

Indeed, Laughing Larry had suddenly decided that the pitcher he had doubted might be playing a clever game, even though the wisdom of it could be questioned. Nor was Larry the only one with confidence suddenly revived.

“Such speed!” muttered Billy Orth. “And his control was perfect—that time.”

“That’s two on him!” howled an excited man from the middle stand. “He’s your meat, Lefty! You never did fail us!”

Nelson gave his tingling bare hand a shake and returned the ball to Locke, who seemed to perceive it just in time to thrust out his gloved right and catch it a bit awkwardly. They saw him shake his head from side to side with a queer motion and pass the back of his left hand across his sweat-moistened forehead. His face was drawn into hard, set lines, which seemed like lines of pain. Before looking again for Nelson’s signal, he walked all the way around the slab, staring down at the ground as if seeking for something he had dropped. And these queer movements brought the uncertainty leaping back into the heart of Laughing Larry and others.

There was speed in the next one—speed enough, it is true; but Schwartz could not have reached it had his bat measured two feet more than it did. It went past Nelson, and clean to the stand, from which it rebounded.

“Wait it out, Dutch,” urged a coacher. “He’ll hand you a pass yet.”

Schwartz knew how to wait, as he proved by ignoring the next pitch, which barely failed to cut a corner. Three balls were called—three balls and two strikes.

Again Lefty gave his head that queer, side-swaying shake. His teeth were set and his lips drawn back. Receiving the ball, he held it gripped tightly in both hands beneath his chin, while he leaned forward to get the catcher’s sign.

Upon the crowd fell a great hush, in the midst of which the voices of Locke’s teammates, calling encouragement, could be distinctly heard. Schwartz, his confidence apparently unmarred, waited, sturdily alert.

Lefty nodded, swung backward, swung forward, slashed the air with his arm—pitched. It was a hook-curve, sharp, and breaking toward the outside corner. Schwartz swung his bat as if it weighed no more than a toothpick. But, marvelous hitter though he was, that curve fooled him, and he was out.

CHAPTER XIV
A WILD HEAVE

Championship prospects for the Blue Stockings had led an unusual number of rooters for the team to follow it around on the short jumps, and now, with the fanning of Schwartz, they made a tremendous racket. The following batters might be equally dangerous, but, with the sturdy Dutchman disposed of, the prospect of holding the threatening Specters was bright indeed. Not a few felt, like Larry Dalton, that to get Schwartz at this time was as good as disposing of two men.

As Bugs Murray took Schwartz’s place, however, the great bulk of the gathering howled for a safety.

“Get a hit! Get a hit!” was the cry. “Put us in the game, Bugs!”

“He’s just as easy, Lefty, old boy,” chuckled Dalton. “Sew it up right here. This game counts. We need it.”

By no visible sign did Locke show that the words of his friend reached his ears. On the other hand, the rooting of the immense crowd in the stands seemed to annoy him in a most unusual way. And when one individual, with a voice like a locomotive whistle, shrieked that he was “wild,” “no good,” “easy,” and “punk,” he remained for some moments staring at the spot from which the cries seemed to come.

“Don’t mind that, old man,” pleaded Grant. “You know what you can do. Bugs is your next victim. Mow him down.”

Again the troubled pitcher seemed to lack control, for he handed up two wild ones that made Nelson stretch himself to pull them down. Again the coachers prophesied that he would be obliging enough to give the hitter a walk. It is likely Murray thought there was a good prospect of such a thing, for he held back when Locke, after a seeming struggle to pull himself together, shot one down the groove.

“Strike-ah!” called the umpire, flinging up his hand.

“Why, of course, of course!” whooped Dalton. “You’ve got him hypnotized, Lefty. No free passes this inning.”

But Laughing Larry was mistaken. With Murray waiting confidently, the laboring southpaw was unable to find the pan again, and four balls sent Bugs capering with elephantine grace to first.

“Going up! going up!” he whooped, doing a dance on the sack. “Wait it out, Dil. He’s all shot to pieces.”

After glancing toward his manager for a signal, Dillingham dropped one of the two bats he had been swinging, and hastened to put himself into position to do a little business with the other one.

Logie, fourth on the list, and therefore a most reliable club swinger, followed Dillingham. And Logie was the only man who, all through the game, had shown the ability to fathom anything Locke put within his reach. With this fact in mind, the Specter manager felt that, even though two should be down, and a runner on second, with Logie batting it meant an even chance to get the run which would tie the score.

“If we can tie it up now,” he thought, “we’ve got that left-hander’s goat. He’s barely been holding himself together, and a tie score in this inning would scatter him all over the lot.”

So Dillingham was given the signal to sacrifice, and he passed the sign to Murray, who ceased his capering and made ready to tear up the chalk line on the way to second.

Like the shouting of the crowd, the antics of Murray had seemed to disturb Lefty, and when he threw once to drive Bugs back to the initial sack he made such a wild heave that Spider Grant pulled the ball down only by a most amazing leap into the air.

“Wow! wow!” laughed the coacher at that base. “He made you stretch, Spider. He can’t even throw to the sacks. What’s the matter with him—struck by ’stigmatism?”

There really seemed that there was something the matter with Locke’s eyes, for again and again he passed his hand across them, like one brushing away cobwebs.

The restored confidence of his teammates was ebbing again. Several times during the game Grant had wondered why Carson sent no other twirler out to warm up, and now the puzzling question once more flashed through his mind. With the former manager at the helm, the captain would have suggested such a precaution, but Carson was not popular with Spider.

“He knows so much about the inside game,” thought Grant, “let him run things all by his lonesome. I’ll handle my end on the field, but I’m not going to give him a chance to call me by proposing something he ought to be wise to himself.”

And only for what he had heard from Collier, Carson would have replaced Locke with another pitcher long ere this. With such feelings governing the “powers,” there was really small chance for the Blue Stockings to snatch the coveted championship. Indeed, it was just this sort of childishness that had prevented Carson from becoming a pennant contender on the occasions when he had managed other Big League teams. The thoroughly successful manager never permits personal feelings or whims to influence his judgment.

Although Lefty’s first pitch to Dillingham would have been called a ball, the batter reached across and met it, with his club loosely held, rolling a soggy bunt into the diamond.

Murray had started with the swing of the pitcher’s arm, and therefore there was no chance to get him at second. It was Locke’s ball to field, and he should have nailed Dillingham at first by twelve or fifteen feet. Somehow, he seemed to hesitate before starting after the rolling sphere, and then, when he did get it, with barely enough time to pinch the runner at the initial sack, he threw all the way into deep right.

A sudden roar went up. The coacher at first shrieked for Dillingham to keep on. The one at third howled and waved his arms at Murray.

Lettering one gasping snarl, Rufe Hyland chased that wild peg down, got it on the rebound from the face of the bleachers, and whipped it back into the diamond in time to hold Murray at third. At second Dalton fooled Dillingham into sliding by pretending that he was going to take a throw.

The Blue Stocking fans were silent and appalled, but the stands seemed to rock with the tremendous uproar made by the sympathizers with the Specters. With second and third occupied, only one down, and Logie the hitter, it seemed a three-to-one shot that Lefty Locke had thrown away the game.

“If we only had Grist or Orth or anybody to go in now!” muttered Grant. “They’re all cold. There’s no time for ’em to warm up. Oh, this is fine management, and I’ll have to shoulder a big part of the blame!”

CHAPTER XV
THROWN AWAY

In the Blue Stocking pit Carson sat gritting his teeth and muttering, but he gave no orders that would tend to relieve the situation.

Nelson, standing on the plate with the ball in his hands, motioned repeatedly before Locke saw him and came forward. They met a few feet in front of the pan.

“What’s the trouble, old man?” questioned Dirk. “Are you sick?”

“Sick? No,” growled the southpaw. “Gimme the ball.”

“Wait a minute. There’s something wrong. You’re not right.”

“Nothing the matter with me. I’ll get Logie. They won’t score. Hear that infernal bunch howl! They make me sick!”

His angry eyes once more swept the tumultuous stands, where the crowd was jeering and hooting and shouting for the Blue Stockings to play ball.

“You’re paying too much attention to the crowd, or something,” said Nelson. “You’re not pitching in form.”

“Bah! I’ve got speed, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but—”

“And curves, too?”

“But your control is bad. If they score now they’ll take this game, best we can do.”

“I tell you they won’t score. Haven’t I made good in every pinch to-day? Well, stop carping, and leave it to me. Just you give me the signs, and do your part of the work; that’s all that’s necessary.”

“All right,” said the catcher, trying to seem as confident and cheerful as possible. “But don’t let Bugs reach the rubber—don’t, for the love of goodness! Keep steady now, and we’ll hold ’em yet.”

He handed Lefty the ball, and Locke walked back to the mound, watching Murray, who was capering off third in an effort to draw a throw.

“Come on, come on!” coaxed Bugs. “Heave it. You can’t get me. Heave it!”

But the pitcher refrained from throwing, and took his position on the slab. The moment he squared away to pitch Dillingham ran far up from second, ready to try to get home on any sort of a promising single.

That Locke had speed enough no one could deny, and now, to the surprise of his friends and his opponents alike, he seemed suddenly to have recovered his control. Doubtless Logie did not figure on this recovery, for he stood up to the pan, without swinging, and permitted two smokers to cut the inside corner, both being called strikes. Annoyed, he gripped his bat and waited for the next one. It proved to be one of Locke’s amazing hooks, all of which seemed due to cut the pan until they “broke.” On the break that particular ball would shoot downward and outward beyond the corner. It did so now, and Logie pounded the air.

Laughing Larry’s joyous yell sounded high and clear above the delighted shouts of the little gathering of Blue Stocking “bugs” in the watching throng.

“All right—it’s all right,” sang Dalton. “You’re fooling ’em some to-day, Lefty, my bucko.”

On the bench Billy Orth mopped his pale, perspiring face. “Great scissors!” he breathed. “I believe he’s going to pull out now. If he does, I’ll own up that I don’t know when a man has gone to the bad.”

The crowd implored Aldrich as they saw him advancing to take the place of the thoroughly disgusted Logie. The game hung by a thread, ready to drop into the laps of the Specters. Could Bush cut that thread?

“You’re there, all right, Lefty,” said Nelson, grinning through the wires of his mask. “If they wait for you to hand ’em the game, they’re fooled.”

Locke made no retort. In position to pitch, he faced Grant and looked to see if the captain gave him a signal to throw to third. But, remembering the wild heave to first, even though Murray was taking a perilous lead, Spider withheld the signal.

“Get Aldrich,” he said. “That’s all you have to do.”

Locke’s first pitch to Aldrich was high, and the batter, after starting to swing, checked himself in time to get the benefit of a called ball.

Nelson returned the sphere promptly. Lefty muffed the toss, brushed his hand across his eyes, picked the ball up, and toed the plate.

There was a sudden wild yell of warning. Murray, spurred by desperation, securing a good lead off third, had started on the jump for the plate. It was an attempt to steal home.

“Here, here!” shouted Nelson, leaping forward to take the ball.

To the dismay of the Blue Stockings, Locke turned to look toward third before throwing. Apparently he was surprised and dazed by failing to perceive Murray anywhere in the vicinity of that sack. Nor did he at that time seem to see Dillingham coming up from second as fast as he could leg it.

“The plate! Put it home!” shrieked Larry Dalton.

Locke swung back slowly, almost heavily. At that moment Bugs was flinging himself for the slide to the pan, and it was too late to stop him. That steal had tied the score.

Then Lefty did what would have been a foolish thing had he made a perfect throw. Swinging back, he pegged the ball to third, although Dillingham was within ten feet of the sack when the sphere left the pitcher’s fingers.

Leaping high, and reaching as far as he could, Jack Daly felt the ball barely graze the end of his gloved fingers. Away it went toward the left-field bleachers, and the coacher sent Dillingham on to the plate.

Joe Welch got the ball, and lined it to the pan in a hopeless attempt to stop that second run. The throw was a bit wide; and when Nelson, lunging with the ball, tagged Dillingham, the umpire spread out his open hands, palms downward.

The game was over! Locke had thrown it away at last.

CHAPTER XVI
HOT WORDS

In a small, bare room of the clubhouse Al Carson waited, his face dark as a storm cloud. At times he muttered to himself. From the adjoining quarters of the defeated players there came no sounds of joshing or laughter. The loss of this game was a disagreeable pill for either management or men to swallow.

After a time a heavy step sounded outside, the door opened, and Lefty Locke appeared before the manager. He was pale now beneath his healthy tan, but still his once handsome, good-natured face wore a sullen, defiant expression, and his flinty eyes met Carson’s withering look without wavering.

“Well,” he said, his voice strangely harsh, “you sent for me.”

For a moment Carson felt that he was going to blow up like a firecracker, but, somehow, he managed to control himself in a measure.

“Yes, I sent for you,” he said. “I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

“I’m not going to say anything.”

“Oh, you’re not! You’re not going to say anything after handing the Specters that game on a platter? You’re not going to say a word after an exhibition that would make a jackass weep?”

“I don’t see any tears in your eyes.”

Then Carson did go up. “You infernal, insolent, swell-headed cub!” he shouted. “You think you can talk to me that fashion just because you happen to have a pull with—” Barely in time he bit the sentence short. His breast heaving, his nostrils distended, he announced: “I’ll show you! I’ll teach you that you can’t deliberately throw a game!”

“Any man who says I ever deliberately threw a game is a liar!”

Rarely in his baseball career had a player talked to Carson like that. The manager could scarcely believe the evidence of his ears, and for a moment he choked, his face purple, in an effort to articulate.

“I oughter beat your head off!” he finally ground forth.

“Try it!” invited Locke.

The manager knew better than to try it. That tall, compact, finely built man looked like a thorough athlete, and just now the expression on his face seemed to betoken that he would gladly welcome a hand-to-hand scrap with anyone.

“I won’t maul you,” panted Carson.

“I’m sorry,” regretted the southpaw.

“But I’ll teach you something, just the same. You’re fined twenty-five and suspended.”

For a moment or two Lefty was silent. “Perhaps you think you can make that penalty stick,” he said presently. “Perhaps you think, simply because I lost a game—I’m not denying I lost it—you can call me into a private room and browbeat me, and fine me when I fail to cower and eat humble pie.”

“I’m fining you for your rotten work on the field. I’d fined you then and there if I’d got hold of you before you loped off.”

“You’re fining me from pure malicious revenge, nothing else. As a manager you play your favorites, and I don’t happen to be one of them.”

“Shut up!” roared Carson. “Shut up, or I’ll double it!”

“Double and be—hanged! I don’t have to play baseball for a living. You can suspend me as long as you please. I’m getting tired of the game, anyway, and thinking about quitting.”

“Oh, you’re a quitter, all right. I reckon old Brennan, of the Hornets, had you sized up about right in the first place.” Carson’s total lack of diplomacy was amazing. Had he tried, with deliberate forethought, to create an unbridgable breach between himself and the left-hander, he could not have chosen a surer course. “The yellow streak always crops up sooner or later in any man who has it,” he went on. “You can pitch, with everything breaking for you, but you lack heart. A little streak of success swelled you up till you began to think yourself a king-pin. You had an idea that you were a better man than Pete Grist, and now—”

“Have you finished?” interrupted Lefty, his voice quivering strangely. “I think I’d better go. In about ten seconds more I’ll do something that will put me liable to a fine for assault and battery.”

His attitude was that of a man about to attack another when the door opened and Charles Collier entered, followed by a clean-looking, tall young man. Both stopped and stared in astonishment at the tableau.

“What—what’s the matter here?” spluttered the owner of the Blue Stockings. “What’s the trouble, Carson?”

“Oh, nothing,” answered the manager. “Nothing, only this fellow threatens me with assault when I give him a call-down for his wooden-headed work in that last inning.”

“Really, Locke, I’m astonished,” said Collier, beginning to show a touch of anger himself. “You must know Mr. Carson has a right to feel sore.”

“But he hasn’t a right to blackguard me. He can do that with other men, perhaps, but he can’t put it over on me.”

“I’m simply telling him the cold facts,” the manager hastened to assert. “He thinks himself so high and mighty that no one has a right to say a thing to him. He’s been coddled and spoiled. There’s no surer way to spoil a cub than to feed him taffy. It’s his first season out of the bush, and he’s beginning to reckon himself a second Walter Johnson.”

“You’re both excited,” said Collier, in an attempt to be soothing. “Of course, there’s a good reason, the game to-day meaning so much, but it’s better to talk these things over in cold blood. Let’s calm down a little, all of us.”

His effort to cast oil on the troubled waters was partly successful, as far as Carson was concerned; for the manager did not wish the magnate to think him a person to lose his temper unreasonably in dealing with any player.

“I called him in to talk it over decently,” he said; “but he became nasty right off the reel.”

“Any man can talk to me decently,” muttered Lefty, though the resentful light still lingered in his eyes.

“That’s right, my boy; that’s the way to feel,” said Collier, rubbing his hands. “It’s too bad we lost the game, but we’ll simply have to fight the harder for the rest of the series. If we break even, we’ll still have it on the Specters. Perhaps Hazelton has been working too hard. I understand Kennedy used him a great deal. Perhaps he needs a rest.”

“Maybe he does,” growled Carson. “Anyhow, I’m going to give him one.”

“It’s likely a few days will put him back into form. My daughter is a good judge of baseball players, and she has confidence in Lefty.”

The young man who had entered with the owner moved his shoulders uneasily, and bit his lip. Suddenly Collier seemed to remember him.

“Mr. Carson,” he said, “let me introduce a man who wanted to meet you. A friend of myself and daughter—Mr. Parlmee. Shake hands with Carson, Franklin.”

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Carson,” said Parlmee, as he gave the manager his hand.

“And Mr. Hazelton, too,” said the magnate, with a wave toward the southpaw. “Son of an old friend of mine. Unfortunately, his father has a prejudice against baseball, so he’s playing under the name of Locke.”

For the first time since the appearance of the club owner and his companion, Lefty’s eyes rested on the face of the latter. In a moment he was vaguely aware that he had seen the man before, but not until Parlmee had bowed coldly, without an attempt to shake hands, did Locke recall the occasion. Then he remembered how in the last home game with the Specters, while he was talking with Virginia Collier, he had seen a young man watching him gloweringly from the stand. This was the same man, and between the two there existed a singular feeling of antipathy, as yet unaccounted for in the pitcher’s mind.

Suddenly it seemed to Lefty that everything was against him, the whole world—fate, even.

“If there’s nothing more,” he said, his voice cold and harsh, “I think I’ll be going.”

“Sullen dog,” said Parlmee, when the door had closed behind the departing man.

CHAPTER XVII
THE UNAPPROACHABLE LOCKE

“Men go stale on college teams,” said Charles Collier apologetically. “Perhaps that’s the trouble with Locke.”

“He ain’t stale,” asserted Carson. “That ain’t the trouble with him. Look how he pitched when he wanted to.”

“He seemed very erratic to me,” put in Parlmee. “I’ve seen plenty of pitchers like him. They’re never to be depended on.”

“But you haven’t seen him at his best,” said the club owner. “This is the first full game you’ve ever seen him pitch. He certainly was reliable enough earlier in the season.”

“The only trouble with him is in that swelled bean of his,” declared Carson. “Under Kennedy he was petted and coddled and made to believe he was the real thing, spelled with capitals. As soon as he gets the same deal from me that every other man is getting, and is handled on his merits, he turns ugly.”

“I suppose,” observed Collier, “he has an idea that you rate Grist at the top of the list.”

“Well, why shouldn’t I? Look at Grist’s record and experience. There’s more baseball in his little finger than this cub has learned yet. If we’d had old Peter on the mound to-day—”

“Why didn’t you put him in when you saw the youngster wabbling?”

“Put him in, and then have it said I gave Locke the hook without reason? Who could foresee the fellow was going to throw the game at the last minute? I know he threatened to blow up several times, but he always tightened. Two were gone when he let Murray steal home. Even then there’d been a chance, for I might have run in another man; but he followed his dumbness up with a fool heave to the left-field bleachers. There wasn’t a bit of sense in it, and, unless he was trying to pass over the game, I can’t understand why he did it.”

“It was the silliest thing I ever saw a pitcher do,” asserted Franklin Parlmee.

“I admit that it was crazy,” agreed Collier. “But he can pitch, and we need the best that’s in our twirling staff in order to keep first place this year. The loss of a single pitcher would be pretty sure to fix us now. You’ve got to use sober judgment, Carson, if you land the championship, and doing that means something to you, as well as myself. The old burg will support a winning team and make it a money-maker, but it hasn’t much stomach for losers.”

“You can bank on it, Mr. Collier,” said Carson, “that I’m going to do my level best to land on top. I’m not in the game, any more than you are, for the fun there is in it. If you hadn’t reckoned I knew my business, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

“Surely not,” agreed the owner. “Kennedy did a good turn last season, and I’d not thought of displacing him if he’d shown an ability to keep the bunch united. Jealousy and cliques on a ball team always put it to the bad. It’s up to you to smooth things out, and I’m afraid you’re not succeeding. But for internal troubles, the Blue Stockings’ lead now would make it practically impossible for the Specters or any other team to head ’em.”

Al Carson was not at all pleased by the criticism of his employer, but he had sufficient good sense to repress open resentment. He made the plea that he should be given time to “smooth out the wrinkles.”

“If I’m going to be given full swing,” he said, “I think I should have it. I let Locke go the limit to-day because of criticism in my handling of him. Give me the proper rope, Mr. Collier, and I’ll deliver the goods; but no manager can do that unless he’s unhampered.”

“It has never been my intention to interfere in a way to hamper you,” returned Collier a bit tartly. “Naturally, I presume I have the right to talk things over with you.”

Half apologetically Carson hastened to state that it was not his intention to question that point.

“Leave me to handle this grouchy man,” he promised, “and I’ll bring him into harness. I know we need him to do a certain amount of pitching, but he’s got to understand that there’s such a thing as discipline. He ought to know he can’t be sassy to his manager.”

While this talk was in progress Lefty’s teammates, starting for their hotel in a motor bus, wondered what had become of him. It was Rufe Hyland who announced that he had seen Locke taking a trolley car all by himself.

“S’pose he feels rotten,” said Rufe, “and so he sneaked.”

“There was something doing ’tween him and the old man,” said Kid Lewis. “Carson called him for a private confab, and I heard sounds of fireworks.”

“It’s a shame,” said Laughing Larry, looking strangely doleful, “a beastly shame he had that spasm in the ninth.”

“Spasm?” growled Herman Brock. “Looked to me more like a trance. What ailed him, anyhow?”

“What’s been ailing him for some days?” questioned Jack Daly. “He don’t eat, and I happen to know he ain’t sleeping well.”

Dalton knew this also, although he had said nothing about it. Suddenly, to the surprise of the others, Grist, who had taken no part in the conversation, spoke up.

“The boy must be off his feed,” said Pete. “Any youngster is apt to have a slump. Give him time and he’ll come round.”

Now this was particularly generous of Grist, who at other times, with Lefty going at his best, had shown a disposition to belittle the southpaw’s fine work. Promptly Dalton’s heart warmed toward the old veteran.

“You’re right, Pete,” he said, “and mebbe you’re the very one to put him back on his pins.”

“Me?” grunted Grist.

“Yes, you.”

“How y’ mean?”

“By talking to him. By encouraging him.”

“Huh!” grunted the old twirler. “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I believe he would, Pete. Lefty’s a ripping fine fellow when he’s right—the finest ever. He’s generous and whole-souled, without a touch of jealousy in his make-up. All of a sudden he’s gone wrong, and nobody can account for it. His particular friends can’t talk to him. They’ve tried.”

