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