Kitabı oku: «Jimmy Kirkland and the Plot for a Pennant», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIV
"Technicalities" on the Job

The Bears were going home holding grimly to their claim upon first place in the league race. With but seven games remaining to be played all were against clubs already beaten, and five of the seven were against clubs considerably weaker in every department. Two games were to be played off the home grounds.

The statisticians were busy calculating that the Bears had a decided advantage in the race, yet they were not happy in the homecoming. The ride home was only a few hours long, and they had caught the train immediately after the sensational finish of the final game with the Travelers in order to reach home and get settled by midnight.

Swanson and McCarthy sat together as the train pulled out, talking in low tones.

"I think Clancy is onto him," said Swanson. "Just sit tight. It isn't our move yet. The Boss acted queerly on the bench to-day and has been watching Williams all the time, while pretending not to. I'm going to mingle and see if any of the other fellows are wise to him."

Hardly had Swanson left the seat than McCarthy was surprised by "Technicalities" Feehan, who sat down in the seat vacated by the shortstop.

Feehan was one of the odd characters developed by the national game, a reporter who had traveled with the Bear teams for so many years the players regarded him as a sort of venerable pest who hadn't seen a ball player since Williamson's day, and never such a catcher as Mike Kelly, a first baseman like Comisky or a fielder like Tip O'Neil. He sometimes was called "Four Eyes," from the fact that he wore large, steel-rimmed glasses of great thickness, and his other name was "Technicalities."

He was not at all interested in baseball, excepting as a business. His chief interest was in the Children's Crusades, and he had spent eight years of his spare time in libraries all over America digging out data for his history of those remarkable pilgrimages which he had written and rewritten half a dozen times. Not being a baseball fan he was eminently fair and unprejudiced, and the players thought more of the quiet, studious fellow than they did of the excitable and the partisan reporters who joined their sports and their woes.

"Mr. McCarthy," he said seriously, "did you observe anything strange in to-day's game?"

"Several strange things," assented McCarthy. "Among them that error I made early in the game."

"I mean things of an unusual nature," persisted Technicalities. "I was struck by an odd phenomenon and thought perhaps you noticed it. I find it more perplexing as I study my score books."

"What was it?" inquired McCarthy, cautious not to betray any interest.

"Did you, for instance, observe anything strange about the hits in your direction?"

"I noticed that those that didn't have cayenne pepper on them were white hot and came like greased lightning," laughed McCarthy. "I expected to find my right leg playing left field any minute."

"I was speaking numerically, although, of course, the speed of the hits enters into the phenomenon."

"They did seem to be coming my way rapidly," agreed the third baseman.

"In to-day's game I find," continued the statistician, "that there were eighteen batted balls hit in the direction of third base. You had five assists and one error and caught two line drives. I do not include foul balls, of which six line drives went near third base. Of these eighteen batted balls, fourteen were hit by right-handed batters and four by left-handers. The fourteen right-handed batters hit balls pitched inside the plate, the four left-handers hit balls outside the plate, that is, outside to them, so that practically every ball batted toward you was pitched to the inside of the plate, that is, the catcher's left. I have checked these statistics and find them correct."

"Well, what of it?" asked McCarthy.

"In the preceding games – in which you played third and in which Williams has pitched – I find that an average of twelve and a fraction batted balls per game have been hit toward third base, exclusive of fouls. In the games in which you have played and in which Williams has not pitched the average is six and a trifling fraction. You have averaged seven and one-fourth chances per game – legitimate chances – with Williams pitching, and a trifle under three chances per game when he was not pitching. Does it not seem remarkable?"

"Perhaps so," assented McCarthy. "I never studied such statistics."

"The phenomenon is the more remarkable," added the strange little man, "because the average chances per game of the third basemen of five leagues, two majors and three Class AA for the last five years has been 2 and 877-998. It is impossible to construe the figures to mean but one of two things."

"What are they?" asked McCarthy, curiously interested.

"Either it is mere coincidence or Williams is deliberately trying to lose this pennant and to make you shoulder the blame."

"That's a pretty stiff charge," remarked McCarthy, amazed at the deductions of the reporter, which fitted so well the suspicion, gradually becoming a certainty to his mind.

"Either he is pitching purposely to make the opposing batters hit balls at you," insisted Feehan, "or it just happened – and things do not just happen in baseball with that regularity."

"Possibly he is wild and can't get the ball over the plate."

"On the contrary," persisted Feehan, "he has perfect control. If he did not possess control he could not pitch so many balls to the same place."

"I'm immensely grateful," said McCarthy, touched by the kindness of the odd reporter. "It's good of you and I shan't forget it."

"I deserve no thanks," insisted Feehan. "It's merely in the line of square dealing and justice – and, speaking of justice, McCarthy, did you ever take interest in the Children's Crusades? Let me show you some of the data I dug up recently" —

He delved into his little bag, which was his constant companion, and, drawing forth a mass of scattered, disordered notes, he went into raptures of enthusiasm while describing to the player some new features of the disappearance of the French children and of the sojourn of hundreds of them as slaves in African harems.

A great throng of admirers was waiting in the station to welcome the Bears back from their successful trip. Swanson and McCarthy finally escaped from the crowd, and, jumping into a taxicab, were whirled to the hotel, where Swanson had secured rooms for both.