“Then I dunno why I should waste my breath,” said Grist slowly. “Likely he’d jump on me and sink his spikes to the sole leather.”

“I don’t believe it,” protested Larry earnestly. “He acts like he’d somehow got a fool notion that everybody’s sore on him. Now, if he saw that you didn’t feel that way—”

“All right,” snapped Grist shortly. “Leave it to me; I’ll talk to him like a father to a wayward son.”

“But be careful,” cautioned Dalton. “Handle him right.”

“Leave it to me, I tell yer,” advised Grist once more.

That night Lefty ate alone at the hotel, shunning his teammates. He picked at his food like a man insulting his appetite, if he had one. When he left the dining room and walked out through the lobby without looking to the right or left, Grist followed him.

Ten minutes later Grant, Hyland, and Dalton, chatting in a front window, were startled to see old Peter appear before them, his face the picture of anger and disgust.

“Say,” snorted the veteran twirler, “when anybody gets me to try anything like that again he’ll know it. Why, that dub would slap his grandmother’s face if she peeped to him. I overtook him by chance on the street and tried to talk decent. What did I get? He seemed to think I was trying to rub something into him, and I couldn’t argue it out of his dumb noddle. The more I said the dirtier he got. I just had to give it up and quit sudden before I forgot myself and handed him a bunch of fives. Anybody that wants to talk to him hereafter can do so. Excuse me!”

“He wouldn’t listen?” asked Dalton in deep disappointment. “Did you make him understand that your motives were friendly?”

“Dunno. I tried hard enough. ’Twan’t no good. If anybody else’d met me that way, I’d soaked him. Now I’m done with Lefty Locke.”

CHAPTER XVIII
UNDER A CLOUD

Sometimes it takes very little to upset the poise of a Big League team. Even when a winning organization is running smoothly, an injury to a single player may throw the whole machinery out of mesh. To an outsider—a mere spectator who has not studied the peculiarities of baseball at close range—this often seems unaccountable. To him, in a club with first-class substitutes waiting to fill the position of any man, there seems to be no reason why the loss of a regular player should make such a remarkable difference in the work of the entire outfit.

Few outsiders realize how evenly matched the clubs often are in the first division. Many times the action of an astute manager in replacing a player who seems to be doing splendid work in his position with another player, apparently no better, has turned a losing club into a winner, the secret of this being that the man substituted fitted in more nicely with the fine adjustment of the great machine, like a perfectly made pinion in the works of a watch.

It is not drawing it too fine to compare a first-class Big League team to a high-grade watch. Time after time the spectators wonder at the clockwork precision of the living machine upon the field. Now and then, at rare intervals, of course, this piece of machinery temporarily goes wrong; but a little oiling or adjusting puts it right again, and it once more resumes its accurate, methodical, mechanical course.

The pitching staff may be likened to the mainspring of the watch. Without pitchers of the highest grade any club, no matter how strong it may be in other departments, is badly handicapped; with such a staff it often happens that a team of otherwise inferior caliber makes no end of trouble and worriment for the leaders. And, despite his ill-advised handling of Lefty Locke, no one knew this better than Al Carson.

When it became known that Lefty had been fined and suspended, some of his teammates attempted to condole with him in a cheerful, joshing way, but not one of them repeated such advances; for he cut them short with such snappy, savage abruptness that they were justified in their resentment of his manner.

The second game of the series between the Specters and the Blue Stockings proved to be a slugging match, in which each team used three pitchers. Pink Dillon, starting for the visitors, was pounded off the mound in the second inning and replaced by Orth. He lasted until the seventh, and then gave way to Grist, who took up the burden with the locals leading by one run. Even “Old Reliable” was not respected by the Specters, who slashed his slants mercilessly. Nevertheless, by a great batting rally in the ninth, the Blue Stockings tied up the score. But Grist was forced to work like a horse for three more long innings before his teammates got to Jim Donovan and hammered out the run which finally gave them the game fourteen to thirteen.

The newspaper reporters called it a “swat fest.” In his wire to the Blade, Jack Stillman, on the road for his paper with the Blue Stockings, vaguely hinted at future trouble for Carson on account of the condition of his pitching staff. Besides Carson himself, no one realized better than Stillman the peril of this crucial period in the great struggle.

Under suspension, Lefty Locke was not on the bench with his teammates. Stillman, who had twice tried to get an interview with Lefty, saw him soberly watching the struggle from a portion of the stand near the reporters’ section, and wondered what really had happened to change this fine, open-hearted fellow into a gloomy grouch.

“I’ll get at him again,” thought the reporter. “He’s got to talk to me. He can’t stand me off like an iceberg.”

But after the game Locke disappeared with the crowd that disappointedly melted away, and Stillman was compelled to postpone his interview.

With his ears open for everything connected with his business, the newspaper man that night heard something which sent him in search of Carson for confirmation. However, he obtained little satisfaction from the manager. Then, remembering his desire to have another talk with Locke, he tried to find Lefty, and failed. The southpaw was not in his room, and none of the players seemed to know where he could be located.

In Dirk Nelson’s room Stillman found Kid Lewis and Jack Daly lounging and talking things over with the catcher. Being well liked by the entire team, he was invited to join them.

“We was just figgerin’ on our chances to-morrer,” said Daly. “We’ve got to have another one of the games here to keep us afloat on the roller.”

“If the Specters play the way they did to-day,” said Stillman, “you ought to cop one more, anyhow.”

“Huh!” grunted the Kid, twisting off a chew of tobacco with his square teeth, “seems to me we didn’t shine like stars of the first magnitude this P.M. Why, with old Peter on the firing line we was barely able to rake in the plum by one measly run.”

“And the way Grist had to go, he won’t be in any shape to-morrow,” said Nelson. “Neither Orth nor Dillon can hold this bunch of sack swipers, and, besides pitching yesterday, Locke’s suspended. We’ve got a couple of reserves, but Handy’s arm is broke in the middle, and Carney has been sick for a month. Excuse my tears.”

“I wish you’d tell me,” said Stillman, “what’s the matter with Locke, anyhow.”

“Tell us,” invited the trio in chorus.

The reporter shook his head. “I’ve tried to find out, but he won’t talk to me. Anybody would think,” he added in an injured way, “that I was his worst enemy; and I was about the only news man who pulled hard for him all the way after he joined the Hornets in the South last spring.”

“He’s sick,” cried Nelson, thumping his knee. “If he ain’t, he’s crazy, and oughter be shut up somewhere with the rest of the bugs. Think of him going wrong just now! Wouldn’t it make a parson use bad language!”

“I heard something to-night,” said Stillman. “I wonder if you fellows have got wind of it? There’s a rumor that Carson has a deal on.”

“What sort of a deal?” asked Daly.

“A trade. They say he got busy on the wire this morning, and that he’s trying to make arrangements to trade Locke off for another pitcher.”

“Who says so?” snapped Lewis.

“I don’t believe it!” shouted Daly.

“Thunder!” breathed Nelson.

“You know I can’t go round blowing the source of my information,” said Stillman, “but it seemed to come straight enough.”

“Perhaps it is straight,” said Nelson. “Carson ain’t never took to Locke. But who’s the man he’s after?”

“You couldn’t guess,” said the reporter. “I won’t prolong your agony. If the report is true, it’s Chick O’Brien, of the Wolves.”

Even with the warning he had given them, this statement seemed to strike them like a bursting bombshell. The Wolves, although in the second division, had harried the leaders all through the season, mainly by the marvelous work of O’Brien, and it was generally agreed that with a first-division team behind him Chick would show himself one of the great pitchers in the business.

“Sufferin’ snakes!” cried Lewis, his face glowing and his eyes snapping. “If we could get Chick now, I’d begin right away planning how to spend my post-season money.”

“Me, too,” agreed Daly.

“There’s nothing to it,” announced Nelson. “You couldn’t pry O’Brien away from the Wolves with a twenty-thousand dollar lever. Old Frazer wouldn’t let him go for two youngsters like Locke and a barrel of money to boot. Every manager in the league has been after him, and Frazer’s held on with the grip of death, knowing the Wolves would go plumb into the sub-cellar without Chick.”

“Collier’s got the dough to buy almost anything, and he’s a plunger when he gets started,” said Stillman. “I reckon he’d be willing to lose money this season to cop the championship again. Anyhow, Carson wouldn’t deny that he was trying to put such a deal across. He wouldn’t say anything about it.”

“Whether it’s true or not, the story is bad for Locke,” said Nelson; “and if it gets to his ears it’s going to make him worse than he is.”

“Or brace him up,” put in Daly. “Mebbe it will do that.”

Of course, the rumor spread swiftly, and in short order every man on the team had heard of it, save Locke himself. For reasons, no one told Lefty.

The fears of the Blue Stockings seemed justified when the Specters walked away with the third game of the series by a score of eight to two. Such a defeat, instead of disheartening them, seemed to fire them with desperation, and the fourth and final game proved to be another terrific battle, in which the two teams seesawed from start to finish, resorting to every legitimate device and trick as opportunities arose. Nevertheless, only for a fluke in the eighth inning, the locals doubtless would have taken the game.

With two down and two on the cushions, Herman Brock banged the ball into deep left, and it went bounding to the fence, with Forbes in hot pursuit. The fielder had been playing deep, knowing Brock’s menace as a slugger, and, but for an unforeseen freak of fate, he doubtless would have secured the ball and held the enemy to a single run. It happened, however, that close to the ground there was a small hole in the fence—a hole barely large enough to push an ordinary baseball through; and never before had the sphere sought out that little opening hidden by a thin fringe of grass. Now, with seeming perverseness, it went straight through the hole, giving Brock a homer and putting the visitors again in the lead.

Orth had been wabbling, and Carson had wisely kept Dillon warming up all through the game. Now, when the Specters came to bat again, the manager took a chance and sent Pink to the hillock.

Strange as it seemed, the slants and benders of this second-string pitcher, which had been so easy for the locals to fathom two days before, now proved tremendously puzzling. And, though the fighting “ghosts” became menacing in both the eighth and ninth, they could not quite succeed in pushing a runner round the course.

Therefore, for all of the tattered condition of their pitching staff, the Blue Stockings broke even in the series with their most dangerous rivals.

But they were now to invade the territory of the Terriers, always to be feared, and the dark cloud swung lower.

CHAPTER XIX
THE STRANGER

The train was swinging along through open, rolling country when Locke, now being left severely to himself on account of his churlishness by his resentful teammates, tired of gazing dully at the flying landscape, rose and passed down the aisle of the special car. Scarcely anyone seemed to observe him, and he noticed no one. When he had disappeared, however, Billy Orth shook his head and turned to Larry Dalton.

“Thundering shame, Larry,” he said in a low tone. “Do you know, I think I’ve solved the trouble.”

“Then you’re wiser than the rest of us.”

“It’s the girl business, to begin with.”

“Oh, we’ve all guessed that much, but being thrown down by a girl isn’t enough to put an ordinary well-balanced chap, same as Lefty seemed to be, all to the punk. Of course, it might affect a fellow, but it wouldn’t turn him from a fine, jolly soul into a sour, nasty-tempered, unreasoning grump. You’ve got to go farther, Billy.”

“I have been,” asserted the other with assurance.

“What way?”

“He’s taken to hitting the booze.”

“No!” breathed Laughing Larry incredulously. “Why, he never drank. He’d take a glass of beer now and then, to be sure, but you couldn’t drive a drink of hard stuff into him. You’re wrong, Orth.”

“When a man gets double crossed in love he’s liable to do any freakish thing, and lots of ’em affiliate with the jag juice.”

“But Locke hasn’t been full. No one has seen him under the influence.”

“Perhaps he’s under the influence right now. Perhaps he’s keeping about so much redeye in his skin all the time. Maybe that’s why he herds by himself so much. He sure has had plenty of chance to drink by his lonesome lately.”

“Yes, but— Oh, say, you’ve got to have something better than mere supposition to base this on.”

“I have.”

“What?”

“Saw him coming out of a saloon last night. Couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but it was Lefty, sure. You know firewater works in peculiar ways with some men. Occasionally it turns a jolly good fellow into an ugly dog. Lefty hasn’t hit it up enough to stagger or show the usual signs, but in his effort to drown his sorrow he’s taken just enough to change him completely. Something ought to be done. But when a fellow is absolutely unapproachable, what can you do?”

“What can you?” echoed Larry.

In the meantime, passing through the train, Lefty had entered the ordinary smoker, which chanced to be so well filled that nearly every seat was taken. Through a blue haze of smoke he peered in search of a seat as he walked along the aisle. Suddenly a young man took a brierwood pipe from his mouth, stared hard at the pitcher, and rose to his feet.

“By Jove! Phil Hazelton!” he exclaimed. “Why, how are you, old man?”

Lefty stared, unsmiling, at the speaker, apparently failing to notice the extended hand.

“Pardon me,” he said; “I don’t remember you.”

“Don’t remember me?” cried the other incredulously. “Great Scott! Have I changed so much? I know I’m threatened with premature baldness, but still it can’t be that in such a short time you’ve forgotten Walt Hetner.”

“Hetner?” said Locke, frowning and shaking his head in a puzzled way. “I don’t have the slightest recollection of you.”

“Cæsar’s ghost! I knew you at Princeton. We were college mates.”

“Princeton?” said Lefty. “Yes, I was at Princeton, I believe.”

“You pitched for the varsity nine. Your old man didn’t like it, and was pretty sore. I’ve heard lately that you’ve gone into professional baseball. Don’t get a chance to see many games myself nowadays, but the report is that you’re some pitcher for the Blue Stockings.”

“I have been pitching for them,” admitted Locke slowly. “Sorry I don’t remember you.”

His pride hurt, Hetner sank back into his seat, and Lefty passed on. The rebuffed man turned to his companion, who was an old acquaintance he had met on the train.

“Well, wouldn’t that frost you some, Wilson?” he exclaimed, his face flushed. “Why, I knew that fellow at college as well as I know you, and he’s the last man I’d expect to hand out anything of that sort.”

“Do you think he didn’t recognize you, Doctor?”

“Recognize me? Of course he did. That’s what makes me hot. I don’t know why he should play the cad. It’s beyond me. Perhaps he’s ashamed of the fact that he’s playing professional baseball under a fake name.”

“Still,” said Wilson, “he might be decent, at least.”

Lefty came to a seat in which a slender, pallid, sad-eyed young man sat alone.

“I beg your pardon, stranger,” he said; “is this seat taken?”

The young man started a bit, glanced up, and smiled faintly.

“No, it isn’t taken, pal,” he answered. “But how the dickens did you happen to know my name?”

“Your name?” said Lefty, sinking down, a puzzled frown plowing a deep furrow between his eyes.

“Yes. You called me Stranger. That’s my monacker—Robert Stranger; Bob for short.”

“Oh, I get you,” said Lefty, failing to return the young man’s engaging smile. “It was just by chance that I called you that.”

“Well, for a moment I thought you knew me. It’s mighty lonesome taking this jaunt without anybody to chin to, and I’m glad you came along. Traveling alone yourself?”

“In a way I am,” answered Lefty, betraying a willingness to talk to this chance acquaintance which would have surprised his antagonized friends in the special car. “I’m a ball player, but I ducked to get away from the rest of the bunch. They’re on this train.”

“Oh, a ball player!” murmured Mr. Stranger. “Professional? Big League?”

“The Blue Stockings.”

“They’re some,” beamed the man by the car window. “Of course I hear plenty of baseball talk. Can’t help it. But I never did take to the game much. It may sound like bunk to you, but I never saw a real game in my life.”

“Really?” said Lefty, in an expressionless way. “That is rather odd.”

“S’pose I’m a crank,” laughed the other; “but all the guff I hear and see in the newspapers about baseball makes me weary; it sure does. Seems like ninety per cent. of the population has gone dippy about the game. Once on a time I was mistook for a pitcher I happened to look like. A gent blew up and called me by that ball tosser’s name and asked me how I was coming on at it. He didn’t believe me when I told him I’d never pitched a ball in my life. Why, I don’t know a curve from a wedge of restaurant pie.”

“You’re a rare bird,” said Lefty.

“I am, pal, and I’m rather proud of it.”

“What’s your business, if it’s not too personal?”

The young man hesitated and coughed behind his hand.

“I’m a—a diamond cutter,” he answered. “That is, I have been, but I’ve had to give it up on account of my health. Too confining, you know. I’m not much on being confined,” he continued oddly. “You can see it has rather taken hold of me. My health isn’t just what it should be.”

“I noticed you were unusually pale.”

“That comes from confinement. A pill slinger told me it would be a good thing for me to get out into the country and find a job somewhere in the open air. I’m looking for work on a farm. The rural life for mine, far from the lure of high-cut swinging doors. Between us, pal, I’ve hit it up a bit too hard in my day. I always was a wild one,” he went on garrulously. “Even when I was a boy I touched too many of the high spots. I’ve been a mark, too. Ever play poker? Well, I’ve been the easiest dub you ever saw at that game. But I like it. Can’t seem to keep away from it. Every time I get a roll on hand I go searching for a game and someone to pass the velvet over to. Even now I’ve got a little wad of long green that’s burning in my pocket. Before you came along I was thinking I’d like to find three or four good sports and get up a little game.”

“I don’t play poker—for blood,” said Lefty. “A bunch on the team are at it every chance they get; though, of course, they only play a little game.”

“Oh, that would suit me. I don’t want to really gamble, you know. I’m a minister’s son.”

Lefty refrained from saying that he was another.

“Brought up in a straight-laced family,” Stranger went on. “My old man thought cards the tools of Satan. And my mother”—a cloud seemed to come to his face and his smile faded—“it broke her heart when she found out I was playing penny ante with a bunch of game lads. Mebbe that’s what finished her. The old gent didn’t last long after she was put away under the daisies.”

“Then your father and mother are both dead?”

“Both gone. But come, what’s the use to talk of things like that? Let’s see if we can’t find a couple of lonesome travelers looking for amusement. Let’s start something. A little game of poker to pass away—”

The sentence never was finished. At this moment there came a sudden jarring, grinding, crashing sound. A broken rail had given way on a curve, and it shot half the train from the track to strew it into a splintered mass of wreckage along the foot of the embankment.

CHAPTER XX
THE RETIRED MANAGER

Throughout his baseball career it had been the object of old Jack Kennedy to quit the game voluntarily with honors and retire to his little Ohio farm in the town of Deering. Being of a somewhat frugal turn, he had saved from his earnings while in the game enough to pay for the farm to the last dollar, which was a matter of no small satisfaction to him when Charles Collier, the new owner of the Blue Stockings, dropped him from the management of the team in order to give Al Carson that position.

Without egotism, Kennedy knew himself to be more capable than Carson; but still he made no protest, and, in spite of his evident regret over bidding the players good-by, he succeeded very well in hiding the sore spot.

“I’m done with baseball, boys,” he said. “Henceforth it’s the rural life for me, raising corn and pumpkins and garden sass in general. If any of you ever come through my way, don’t forget where I live. You’ll make a hit with me if you take my wigwam for the home plate and squat on the bench at my fireside.”

Kennedy knew full well the real trouble with the Blue Stockings, and it had been his object to break up the cliques and smooth out the wrinkles on the team in his own level-headed way. He knew also that Carson was due to have his troubles, and, like the generous man he was, he had approached the new manager and attempted to put him wise. These advances, however, were not pleasing to Carson, who had cut him short in a way that caused Kennedy to bottle up abruptly.

“All right,” old Jack had muttered to himself. “All right, my wise gink. Go your way and see where you land. I’m betting it won’t be on top.”

Despite the fact that he had said he was done with baseball, it was no more than natural that he should keep track of the career of the Blue Stockings under the new management, and the sporting department of the big daily newspaper he received regularly by mail was the first page examined. Each day he drove a mile and a half into town to get the two o’clock mail, and the letters he received never seemed to have much attraction for him until he had ripped off the cover of his paper, glanced at the percentage of the Big League teams, and perused the report of the last contest in which the Blue Stockings had participated. While he was doing this his face was a study. Sometimes he would smile, but more often he frowned and shook his head, and occasionally he muttered to himself. Once a man, standing near, was startled to hear him suddenly exclaim:

“What’s the matter with the boy, anyhow? Either he’s slumped or Carson’s handing him a rotten deal.”

Of course he was speaking of Lefty Locke, and when, later, he saw a printed reference to the southpaw’s poor form, he puzzled still more over the matter. For Kennedy had realized the need of new blood on the pitching staff of the Blue Stockings, and had banked a good deal on the ability of Locke to aid in holding the team in first place.

With an excellent overseer on his farm, old Jack did not labor hard enough to hurt himself. The truth was, he found it difficult to step directly from the baseball harness into something so wholly different and so decidedly tame and monotonous by comparison. At times he fretted a little, although he did his best to overcome the restless spells that assailed him.

“When an old race horse is turned out to pasture,” he told himself, “it’s a good thing for him to realize that his track days are over.”

Now it chanced that the town of Deering supported one of the teams which composed a four-cornered bush league, and, although the loyal citizens had put their hands deep into their pockets to finance the club, the “Deers,” as the local organization was known, were running a rather bad third in the race. This fact was the cause of no small dissatisfaction to Peter McLaughlin, proprietor of the Central House, the principal hotel, and one of the most generous contributors to the fund. In the old days McLaughlin had played baseball a little himself, and he was confident now that he knew just where the trouble with the local club lay.

“It’s in the management,” he told the other members of the board of directors. “Sperry made a record as manager for a little jerkwater college club, therefore he thinks he knows all about it. But I tell you he’s no match for old Hank Bristol, of the Buccaneers, to say nothing of Hi Pelty, who’s handling the Stars. Last year, this time, the Buccaneers were in third place, where we are now, and we was banging away trying to get ahead of the Stars. This year we’re down next to the Boobs in the basement, and unless something’s done even that bunch of dummies will get ahead of us. Sperry better throw up his job as manager and stick to his regular business drawing sody water at Folsom’s drug store.”

“If he did that,” said Lawyer Gange, secretary of the baseball association, “who’d we get to fill his place? Nobody else wants the job—unless you do, Peter.”

“Excuse me,” said McLaughlin. “I’ve got my own business to look after. I’ve coughed up a hundred bucks to back the team, and I’m ready to put in another hundred if necessary, but I couldn’t waste my time trying to run the outfit, even if I knew how.”

“Well, that’s the way with the rest of us, so what are we going to do?”

“I’ve got an idea. There’s Jack Kennedy home on his farm, and he knows more baseball in a minute than anybody in this town, or in the whole league, for that matter, except possibly old Hank Bristol. If we could get Kennedy to—”

“If we could,” exclaimed Rufe Manning, the treasurer. “There’s that if. You don’t s’pose Kennedy would monkey with a little bush team like ours after being manager of Big League champs, do yer?”

“No tellin’. Perhaps he might.”

“He won’t,” said the lawyer. “He told me himself that he was done with baseball. Why, he hasn’t even had interest enough since coming home to see one of our games, though he’s been invited to do so.”

“No tellin’ what can be done with him,” persisted the hotel proprietor. “He ought to have enough local pride to want to see his own town stand well in this league. If somebody could prick that pride a little, mebbe he’d take holt. I don’t reckon he’s workin’ himself to death on his farm. He’s got the time.”

“Well, you’re the man to try him,” said Gange. “It’s up to you, Peter.”

“All right,” agreed Peter. “Leave it to me and I’ll see what I can do. We’re going up against Bristol’s bunch of Buccaneers this afternoon, and I’ll look out for Kennedy if he comes in for his mail same as usual.”

CHAPTER XXI
BACK IN THE GAME

When he cornered old Jack at the post office, half an hour before the game was to start, McLaughlin’s proposition failed to arouse the retired manager’s interest.

“I’m done with the game, Peter,” said Kennedy. “I’m just a plain farmer now. As long as I don’t mean to get mixed up with it again, it’s best that I should keep away from the field.”

“Do you know, Jack,” said the hotel man, “folks around here say you’ve got a grouch. They say you’re sore on baseball ’cause you was turned down. We’ve been rather proud of you in this town. When you come home twice after winning the championship we gave you a blow-out both times. You seem to have forgot that.”

“No, I haven’t forgot it, Peter. But when a man has quit a certain line of business, and quit it for good, he’d better cease to monkey with it. With me baseball was a business for a good many years. I own up that I was rather proud of my record at it.”

“And you was so proud of being manager of Big League champs that now you won’t even ask how the little fellers are doing in your own home town. You used to set round my office winters and talk it over with the boys and give them points, but this time you’re changed so folks scarcely know you. Why, there’s Hank Bristol, manager of the Buccaneers, who’s asked for you every time he hit Deering, saying as how he used to know you well and he’d like to put his blinkers on you again. He was some baseball player once himself, and he’s pretty clever at it yet, as fur as our sort of baseball goes. I should think you’d like to see him operate around second base. He’s up to the field right now with his bunch, and he says he’s goin’ to drive another nail in our coffin. His team ain’t only a few points behind the Stars, and Hank reckons the pennant’s as good as nailed.”

“Bristol always did talk a lot with his mouth,” said Kennedy. “If he can’t win any other way, he’ll bluff out a victory.”

It was the sore spot not yet healed which had caused Kennedy to avoid Bristol; for Jack, knowing old Hank would ask questions, was far from eager to furnish explanations regarding his sudden release by Collier.

“Oh, well, do as you’re a mind to,” said McLaughlin, with pretended indifference. “I’ve done some personal favors for you. When we give you that banquet at the hotel last year—”

Flushing, Kennedy interrupted. “If you’re going to put it up to me that way, Peter,” he said, “I’ll go out and watch the game to-day. Perhaps I can give your manager some tips that will help him.”

In this manner it came about that Kennedy saw the struggle that afternoon between the Deers and the Buccaneers and warned the manager of the former team, in the midst of the game, that Bristol’s players had the signals of the locals and were, therefore, forewarned and prepared for every method of attack. This warning, however, was not sufficient to prevent the Buccaneers from winning. In the eighth inning they secured a lead of two runs through their disposition to take chances on the paths, and the failure of the Deering pitcher to hold the runners close to the cushions, and at the end of the ninth they were still one tally to the good, although outbatted and outfielded. With a supercilious, confident grin adorning his homely face, Bristol encountered Kennedy after the clash was over.

“You see how easy it is out here in the bush, Ken, old hoss,” he chuckled. “It’s a reg’lar cinch to make a winning team if you’ve got any mater’al to work with. Before next week’s over we’ll be leadin’. I took it easy to-day. Saved my best pill slinger for the Stars to-morrow. Your poor little Deers are due to find a resting place in a deep, dark hole.”

“Don’t call them my Deers, Hank,” remonstrated Kennedy. “I ain’t got nothing to do with them. If I had—”

“It would be just the same, Jack, old boy. You had a streak with the Blue Stockings, I own up; but it was broke before they put Carson in your place. I reckon you lost your rabbit’s foot. If I’d ever had your chance—”

“You’ve had chances enough in your day,” cut in Kennedy a trifle warmly. “I was about ready to quit baseball, anyhow; that’s why I bought my farm here.”

“Oh, you was always a clever gink holding on to the dollars and salting ’em away,” returned Bristol.

In truth, he was jealous of Kennedy’s success, although he endeavored to disguise the fact beneath a joshing exterior. Such joshing, however, was not calculated to please.

“Let me tell you something, Hank,” said Kennedy. “If the manager of this Deering bunch knew his business he could eat you up. It wasn’t much of a trick to swipe such a simple code of signals, and any sort of runners could steal on a pitcher with a movement like Corey’s. Don’t get so chesty.”

“Old hoss,” retorted the Buccaneer manager, “if you had the Deers it would be just the same, believe me.”

“Perhaps so,” said Kennedy.

Twenty minutes later he was talking with Peter McLaughlin in a private room at the hotel.

“What was that proposition you made to me, Peter?” he asked. “Did you say the town generally thought Sperry inefficient as a manager and wanted someone else?”

“That’s what I said,” answered the landlord. “We’ve talked it over, and you’re the man we’d like to have. Sperry would get out willingly, too. He’s got about enough of it, with everybody kickin’ at him.”

“If you’re giving it to me straight,” said Kennedy, “I’ll stand. You may tell the association that.”

At a meeting of the directors, called that night, Sperry resigned as manager of the Deering baseball team and Jack Kennedy was chosen to fill the position vacated.

CHAPTER XXII
BUILDING UP THE TEAM

With the season three-quarters over, it was no cinch for anybody to whip into winning form a bush team like the Deers, and Jack Kennedy soon realized that he had a real problem on his hands. Having shouldered the responsibility, however, he went at it with the same conscientious earnestness he would have devoted to a Big League organization, and the bushers, who had been taking things easy and “soldiering” under Sperry, quickly learned that there would be no loafing or fooling with the new manager. Whenever possible there was regular forenoon practice, and when this could not be secured it was necessary for the team to appear on the playing field for a long warming-up before any league game.

The code of signals arranged and put into use by Sperry and Toots Kilgore, second baseman and captain of the Deers, was promptly cast into the discard. In place of these incomplete and rather simple signals, old Jack introduced a new code, at which the men were drilled on the field and off, the requirement being that every one of them should become so familiar with the signs that there could be no possible misunderstanding, doubt, or hesitation in any event.

Of course, Kennedy secured a suit for himself, which enabled him not only to sit on the bench and direct his men, but to go on to the coaching lines or take the place of another player as a pinch hitter or upon the field. The loose ends were quickly gathered up, and the former hit-or-miss style of going after a game was abandoned for something bearing a genuine resemblance to inside baseball.

Nor did it take old Jack long to perceive that the arrangement of the team, as well as the batting order, needed doctoring. His first move, of course was to line up the batters so that their individual work in offense would become as effective as possible in securing runs. Almost simultaneously he called to the bench the regular center fielder, although that individual had established a record in the league for his great ground covering, sureness on flies, and splendidly accurate long throws to the sacks or the plate. It was Kennedy’s theory that all outfielders should be hitters, and the man benched had the lowest batting average on the team. The former first baseman was sent out into the middle garden, where he soon demonstrated that he had the making of an outfielder.

The regular third baseman did not handle hot grounders to Kennedy’s satisfaction, but in all other ways he could cover the sack well, therefore the manager switched him round to first, where he would not get so many sizzling grass clippers. This move proved to be a piece of wisdom, but it left the third station vacant, and for some time Kennedy was bothered to plug the hole. The first person tried was Tim Coffin, the utility man, who had been kept on the bench, but Coffin had the same trouble with sharp ground hits. Nevertheless, at bat he was certain to get one clean, hard bingle a game, and his average was nearly two, which created in Kennedy’s breast a strong desire to keep him regularly at work.

“Have you ever done any backstopping, Coffin?” asked the manager.

“A little,” was the reply. “I started out to be a catcher.”

“You’ve got a good whip,” said old Jack. “We’ll try you behind the pan to-day. Brinkley will have a go at third.”

Behind the pan Coffin did a splendid turn, being far more successful than Brinkley in stopping base pilfering. Brinkley was one of those backstops who could handle almost any sort of pitching and rarely let a wild heave get past him if there was any possible way of touching it, but his base throwing was erratic. The players of every other team in the league knew this, but they soon found that they could not reap the advantage of a wild throw off Coffin at a critical time, and their first efforts to do so cost them dearly.

But Brinkley was no third baseman, and Kennedy kept the wires hot with distress signals in his efforts to fill that position.

In response to one of those signals, Joe Digg blew into Deering. Digg had come up from the sand lots through the minors to the Big League, where, after creating a sensation in the early part of one season, he passed away in a blaze of red fire. Drink had sent Joe back to the minors and thence down into temporary oblivion. Kennedy knew him as a crackajack third sacker and a terror to pitchers when he was sober and in condition. Old Jack met the new man at the station.

“Hello, Joe,” he said cordially, shaking Digg’s hand. “Glad to see you.”

“Hello, Jack,” returned Digg, with equal cordiality. “I’m glad to see you, but I never expected it would be managing a bunch of bushers.”

“Oh, this is just a little matter of sport,” explained Kennedy. “I’m out of the game, you know. I’m a farmer now. But it happened that they had a team here in this burg that was getting walloped because of bad management, and my friends in town drafted me into service. I want you to come out with me to the farm to-night, and we’ll have a little chat.”

They did have a chat that night after supper on Kennedy’s veranda. In his bluff, open way, which seldom caused offense or produced resentment, the manager came to the point without beating around the bush.

“Joe,” he said, “you ought to be drawing a fancy salary to-day in the Big League, and it’s your own fault that you ain’t.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” returned Digg, flushing.

“Booze has downed many a good man besides yourself. Are you going to let it keep you down?”

“I dunno. Seems like I’m such a thunderin’ fool that I can’t help it.”

“Rot! You can help it. Keep away from jag hunters and you’ll be all right. As I said, I’m out of Big League baseball for good, but I reckon my judgment and my influence would count for something with a number of managers who are still in the game. If I should say to one of them that I had a player who ought to be given a trial, that man would get a show, even if he had been canned after one fizzle. You get me?”

“I get you, Jack,” nodded Digg, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “If you can work me back into the game you’ll do me a turn I’ll never forget.”

“But you know I wouldn’t try such a thing unless I was satisfied that you had really turned over a new leaf and meant to cut drink out for good and all. You’ve got to show me, Joe.”

“It’s a go!” exclaimed Digg. “If you ever catch me drinking anything stronger than water, put the tag on me.”

In the first two games in which Digg played third for the Deers he accepted eleven chances, three of them of the most sensational order, without an error, and batted .400.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE MAN WHO DENIED HIMSELF

His pitching staff gave Kennedy the most trouble. No matter how efficient a team may be in other departments, it cannot aspire to championship honors unless it has a capable staff of twirlers. Curley, Sullivan, and Heines, the three mound men for the Deers, each and all had some weakness which was a drawback.

Curley was erratic and never to be depended on. One day he might pitch a splendid game, and follow it on his next turn with wretched work. Sullivan had a long swing which gave base runners a big lead and made it almost impossible for the best throwing catcher to keep them from stealing. Nor could old Jack break the man of this swing, for when he tried to do so Sullivan’s short-arm delivery proved to be “pie” for the opposing stickers. Heines had an arm that was good for four or five innings, then broke like the most brittle glass.

In one pinch, with Heines’ wing failing in the fifth and the Deers having a lead of three runs, Kennedy actually went on to the mound himself. Curley had pitched the day before, and old Jack knew Sullivan’s delivery would hand the game over to the enemy. Never in his life had Kennedy attempted to pitch in anything resembling a league game, and he was not the possessor of as much as one little dinky curve. Yet, using from start to finish an underhanded ball, delivered from the knee and shot upward close across the batter’s shoulder, he managed to pull the game out of the fire by a margin of one lonesome tally.

When the Deering fans hailed him as a pitcher Kennedy laughed them to scorn.

“That was the greatest case of horseshoes ever,” he declared. “I couldn’t do it again against a bunch of grammar-school kids. Heines had the Stars dizzy by his speed, and when I handed them up that subway rise they simply broke their backs trying to hit it. If I’d begun the game I wouldn’t have lasted an inning.”

All this time, of course, he was trying to get hold of other pitchers, and, most of all, he desired a left-hander to use against the Buccaneers, who had five left-handed batters. Somehow he got hold of a southpaw by the name of Billy Winkle, who seemed to have speed, curves, and control. His lack of head might have been balanced by the good judgment of Coffin, who was steadily and swiftly improving behind the bat, but Winkle lacked heart as well as head; and in the breaks the uproar of the rooters, combined with Billy’s fear of what was going to happen, invariably cut the guy ropes.

About this time, still eagerly following the career of the Blue Stockings, Kennedy was startled one day when he opened his newspaper and read some black headlines on the first page which told of a railroad disaster in which the Big League team was involved. In the smash seven persons had been killed and twenty-one more or less seriously injured. By rare good fortune the special car containing the ball players had shot down the embankment on its wheels and remained in an upright position after plowing deep into a boggy place at the roadside. It had not been smashed, and, save for a shaking up and a few bruises, not one of the men in that car had been hurt.

Having read to this point, Kennedy drew a deep breath of relief. A moment later, however, he uttered a smothered exclamation of dismay, for the next paragraph stated that one of the players, Lefty Locke, had not been in the car and was missing since the catastrophe. He was not among those killed or injured, and all efforts to find him had proved fruitless.

“Well, I’ll be—jiggered!” muttered Kennedy. “Wasn’t in the car! Hasn’t been found! Well, what’s become of the boy? He was under suspension. I’m afraid—”

He did not state what he was afraid of, but the serious, troubled face which he wore, and his eagerness for further details concerning the disaster, indicated that anxiety over the fate of Lefty remained in his mind.

One evening, two days later, shortly after the arrival of the seven o’clock train in Deering, Kennedy sought Landlord McLaughlin in the Central House to consult with him regarding some matter concerning the team. As old Jack entered the office he saw a man at the desk in the act of registering. There was something strangely familiar about this man’s back, and when the new arrival made inquiries for a room with bath the sound of his voice caused the manager of the Deers to step forward quickly to get a look at his face.

As the clerk was fishing a big brass key from a pigeonhole the guest leaned his left elbow on the edge of the desk and swung part way round, thus bringing himself face to face with Kennedy. The latter gasped, and let out something like a shout.

“Holy smoke!” he cried delightedly. “As I live, it’s Lefty Locke! How are you, son?”

To Kennedy’s astonishment, no light of recognition rose into the man’s eyes, and he made no move to shake the extended hand. Instead, he surveyed the old manager in a puzzled, doubting way, and slowly shook his head.

“I think you’ve made a mistake, pal,” he said. “My name is Stranger—Robert Stranger.”

His mouth open, Kennedy slowly permitted his hand to drop at his side. For something like half a minute he stared steadily at the person who had denied his acquaintance. Suddenly he laughed.

“What’s the joke, Lefty?” he asked. “Put me wise.”

“Really, there’s no joke,” was the grave assertion. “You’ve got me wrong.”

“What’s that?” rasped old Jack. “Do you mean to say you don’t recognize John Kennedy, your old manager?”

Something like an annoyed frown crept into the somber, handsome face of the younger man.

“I tell you,” he said a trifle warmly, “you’ve got me wrong. To my knowledge I never heard of you in all my life. You call me Locke, but my name is Stranger. That’s my monacker—Robert Stranger, Bob for short.”

Kennedy pinched himself. “I’m awake,” he muttered. “There can’t be two men so much alike in the whole world. Besides, he wrote his name on the register with his left hand.”

Suddenly he began to feel a touch of anger. “See here,” he said harshly, “maybe your right name ain’t Locke, but you can’t deny that it’s Hazelton. You can’t deny that you’re a baseball pitcher and that you were under my management on the Blue Stockings.”

“The Blue Stockings?” said the other. “They’re some. I hear plenty of baseball talk. Can’t help it. But I never did take to the game any. Perhaps it sounds like bunk to you, but I never saw a real game in my life.”

“Help!” cried Kennedy. “I’m loony, or he is!”

CHAPTER XXIV
PERPLEXED

The brazen, barefaced manner in which Lefty Locke denied his identity and professed that he had never even seen a game of baseball was simply staggering. For old Jack still refused to believe the man could be any one save Locke himself.

What was Lefty’s object? Surely he ought to know that he could not fool his old manager by such a silly subterfuge and barefaced falsehood. That he was trying to “put over” a puerile joke did not appear possible, and certainly there was no twinkle of mirth in his steady eyes, no smile upon his sober face.

There was something behind the young pitcher’s denial of his identity which Kennedy could not understand, something which confused as well as annoyed him. He was mustering his wits to begin all over again when suddenly the new arrival said:

“I trust you’ll excuse me, pal. I’ll have to wash up before supper, which I see is in progress now.” He glanced in the direction of the open doors to the dining room and turned to the clerk. “Can I have my room now?” he asked.

“Your luggage?” questioned the clerk significantly.

“I haven’t any. I’ll pay a day in advance. How much?”

“Three dollars.”

Producing a roll of bills, the man peeled off a two and a one and shoved them across the desk, whereupon the clerk handed the key over to a boy, who invited the guest to follow him.

They had not disappeared before Kennedy was surveying the register, on which he found written: “Robert Stranger, N. Y.”

“Well, wouldn’t that freeze you stiff!” he muttered.

He was still muttering to himself when Landlord McLaughlin appeared.

“What’s the matter now, Jack?” inquired the sporting proprietor of the Central House. “You’re growlin’ like a dog with a sore ear. Same old trouble ’bout pitchers, I s’pose?”

“I came in to consult with you about that southpaw, Mercer, we’ve been trying to get holt of for a week. I’ve got him to state his terms at last.”

“Good,” said McLaughlin.

“Bad,” said Kennedy. “He wants sixty a week and board. We can’t afford it, Peter, in this little crossroads town. It’ll take us over our salary limit, too.”

“We’ve got to have a fust-class pitcher at any price. You said so yourself. Ain’t there no way to hire him and keep under the salary limit?”

“Only one way. We can release one of our other pitchers, along with the utility man we’re keeping on the bench for emergencies. If a pinch comes I can go into the game myself.”

“Your plan seems all right to me, and I’m for it. We can get along without Heines. Three pitchers is all we’ve had, anyhow, and they’re enough. I say, nail Mercer. We’ve got to have somebody quick. I just heard to-night that Bristol’s signed a new twirler for the Buccaneers. You see, Hank don’t propose to let you git the bulge on him.”

“Did you hear the name of Bristol’s new pitcher?”

“Yep, but it sorter slipped me. It was Eagan or Elywin, or something like that. I’ll bet he’s a ripper.”

“He’s probably a good man if Hank’s signed him at this late day.”

“Well, you see where that puts us. You see what we’re up against. We can’t expect to get no Big League pitcher now.”

“I don’t know ’bout that,” returned Kennedy in a low tone, his eyes on a man who was descending the stairs, and who turned at once toward the dining room. “There goes one.”

“Hey? What?” spluttered the landlord.

“There goes one of the cleverest young portside pitchers it has been my luck to see work in a game in the last three years.”

“Hey?” spluttered Peter once more. “That feller there? The one just goin’ into the dining room?”

“That’s the man.”

“What you giving me, Jack?”

“Straight facts.”

“Why, what’s he doin’ round here?”

“I dunno. That’s what gets me.”

“Who is he?”

“He registered as Robert Stranger, but he played under me with the Blue Stockings, using the name of Tom Locke. He was generally called Lefty.”

Landlord McLaughlin was in a sudden sweat of excitement.

“Played under you? Then you know all about him.”

“I reckoned I knew a lot about him,” said Kennedy; “but in the last ten minutes I’ve sorter changed my mind. Brennan, of the Hornets, got him through a scout early in the season, but Brennan sized him up wrong and let him go unconditionally. I’d been after him before that, and I gave him a try-out. He was there with the goods. When I quit, with the exception of Grist, he was the most dependable pitcher the team had. Since then something has happened to him. I dunno what ’tis, but I could tell by the papers that he was goin’ wrong. He was in that railroad smash the other day. After the smash he wasn’t to be found. Now he’s here.”

“Well, if you have a talk with him he’ll clear things up, of course. He’ll explain it all.”

“I’ve had a talk with him. Instead of explaining, he pretended he didn’t know me. Peter, he denied that he was Lefty Locke and claimed his name was Stranger, under which he has registered here.”

“Jerusalem!” breathed McLaughlin. “That’s mighty funny. How do you figger it?”

“I can’t get only one solution. It must be he didn’t pull well with the new manager. I know Carson, and he’s rough on a man he don’t cotton to. Lefty was suspended shortly before that railroad smash-up. When that came he improved his opportunity to duck. Fool thing to do, but it must be just what he done, Peter. Mebbe he plans to lay low until Carson gets in a hole and needs him desperate. Then, perhaps, he’ll wire Carson and try to make terms. It don’t seem to me that the Lefty Locke I knew would try any such jinks as that, but you never can tell what a man will do.”

“By goudy!” said Peter. “If that’s what he’s up to, mebbe we can get him to do some pitching for us while he’s waitin’ to pull the thing off. We’d make Bristol go some. Why don’t you try it, Jack? You oughter be able to make a deal with him, if anybody can.”

Kennedy shook his head. “I dunno,” he growled, “I dunno ’bout that. Why, he just said not only that he’d never played, but that he’d never as much as seen a game. He’s got me guessing. I’m afraid I can’t make a deal with him.”

“Then I’ll try,” announced Landlord McLaughlin. “Wait till he comes out from supper. Leave it to me.”

CHAPTER XXV
STRANGER GETS A JOB

When the new guest reappeared from the dining room, having finished his supper, Landlord McLaughlin met him with an engaging manner.

“Welcome to our town,” said Peter. “We’re always glad to see strangers drift in. Smoke?”

He tendered a cigar, which the other accepted in a somewhat hesitating manner. Peter nipped off the end of another cigar and struck a match, which he held for the young man to light up before lighting his own.

“It’s rather dry,” said the landlord.

“Is it?” said the one who called himself Stranger, taking the cigar from his mouth and looking at it doubtfully.

“I mean the weather. We ain’t had much rain lately. Rather bad for crops, though it’s good for baseball, and we’re interested in that round here.”

The young man made no reply, but took another uncertain whiff or two at the cigar. Suddenly he said:

“I don’t believe I smoke. I don’t care for it, anyhow. If you don’t mind, I won’t smoke this one.”

To McLaughlin it seemed a bit odd that any man shouldn’t know whether he smoked or not, but he made no comment as the other tossed the cigar into a cuspidor.

“How’s things the way you come from?” he asked. “We always like to meet folks from the big town. Say, won’t you come into the writing room and set down for a little chat?”

“I don’t mind. I’m a bit tired, but it’s rather early to turn in.”

Kennedy was watching them from behind a newspaper in a distant corner. He saw them enter the writing room, where the landlord placed a chair for the guest in such a manner that the latter’s back would be turned toward the door. Almost immediately Jack rose, and, paper in hand, walked quietly toward the writing room.

“What’s your business, if it ain’t too inquisitive of me?” McLaughlin was saying as Kennedy reached the door.

“I’m a—a diamond cutter,” was the somewhat hesitating answer. “But I had to give it up on account of my health. You can see it has taken hold of me.”

Old Peter gave his husky-looking companion a quizzical, sidelong glance.

“Mebbe so,” he half chuckled; “but I’d never noticed it if you hadn’t spoke. What are you planning to do?”

“A pill slinger suggested that I ought to get out into the country and find a job somewhere in the open air. I’m looking for work on a farm.”

“On a farm, hey?”

“Yes, the rural life for mine. Between us, pal, I’ve hit it up some in my day. Even when I was a boy I was a high flier.”

“You don’t say so!”

The landlord knew that Kennedy had taken a seat in the room some distance behind them, but he did not look round.

“I always was a wild chap,” the young man went on. “When I was a boy I touched plenty of high spots. Cards have tripped me, too. Ever play poker?”

“Ho! Sometimes winters we have a little sociable game of penny ante round here just to pass away the time.”

“I’ve been an easy mark at the game, but I like it. Can’t keep away. Every time I get a roll I go searching for trouble. I’ve got a little wad of long green right now that’s burning in my pocket. I’d like to find three or four good sports and get up a game.”

“I don’t cal’late you can kick up one this season o’ the year,” said Peter. “’Sides that, we generally play among ourselves, not caring to gamble in the reg’ler sense of the word. The strait-laced people round here think that Satan’s got a strangle hold on anybody that plays cards for money.”

“I was brought up in a strait-laced family, pal. My old man thought cards the tools of Satan. It broke my mother’s heart when she found I was playing penny ante with a bunch of youngsters. Maybe that’s what finished her. But come, what’s the use to talk of things like that?”

“Yep, what’s the use? Baseball’s the game in the summertime hereabouts. We’ve got a pretty hot team, I tell you. All we need now is a rattlin’ good pitcher.”

“The guff I hear and see in the newspapers about baseball makes me tired, bo. Seems like ninety per cent. of the population has gone bug-house about the game.”

“Well, that don’t hurt ’em. Folks has got to have something for recreation. All work and no play is bad policy. Don’t s’pose you know where we could get holt of a good pitcher, a left-hander?”

Locke seemed to meditate a moment as if seeking to recall something, then in a queer way he answered:

“One time I was mistook for a pitcher I happened to look like. A gent blew up and called me by that ball tosser’s name and asked me how I was doing at it. Really, he didn’t believe me when I told him I’d never pitched a ball in my life and that I didn’t know a curve from a—from a wedge of—restaurant pie.”

Old Peter cleared his throat with a rasping sound and shoved round his chair till he could glance at Kennedy, who made a quick, cautioning gesture.

“Then if that’s the case,” floundered the landlord helplessly, “I don’t s’pose you can help us none. I’m sorry. I didn’t take you for a minister’s son.”

“I am,” was the prompt assurance. “If I can’t help you, perhaps you know where I can get a job on a farm.”

“You say you’ve never done no farm work, but, still, green hands ain’t to be sneezed at when help is short.”

Kennedy rose and stepped forward.

“I’m a farmer,” he said, “and I need a man.”

The new arrival in Deering looked up with a slight frown.

“You’re the man I met when I first came in,” he said. “Well, if you need a laborer on your farm perhaps we can talk business, bo.”

“You don’t look like a sick man to me.”

“My business has been too confining. You can see it has affected me. I don’t like confinement.”

“I’ll give you all the outdoor work you want,” announced Jack, “and if you’re any good I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars a month and keep.”

“That suits me. It’s a deal.”

“All right,” said Kennedy; “I’ll be in town to-morrow afternoon and take you out to my farm. My name, as I told you before, is Kennedy.”

“And mine, as I told you before,” said the other, “is Stranger.”

“‘Stranger’ goes,” returned Kennedy. “You can call yourself anything you blame please. It’s none of my business.”

CHAPTER XXVI
MIGHTY QUEER

Kennedy wanted an opportunity to meditate quietly upon the peculiar behavior of Lefty Locke, with the hope of hitting on a reasonable solution of the problem. For a problem it now appeared to the old manager.

“There’s just one thing I’m afraid of,” he said to McLaughlin after Lefty had bidden them good night and ascended to his room. “He didn’t expect to run across me here in Deering. It must have been a jolt to him, though he managed to hide it mighty clever. Now, he may take a notion to sneak sudden and give us the shake. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if you woke up to-morrer to find your late guest missing.”

“He’ll have some trouble gittin’ out of town before the first train in the morning,” declared Peter. “If you think it’s worth while, Jack, I’ll have Skedge, the boy, set up all night right here to see that he don’t sneak out.”

“Anything would be worth while if we could only get him to pitch a few games for us.”

But if Skedge remained awake and on guard all night in the office of the Central House, he wasted his time. Apparently the new guest had no idea of slipping away, and when he appeared at breakfast the next morning everything seemed to indicate that he had passed a restful night.

Kennedy came in early for forenoon practice at the ball park, but his suggestion that the new farm hand should go out to the grounds with him was not received favorably.

“If you don’t mind, pal,” said Lefty, “I’ll wait for you right here at the hotel till you get ready to take me out to your farm. Baseball doesn’t interest me at all.”

Jack frowned a bit over that word “pal.” It was not like Lefty Locke, and he had noticed that at times since his appearance in Deering the fellow spoke with a touch of slang that seemed quite unnatural and different from his usual manner of speech. There was in it, however, no trace of the slang of the baseball field.

At noon Kennedy, coming back from the park, decided to lunch with Locke at the hotel. During the meal, however, he had little success in drawing the man into conversation.

“Keep bottled up if you can,” thought old Jack resentfully; “I’ll trip you yet.”

The Boobs came in on the two o’clock train, and made straight for the field. Kennedy lingered at the post office to get his daily paper, and stopped at the hotel on his way out to the park. McLaughlin was waiting for him.

“Tell you what,” said the landlord, “this southpaw o’ yourn don’t propose to earn his twenty-five a month playin’ baseball. I’ve been tryin’ to get him out to the game, but he won’t budge.”

“Let me handle this case, Peter,” urged Kennedy, spreading out his newspaper. “I don’t quite get his drift yet, but I will. Take a look at this! Here’s something more about the unexplained disappearance of Lefty Locke. They can’t seem to trace him. Some think he was killed in the smash, but all save one of the dead were identified, and the description of that one don’t agree at all with the description of Locke. He was a slim, slender, blue-eyed chap who looked like he was in bad health. That accident, together with the loss of Locke, seems to have knocked the starch out of the Blue Stockings, for the Terriers are eating ’em up in the series. The wise guys think it’s going to be a cinch from now on for the Specters to get away with the championship.”

“Mebbe that’ll interest our friend here,” suggested McLaughlin. “He’s in the writin’ room, watchin’ people on the street through the window. That’s all he seems to do—jest set around and watch folks.”

Kennedy found Locke in the writing room. “I say, Stranger,” he said, “here’s a daily paper that may help you to pass away the time till I get back after the game. Just look it over.”

He put the paper in the man’s hand with the item regarding Locke and the Blue Stockings folded out; but, after a nod and a casual glance at that page, Lefty turned to another part of it.

Old Jack rejoined McLaughlin, growling, and together they hastened to the field.

About two hours later Kennedy drove up in front of the hotel with his rig, and asked for Mr. Stranger. The latter seemed to be waiting, for he came forth at once, the landlord following closely.

“Well, Stranger,” said McLaughlin, as the man got into the carriage, “I hope you take to your job out on Kennedy’s farm.”

“Thanks, bo,” was the reply, as old Jack drove away.

Kennedy had an excellent farm under a fine state of cultivation. Besides the overseer, he kept a stout, hulking boy, and at times, when needed, extra hands were hired. All the buildings were in perfect repair, and painted a clean white. The house was a big, square, old-fashioned affair, with fireplaces and a wide veranda. Kennedy’s sister, a widow by the name of Malone, was the housekeeper.

“I’m going to let you take a day or two to get the hang of things around the place,” said Kennedy, as he showed Locke into a big, square corner chamber with four windows, two of which opened toward the east. “There’s no hurry about your striking in to work, as it’s a bit slack just now.”

The new man muttered his thanks, standing in the middle of the room and looking around in a manner which seemed to indicate slight surprise over this sort of treatment, which, perhaps, was scarcely what he had expected. Through the open door, as he departed, Jack saw him seat himself by one of the windows, and, with his head resting on his hand, look out at the softly rustling trees, the broad fields beyond, and the little lake on which the afternoon sunshine was shimmering. There was something pathetic and lonely in his pose and manner, and to himself, as he descended the stairs, Jack muttered:

“Queer—mighty queer!”

CHAPTER XXVII
DID HE REMEMBER?

After a hearty supper, at which the new hand met Mrs. Malone, Kennedy invited him out onto the veranda, where they sat while Jack puffed at his pipe.

“You don’t smoke?” said Kennedy.

“I don’t think so,” was the reply.

“Drink?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been a wild one in my day, pal. Hit the high places, and hit ’em hard. Cards were my trouble. I was thinking I’d like to find three or four good sports and get up a little game.”

“Well, you won’t find them round here,” growled old Jack, puffing savagely at his pipe. “Nothing doing, Left—er—Stranger.”

The other betrayed no disappointment.

“We’ll just sit and talk things over comfortable like,” said Kennedy, glancing at him sidewise. “How’d you get the notion you wanted to go to farming?”

“It wasn’t my notion; it was the pill slinger’s.”

“You don’t look like there’s been anything the matter with your health.”

“I’m pale. That comes from confinement.”

“You’re brown as an Injun—or a baseball player.”

Lefty rubbed his head. “I know what I’ve been told,” he said, with a slight touch of resentment.

“Well, don’t swaller everything the doctors hand out to you. How do you like my ranch?”

“It’s very comfortable. I like it here, only I seem to miss something. It’s quiet.”

“That’s the way I feel. You see, when a man has been in the hot of Big League baseball year after year, it’s a big change to settle down this fashion. But we all have to take up something after we’ve had our day at the game. If I’d ever married it might ’a’ seemed different.”

“You never married?”

“No,” said old Jack, a trifle sadly; “slipped up on that play. Made an error, and another fellow fanned me out. You know, it’s mighty easy to lose in a game like that if you don’t keep on your toes all the time. I don’t often talk about it, but I don’t mind telling you how it was.”

Lefty said nothing, and the old manager continued:

“She was the only dame I ever got really smashed on, a little, dark-eyed Irish girl by the name of Madge. Met her after a game in which I was pretty near the whole show, having made two homers, a three-bagger, and a single. She was just bubbling over with enthusiasm, and when she turned them eyes of hern on me, and handed me a smile with her teeth shining like polished chinyware, I just felt that it was all up with me. I was like a busher in his first Big League game, all cold and hot and shaky and queer clean down to my toes. I knew in a jiffy that she was the one for me.

“Well, there ain’t no need to string the story out,” he went on. “I rushed her for all I was worth when the team was playin’ to home. Things went along swimmin’, and we had it arranged somehow before I ever knowed just how it come round that we would play the big game together on the same team. That is, we was going to get spliced some time, and I didn’t care how soon the job was done. She had another guy that was rushing her, too, before I hove in on the horizon; but I had his groove, and he was fanning every time he stepped up to the plate.

“Now, listen to me, and hear how the whole game went wrong in the ninth inning. My sister Kitty comes on to see me unexpected, and, of course, I spreads myself to give her a good time. Madge didn’t know nothing ’bout it, and she sees me blowin’ Kit off to cabs and theaters and feeds, and a-kissin’ her good-by when I had to send her home one night sudden on account of an unexpected turn. What did that little hot-headed, black-eyed girl do? She just writ me a red-hot letter, tellin’ me what she thought of a deceivin’, heart-breakin’, double-dyed wretch like I was, and announcin’ that she was leavin’ town. She didn’t leave no address, either. At first I took it as a kind of joke, thinkin’ I could straighten things out all right with Madge. But next thing I heard, within a week, she was hooked to the other guy, and I was down and out in the series.

“I ain’t never struck one like Madge since, and I ain’t likely to; so, you see, here I am—an old bach. It’s tough on a man when a girl throws him that fashion, with no chance to explain; but I’ve always tried to console myself by sayin’ that one who’d do such a thing would likely keep a guy in hot water the most of the time when she got him. It’s poor consolation, but it’s all I’ve got.”

Lefty was frowning as he gazed through the faint purple shadows toward the little lake, on which the afterglow of the sunset was reflected, and he stirred uneasily, passing a hand across his forehead. After some moments of silence, he said:

“Seems to me I’ve heard of a similar case.”

“I s’pose there’s lot of similar cases,” replied Kennedy, giving a pull at his pipe, which had gone out during the narration. “I was young, and it broke me up bad. I played so rotten that my manager got sore, and put me on the bench. I took to hittin’ the bottle, too. Drank altogether too much until a friend gave me a talking to and showed me what a dumb fool I was. Then I tried to forget it and get back into form again. I succeeded, too, and I’ve stuck to baseball steady, saving my dollars, with the idea of having something to live on when my days at the game was finished. I am out of it now, though I’m managin’ this little Deering team. Kinder got pulled into that. I wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for Hank Bristol, who’s managin’ the Buccaneers. He sorter rubbed me the wrong way, and it’s my object now to beat him out if there’s any way to do it. To beat him, I’ve got to have another A-one pitcher, and I need a left-hander.” Lefty was silent.

“I know the very man I’d like to have,” Kennedy went on musingly. “He come out of the bush this year. Brennan, of the Hornets, had him in the South to start with; but Brennan also had another promisin’ young slabman by the name of Bert Elgin. It seems that the left-hander and Elgin had some sort of a mix-up at college, and they didn’t cotton to each other a great deal. Elgin put up some sort of a dirty job on the other chap, and made him look like a quitter and a useless pup. Brennan was fooled, and dropped him.

“I’d been after him before that, and he comes to me after being handed the can by Brennan. I sent him out into the bush with a team from which I could pull him in any time I wanted to, and he made good out there. My pitchers started cold, and didn’t get into the game just right, so I sent out a hurry call for the southpaw, and he joined the team just in time to pitch in our first game against the Hornets. I took a chance on spoiling him by shovin’ him into that game. Had to do it, you know, though I hated to. The proper way to break in a pitcher is to work him against a weak team, and give him confidence by a good chance to pull off a win to start with. It was hard on him, rammin’ him into that game against the Hornets, but he come through with flying colors, and he pitched against Bert Elgin, too.

“There was a reporter named Stillman who had it in his noddle that Elgin was responsible for what my left-hander got from Brennan, and he chased the thing down and got the proof, which he hands out to Brennan hisself. That was Mr. Elgin’s finish in Big League company. Brennan sent him down into class C company, but he didn’t last even there. Nobody seemed to have much use for him, and I dunno where he’s faded to.

“Now,” continued old Jack, squaring round until he could watch his companion without turning his head, “if I just had that left-handed man of mine for about two weeks I’d bury the Buccaneers. We beat the Boobs to-day, but they’re the weakest bunch in this league. After the game I heard that the Bucks had beat the Stars, and gone into first place by a small margin. We play Bristol’s team in Hatfield to-morrow. I’ve figgered the percentage out to-night, and if we could take a fall out of ’em we’d be tied with ’em to-morrow night.”

“I presume that’s all very interesting to you,” said Lefty, unmoved; “but, having never cared in the slightest for baseball, you’ll pardon me if I don’t enthuse.”

Kennedy made a queer sound in his throat. “Look a’ here,” he snapped, “was you ever in a railroad smash-up?”

“Never,” was the slow answer, coming after a moment or two of breathless silence.

Old Jack dropped his pipe, and groped for it.

“Why do you ask?” questioned the other.

“Oh, nothing—nothing,” mumbled Kennedy. “I’m going to turn in pretty soon. You can go to bed any time you want to. We get up ruther early here on the farm.”

“Think I’ll turn in now,” said the other, rising.

In his chamber, half an hour later, having made sure that Lefty had really gone to bed, Kennedy paced up and down a while, his forehead corrugated by a deep frown.

“It gets me!” he finally exclaimed, beginning to undress. “I can’t quite make up my mind whether he’s faking or really don’t remember. If that last is the case, he ought to have treatment by a doctor.”

CHAPTER XXVIII
A NEW PITCHER

Although there was an early breakfast on Kennedy’s farm, when old Jack arose his sister surprised him by stating that the new man had been up and wandering about the place for an hour or more.

“I wonder if he didn’t sleep well?” said Kennedy.

“I asked him,” returned Mrs. Malone, “and he said he slept like a log. He’s a fine-looking fellow, Jack, but he ain’t no farmer. If you took him for one you got bunkoed.”

Kennedy gave her a laughing, knowing wink. “Leave it to me, Kit,” he said. “I know my business, whether I’m hirin’ farm hands or ball players.”

“I’m thinking you’d be much more successful picking the latter,” she replied. “You may call yourself a farmer, but it’s baseball that’s still got the hook on ye.”

“Mebbe you’re right, Kitty,” he agreed. “Mebbe that’s why I decided to taper off with this bush league bunch. Perhaps I’m like a man that’s been drinking hard and finds he’s got to quit, but it’ll kill him if he stops all to once. When the baseball bug gets into a man’s blood for fair he never is quite cured. It’s a disease, my girl.”

“If you’d had a square deal you’d be at it now.”

“Don’t let that worry you. I knew it was coming some time. Where’s this man of mine?”

“I wouldn’t wonder if you found him out viewin’ the scenery. There’s something sort of sad and lonesome about him. He acts like he’s lost his last friend on earth. But he’s a handsome feller, Jack.”

“Now, Kitty, don’t be sentimental. I thought you was done with the men?”

“So I am,” she retorted, flushing almost like a girl. “Stop your joshing. Me day is over, but I can tell the kind that git the girls as well as I ever could. Breakfast will be ready in less than five minutes.”

Laughing, Kennedy went out to search for Locke, whom he found on the veranda. Lefty rose at once when Jack appeared.

“Good morning,” he said. “You told me to look around, and I’ve been doing so.”

“Right-o! You’re an early bird, all right. It’s an appetite you should have for breakfast.”

“I haven’t any working clothes,” said the other. “I’ve been trying to think what became of my outfit. Can’t seem to remember.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got old clothes enough, and they’ll do when you want ’em, which won’t be to-day. Come in to breakfast.”

At the table Lefty was silent, but, whatever else could be said of him, his appetite was healthy enough. He seemed wholly unaware of the occasional glances of interest from the blue eyes of Mrs. Kitty Malone. In every movement he proclaimed himself a person of refinement, and it was only in occasional lapses of speech when he seemed almost trying to remember something, or repeating a lesson that had been learned, that there was the slightest suggestion of anything different.

After breakfast Kennedy gave his foreman some instructions, and later he found Locke waiting for him. Old Jack appeared with a soiled baseball and a glove.

“I may have to get into the game myself to-day,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m a bit out of practice. As long as you’re not going to work until to-morrow, mebbe you’d throw me a few?”

Lefty frowned, but did not refuse.

“Pull off your coat,” directed the old manager, as he paced off and marked the regular pitching distance in the yard. “Here’s a flat stone for you to put ’em over. I’ll be the catcher.”

If he had prepared a trap, the other walked into it without hesitation. Taking his place on the mark indicated, he caught the ball which Jack tossed him, and squared away.

“Take it easy at first,” suggested Kennedy, in full remembrance of the smoking speed with which Lefty Locke had dazzled the best batters in the Big League. “As long as you’re green, you’ll hurt your whip if you start in by wallopin’ ’em.”

Lefty complied to the letter, and the old manager’s eyes glittered with the secret triumph he felt as the young man began putting the ball over with perfect control and apparently without effort. Gradually Kennedy urged him to speed up, and the change made no difference. Wherever Jack held his hands behind that flat rock—high, low, behind the inside or the outside corner—Lefty Locke winged the ball straight into them, so that it was scarcely necessary to make the slightest movement to catch it.

“Say,” cried Kennedy suddenly, “I thought you didn’t know anything about this business?”

“I don’t,” was the instant declaration. “Don’t think I ever handled a baseball before in all my life.” But there was a strange flush in his face and a peculiar light of aroused interest in his eyes, all of which the former Blue Stockings’ manager observed with unspeakable gratification.

“Well, if you’re a greenhorn, certainly you’re a wonder,” said Kennedy, still careful to follow the other’s lead. “Say, throw me a drop.”

Locke shook his head. “I don’t know how.”

“Easiest thing you ever tried. Here, I’ll show you.”

He jogged forward, took the ball, and demonstrated how it should be held and in what manner it should be released with the proper whirling motion to make it drop.

“Now try it that way,” he said, returning to his position.

Three times Lefty threw the ball without the slightest indication of a drop, but with the fourth throw, into which he put a bit more speed, the sphere, coming breast-high, took a sudden shoot toward the ground just before reaching the stone which served for a plate. Kennedy, scooping it from the turf, whooped.

“That’s it!” he shouted. “Great smoke! That was a peach! It would have had Logie, of the Specters, breakin’ his back.”

For the first time since his arrival in Deering, something like a faint smile flitted across the young man’s face.

“Queer,” he said. “I didn’t know I could do that. Pitching can’t be so difficult to learn.”

“It isn’t for some men,” assured Kennedy. “Give me another.”

He snapped the ball wide and high to Locke, who carelessly thrust up his right hand, stopped it, and permitted it to drop into his left, a movement so familiar to old Jack that he nearly whooped again.

“Give me one just like the last,” invited Kennedy, “and burn it. Let it come smoking.”

It was like the last, and with only his small fielder’s glove to aid him Kennedy lost it.

“Oh, some speed, son—some speed!” he rejoiced. “The left-hander I told you about last night used to have a duplicate of Walter Johnson’s hook curve, only it took the opposite twist toward the inside corner for a right-hand batter, and so was a heap worse to hit. Let me show you how he threw it, if I can remember.”

Again he demonstrated, and again Locke apparently tried to follow directions. This time he threw the hook with the first effort, and old Jack bit his tongue to hold himself in check.

“That’s it!” he cried. “Why, I could make a pitcher out of you—I sure could! And there’s more money in it than working on a farm. It’s good, healthy business, too. Just what your doctor’d ordered if he’d knowed you could do it.”

“How could he know, if I didn’t know myself?” was the good-natured question, all the somberness seeming gone from Locke’s face—temporarily at least. In every movement he was now a pitcher, the same young wonder who had made such a record under Kennedy with the Blue Stockings; the same jovial-appearing, resolute, reliable boxman who had made a host of friends and admirers, and had come to be feared and respected by opposing batsmen.

“You throw ’em any way you’re a mind to now, and let ’em come,” said Kennedy. “You’re giving me some practice, all right.”

There was life, ginger, fire, and marvelous control in every delivery. The whistlers that left Locke’s fingers made old Jack set his teeth and grin painfully as, one after another, they nearly lifted him off his feet. In a few moments the old manager, unprotected by a big mitt, found that he was getting more than enough.

“That will do!” he shouted, dropping the ball, and blowing on his smarting right hand. “Perhaps you never saw a ball game, but, believe me, you can pitch—and I know pitchers.”

CHAPTER XXIX
AT THE FIELD

When Manager Kennedy rode into town to take the ten-ten train for Hatfield with his players, Mr. Robert Stranger came with him. Old Jack stopped at the Central House, and found Landlord McLaughlin on the point of leaving for the station.

“Howdy, Jack,” said Peter. “I see you’ve got your new farm hand with ye.”

“’Sh!” breathed Kennedy. “I’ve induced him to go over with us to see the game, and I’m takin’ along an extra suit of mine—one I wore with the Blue Stockings, with the letters cut off.”

“You don’t mean to say—” gasped Peter.

“I don’t mean to say anything now.”

“But he ain’t owned up?”

“Not a word. It’s the queerest thing I ever bumped against—it sure is. We’ve got to catch that train, so let’s be movin’. On the way over I’ll tell you about it.”

Locke accompanied them to the station, where Kilgore was waiting with his teammates. Some eighteen or twenty Deering fans who could get away had purchased round-trip tickets, while at least fifty more were on hand to give the Deers a send-off. Kennedy bought tickets, after which he introduced Locke to the players who gathered around them.

“Shake hands with Bob Stranger, boys,” he said, calling one after another by name. “He’s a friend of mine going along with us to-day.”

The locomotive was whistling in the distance when Captain Kilgore pulled at Kennedy’s sleeve, and whispered, his back toward Locke:

“Say, Jack, who is this guy?”

The manager made a warning gesture. “Not a word,” he cautioned. “It’s a secret. He’s a southpaw pitcher, and if necessary I may use him in the game against the Bucks to-day.”

Toots Kilgore grinned. “Take it from me, it’s likely to be necessary,” he said. “It’s going to be the game. They’ll fight us like blazes on their own field, and they’ve got a new man to put against us. Curley won’t last; they can steal right and left on Reddy Sullivan, and Heines’ whip is broke. You better start your new man on the hill.”

“Leave that to me,” returned old Jack reprovingly, “and keep your face closed about him. I’ll tell the boys anything they ought to know. Don’t even hint to him that you think he’s a pitcher.”

“Oh, I see!” said Kilgore. “You’re planning to spring a surprise. Maybe he’s some real gun in the game. Maybe his name ain’t Stranger at all.”

“That’s the name he goes by—now,” said the manager of the Deers, as the train roared up to the station and stopped.

The crowd cheered them as they got aboard, carrying grips, bat bags, and other paraphernalia.

“Git this game, Jack—you’ve got to git it!” cried a big man on the platform. “We need it, and we depend on you.”

Kennedy’s only reply was a nod, which brought another cheer from the crowd, who continued to make a demonstration until the train pulled out.

Old Jack saw to it that Lefty Locke was seated in the midst of the players, where he remained during the journey to Hatfield, listening with a strange sort of interest to their chatter about the game and the standing of the teams, which to them seemed quite as vital as a Big League race. At times Locke evinced more than usual interest as some chance phrase fell on his ear with a familiar ring, and for the time being the shadow in his eyes was dispelled. Although he had little to say, his manner was that of one who again found himself with his own people, and felt once more the vital throb and thrill of life which is experienced daily by the man who has found the vocation for which he is best adapted.

Kennedy missed none of this, although he took pains not to give Locke the impression that he was being watched.

“Got him going,” mused the old manager, with deep satisfaction. “He tried to duck the game, but the germ is in his blood, and he can’t keep away from it. If I need him, I’ll have him pitching before the game is finished this afternoon.”

Hatfield was a thriving, prosperous place—nearly a young city—in rather strong contrast to the quiet, almost sleepy town of Deering. It seemed presumptuous that a somnolent village like Deering should presume to the championship in a bush league represented by Hatfield, for surely the latter had the advantage, in the way of backing, population, attendance, and general resources.

From the station, Kennedy led his men to Tower’s Hotel, which gave them special rates, and furnished the most satisfactory table.

An hour’s rest followed dinner; then, as two o’clock approached, the Deers gathered up their trappings, and set forth for the park, toward which the early fans were already turning their faces.

Reaching the field, they entered a dressing room, and began stripping down to don their playing togs. Still with them, Lefty watched and listened after the manner of one to which all this seemed familiar, yet as an outsider.

“There’s an extra suit,” said Kennedy, placing his grip on a shelf, and being sure that Locke saw and heard. “Everything a man needs, down to shoes. Perhaps it won’t be used to-day, but if anyone should happen to want it, it can be found right there.”

Kilgore wondered why old Jack’s new pitcher did not get into that suit at once; but, having no small respect for the manager’s cleverness, and thinking he knew the sort of game he was playing, the captain of the Deers made no remark.

“There’s no rules here to prevent you from sitting on the bench with us, Stranger,” explained the manager, as the players were ready to leave for the field. “It will give you a chance to watch the game from close range.”

The Deers followed their manager and captain to the field. The Buccaneers had not yet appeared, so the visitors had everything to themselves.

They began practice by “fungo” batting and the catching of liners and flies, cheered only by the little group of Deering fans who had followed them and were waiting to give them encouragement. Those cheers were not the only sounds to greet them, some of the more rabid local partisans shamelessly hissing or groaning. For out in the bush baseball rivalry is almost always intense, and there is little of the fair-minded impartiality among the spectators which sometimes, in a place like New York, leads the home crowd to applaud famous players of opposing nines.

In less than ten minutes the Buccaneers came forth with a dash, Hank Bristol at their head. In appearance they justified their name, for their blue suits were almost black, and the dash of crimson upon their caps, together with their crimson stockings, gave them a somber, awesome appearance, which was heightened by the husky build of almost every man, and the mocking savageness of their faces. If ever a baseball nine was calculated to win from the awe it would inspire in the breasts of opponents, the Bucks were that organization.

With an assumption of cordiality, Hank Bristol shook hands with Jack Kennedy.

“Sorry for you, old hoss,” he grinned, “but you should have known better than to let ’em coax you into the game again.”

“Save your sympathy till I need it, Hank,” returned the manager of the Deers. “You’re old enough and wise enough to know one never can tell what’s going to happen in this game.”

“I know what’s going to happen to-day. We’re going to put another nail in your coffin. You’re a dead one, Jack, but you don’t know it. Why, you don’t worry us at all. We’re not even going to start our new pitcher against you, and I don’t believe we’ll need him. Jewett ought to find you easy picking.”

“Where’s your new man?” asked Kennedy.

“There he goes, walking by your bench now,” answered Bristol, pointing.

At this moment a ball, thrown from the field, went bounding past them into the bench of the visitors, where Lefty Locke sat. Immediately he secured it, and stepped forth to throw it to the signaling batter.

The Buccaneers’ new pitcher stopped short, and stared in astonishment at Lefty, who did not seem to observe him.

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” exclaimed the surprised man, his eyes fastened on Locke. “It’s you, is it? You didn’t last so long in big company, did you?” He finished with a sneering laugh full of unspeakable satisfaction and joy.

Lefty looked him over blankly. “Speaking to me?” he asked.

“Who did you think I was speaking to?” retorted the other as he passed on, still laughing.

Frowning, Locke stared after him.

“Who’s that man?” he asked, a few seconds later, as old Jack came to the bench.

“That man?” repeated Kennedy. “He’s the Buccaneers’ new pitcher. His name is Bert Elgin.”

“Queer,” said Lefty. “He seemed to have an idea he knew me, but I’ve never seen him before.”

CHAPTER XXX
BASEBALL LUCK

The words were uttered in such a sincere manner that they came near dispelling Kennedy’s last doubt. “He’d be a fool to try to keep up a bluff like that,” thought the manager, “and Lefty Locke never was no fool.”

Aloud he said: “That’s the cub I was tellin’ you ’bout who put up a job on my southpaw pitcher when he was gettin’ a try-out with the Hornets. He can pitch, but he’s got a yaller streak, and he’s about as mean as dirt.”

“Will he pitch to-day?” asked Lefty.

“Dunno. Perhaps so. Bristol won’t use him ’less he has to. I see he’s goin’ to warm up with the others. Keep your eye on him.

“Somethin’s gone wrong with the man,” he muttered, as he turned away. “It’s no bluff. His noddle is twisted.”

From the bench, Locke watched the two teams take turns at practice, but for the most part his interest seemed to center in the opposing pitchers, who were warming up. Having been told all about the crippled condition of the Deers’ staff, he realized the probable advantage of the home team with a new man ready to jump on to the slab if needed—a man considered by Bristol a star of the first magnitude.

The critical nature of this game turned out a crowd which filled the bleachers and packed the stands—a crowd bubbling with enthusiasm for the locals, who could obtain an added grip on first position by taking this contest.

And more than nine-tenths of the assemblage seemed to believe such a result a foregone conclusion.

In warming up, Elgin attracted the most attention, for nearly everyone had heard of Bristol’s new man. Knowing the eyes of the crowd were upon him, he posed vainly, and finished limbering his flinger by whipping three or four speedy ones to the catcher which caused many witnesses to gasp.

The time for the game to start came at last, and the clang of a bell called the visitors to their bench, while the locals took the field. Then one of the umpires, with a megaphone, announced:

“Battrees to-day: For Deering, Curley and Coffin. For Hatfield, Jewett and Yapp.”

At this there was a murmur from those who had wished to see the new man pitch. Elgin, hearing this murmur and understanding, laughed to himself.

Chick Collins, the Deers’ right fielder, was the first man to face Jewett, and, as Collins had the reputation of being a man who “waited it out” and made a pitcher put them over, Jewett started in by cutting the pan with the first ball delivered.

To his surprise, Chick did not take one; instead, he met that straight ball on the trade-mark, and cracked it safely into right, which caused the little bunch of Deering fans to give a howl of joy.

“That’s the stuff!” sounded the voice of Peter McLaughlin. “He won’t last an inning at that rate. Go to him, Truly!”

Hen Truly, familiarly known as “Yours Truly,” followed Collins to the plate, fully instructed by Kennedy. Jewett, a bit nervous, threw three times to first to hold the runner close. Then he wasted two while Truly waited and grinned. Having put the twirler in a hole the batter signaled to Collins that he would bunt the next ball pitched, and the runner was off for second with the swing of Jewett’s arm.

Truly dropped a bunt in front of the plate, and stretched himself for first. Jewett fell over himself trying to field the ball, and the attempted sacrifice was turned into a scratch hit when his throw reached first a second too late.

“Where’s your new pitcher?” cried Landlord McLaughlin. “You better put him in right away.”

Bristol remained apparently unmoved upon the bench; but Jewett, glancing toward his manager, knew that he was on the verge of getting the hook.

Joe Digg was the next hitter—Digg, the formidable, who still had the highest batting average among the visitors. Jewett feared Digg; yet to pass him now would fill the corners, with no one down, and Hallett, a man almost as dangerous, followed. In this dilemma, wabbling in the effort to get his pins under him, the Buccaneer flinger sought to coax Digg into reaching.

On the first ball pitched, Truly, seeming to forget that second was occupied, shot down the line. Instantly Yapp winged the ball to first, and even as he did so Collins stretched himself for third. Seeing this, the first baseman attempted to cut Collins off by a throw across, and Truly went on to second. By a fine slide, Collins shot under the third baseman, who made a sweeping, ineffectual jab at him, and then threw to second to stop the crafty Truly. Truly was there ahead of the ball, and had the baseman not been alive to the situation, which led him to whip the sphere to the plate without an instant’s delay, Collins would have tried to score. As it was, he got back to third a second ahead of the ball, and the delayed double steal was a complete success. With second and third occupied, a long single in the right quarter would give the visitors a start of two runs.

Out of the corner of his mouth, Hank Bristol spoke to Bert Elgin.

“Take Putnam,” he said, “and go down into a corner, and keep your arm warm. I may want you any minute.”

Jewett saw the new pitcher and the change catcher leave the bench, and knew what it meant. Desperate, he whipped over a jumper to Digg, who attempted to lace it out, and simply hoisted a short fly to second.

Leaving the bench, Kennedy took Tom Boyd’s place on the coaching line, Boyd being the batter who followed Hallett.

“Got ’em going!” grinned old Jack. “Hit it a mile, Hallett! Give ’em a chance to use their new wizard right away.” While apparently encouraging Hallett to smash the ball, he gave the signal for the squeeze play, which doubtless would be unexpected at this moment, when everything seemed to indicate the immediate downfall of the unsteady pitcher.

Jewett handed up another. With the first hint of his movement Collins started like a shot for the plate. Hallett lifted his bat, held it slack, and bunted. Instead of falling to the ground, the ball rebounded in a little fly, which was caught by Jewett without moving from his tracks.

Collins, warned by a shout, tried to stop. He saw Jewett with the ball, and realized what had happened. The pitcher, elated, laughed at him; and the sphere was tossed to third for a double play, which put an abrupt end to the fine start the Deers had promised to make. It also let Jewett out of a bad hole through a streak of great luck.

Nevertheless it was probable Bristol would use the new man with the coming inning; and far out in a corner of the field Elgin, working easily with the change catcher, awaited the call.

CHAPTER XXXI
PITCHERS’ WATERLOO

Although Bristol said nothing to Jewett, it was sheer luck which kept the pitcher from receiving a call-down by his manager. It was also luck, combined with poor work on the part of Curley, that gave Jewett an opportunity to reclaim himself in the second inning; for the locals got after Curley with such effect that two runs had been secured through hits and errors, with only one man down, when Kennedy pulled the twirler from the mound, and sent Sullivan out. On Sullivan’s long swing another run came in before the home team was retired. With this comfortable lead of three tallies, Bristol decided to save his new man for a tight pinch or some other game.

“It’s uphill work now, boys,” said Kennedy to his players; “but a bunch that can’t fight an uphill game is no good. Get after that easy mark, and force Bristol to show us what he’s got out there in the offing. Make him use his new colt.”

Already the wise old war horse had sent Heines out to keep his flipper oiled, fearing that Sullivan would prove meat for the Bucks. Despite Jack’s urging, which possibly made the youngsters of his team a bit too eager, Jewett got away with it in the first of the second, only one man threatening from third before the side was retired without cutting down that lead of three.

“Now,” said Spider Hogan, field captain of the Buccaneers, “it’s up to us to put the wood to Sullivan. That old soup bone of his can’t keep this bunch in check. Every man that gets on first steals on his swing. Don’t forget.”

Kennedy also had his fears for Sullivan’s “soup bone.” He spoke to Lefty Locke, who was watching the progress of the struggle with the keenest interest.

“Reddy can’t hold ’em,” he said; “nor Heines, either. If I had that left-handed youngster of mine to put in here now the boys would support him, and perhaps they’d tie this thing up sudden before Bristol got cagy and shoved his new man on to the slab. You’re left-handed, and you’ve found out that you can handle a baseball.”

“You don’t mean—” muttered Locke.

“You know where that grip of mine is containing an old suit. There’s everything in it but a left-handed glove, and Collins is left-handed. He’d let you have his fielder’s glove. He could get along without it out in right.”

“You don’t mean—” repeated Lefty.

“I can’t tell you any plainer what I mean. Which had you rather do, pitch baseball for me at fifty a week and keeps, or work on a farm at twenty-five a month?”

“If I thought—” Locke still hesitated.

“Let me do the thinking for you,” urged Kennedy. “Get into that suit, and watch your chance to take Heines’ place warmin’ up the minute I have to use him. You can reach the dressing room by going round this side of the field.”

“I’ll try it,” said Lefty, rising; “but don’t blame me—”

“There won’t be any kicks comin’,” promised Kennedy, elated. “I’m taking the chance. You haven’t made any profession of being a ball tosser. Go to it.”

Thus encouraged, while Sullivan was trying to hold the Buccaneers in check, and getting away with the inning by allowing them only one run, Locke sauntered to the dressing room, found Kennedy’s old uniform, and got into it. As he passed Heines, the little pitcher gave him a look, and called:

“It’s about time you got into gear if Jack’s going to use you to-day. He’s worked the rest of us stiff, and the Bucks have grabbed the game already.”

Lefty made no retort. Having prepared himself for the field, he waited, watching Heines.

In the third inning the visitors, steadied by their manager, again bumped Jewett, and this time old Jack’s form of attack was not defeated by a streak of luck. Jewett, sweating and worried after the first two men had hit safely, lost his control, passed another, hit the fourth with a pitched ball, and forced a run. Still Bristol delayed, and the next Deer, slashing out a clean two-bagger, drove two more runners across the pan before Hank gave his pitcher the hook. Elgin came trotting in from the far corner, and ascended the hillock.

He was greeted by a roar from the great crowd, which brought a smile to his face, and caused him to touch his cap proudly.

“I knew he’d have to do it,” bellowed Peter McLaughlin, when the ovation died down. “Go right after him, boys. You can get his alley, too.”

Elgin glanced in the direction from which the landlord’s voice came, and shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

“Give that calf more rope, or he’ll bellow his head off,” he said; at which would-be witticism the local crowd in the vicinity of McLaughlin broke into a chorus of jeers and catcalls.

“A pitcher who talks back,” muttered the hotel proprietor, “has a goat to let. We’ll get his before the game’s done, or I’m no judge.”

Elgin found the plate with a couple of pitches, and nodded to the batter, who stepped into his place. Behind the pan, Yapp, signaling, spoke only for the hitter’s ear:

“He’s got awful speed. He kills ’em sometimes. Look out for his bean ball.”

Following the signal, Elgin whipped a scorcher straight at the head of the batter, who gasped, and ducked barely in time.

“Look out!” cried the pitcher even as the sphere left his fingers. And then, as Yapp handled it and returned it promptly, he said apologetically: “I haven’t pitched for a week, and I may be a little wild.”

That was enough for that hitter, whose three swings failed to touch anything more solid than the ozone.

“So that’s his game in the bush, is it?” growled Kennedy. “Don’t let him drive you away from the plate. Everybody stand up and hit the ball.”

No one, however, seemed to care to be hit by Elgin’s speed, and the new man stopped the Deers in their tracks; which brought him another ovation from the local crowd.

Sullivan started badly by handing one to the first Buccaneer who faced him in the third which the hitter slashed into right for a single. Remembering Bristol’s instructions, the runner went down to second on Sullivan’s first swing, from which anchorage it would be possible for him to score on the right kind of a safety. Then Sullivan dealt out a pass, which brought Kennedy to his feet, and caused Heines to come trotting slowly and reluctantly toward the mound.

Lefty Locke, joining the spare catcher, began to warm up.

CHAPTER XXXII
FILLING THE BREACH

Like Jewett in the first two innings, Heines was lucky, and the change enabled the Deers to hold the locals, despite their savage efforts to increase the lead.

“Keep after them!” urged Kennedy, as the players came to the bench. “There are six more innings to follow. If you can hit this fellow Elgin at all, and we can hold them where they are, we’ll be neck and neck with them to-night, or I’ve never seen a game of baseball. Elgin has got a jinx, and he’ll show up before long. Don’t let him put the Injun sign on you with his bean ball.”

But, in spite of old Jack’s attempt to encourage his batters, Elgin seemed to have the “Injun sign” on the Deers.

“You can’t hit him,” Yapp told the three batters who faced Buck’s pitcher in the first of the fourth. “If you did you’d never get farther than first, for you’d see him tighten like a bowstring. You never could hit a real pitcher, anyhow.”

He made them believe it, too. And when a batter thinks he cannot hit a pitcher it is only by the most remarkable bull luck that he ever gets as much as a scratch single. So Elgin had it easy, striking out two men and fielding the weak roller which the third sent his way.

“Gods of war!” growled Kennedy. “I’ll have to get out there myself, and show them how to hit this gink. If they ever fell on him he’d take a sail. Where’s Locke? Oh, there he is—at it.”

Old Jack watched the work of Heines like a hawk, waiting for the first show of wabbling; for by this time Locke had loosened his wing, and could come to the rescue. Just what he could do against Bert Elgin, Kennedy believed he knew. The old manager remembered that first game with the Hornets, when the two youngsters had faced each other in the Big League; remembered that Elgin had gone down to defeat and disgrace, while Lefty Locke made his reputation under the most trying circumstances a new man could possibly meet. Just now, as on that other occasion, with the great mass of spectators favoring him, Elgin seemed invincible; but with the first cry of “Take him out!” Kennedy believed the yellow streak would show. Would the break in the game lead the local crowd to shout for his removal? While he was going strong the little bunch of Deering fans might howl themselves black in the face without effect.

Peter McLaughlin kept up his efforts to get Elgin’s goat, even though by so doing he was inviting personal injury from rabid Hatfielders within reach of him. And when a scrap starts out in the bush it is liable to make Ty Cobb’s whipping of an insolent fan look like fisticuffs between kittens at play. McLaughlin, however, had a mouth, and he was not afraid to use it in Hatfield or at home.

“Shut up, you old toad,” commanded an angry spectator, “or somebody will hand you a wallop on the ear!”

“When you come to Deering,” old Peter flung back, “you can talk and holler all you please, and anybody that tries to stop you will get into trouble with me. You can’t muzzle me here.”

Those who knew him were aware that nothing save a sleep jab or a gag would keep him still, and some there were who found amusement in his apparently futile efforts to jar Elgin.

Two more outfield catches promised to let Heines get away with another inning, but, with every man hitting the ball when he put it near the plate, it was his support that saved him to that point. Two safeties, however, landed runners on first and second, and a successful double steal caused Kennedy to shove out the hook again. Then the change catcher told Locke that his turn had come. The crowd watched the southpaw jogging to the slab; only McLaughlin and the Deering fans cheered him. Following that cheer, Elgin, on the coaching line, called to Pop Doyle, the man at bat:

“Here’s a portsider with a straight ball and a prayer. He’ll put one over in your groove if you wait, and then you’ll show ’em why he isn’t pitching in the Big League now.”

Doyle, a left-handed hitter, did not like southpaw pitchers, but Elgin had told every man on the team that the fellow who called himself Stranger was a frost; and the batter grinned like a wolf while Locke got the range of the pan with two or three throws, after Coffin had told him the signals.

“There’s the fence, Pop!” cried Bristol, swinging two bats, with the expectation of following Doyle. “Get another pair of shoes by putting it over. You’ve won enough footwear to last you five years already. You can start a little retail store of your own when the season’s over. Make Kennedy’s new man contribute to your stock.”

“You can’t get his goat that way,” howled McLaughlin. “He’s your jinx, and you know it. Give him a cheer, boys!”

The bunch of Deering rooters responded lustily, but their cheer was drowned by the crowd roaring for Doyle to lace it out.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE MAN ON THE MOUND

Pop Doyle rapped the rubber and squared away like a man who believed he could drop another one over the fence any time he wished. This was the time to do it, too. This was the time to break the new pitcher’s heart before he could get his feet under him. This was the pinch in the game, with the temporarily faltering tide threatening to flow on and overwhelm the Deers.

Nor was the sympathy of all the visitors with the new pitcher. Curley, Sullivan, and Heines knew that the success of Stranger might mean that at least one of them would receive his release, and, together on the bench, they nursed their ineffective whips, waiting and hoping to see Doyle do things to the southpaw.

What passed in Lefty Locke’s mind as he toed the slab and took Coffin’s signal not even Kennedy could know. Did he remember other occasions when he had faced batters more formidable than Doyle and felt no tremor of apprehension, or was the past a forgotten blank? Was he at that moment the Phil Hazelton who had made good under Kennedy with the majors, or was he Bob Stranger, now pitching for the first time in a game of baseball? Did he remember Elgin, whose trickery had so nearly ended his Big League prospects, or was his present rival and former foe absolutely unknown to him? Whatever he thought at that moment, his face revealed nothing. It was as impassive as a mask; the grim, determined mask of one who knew his task and was ready to meet it.

Coffin, having signaled, put up his glove behind Doyle’s shoulder, and, as he had thrown at old Jack’s hands in the morning, Lefty Locke whipped the ball past the batter’s chin and into the pocket of that yawning mitt. There was no attempt to drive the batter back from the pan, yet Doyle, jerking his head away, heard the umpire declare a strike. Instantly he kicked on the decision, and Hank Bristol flung one of his two bats high into the air. The local fans roared their disapproval, encouraged by these movements of the batter and the manager.

“Robbery!” shouted Bristol.

“Robbery! Robbery!” came from the crowd. “That was a ball!”

Coffin, laughing, snapped the sphere back to Lefty, who stopped it with his gloved right hand, and permitted it to drop into his bare left, the old movement which was so familiar to Kennedy.

“That’s him!” whispered old Jack to himself. “That’s Lefty, sure. Let him get squared away, and they’re through scoring. If they don’t make another run this inning, it’s all off, and we’ve got ’em going.”

Lefty gave little heed to the anxious base runners. He had selected Doyle for his victim, and it was easier and safer to keep after him than to take the chance of throwing to the sacks when it was not necessary to drive the runners back.

Having made his kick, Doyle was satisfied, though Bristol kept it up until warned by the umpire that he would be chased from the game. The next one pitched by Lefty was wide. When it was called a ball, the crowd sarcastically howled at the umpire, and asked him if he was sure it was not a strike.

Peter McLaughlin found it almost impossible to remain on his seat. “You’ve got him!” the old man shouted. “He can’t hit ye, Stranger! He can’t see your fast ones. Give him a curve now, and see what he can do with it.”

Without looking in the direction of the excited hotel proprietor, Lefty nodded and smiled.

“I’m going to try you with a curve, Doyle,” he told the batter. “Let’s see if you can win any shoes off it.”

Coffin called for another straight one across Doyle’s shoulder, but Locke shook his head.

“I told him I was going to pitch a curve,” he said. “Mr. Kennedy showed me one or two this morning. I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to use them?”

“Lay one over anywhere,” invited Doyle, “and I’ll break the fence.”

Even as he spoke, Locke pitched, starting the ball high, and making it take a break across the batter’s shoulders. Whereupon Doyle pounded the air for a second strike.

“Told you you had him foul!” whooped McLaughlin. “How can he hit ’em? He can’t.”

“Make him put ’em across, Pop,” urged Bristol. “Don’t let him fool you again.”

Now, Lefty had deceived Doyle completely by telling him just what he was going to pitch, for the batter had looked for something entirely different.

“Try another,” he entreated. “Give me another like that, and see it go out of the lot.”

“Well,” said Lefty, “I’ll do it, if you’ll agree to swing.”

“Look out for the straight one now!” shouted Elgin from the coaching line. “I know his pitching. That’s the way he mixes ’em—a curve and a straight one. That’s why he didn’t last in the Big League. They got wise to him. Meet it, Pop—meet it!”

But, to the surprise of Elgin, although Lefty swung his arm as if about to waft over a smoker, he made such a beautiful change of pace that Doyle barely saved himself by holding the bat back on the swing. The slow ball dropped to the ground six inches in front of the plate, and Coffin gathered it on the bound.

“That’s two and two,” said Elgin. “It takes only one to hit it.”

Lefty rubbed his bare hand on the hip of Kennedy’s old Blue Stocking pants. “I’ve got another curve,” he observed thoughtfully. “Let me see if I can remember that one.”

He threw it a moment later, the hook which dropped and twisted to the far side of the plate beyond Doyle; and again the batter checked himself on the swing, rejoicing when the umpire’s decision made it three to two.

“Now,” he said, “you’ve got to put it over or hand me a walk. You don’t dare put it across!”

“I’m going to put it across,” promised Lefty; “and of course I’ll have to use a straight one.”

In such a hole some pitchers would have found it necessary to use the straight one. Apparently Locke pitched with that intention. Doyle tried to meet the ball and hoist it over the fence. It was another of those baffling “Johnson hooks” to the outside corner, and he missed by inches.

“You’re out!” cried the umpire; and Peter McLaughlin had a fit then and there.

CHAPTER XXXIV
THE OTHER PITCHER

Old Jack Kennedy’s lips were pressed together, not a word coming from them as Lefty Locke strode to the bench; but in the depths of the manager’s eyes there was a wonderful glow, and he could feel his usually steady pulse pounding with an erratic throb.

“Here’s the boy who could have pitched the Blue Stockings to a pennant,” he thought; “and Al Carson didn’t know a good thing when he had it. He didn’t know how to handle the lad.”

“Did I get away with that all right?” asked Lefty, with surprising simplicity.

“Huh!” grunted Kennedy. “They didn’t score, did they? You ain’t heard anybody kickin’, have you?”

“He’s some pitcher—he really is,” murmured Coffin, slipping into place between Sullivan and Curley.

“Oh, wait,” muttered the big red-headed pitcher. “He’s only had to face one man, and I didn’t see that he showed so much.”

“The Bucks will size him up in about two innings,” prophesied Curley, “and when they do—good night, Mr. Stranger!”

“They’ve got a real pitcher in that fellow Elgin,” said Sullivan. “He struts like a peacock, sure; but he’s got speed and slants, and he knows where to put ’em.”

“It’s my opinion,” said Coffin, “that Bob Stranger has got a little smoke himself, and that queer, twisting drop of his would fool old Honus Wagner.”

“Yes, it would!” scoffed Curley. “It fooled Doyle once, but wait till next time, Coff—just you wait!”

Even while this brief conversation was taking place, Elgin, still graceful, confident, and filled with ginger by the applause of the crowd, retired Captain Kilgore by the pop-fly route, and took on Buster Brown. Coffin, who followed Brown, began looking around for his pet bat.

“You look to me like a blowed-up bladder,” said Brown, addressing Elgin. “Put one across, and see me nail it. But look out you don’t blow all to pieces when the bladder’s pricked.”

“Get his goat! Get his goat!” howled Peter McLaughlin from the stand. “You can get it!”

Elgin gave Brown a contemptuous smile. “Why,” he said, “you couldn’t hit me if I told you what I was going to throw. This will be a spitter. You never could hit a spitter.”

Holding the ball covered by both hands, his head went back with a motion which seemed to indicate that he pasted one side of the ball with saliva. Then he actually threw the spitter to Brown, and Brown missed.

“I’ll give you another, you big dub!” said Elgin. “Another just like that. Now, go ahead with your puncturing.”

As good as his word, he threw another spitter, and again Brown fanned.

“Say,” said the batter, “you’re copying the style of Kennedy’s new left-hander, ain’t you, telling the batter what you’re going to throw? You’re nothing but a plain copy, anyhow.”

Somehow this touched Elgin, and his face burned. “If I was going to copy anybody,” he retorted, “I’d take a real pitcher for a model.”

“Keep him chewin’ the rag,” bellowed McLaughlin. “You’ll git that goat yet.”

Indeed, Elgin was so exasperated that he made a tremendously wild pitch, and, seeing it coming, Brown took a chance, and pretended that he was trying to hit it. With the swing, he let his bat fly to one side, and was off toward first, which he reached before the disgusted Yapp could recover the ball and stop him.

“Oh, wow, wow!” laughed Buster mockingly. “It’s a good thing the stand was behind Yapp. They’d never found that wild heave if it hadn’t been. Keep on shooting your face off, peacock. We like it.”

“You’d never get to first any other way,” said Elgin. “Congratulate yourself.”

“Never mind him,” called Yapp, as the catcher for the Deers walked out to the plate. “Put a nail in this Coffin. You can do that just as well as you can Kilgore.”

“Why, you’re a real wit, Yappy,” said Coffin. “Why don’t you get his umps to call time while you laugh at your own jokes?”

“Speaking about jokes,” returned Yapp, “you’re one. I heard Kennedy kept you in the game and put you behind the bat for your hitting. Well, you won’t fat your average off Elgin.”

Now, Yapp really knew Coffin’s weakness, and, with Elgin’s perfect control, the man was worked for a strike-out, although Brown stole second while this was taking place.

“Don’t exert yourself,” said Elgin, looking around at Buster; “’twon’t be necessary.”

Lefty Locke was the hitter now, and Elgin seemed to have little doubt in his mind as to what he could do with him.

“You thought you was something when you made the Blue Stockings, didn’t you?” said Elgin, as Lefty took his place in the box.

“I beg your pardon,” returned Locke. “I think you’ve got me mixed with some other man.”

“Oh, you do, eh?” sneered Bert. “Call yourself Stranger now, eh? I sure don’t blame you at all.”

“Why don’t you pitch instead of talking so much?” demanded Lefty impatiently.

“Oh, I’ll pitch in a minute,” returned the other, nodding to Yapp to signal. “You seem in a big hurry to strike out.”

Lefty made no further remark, but waited in position to swing easily at anything the pitcher might put over. Nevertheless, two strikes were called on him, and he had not attempted to hit one, much to the amusement of the great crowd, before he finally got what he wanted. The ring of wood meeting leather brought a gasp from the crowd. It was a line drive straight over the head of Berlin, who jumped vainly for it.

Now, at Elgin’s suggestion, the fielders had all been switched round to the left; for, despite the fact that he was a left-hander, Locke frequently hit hard into left field. This movement had brought the right fielder almost in line with that tremendous drive; otherwise he could not have touched it. The change enabled him to make a marvelous running bare-handed catch which robbed Lefty of a three-bagger, at least, and prevented Brown from tying up the score.

“Oh, dear, dear!” sighed Peter McLaughlin, sinking back into his seat. “What a crack! What luck! Why, that fellow can hit ’em—he just can.”

Brown, swinging toward home after crossing third, and being told that it was useless to run, twisted his mug at Bert Elgin.

“Luck saved you that time, Mr. Pouter Pigeon,” he said. “You’re due to get yours good and plenty before the day is over.”

Although he shrugged and sneered, away down deep in his heart Elgin felt a touch of apprehension lest the words of Buster Brown were prophetic.

CHAPTER XXXV
THE STEAL HOME

The game, which had started out so loosely, and threatened to become wretched at any moment, was now turned into a pitchers’ battle, with Locke and Elgin working against each other. Settling down, Lefty became silent, attending strictly to business. At no time, save in the threatening moments, did he seem exerting himself to his utmost. The uproar of the crowd, calculated to disturb his coolness, seemed no more effective than the murmur of a summer breeze.

“If they think they can rattle him in this little one-horse burg,” Kennedy whispered to himself, “they should have seen him pitchin’ before thirty thousand howlin’ fans in the Big League. Why, he’s just monkeyin’ with that bunch. With him, we can walk away with the bunting, sure as fate.”

With him! But what right had he to keep Lefty Locke, under contract with the Blue Stockings? What right had he to hold this man, the lack of whose pitching might prevent the Blue Stockings from taking the championship? Was it not his duty to notify Al Carson as soon as possible that the missing pitcher had turned up in Deering?

“But Lefty’s under suspension,” thought Kennedy. “They wouldn’t be using him now if they had him. Oh, I’ve got to talk it over with him, and talk straight. It’s the only way.”

There was little time for thoughts like these. The locals still held that one-run lead, and Elgin, pitching like a man with life at stake, refused in the sixth and seventh innings to let one of the Deers as much as threaten to tie it up. On the other hand, in both of those innings the Bucks got a runner to second with only one out, whereupon, however, Locke tightened promptly, and there was nothing further doing.

The eighth opened with Brown leading off, and he talked to Elgin a blue streak until the pitcher finally fanned him.

“Go sit down, and close up that hot-air vent,” said Bert.

Coffin picked a slant, and smashed it like a bullet straight into the hands of the shortstop for the second out.

Then, again, Lefty Locke stepped forth, and Peter McLaughlin shrieked:

“Here’s the man to hit him! Here’s the boy! It’s all off now! He’ll tie it up.”

Once more, away down in Elgin’s heart, he felt that throb of apprehension. This was the man who had ruined his chances in the Big League, the man who had seemed favored in everything by luck—Lucky Locke he should be called, Elgin thought. And only for the chance that had brought Hartford over nearly into center field, Locke would have scored Brown on a clean drive the last time up.

“I’ll pass him,” declared Elgin suddenly. “I’ll pretend I’m trying to put the ball over, but I’ll pass him.”

It was the weak spot, the yellow streak coming to the surface. With two out and no one on the sacks, there was really little danger that Locke could make a home run; yet Elgin was afraid. From over at one side, in the midst of the little knot of Deering fans, Peter McLaughlin seemed to realize Elgin’s purpose by the time Bert had handed up the second wide one.

“He’s scat!” yelled the old hotel man. “Yaller—yaller! He don’t dare put one over! He’s quittin’!”

The coachers took up the cry of “Yellow,” and Elgin viciously bit his under lip.

“I’ll just put one bender over,” he decided. “I’ll show them that I’m not afraid to slant one across.”

Using his curve, he put the ball over; but it never reached the waiting hands of Yapp. Again Lefty met it fairly, and again it went whistling out on a line. This time, however, neither infielder nor outfielder could touch it. Only for a long rebound from the fence into the hands of a player, who promptly returned the sphere to the diamond, Locke, covering ground like a deer, would have turned the hit into a homer.

McLaughlin and the Deering bunch were howling themselves purple in the face. Old Jack Kennedy, on the coaching line, flapped his arms and laughed at Elgin, whose face was pale as a sheet of paper.

“Why, he knows how to hit you, Elgin. He can do it every time,” said the old manager. “If the head of the list wasn’t up now, I’d go in myself and pound him across. Collins,” he snapped, as Chick came out from the bench with a bat, “if you dodge a bean ball this time I’ll fine you a week’s pay. Take it on the nut if he throws it.”

“If he—if he does,” muttered Elgin hoarsely, “you’ll carry him home in a box.”

“Oh, no—oh, no!” derided old Jack. “Why, you couldn’t crack a pane of glass with your swift one. Get hit, Chick, if he throws at you—get hit.”

“All right,” grinned Collins. “Let her come.”

Elgin pitched only once to Collins before something happened. Yapp snapped the ball back, and Bert, catching it with one hand, was kicking a pebble out of the pitching box when a sudden wild yell arose. He turned in surprise, and saw Locke racing down from third, actually attempting to tie the score by stealing home. And that with the head of the batting order up! The astounding unexpectedness of such a thing took away Elgin’s breath, and made him hesitate for a fraction of a second.

Yapp, leaping forward to block the runner off, shrieked for Elgin to throw the ball. Awaking suddenly, Bert threw it. In his haste, however, he whipped it wide, and Yapp was forced to reach in the wrong direction.

Lefty Locke hit the dirt feet first, shot under the Buccaneers’ catcher, and scraped one foot across the rubber.

“Safe!” shouted the umpire, his hands outspread.

The great crowd was silent—all save a little bunch led by Peter McLaughlin, who were yelling like lunatics. Elgin, ghastly white, was dumb. It had happened, after all—the thing he feared; this fellow Locke had snatched the opportunity to make him ridiculous before a bush-league crowd. Like poison fire, hatred burned and seethed in Elgin’s heart. He did not hear Bristol raging at him from first. His eyes followed Locke as the latter, rising, pounded the dust out of Kennedy’s Blue Stocking uniform, and turned toward the bench as calmly as if stealing home was a common thing with him.

CHAPTER XXXVI
STRANGER IS ANNOYED

“Gods of our fathers!” said Buster Brown as Locke reached the bench. “You done it, old boy, and you done it slick. I’ll bet that man Elgin goes up so far you can’t see him with the Lick telescope.”

As for Elgin, he spent some minutes in an apparent endeavor to steady himself; then, when he pitched again to Collins, Chick smashed out a safe drive.

The fusillade of singles and doubles and triples which followed gave the Deers four more runs before Bristol came to realize that Elgin was wholly gone, and sent another man to the mound.

“Got his goat! I knew we would!” rejoiced Landlord McLaughlin. “It’s all over but the shouting. Nobody is afeared of the Buccaneers now.”

Appalled and silenced by the sudden turn of the game and the amazing and unexpected downfall of their pitching hero, many of the disgusted local spectators crept out of the stand and stole away before the Buccaneers went down to defeat in the last of the ninth, vainly seeking up to the finish to fathom the delivery of Kennedy’s southpaw.

When it was all over, Locke lost not a moment in dashing away toward the dressing room—an action which seemed instinctive or born of baseball experience in other days. He was pursued by the shrill cheering of the little bunch of delighted Deering fans.

Elgin had vanished. Crushed, bitter, unspeakably humiliated, after his removal from the box he had lost no time in leaving the field. He could not realize that retribution had reached forth its iron hand and touched him again, as it will any and all of us who do wrong and have a conscience that must cause us to suffer.

Reaching the dressing room, Lefty had peeled off the old uniform, and was ready for a hasty shower before his teammates arrived. They came in rejoicing, with the possible exception of the jealous pitchers who had failed in the early stages of the game.

“Stranger, of the southpaw!” cried Kilgore, as Locke seized a towel and began rubbing himself dry. “You were there when the hour struck. That steal home broke Elgin’s heart. Never saw a man blow up so sudden before. Couldn’t touch him before that; everybody hit him afterward.”

Old Jack Kennedy came in. “Let me massage that portside flinger of yours, Stranger,” he urged. “We’ve no regular rubber to look after it, so I’ll have to give it what it needs.”

Lefty submitted to the massaging of his strong, free-swinging left arm and shoulder.

“How did you happen to try that steal to the plate?” asked Kennedy, as he worked over the man’s arm.

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “Seems to me I’ve done it before, but of course I haven’t, never having played baseball.”

“You have played baseball—take it from me,” said Kennedy. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about it, but you’ve played the game aplenty.”

“Anyhow,” said Locke, “something told me to go home when I saw Elgin getting a bit careless in the box. I knew it would tie things up if I scored, and it might put him off his pins. If I failed, we’d still have another chance in the first of the ninth inning. Before I knew it I was streaking to the plate. Of course it was luck.”

“Of course there was some luck about it,” agreed old Jack; “but it took nerve and judgment. If you’d failed, everybody would have handed you the laugh.”

“That wouldn’t have disturbed me,” said Locke. “A man can’t do much if he’s never going to try anything for fear he’ll be laughed at if he fails. Sometimes a sense of humor helps; other times it hurts.”

“That’s philosophy,” said Kennedy. “Now you’re talking like yourself, son.”

Indeed, at that moment Locke appeared like the fine, forceful, jovial fellow Kennedy had known him to be, having lost much of his shadowy gloom and all that peculiar style of talk which had bothered old Jack not a little.

Locke was fully dressed and ready to leave when a prematurely corpulent young man arrived at the dressing-room door and inquired for Phil Hazelton.

“Nobody by that name here,” he was told.

“Wait a minute,” called Kennedy, who had heard the words. “Who’s that? The young doctor who follows up the Bucks? I’ve seen him over in Deering.”

“My name is Hetner,” said the man at the door. “I’m Doctor Wallace Hetner, and I’d like to have just a word with my old college friend, Hazelton. Perhaps he doesn’t call himself by that name in baseball. Perhaps he calls himself Locke. And I see by the score sheet that he was down to-day as Stranger.”

Lefty turned and stepped to the door to face the speaker.

“You must mean me,” he said. “I’m the Stranger who pitched for the Deers.”

“And you’re Phil Hazelton,” said Doctor Hetner. “I wondered what had become of you, Hazelton. You were on the train with me when the smash came. You were on that very smoking car. I spoke to you a short time before the car jumped the track. Don’t you remember?”

Locke shook his head.

“It’s a singular thing,” he said, “but people get me mixed up with someone else. They persist in thinking I’m some other person. My name is Robert Stranger, pal. I’m a diamond cutter by trade. My health ain’t just what it should be, and a pill slinger advised me to get outdoors somewhere and work on a farm. That’s how I happen to be here.”

Hetner’s jaw dropped, and he stared hard at the speaker. At the same time, behind Locke’s back, Kennedy clenched his right fist, and his eyes narrowed as he listened to this sudden change in the young left-hander’s style of speech.

“That’s right, doctor,” he said suddenly. “Folks seem to think that Stranger, here, is someone else. Even I made that mistake. It annoys him.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” persisted Doctor Hetner, his eyes fastened on Locke, “that you weren’t on that train when a broken rail sent us into the ditch? I looked for you among the injured or killed, but couldn’t find you.”

“I never was in a train wreck in my life,” said Lefty.

Baffled, the doctor turned away, mumbling an excuse, although not at all satisfied.

“I wish they’d quit that,” said Lefty, brushing a hand across his forehead. “I wish they’d stop taking me for some other person. It’s infernally annoying.”

“It must be,” agreed Kennedy, turning to Toots Kilgore. “Toots,” he said, in a low tone, “take the boys to the hotel and get supper. If I’m not there, I’ll meet you at the train.”

CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DOCTOR’S DOUBTS

“Yes,” said Doctor Hetner, sitting in his office, facing Manager Kennedy, “of course it’s possible for such a thing to happen. Of course, the man’s mind may be affected, and he may not remember his former life and friends. At the same time, he may be suffering under a delusion, which has led him to take a new name and assume a different character. Such instances, although rare, are well known to medical science.”

“What brings them about?” inquired Kennedy eagerly.

“Overstudy, overwork, a diseased condition of the body or mind, a sudden shock—oh, numerous things. It has almost a thousand different forms. Psychologists and physicians who make a study of the subject recognize many of the symptoms.”

“Have you made a study of it, doc?”

“Not what you might call a thorough study, although, of course, among my books I have many which deal with neurasthenia and its allied forms. Still, I’ll give you my word that I never for a moment recognized the symptoms in Hazelton. It seemed to me that the fellow, when he met me on the train, was simply declining to acknowledge an old acquaintance for reasons of pride or something of that sort. That it was aphasia didn’t occur to me. It’s likely you know how he happened to go into baseball under a fake name?”

“But there ain’t no disgrace playing baseball these days,” growled the old manager. “There’s as clean a set of fellers in the game as you can find anywhere.”

“Nevertheless, prejudice exists in the minds of many old-fashioned persons, such as Phil Hazelton’s father must be. To them, playing baseball is a great deal like taking part in a circus performance. They can’t see that it has become an honorable, legitimate, recognized profession, followed by hundreds upon hundreds of clean, honest young men. You understand why I doubt this being a genuine case of loss of identity? I believe Hazelton is trying to hide himself under an assumed name and personality.”

Old Jack shook his head.

“He ain’t no fool, doctor; he can’t help knowing that I know him and you know him. Elgin knows him, too. If he was a simple-minded idiot, he might continue to try to keep up the bluff. I tell you, that boy has gone wrong in his garret, and something ought to be done for him. I don’t know just how to do it.”

“Well, now, look here,” said the doctor; “I’m coming over to Deering in a day or two, Kennedy. In the meantime, I want you to try to trip Hazelton. Lead him into some sort of a give-away, an admission, then nail him. Tell him it isn’t any use to stick to the bluff.”

“And have him get red-headed and tell me to go straight to—well, you know where.”

“Never mind that.”

“But I do mind. With him pitching for the Deers, we can put ourselves into first place in two weeks’ time. I know just what he can do. Talk about John Coombs, the iron man, or ‘Cy’ Young in his palmy days—why, Lefty Locke is as good as either of them. He can pitch three days running, if necessary; and two or three games a week, with a day between each, is like loafing for him, especially in this bush league. Oh, I don’t want him to quit me!”

“I don’t blame you,” said Hetner, laughing; “but I don’t believe he’ll quit. Yet, if he belongs to the Blue Stockings, and they’re in need of him—”

Kennedy growled. “Then it’s up to me, if I’m decent, to let ’em know where they can find him. No matter how I feel about the way I was treated, it’s up to me just the same.”

“Still,” said the physician, “if the man isn’t right in his head, it would be wrong for him to go on pitching baseball without any treatment whatever.”

“Treatment?” said Kennedy. “Does treatment always cure ’em?”

“Sometimes it won’t do a blessed bit of good. Nothing cures them but a long rest, and, perhaps, a sudden accidental occurrence which flashes back into their brain the realization of their true identity. Sometimes a situation may be successfully planned to bring this about; more often the most skillful planning results in absolute failure. But remember, I haven’t stated that Hazelton is a victim of such a delusion.”

“We’ll find out whether he is or not, doctor,” said the old manager, rising. “If he’s fooling, I’ll catch him at it. I’ll let you know right away if I trip him somehow. So long, doc.”

Kennedy had time to snatch a bite at the hotel and accompany the team to the station to take the train for Deering. Arriving at the latter place, they were welcomed by a gathering at the station, for the whole town had learned by telephone the result of the game in Hatfield.

“Where’s your new pitcher, Jack—where is he?” they shouted. “He ought to be all right.”

“He is,” assured Kennedy, waiting on the car platform until Lefty was forced to appear. “He didn’t let the Bucks have a run after he mounted the slab. Here’s Bob Stranger, gents, and, believe me, he’s the man I’ve been looking for to win the pennant with. If I can keep him, we’ll nail it.”

“Keep him!” yelled one of the crowd. “If you let him get away, your life won’t be safe around these parts!”

CHAPTER XXXVIII
FIRST POSITION

Of course, Locke went out to the farm with old Jack, and again they sat on the veranda, this time watching the moon coming up over the eastern horizon. For a long time Kennedy was silent as he smoked, and Locke also seemed busied with his thoughts. The moonlight, creeping beneath the veranda, fell upon Lefty’s face, making it seem strangely handsome and strangely sad. Suddenly the old manager burst out laughing.

“Wonder if Bert Elgin will get his release the way he did the first time you went up against him with the Blue Stockings behind you, son?” he said. “You remember what Brennan done to Elgin after that game was over?”

Locke swung round and faced the speaker.

“I don’t remember anything at all,” he said, “because, as far as I’m concerned, it never happened. Like the others, Mr. Kennedy, you’ve got me mixed up with another man.”

“Mebbe so,” said old Jack; “but I don’t believe it. Look here, if you ain’t Lefty Locke, the boy who pitched for me when I was handling the Blue Stockings the first of the season, how does it happen that you can go into a game same as you did to-day and pitch like a veteran?”

“That’s one thing I can’t answer,” was the confession. “Of course, you gave me some practice here in the morning, but—”

Kennedy snapped his fingers. “All I gave you didn’t amount to that, unless you knew how to pitch before,” he declared. “No matter how much you remembered, it was what you didn’t seem to remember that was telling you what to do in that game. That’s how you could go in there and win for us. I don’t know where you picked up the name of Stranger, but—”

“I’ve always had that name. I’m a diamond cutter, pal. My folks were rather strait-laced, and I was a wild one. They’re both gone, and I’m alone in the world.”

“That sounds first-rate as fur as it goes,” said Kennedy; “but it don’t go fur. Where was you born, and where was you brung up? You’ve got plenty of folks who know about you, of course. Where be they?”

“I was just trying to think,” said Locke. “Something has made me forget, but I’ll remember to-morrow, perhaps.”

“Hope you do,” said Kennedy. “If you remember, you’ll get it straightened out that I was your manager. The new owner fired me, and Al Carson took my place. Something happened between you and Carson. You didn’t get along. I was watching things in the papers. You was fined and suspended. Then the team was mixed up in that railroad smash, an—”

“Stop!” interrupted Locke, in mingled excitement and confusion. “I can’t follow you as fast as that. No use for me to try.”

“But you remember—you remember now?” persisted Kennedy.

“Not a thing,” was the reply. “I still think you’re mistaken.”

The following morning Kennedy sent a telegram to Al Carson, of the Blue Stockings:

Can tell you where to find your missing pitcher, Locke.

John Kennedy.

By noon he received an answer:

Don’t want to find him. He’s blacklisted for quitting.

Carson.

“Hooray!” said Kennedy, as he thrust the message into his pocket. “I’ve done my duty. They don’t want him. Now I can keep him—unless he gets cured of a sudden, and goes hustling back to them.”

For a time the old manager felt nothing but keenest satisfaction over the situation. Gradually, however, having a conscience, he began to fret and worry. It was all wrong, he told himself, and the fact that Carson was prejudiced and had given Locke a rotten deal did not excuse him for remaining silent under the circumstances and using the youngster to his advantage. If Locke’s mind was affected immediate treatment was what the young man needed—immediate attention by an expert in mental disorders; and Kennedy could not con himself into satisfaction by saying over and over that nothing could be better for Lefty than the peace and quiet of the country, together with an occasional game of baseball to keep awake his interest in a life of action.

“But I’ll wait till Monday, when the Bucks come over here,” he told himself. “That young doctor likely will come along at the same time, and we can talk it over again. I’ve got to have advice.”

In this manner he pacified his troublesome conscience for the time being.

In the afternoon, playing the Stars upon Deering field, the Deers, with Curley on the hillock, had it pretty much their own way. Danger of release had spurred Curley to do his level best, and in all the pinches he pitched with a skill which made his performance one of the finest exhibitions he had ever given in that bush league.

Furthermore, the snatching of the game from the Buccaneers had inspired the Deers with new hope and fire, and they backed Curley up in an errorless manner, and hit well. Not only that, but both Sullivan and Heines, before the game started, had asked to pitch.

Kennedy knew what that meant. The work of Locke, and the probability that some one of the others would get his release, had put them all on their mettle.

“Got ’em now,” thought old Jack; “got ’em where I want ’em. They’ll all work till they drop in the harness, and it’s only up to me to keep watch that I don’t push ’em beyond the limit.”

On the other hand, the Stars were nervous and fearful and altogether too eager. They seemed to realize that the Deers, unless beaten right away, would eventually leap into first place and clinch the championship. A day or two earlier they had feared the Buccaneers most, but the victory of the Deers over the Bucks had brought a new menace to the front; and the former champions, having endured the strain to the seventh inning, went to pieces generally, handing the locals a well-earned but rather staggering victory.

Lefty Locke sat on the bench, again wearing Kennedy’s Blue Stocking uniform. He had warmed up a little, although the manager had scarcely a thought of putting him in under any circumstances; and the visitors had watched him with the utmost interest. For surely an unknown twirler thrown into a game at Hatfield by Kennedy, and able to stop the fierce Buccaneers in their tracks, was a real pitcher.

“I wonder who he really is?” the bushers asked one another. “Stranger—that ain’t his name, never!”

After the game was over, Kennedy, outwardly calm, but inwardly chuckling with satisfaction, made his way to the Central House, where he found Landlord McLaughlin ready to set out the cigars for everybody.

“Well, say, Jack,” called the proprietor, as Kennedy strolled in, mopping his perspiring face, “things have turned our way, sartain. I knowed you could do it if we could only get you to take holt of the team. That there championship is as good as ourn.”

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, Peter,” advised Kennedy. “You’ll find the Buccaneers and Hank Bristol still in the game. Of course, they put the Boobs to the mat to-day, but our winning from the Stars keeps us neck and neck with ’em, and ready to step into fust place before we go under the wire at the finish. To-morrow we’ll have a crack at the Boobs, and Monday we get another swing at the Bucks right here to home. Monday I’ll pitch Stranger again. Watch him trim them, if the boys back him up the way they did Curley to-day.”

“Say, Jack,” chuckled the old man behind the cigar counter, as he put forth box after box, “this town is sartain red-hot baseball crazy right now. Talk about Deering being dead! Why, it’s the liveliest little burg between the two oceans. Mark me, next Monday we’ll have out the best crowd that has ever seen a baseball game in these parts.”

From a near-by booth came a sharp call of the telephone bell.

“Mebbe that’s the report of the game at Somerset,” said McLaughlin, leaving the cigars for anybody who wanted them to take one or a handful, and turning toward the booth. “I’ll just see if ’tis, and find out how bad the Buccaneers beat the Boobs.”

He entered the booth, and closed the door. Those outside heard him shouting into the receiver a few minutes later: “What? What’s that? Say it over. Ain’t you got that wrong end to? Well, I swan to man! Good-by.”

The minute he could push open the door and stick his head out, he cried:

“The Bucks have gone up! The Boobs beat ’em four to two. We’re at the head of the league. Hooray!”

CHAPTER XXXIX
A TROUBLED MIND

A person who has never had any experience with baseball in the bush can scarcely realize the effect upon Deering of the knowledge that the local team had jumped into the lead and stood more than a fair prospect, managed by Kennedy, of winning the championship. The place, which ordinarily seemed rather sleepy and lifeless, suddenly seethed. Almost everyone, save crabbed old men or cranks prejudiced against the game, talked baseball, praised Kennedy, and speculated concerning his new left-handed wonder, who had beaten the dangerous Buccaneers.

On Saturday afternoon the crowd that came streaming out to the field gladdened the hearts of the team’s backers by the manner in which they forked over their quarters at the box office. A flow of silver poured in, and the Deers, who had once seemed likely to end the season several hundred dollars in debt, saw a prospect of coming out ahead in finances—a prospect which made everyone rejoice.

Of course Lefty Locke was the hero of the day. Everyone stared at him. The girls whispered and giggled as they looked in his direction, and even young married women discreetly ventured to say that they considered him a very handsome man. There was something about his reserved bearing, the melancholy touch in his face, and the somber shadow in his eyes which seemed poetical and fascinating to those of the fair sex who observed him.

In some manner, stories about him began to be whispered around. It was suggested that he had a broken heart, caused by some foolish girl, who had thrown him over for another man. Another story was that he was mourning for his sweetheart, who had died. The one humorous yarn of the lot was that he was a married man and the father of several children.

But no matter what baseless speculation was circulated, each and every one of these stories simply made him seem all the more fascinating and attractive to the young women of Deering.

But Lefty favored not one of them with more than a passing glance, and never in his eyes was there as much as a twinkling light.

They had a chance to see Locke in action in the ninth inning, when, after pitching a great game to that point, Sullivan let down a little, and the Boobs, scampering over the sacks as they chose, threatened to snatch victory from defeat.

Old Jack was watching every turn like a hawk, and promptly he pulled Sullivan from the mound, and sent out Locke, who had warmed up once before and once during the game, but was now cold.

With one man down, Lefty took the next two batters in hand, and buried the whooping, aggressive Boobs in short order. The first man he fanned, and the next he forced into putting up a little pop foul back of first base, which ended the game.

Coming down from the park, half an hour later, Locke was surrounded and pursued by at least twenty youngsters, who openly discussed him for his own ears to hear, all agreeing that as a pitcher Christy Mathewson had nothing on this great southpaw.

Ordinarily this would have provided no small amount of amusement for Lefty; now, however, he scarcely seemed to hear or see any of them as he strode along, his expression one of troubled thought.

Was it possible that he was beginning to realize that his name was not Robert Stranger, and that, for all his protestations that he had never played baseball before coming to Deering, he had a past upon the diamond? At any rate, he moved like a shadow among those admiring people of Deering—among them, but not of them.

Sunday followed—Sunday on Kennedy’s farm. Old Jack made a suggestion about church, but Locke shook his head, saying he did not care to attend. And all day long he wandered restlessly about the farm, or sat idly on the veranda, declining to read, apparently striving to think—to think.

“The poor boy’s worried, Jack,” said Mrs. Kitty Malone. “It upsets me complete to see him this way.”

“Kit, I never thought the sight of any man would upset you again,” returned her brother. “I thought you’d had enough of them.”

“So I have. But this is different—this case. He’s only a boy. I feel like a mother toward him.”

“Yes, you do!” laughed Kennedy. “Oh, yes, you do—not. Why, you’re not so much older, Kit—not more than ten year, and he really is almost a boy.”

“But ten year,” she said sadly. “If ’twere t’other way ’twould be different. Do you know what’s on his mind, Jack?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied; “but mebbe I could make a guess. He had a girl once, if I remember right.”

“Once!” she exclaimed. “I’m jealous this minute. But, then, I don’t see how he could help having twenty of them. What’s become of her?”

Kennedy shook his head. “Ask me!” he said. “There’s a whole lot about Lefty Locke that I’m guessin’ at.”

“Lefty Locke? He calls himself Stranger.”

“A man can call himself anything he pleases; there’s no law against it.”

“It’s a real pitcher he is, Jack?”

“Sis, you should have seen him pitch against Bristol’s Bucks! If you want to, you’ll have a chance to see him pitch against them Monday. I’m going to put him in. You should have seen him pitch for the Blue Stockings. They lost the best man on the staff when they lost him, but Al Carson is such a pig-headed chump that he won’t acknowledge it. He’d rather lose the pennant than own up that he’d made a mistake.”

“And that’s the man they threw you down for, Jack, is it—after you’d won the championship twice before? It’s always the way in this world. The one who delivers the goods is thrown down for another who’s got the cheek to crowd himself in.”

“Not always the way, sis,” contradicted Kennedy, shaking his head. “It sometimes happens so, and when it does pessimists are inclined to say it always happens.”

“What are these pessimists ye speak of?” she asked quickly. “I don’t think I ever met one of them.”

“You were a bit inclined to be one yourself,” he replied, “until Robert Stranger came to the farm.”

CHAPTER XL
THE REPORTER

Everyone had heard that Locke would pitch again on Monday, and, having seen him wind up the game for Sullivan, their curiosity and interest was whetted to the highest point. Doubtless Bristol would be fierce and determined to get back into the running by downing the Deers, and perhaps he would use again his wonderful new pitcher, who had held the Deers scoreless until Stranger stole home on him in the eighth inning. Naturally that man would be more than eager to retrieve himself in another struggle against Locke.

Kennedy was on the steps of the Central House when Bristol, accompanied by two or three of his players, came hustling up from the railroad station.

“Hello, Hank!” said old Jack, in a friendly way. “Glad to see you.”

“Hello!” growled Bristol. “I s’pose you are. I’d be, if I was in your place. Say, you’ve been having luck, ain’t yer? You put the jinx on us, all right. Think of it, being beat by them Boobs! We’ve got to git back at you to-day, and we’re goin’ to come blame near doing it, too!”

“That sounds interesting,” returned Kennedy. “I suppose you’ll pitch Elgin again?”

“Elgin be—hanged!” rasped Bristol.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“He’s quit.”

“Quit?”

“Yep. That feller was yaller all the way through. He went to pieces like a stick of dynamite. Didn’t even wait to collect the few dollars that was due him. Jumped a train and got out.”

“Well, he was a quitter,” agreed Kennedy. “I’m really sorry for you, Hank. It makes a man sore to be stung in his judgment of a pitcher that fashion.”

“Don’t seem that you got stung much in that feller Stranger. Say, who is he, anyhow? You must ’a’ had him yarded out in the outlaws somewhere, or back in the bush, with a string on him, so you could yank him in any time you needed him.”

“I had him with a string on him, all right,” confessed Kennedy.

“I thought so. Well, we’re going after him to-day. He can’t repeat on us. All the boys are just itching to have another crack at him.”

“You’d better buy some ointment for that itching, Hank. I judge they’ll still need it after the game’s over.”

“Mebbe so,” said Bristol, walking on, “but I doubt it.”

He was not twenty feet away when a young, clear-eyed man came hurrying toward Kennedy, who had turned to call McLaughlin from the hotel.

“I beg your pardon, Jack, old man,” called a familiar voice. “Recognized you a block away. So this is the way you’re farming, is it?”

Kennedy, whirling sharply, found himself gazing into the eyes of Jack Stillman, the Blade reporter.

“Hello, boy!” he exclaimed, grasping the newspaper man’s outstretched hand. “What are you doing here?”

“Hush!” chuckled Stillman, making an extravagant gesture of caution. “I’m doing a little Sherlock Holmesing for the Blade. I’ve followed a trail that has led me right here to this town of Deering.”

“You don’t say!”

“Oh, yes, I do. I repeat.”

“Who are you after?” Although Kennedy asked the question, he knew the answer in advance.

“I suppose you’ve been reading the papers right along?” said Stillman. “Then you’ve seen all about the railroad smash, and how Lefty Locke hasn’t been found since that happened.”

“I read about it.”

“It was proved that he wasn’t among the killed or injured, so, of course, he simply improved that opportunity to fade away. You know, he and Carson didn’t seem to get along right well together. Carson favored Grist, and Grist had some feeling about Locke.”

“I thought I had that pretty near cured before they took my scalp,” said Kennedy. “Grist was the veteran with the experience, but he was on the point of going backward. Locke was the youngster without experience, but he was coming like a whirlwind. Both had their supporters, and there were a few who tried to remain impartial. It affected the playing of the team, and I was working hard to restore harmony just when they handed me mine.”

“Well, there’s not much harmony left now, and Locke’s gone,” said the reporter. “The Blue Stockings are getting it right and left, and only for the fact that the Specters have had a bad streak they would be out of the running already. The loss of Locke has put the whole team on the blink. Take it from me, Charles Collier is getting sore himself, and there’s liable to be something didding any day. Meantime, I am trying to locate Lefty Locke. Where is he, Kennedy?”

“He’ll pitch for me this afternoon,” answered old Jack.

CHAPTER XLI
THE MAN WHO KNEW

“Calls himself Stranger, does he?” muttered Jack Stillman, as he watched the work of Locke from amid the crowd, having taken pains to keep away from the bench of the Deers. “Pretends he’s forgotten his right name or something like that, hey? The whole business is queer. But he can pitch—he can pitch as well as he ever could. If the Blue Stockings had him, with old Jack handling the team, they’d have the championship nailed already.”

Besides Stillman, another man was an intensely interested spectator of Lefty Locke’s work on the mound. It was Doctor Wallace Hetner, of Hatfield, who, according to his promise to Kennedy, had come over with the team. As far as possible during the last few days, Hetner had spent time in meditating upon Locke’s singular behavior, and now he watched the man for some sign, some indication which would denote that he was actually the victim of a mental disorder.

“He doesn’t look like a sick man,” decided the doctor. “He doesn’t show it. But there’s something decidedly wrong, or he’d not be calling himself Stranger. I wonder if Kennedy has succeeded in leading him into a give-away?”

He found the old manager, and called him from the bench. With the game running all in favor of the Deers, Kennedy did not hesitate to answer Doctor Hetner’s call.

“Oh, he’s Lefty Locke, all right,” he said. “Ain’t no question about that. No, couldn’t make him admit a thing, but I know what I’m talking about. Say, there’s another man here in town who knows him well—a reporter by the name of Stillman. You two ought to get together and talk it over. I’ll find Stillman, and introduce you after the game.”

“Thanks,” said the doctor.

Despite Bristol’s threat, the Buccaneers could do nothing with Lefty Locke; but in turn one of Bristol’s regular pitchers succeeded in holding the locals down to three hard-earned runs.

Hetner, Stillman, Kennedy, and McLaughlin held a consultation in a private room of the Central House after the game was over.

“I haven’t said a word to Lefty yet,” said the reporter. “I’ve kept away from him. Whatever his reason for ducking off the map, he’s certainly keeping himself in A-one pitching trim. I told Collier I’d find him.”

“You told Collier so!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Didn’t he know where Locke was?”

“No. How would he know?”

“I wired Carson three days ago that I could tell him where to find his missing southpaw. He answered that he didn’t want to find him. I supposed he told Collier about my message.”

“Don’t believe he chirped a word of it,” said the reporter. “Carson’s making a mess of the management. The team misses you, Jack—it certainly does.”

“No bouquets,” protested Kennedy.

“I’m not throwing any; I’m giving it to you straight. They miss you and Lefty Locke. I’ve been thinking of something odd. There was a man killed in that train wreck who passed sometimes under the name of Bob Stranger. He was a crook and general confidence man—Pink Kelly—who had just been released from the pen. For some time nobody recognized him, so his name was not given in the first newspaper reports of the identified. I was the one who finally recognized that gink. Bob Stranger! Locke calls himself that?”

“That’s what he does,” replied Kennedy.

The reporter struck the fist of his right hand into his open left palm.

“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” he cried, “that Locke and that crook were talking together before the smash came. That smash must have knocked everything out of Locke’s head. He’d been going a bit wrong for some time before that, and that might be the very thing to put him all to the bad. Why, do you know, some of the fellows even thought he’d taken to drinking. I’ve an idea I really know what’s at the bottom of the whole trouble.”

“Then you’ll be mighty valuable in straightening this mess out,” said Kennedy. “What was at the bottom of it?”

Stillman then told them of Lefty’s deep interest in Janet Harting, and explained how the misunderstanding between them had been caused by Locke’s innocent attentions to the daughter of the new owner of the Blue Stockings.

“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Doctor Hetner excitedly. “I think I can see a method of straightening the man out and bringing back his memory. If I had a picture of that girl—the one he’s really struck on—”

“I’ve got it,” laughed the reporter. “Say, I scented a corking old news story in this affair, and so I just took care to get Miss Janet Harting’s photograph, as well as one of Miss Virginia Collier. By the way, there’s a fourth party mixed up in the business—a young man by the name of Franklin Parlmee. It seems that he had a case on Collier’s daughter, and they quarreled. It didn’t seem to shake her much, but he was raw as a flea-bitten pup, and he didn’t lose an opportunity to soak Locke to old man Collier.”

“Something of a romance, I declare!” said Doctor Hetner. “You say you have Miss Harting’s photograph? Have you brought it with you?”

“Sure!”

“Will you let me have it?”

“You bet, if you’ll return it. I wouldn’t lose it for anything. If I write the story—”

“It’s an interesting story,” said the doctor, “and I suppose you’ll write it, anyhow, being a reporter.”

CHAPTER XLII
FAILURE

Kennedy found Locke, and brought him to that room, where the young southpaw was met by Stillman, while the doctor and landlord looked on.

“Of course you remember me,” said the reporter, wringing Locke’s unresponsive hand. “You know how I got the proof on Elgin, and showed him up to Brennan. I knew you’d make good in the Big League, and I never lost a chance to say so.”

“It’s mighty good of you to talk like this,” returned Locke, “but you wouldn’t if you knew how you confuse me. If I’m the man you think me to be, how is it I only remember that my name is Robert Stranger, and that on account of my health I came out into the country to get a job on a farm?”

“Pink Kelly, a card sharp, crook, and con man, was talking to you just before that railroad smash-up. Sometimes Kelly went by the name of Bob Stranger. He was killed, but you seemed to escape without as much as a scratch.”

“I don’t remember it,” persisted Locke, shaking his head. “If I wasn’t hurt in that smash-up, what made me so twisted? For I’m twisted, or you are, every one of you.”

“Perhaps,” said Doctor Hetner, “the railroad smash simply completed what was gradually taking place before that. I saw you on that smoking car. I spoke to you, but you didn’t recognize me. I thought you were lying. Now I’m inclined to believe you were honest.”

“Thank you,” said Lefty, on whose forehead little beads of perspiration were standing thickly. “It’s a rotten thing for a man to get twisted the way I am. I’ve tried to remember, but the more I try the less I can recall.”

“There are reasons,” said the doctor, “why you should strive to recall the past.”

“The principal reason,” said the reporter, “is Miss Janet Harting. Don’t you remember her, Lefty?”

Locke brushed his hand almost fiercely across his forehead. “No,” he answered, “I don’t remember her.”

“I have a notion,” said Stillman, “that you are engaged to her, though there was a quarrel or something of the sort, brought about by your being seen with Virginia Collier—old man Collier’s swell daughter. I don’t know just how it came round, but Miss Harting failed to accept your explanations, if you made any. That broke you up. Now can’t you remember?”

“No, not a single thing!” answered Lefty, in deep distress. “It’s all as if it never happened to me.”

“If you saw the girl!” cried Stillman. “Doctor, where’s that photograph you took from me?”

“Here it is,” said Hetner, handing it over.

The reporter placed it in the hands of Locke, who gazed long and hard at the pictured likeness of one who had seemed to him the most beautiful of all girls.

“It’s no use,” he declared, after some minutes of tense and breathless silence. “If I ever saw her, I have no recollection of it, and therefore I might as well never have seen her. It drives me desperate, trying to remember, and I must stop—”

“That’s right,” said Doctor Hetner, who had been watching him closely. “It will do no good, this straining after what your mind refuses to recall. When it comes, if it does, it will come easily and suddenly, when you’re not trying to break down the wall that shuts you off from the past. Some day you’ll shake the identity and the name of the dead man, and become yourself again; and it’s both dangerous and useless to make further efforts until your mind is in condition to grasp the truth and revive the past.”

CHAPTER XLIII
THE COME-BACK

Jack Stillman went in search of Janet Harting, while Lefty remained pitching for Jack Kennedy under the name of Stranger. As a mascot and a winning pitcher, he proved to be such a success that, with the close of the season a week away, the Deers were entrenched in first position beyond any possibility of dislodgment.

Meanwhile, the Blue Stockings were being battered, and their lead cut down, until even old Pete Grist lost heart, and bewailed the missing southpaw.

“Another week,” he groaned; “another week, and we’ve got to win four games out of six to home, with no pitchers. If we get two of them games we’ll do well. If we had Locke in trim we could take them. I’ll agree to win my share. Carson has failed, and the old man’s sore. After all, Kennedy was the best manager the Blue Stockings ever had.”

To make matters worse, Carson and Collier quarreled violently.

About this time Stillman, whose place had been filled by a cub for nearly two weeks, came back, and interviewed Charles Collier. Although the reporter had made his business a secret affair, more than one of the Blue Stockings guessed that he was searching for Lefty Locke. Daily the Blade was scanned for some word which would indicate that the clever reporter-detective had made progress in this search, and daily those in looking for that word were disappointed. Stillman was taking the chance of being scooped in order to spring a big sensation at the most dramatic moment. He did not even dare tell his editor what he had learned.

The almost hopeless fight of the Blue Stockings aroused the sympathy of the fans, even while the management of Al Carson was bitterly criticised, and also the judgment of Charles Collier in letting old Jack Kennedy go in order to fill his place with a man like Carson.

Pete Grist had made good by winning two games of the last six. He even saved another game when three of the battered pitchers had been pounded out of the box. Then followed two defeats, and upon the day before the final and deciding game was to be played Stillman sprang his sensation in the Blade.

He announced that Carson had been permanently shelved by the owner of the Blue Stockings, who had sent a distress call to the old manager, Jack Kennedy, receiving in reply the assurance that Kennedy would be on hand early in the morning, and would bring with him a cracking portside pitcher by the name of Stranger, who had been doing marvelous work out in the bushes.

Stillman wrote, in conclusion:

I’ve seen this Stranger pitch, and, believe me, he’s able to deliver the goods. He’s the equal of Lefty Locke when Locke was at his best. If Stranger can pitch a winning game for the Stockings to-morrow, the championship is ours after all, and old Jack Kennedy will have saved the day at the last moment.

Forty-eight hours before this article appeared in print, Lefty Locke, pitching for the Deers, had, while batting in the ninth inning, been hit full and fair on the head by a pitched ball delivered with all the speed the man on the slab could command.

Locke sank to the ground without as much as a gasp. In a moment he was surrounded by a number of his teammates. Kennedy lifted the stunned man’s head, calling sharply for water.

“He ought to have a doctor,” said someone. “Perhaps his skull is fractured.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” declared Locke, suddenly sitting up. “I’m all right. A little tap like that never hurt anybody. Donovan hasn’t got much speed to-day.”

“Donovan!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Why, that’s Colfax pitching.”

Locke looked at the old manager queerly. “Colfax?” he muttered. “Who’s Colfax! Never heard of him. The Specters are ahead, aren’t they?”

“Where do you think you are?” choked Kennedy, his excitement growing. “You’re playing the Semour Stars, out in the bush. You’re pitching for the Deers, of Deering.”

It was Locke’s turn to appear bewildered. “I don’t think I get you right,” he muttered blankly. “What are you doing here, anyhow? Carson is managing the team now.”

“Not this team, he ain’t,” retorted old Jack. “Look here, Lefty, has that bump on your bean put you right again? Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Why, my name is Hazelton, though I’m playing the game as Tom Locke. What a blame fool question, Kennedy!”

The old manager showed his satisfaction, and did a dance which caused the crowd to stare at him in wonderment.

“You’re all right now, Lefty, old boy! You’ve got your noddle cleared up by that bean ball. I’ll bet you got one on the koko some other time, and that was what started you wrong to begin with.”

“Wrong? What do you mean? How wrong?” asked Locke, gazing around in surprise at his strange and unfamiliar surroundings. “What am I doing here?”

“Playing baseball. I told you a minute ago. You’re Bob Stranger. Anyhow, that’s what you called yourself when you came to me, and you swore you didn’t know how to pitch and had never seen a game of ball.”

“Jack, you’re stringing me. I don’t remember how I got here, but—”

“Play ball!” cried the umpire. “Shall we give you a runner, Stranger, or will you stick in the game?”

“If you’re speaking to me,” returned Locke, “I’ll stick in the game. That tap on the head didn’t jar me a bit.”

In proof of which, after jogging down to first, he stole second on the first ball pitched to the next batter, and came home with the winning run when a right-field single followed.

That night Kennedy did his best to explain everything to the satisfaction of Locke.

“I wonder what the team thinks of me?” murmured Lefty. “They must figure that I’m just about as yellow as Bert Elgin himself. I wouldn’t quit because I was suspended—not in my right mind, anyhow. I don’t blame Carson for being raw and letting me go.”

Kennedy pulled a yellow envelope from his pocket, and produced the message it contained. “Carson’s done with the Blue Stockings, anyhow,” he said. “Here’s a wire from Collier, asking me to come back and take the management of the team. I can get there just in time for the last game. If we win that game we get the pennant. What do you say, Lefty? Will you pitch it?”

“Will I!” cried Locke. “All I want is the chance!”

“It’s yours,” declared Kennedy. “You’ll pitch, son.”

CHAPTER XLIV
BACK TO HIS OWN

Not once in a thousand times does such a remarkable situation arise in Big League baseball. Not once in a thousand times would it happen that the two leading teams should be scheduled to play off the last three games of the season together, and have the championship depend upon the result of the final game, which would leave one or the other of those teams in the lead by a very small percentage.

To down the Blue Stockings the Specters had to win three straight, and when they had taken the first two the entire baseball world was thrown into a great tumult of excitement, to say nothing of the home city of the Blue Stockings. That city was in a perfect panic, so that business generally was tremendously effected, and all one could hear talked anywhere he went was baseball, baseball, baseball.

The newspapers were crammed with it. They were almost savage in their denouncement of the new owner and his judgment in displacing Jack Kennedy and filling the position with a manager like Al Carson. Half of them prophesied that the Specters would take the last three straight, and cop the pennant without difficulty. A few held desperately to the tattered border of hope, begging the Blue Stockings to brace up and save the day by winning the final game.

But even as they did this, they confessed that the team’s staff of pitchers was all to the bad, with no one in condition save old Pete Grist, who had already won two games out of the double series of the final week, and was therefore unable to attempt to pitch another game.

On the other hand, the Specters had Donovan in reserve, and during the season Donovan had made a record scarcely second to any Big League pitcher. The baseball “dope” in the papers was certainly interesting enough to a genuine fan, though it must have seemed maddening to a reader who cared nothing whatever for the game.

Then came the sensation sprung by Stillman in the Blade. It made readers generally sit up and take notice. The other newspapers had been “scooped.” Stillman’s sense of the dramatic and his judgment regarding the psychological moment had stood him and his paper in good stead.

And when, just as the game was beginning the following day, the Blade appeared with the statement that the pitcher called Stranger, whom Kennedy had brought with him, was none other than Lefty Locke himself, following with a most cleverly written explanation of the cause of Lefty’s vanishing, a complete account of his chance meeting with Kennedy, and how he had pitched in the bush league, winning the championship for the Deers, the scoop was complete.

Never in the history of the game in that city had such a crowd swarmed to the ball park. At daylight a dozen or more tired, sleepy-looking men and boys were seen in line at the bleacher gates, waiting in order that they might be the first to gain admittance and so secure favorable positions. Before eleven o’clock in the forenoon two or three hundred people were waiting at those gates, and the steady influx began when the gates were finally opened ahead of time at twelve-thirty.

Fortunately the police department was on the job, and the crowds were handled beautifully outside the grounds. On the field, at least forty policemen found themselves busy when at last the stands and bleachers overflowed, and the people began to swarm into the field back of the ropes, which had been stretched in anticipation of this very occurrence.

It was, however, a remarkably tractable crowd. Even those who had bought seats in the stand and found those seats occupied, as well as the bleachers packed—being compelled, therefore, to stand in the jam back of the ropes—were good-natured, few complaining.

This was the day—the great day! Jack Kennedy had come back, and brought with him Lefty Locke. They were waiting for Kennedy and Locke to appear, and as they waited they choked down and held back the cheer which welled from their rejoicing hearts. Presently from the clubhouse the Specters came pushing through the gathering mass of people, and burst upon the field. They were given an ovation by their admirers.

Two minutes later there was a tremendous stir all through the stands, running over the bleachers and into the group of standees. Escorted by six policemen, Kennedy and Locke were coming, with the Blue Stocking players at their heels. Other policemen fought the crowd back, and made a lane for them to pass through.

And when they debouched from that lane upon the open space of the field inside the ropes, it seemed that every human being upon the bleachers and in the stands had risen and was howling like a maniac. Such a solid roar, such a tremendous burst of sound coming from human throats, perhaps never was heard save at some gladiatorial contest in the Roman Colosseum. It beat and reverberated upon the eardrums with painful fierceness, causing more than one person to protect himself from the staggering effect of it by clapping his hands over his ears. And it continued while old Jack, bareheaded, with Lefty Locke at his side, marched from the ropes to the bench, his face pale, his eyes shining, his lips smiling.

“They’re glad to get you back, Jack,” shouted Lefty in the old man’s ear.

“You blame fool!” yelled Kennedy in return. “They’re not cheering for me. It’s you, boy—you, the man who’s going to give the Blue Stockings another pennant. Pull off your cap—pull it off! Bow! Bow!”

For a moment there was a blur over Lefty’s eyes. Through it he could dimly see the wildly tumultuous mass in the stands and on the bleachers. Mechanically he lifted his hand—his left hand—and touched his cap. And when he did so the great roar suddenly was intensified for an instant, although it had previously seemed that every person present was shouting as loudly as he could.

When Locke had reached the shelter of the covered bench, into which he dived for a few moments as one seeking to escape a deadly hail of bullets, he laughed again—queerly, incredulously.

“It can’t be for me,” he muttered. “Why, I’m—I’m only a cub yet—nothing but a busher.”

Kennedy was at his side. “You’ll show whether you’re a busher or a Big League pitcher to-day, Lefty,” he said. “If you let this reception get your goat, then your name is Mud. But if you can go out there and pitch a winning game, nobody in fast company has got it on you.”

“Give me two minutes,” said Locke, gripping himself; “give me two minutes, and I’ll show you.”

“Good boy!” said old Jack. “Come out and warm up when you get ready.”

He left Locke there, and went forth among his men, all of whom had greeted him on his return as rejoicing children might greet a beloved parent; and every one of whom had shaken the hand of Lefty Locke until Lefty’s arm seemed ready to come off. Not even Pete Grist had held back. Far from it. Old Pete was among the first to strike palms with the southpaw.

“The prodigal son!” he cried. “The prodigal son back home! Welcome to our midst, Lefty. We’re going to let you kill the fatted calf this afternoon—the Specters, you know.”

“That’s kind of you, Grist, old man,” said Locke. “I’ve brought my little butcher knife with me, and I’m going to sink it to the hilt if I can.”

As old Jack came out again from beneath the bench roof, here and there friends in the crowd shouted at him, but now he seemed deaf to all this as he went at work amid his men, directing them as of old, keeping them on the jump, filling them with inspiration and confidence.

“Hey, Jack! You’re the old man to do it!”

“Kennedy, you can deliver the goods! You did it once, and you will again.”

“Welcome to our city, Mr. Kennedy! We have missed you.”

“Oh, say, Jack, old boy, you look good to me!”

But these cries were faint compared with the renewed chorus of shouts which arose when Lefty Locke, flushed, yet steady and self-possessed, again stepped forth into view.

“Oh, you Lefty! Oh, you southpaw!”

“You’re the kiddo! You’re the Specter slayer!”

“How’s your wing, Lefty?”

“Got your batting eye with you?”

“Lefty, don’t you dare ever leave us again. You’re home with your own family now.”

Kennedy, glancing sidewise at Locke, to notice the effect of this revived demonstration, was well satisfied. Not by a flicker did the southpaw betray the emotion of satisfaction with which his heart must have been filled. He was steady as Gibraltar, and cool as polar ice.

CHAPTER XLV
THE GIRLS IN THE BOX

Still with a view to the dramatic, Stillman had planned something else. It was with the greatest difficulty that he had succeeded in keeping Lefty Locke and Janet Harting apart, for Janet was in the city, the guest of Virginia Collier. And when Lefty reappeared on that field and received that marvelous ovation, Janet sat in the owner’s box with Virginia, her gloved hands clasped with a fierceness that nearly burst the kid, her face by turns pale and flushed.

All the way across the diamond her eyes followed that splendid figure—the figure of the man she loved. The Niagaralike roaring of the crowd she was conscious of in a vague way, and it thrilled her; and it seemed that she must draw his gaze by her intense effort to do so. When he suddenly dove to the shelter of the bench, she relaxed, with a little sigh of disappointment.

Then for the first time she felt the arm of Virginia Collier about her. She heard Virginia’s voice in her ear:

“Wasn’t it splendid? Did you ever know anyone to get such an ovation?”

“Never,” answered Janet, “but he didn’t look—”

“He will look,” assured Miss Collier. “Leave that to Jack Stillman.”

“I owe a great deal to Mr. Stillman.”

“So do I,” said Virginia, glancing over her shoulder at Franklin Parlmee. “Only for Mr. Stillman, we might all be playing at cross-purposes now. There he is. He’s speaking to Lefty.”

Stillman had been pretty busy at his telegraph key, for he was one reporter who could do his own sending, and the events of the last few moments had caused him to sweat as he pounded out the Morse. He was athrill with the joy of it, like a stage manager who has planned a tremendous performance and seen it carried through successfully at the opening, and the crowd going wild over it.

“Lefty!” he called; and Locke, passing, turned at the sound of the familiar voice.

“Hello, Jack!” he returned.

“There’s someone looking for you over in the manager’s box,” said Stillman.

As if he suddenly realized who it was, Locke whirled like a flash and started in that direction with long, swinging strides. His bronzed face was flushed. Never had he looked handsomer than he did while Janet watched him drawing near.

“You—you, Janet!” he cried, heedless of everyone. “I tried to find you, but you were gone. I couldn’t explain. Let me explain now.”

“Hush, Phil!” she cautioned, pressing the gloved fingers of one hand to her lips, while, watched by thousands of eyes, she permitted him to hold the other hand. “You don’t have to explain. Miss Collier has explained everything, and I wish to ask your pardon for—”

“Don’t!” he entreated. “How could you know? It must have seemed beastly of me. I told you I was going to the theater with some fellows from the team, and you saw me there with—”

“Hasn’t Janet told you that everything has been explained, Mr. Hazelton?” cut in Virginia Collier. “Of course, I didn’t know about her, and just then I was somewhat peeved with Franklin. Oh, I think you’ve met Mr. Parlmee, haven’t you?”

“Sure, we’ve met,” said Parlmee, putting forth a hand, which finally led Lefty reluctantly to release the gloved fingers of Janet. “How are you, Locke, old chap? If I was a bit rude when we were introduced, perhaps you’ll pardon me now, understanding the reason.”

“Everybody seems eager to beg everybody’s pardon,” laughed Virginia Collier. “I wonder where father is? I know he was on hand to see you and Jack Kennedy when—”

“He was in the clubhouse,” said Lefty. “I’ve seen him.”

“Do you think you can win the game to-day?” asked Janet, apparently with a touch of anxiety.

“What do you think?” he questioned.

“I’m sure you can.”

“Then I’ll win it, Janet, if there’s any pitching left in my old south wing.”

“You’ll have to pitch,” said Parlmee. “They’ve been saving Donovan up for this game. They want it as bad as we do.”

“Perhaps so,” said Locke; “but we’ve got to have it.”

Somehow, there was no touch of boasting in his manner, nor did there seem to be anything of the sort in his words. He was confident of himself, and his confidence had been redoubled by Janet’s assurance that she knew he would win.

“When the game is over,” said Miss Collier, “you’ll find us waiting outside the clubhouse with the automobile. You’ll join us, won’t you?”

Only for a fraction of a minute did Lefty hesitate. “The others—the boys,” he faltered. “If we win, they will—”

“They’ll forgive you for deserting them this time, I’m sure,” she said quickly. “It only happens once in a lifetime, you know—and Janet will be there.”

“So will I,” he promised instantly.

CHAPTER XLVI
THE GAME OF HIS LIFE

Never in his life had Lefty Locke pitched such a game of baseball. Never had that great crowd seen such splendid work upon the mound. Again master of himself in every respect, thrilled with life and vigor from toes to finger tips, the amazing southpaw of the Blue Stockings fought every inch of the way as if life and honor depended upon it.

He knew she was watching him. He could feel her eyes upon him; yet they did not distract him from the task to which he had set his hand, his brain, his very soul. Instead, they were his inspiration, making him as unfathomable to those desperately waiting Specter batters as would have been Mathewson at his best.

In the whirl and thrill of the conflict, once or twice he thought of how a ball pitched by Donovan, his present opponent, glancing from his bat, had seemingly done him little damage, although it struck him squarely in the head; how that blow had presently brought about the entire loss of his own identity and the assumption of the name and, in some respects, the identity of another man killed at his side in the railroad smash. Vaguely he could now remember fighting to recall the truth concerning himself, while his mind remained an absolute blank as to the past. And the agony of his struggles caused him to shudder.

But it was glorious to know that he was again restored to reason and to his normal condition. The shadow was gone from his mind—gone, he believed, never to return.

And all the other shadows had been dispelled in the meanwhile. Janet was yonder in the box, trusting him, believing in him, sorry she had ever doubted.

And so, while Jack Kennedy hugged himself on the bench, while Charles Collier gazed and marveled, while the great crowd cheered itself mad again and again, he cut the Specters down one after another as they faced him. Behind him his teammates waited, ready to give him their best support. Three times this great support prevented a Specter from getting a hit.

And Donovan, also pitching the game of his career, twice pulled himself out of bad holes, and kept the Blue Stockings from scoring. Once he wabbled and it seemed that he was gone, but his manager made no move, and in time he rose to the emergency and saved himself.

So the game continued, inning after inning, with neither side getting a tally, with not a single Specter reaching first; for thus far Lefty was pitching a no-hit, no-run game. To-morrow the newspapers would be full of it, and the name of Tom Locke would be chiseled forever on the baseball tablet of fame.

No man present was happier than old Jack Kennedy, for he was the manager whose judgment had brought this young busher to the front and given him the opportunity through which in a single season he had risen higher than any bush-league pitcher ever rose before.

“He’s my boy—my boy!” Kennedy whispered again and again as Lefty cut the Specters down with his burning speed, his bewildering change of pace, and his unhittable hook drop, delivered always when least expected. “I found him. I put him into the game after Brennan kicked him out. I thought I was done with baseball, but I’m back to die in harness, unless I’m fired again.”

Without a single exception, Lefty’s teammates were elated. Yes, it is true that even the veteran, old Pete Grist, was supremely happy as he watched Locke work. If for an instant a pang of jealousy entered his heart, he thrust it out as one would thrust forth the devil himself.

And Lefty’s chums, Billy Orth, Laughing Larry, and Dirk Nelson, rejoiced unspeakably. All through the game Dalton laughed as of old, while behind the pan Nelson crouched and signaled, sure that never once would Lefty fail to throw the curve called for and put it where he desired without the variation of an inch. Such control, such smoke, such headwork, Nelson had never before seen a pitcher display; and he afterward made the statement, regardless of the feelings of other twirlers who had worked with him.

From the opening of the game till the last man was down, the Specters strove like fiends to get Lefty’s goat; but all their sneers, their tricks, and their baiting proved ineffectual. Apparently he was deaf, dumb, and blind to everything save the task in hand. The wild cheering of the tremendous crowd as he swept down batter after batter seemed to affect him no more than profound silence—perhaps not as much.

One, two, three, four, five innings—not a hit off Locke! Six, seven, eight innings—not a hit; not a man had reached first base!

“Shut ’em out!” pleaded the crowd. “Don’t let ’em touch you to-day, Lefty! You’ve got ’em killed!”

Then in turn, when the Blue Stockings were at bat, that immense throng begged them to fall on Donovan and get a run.

“One run will do it!” yelled an urchin with a voice like a calliope. “Dat’s all you want, fellers. It wins dis game.”

One run! Donovan himself felt that it would be enough. Perspiration standing forth from every pore, his teeth set like the jaws of a vise, his eyes blazing, he whipped the ball across the corners. One run! Was he going to let this left-handed cub outpitch him in the struggle which would give the winning team the championship? Not if he ruined his arm then and there!

Then came the eighth inning, and again the strain of the terrible pace told on Donovan. The first man up got a safety, and the next hitter, directed by Kennedy, sacrificed him to second. With one down, it was Jack Daly’s turn to bat, and Donovan laughed; for he had Jack’s alley, and knew he could keep him from hitting.

But at this moment Kennedy suddenly came forth from the bench, bearing a bat. Kennedy, the old stager, the veteran, was going in as a pinch hitter.

Donovan laughed. “He’s easier,” he thought. “Why don’t he send out Burchard?”

Burchard was the Blue Stockings’ greatest batter, kept on the bench for just such emergencies as this; and a thousand others wondered that Kennedy should throw himself into the breach with big Burchard waiting and ready.

But Kennedy was inspired. He had been watching Donovan’s work from the beginning of the game, and he believed he could find the man for a safety. As he walked to the plate, he gave the runner a signal which told him to be on his toes and ready to go when the ball was hit.

Two balls Donovan pitched to Kennedy without finding the plate, and then he put one over. Old Jack let it pass, and heard a strike called. Donovan laughed at him, and Kennedy smiled back serenely.

“Give me another just like that, Jim,” he invited. “I’ll hit the next one.”

“All right,” returned the pitcher; “all right, Jack, old back number. Here you have it.”

Kennedy knew Donovan was lying. He knew the man would pitch something entirely different, and perhaps wholly unexpected, but some inspiration told him just what it would be; and when Donovan put it across the inside corner, Kennedy fell back and met it on the trade-mark.

It was a line drive into left. The runner on second tore across third and stretched himself for the plate, while the fielder made a great throw to the pan to stop the score.

At the plate, Dillingham, the catcher, took that throw and jabbed the ball at the sliding runner, but nine men out of ten in the crowd saw that the prostrate man’s foot was on the rubber when Dillingham tagged him, and the outspread hands of the umpire declaring him safe was the only manner in which the decision reached them; for it seemed that thirty thousand maniacs filled the stands, the bleachers, and the outfield.

Donovan, shaking visibly, and pale as a sheet, braced himself hard while that uproar pounded upon his ears. The game was lost, and he knew it. Between them, Lefty Locke and old Jack Kennedy had won it.

It made little difference that, having apparently regained his control, Donovan grinned hard at Lefty when the latter came to bat, and told him he could not hit the ball. Calmly the young southpaw replied:

“I don’t have to hit it, Jim; the damage is done.”

It made no difference that Donovan struck Locke out. The Blue Stockings had scored, and when Lefty returned to the mound and the Specters faced him in the ninth, he mowed the last three down one after another, as if they were schoolboys.

At this moment it seemed that Lefty had triumphed over all obstacles and conquered every foe, but, with the approach of the coming season, he encountered a rival pitcher far more persistent and dangerous than Bert Elgin; a strange and unfathomable character who changed, almost in the flash of an eye, from open-hearted friendship to deadly and vindictive enmity, and as quickly and unexpectedly changed back again; a person enshrouded in mystery, and seemingly the possessor of a dual nature that made him a veritable Jekyll and Hyde. The book in which this character, Nelson Savage, appears, is the fourth volume of the Big League Series, and it bears the title of “Lefty o’ the Training Camp.”

Had he attempted to reach the clubhouse by crossing the field, Lefty could not have escaped the clutches of the madly exultant crowd. They waited for him, but discreetly, with old Jack Kennedy at his side, he ducked into a runway and disappeared beneath the stand even while the great throng was still cheering, and shrieking his name.

“Well, some game to-day, kid, eh?” laughed old Jack, giving him a clap on the shoulder. “Some game, hey? I guess we’re back in it.”

“I guess we are,” said Lefty. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to dust away as soon as I can get a shower and change my clothes. There’ll be someone waiting for me outside the gate.”

“Go on, old man,” returned the veteran manager. “I don’t blame you a bit. She’s a dream.”

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.