The hour was growing late, but after they had deposited their baggage in their rooms, Swanson proposed a walk and a late supper. It was McCarthy's first visit to the city which he represented upon the ball field and its magnificence and greatness made him forget the worries and troubles of which he seemed the center. He even forgot to detail to his chum his strange interview with the reporter until they were seated in a quiet nook of one of the great restaurants. Then, in response to some jesting allusion to the Children's Crusades by Swanson, he told the big shortstop of the array of statistics Feehan had presented.

"He's a square little guy," said Swanson. "And he's got more brains in that funny-looking little head of his than this whole bunch has. He dopes things out pretty nearly right, and when he is convinced that he is right he goes the limit. Between us there is a certain left-handed pitcher who is in hot water right now and don't know it. Speaking of the devil," he added quickly, "there's his wings flapping, and look who he is with – across the far corner there, at the little table."

McCarthy's eyes followed the route indicated and suddenly he lost interest in his food. At a small table were Williams, Secretary Tabor – and Betty Tabor.

McCarthy was silent and moody during the walk back to the hotel and seemed to have lost interest in the great glaring city, which was just commencing to dim its illumination for the night. They were in bed with the lights out when Swanson said:

"Cut out the worrying, kid. I wouldn't have a girl no one else wanted. Besides, either her father has been told by Clancy to watch that crook or else Betty Tabor is stringing him along to learn something. She despises Williams, and she wouldn't laugh at him or eat with him unless she had a purpose in it."

McCarthy could have blessed him for the words, but he assumed a dignity he did not feel and said:

"I don't see why I should be especially interested."

"Cut out the con stuff, Bo," laughed Swanson, relapsing into his old careless baseball phraseology. "You dope around like a chicken with the pip and look at her like a seasick guy seeing the Statue of Liberty and then think no one is onto you."

Reply seemed inadvisable, so McCarthy grunted and rolled over. There was a silence and then Swanson added:

"And say, Bo, this Williams is in trouble. There's me and you on his track. Clancy is wise and watching him. Old Technicalities has him doped crooked in the figures, and now Betty Tabor is smiling at him to get the facts – he hasn't a chance. It's darn hard to fix a baseball game."

CHAPTER XV
Baldwin Baits a Trap

"Willie says that one petticoat will ruin the best ball club that ever lived, but lands knows that if some of us women don't get busy right away there's one ball club that's goin' to be ruined without any rustlin' skirts to be blamed."

Mrs. William Clancy, her ample form loosely enveloped in a huge, flowered kimono, dropped her fancy work into her lap and fanned herself with a folded newspaper.

"Why, Mother Clancy," ejaculated Betty Tabor, sitting on a stool by the window of the Clancy apartment, "one would think to hear you talk that we had lost the pennant already."

"Now, there's Willie," continued Mrs. Clancy, ignoring the protest, "goin' round with a grouch on all the time like he could bite nails in two. There's that nice McCarthy boy frettin' his heart out because you haven't treated him nicely, and Swanson worryin' about something. And there's Williams sneakin' round like he'd been caught robbin' a hen roost."

"Mother Clancy," protested the girl, reddening, "you have no right to say I haven't been treating Mr. McCarthy well. A girl cannot throw herself at a man – especially an engaged man."

"How do you know he's engaged?" demanded Mrs. Clancy. "Lands sakes, I haven't heard him announcing his engagement, and he looks at you across the dining room as sad as a calf chewing a dish rag."

"I overheard – I saw the girl," admitted Betty Tabor, blushing as she bowed her pretty head over her work. "She was telling him she wouldn't marry him if he continued to play ball – besides, Mr. Williams met her uncle, and he said they were engaged."

"Is she pretty?" demanded Mrs. Clancy.

"Beautiful," admitted Miss Tabor. "She's tall and fair and graceful, and she had on such a wonderful gown all trimmed" —

"It looks to me," interrupted Mrs. Clancy, cutting off the description of the dressmaking details heartlessly, "as if someone was just jealous."

"Why, Mother Clancy," said the girl, shocked and red, "you must think me perfectly frightful to believe I'd act that way."

"Oh, girls your age are all fools," said Mrs. Clancy complacently. "I reckon I was myself at your age. Why, if Willie even spoke to another girl I'd go out and hunt up two beaux just to show him I didn't care. You went out with Williams when we came in last night, didn't you?"

"Yes; he asked papa and me to late supper," the girl admitted. "But it really wasn't what you think. I wanted to find out something from him – something that's been worrying me."

"Did you find out?" asked the older woman skeptically.

"I don't know, Mother Clancy." The girl's face grew troubled. "I'm worried. I know Mr. Williams hasn't any money. Papa says he is so reckless he always is in debt, and lately, whenever he talks to me, he talks about the big sums he's going to have. I asked papa what it was, and he only grunted."

"He'd better pitch a lot better than he has been if he's counting on any of that world's series money," remarked Mrs. Clancy savagely. "McCarthy saved yesterday's game twice."

"You think Mr. Williams didn't want to win the game?" The girl's voice was tense with anxiety.

"I hate to say it – but it looked that way."

"Oh, Mother Clancy, I haven't dared to say a word to anyone about it," said the girl hesitatingly, "but I've been afraid for days. He said something to me that almost frightened me. He hinted that Mr. McCarthy was losing games on purpose. I didn't believe it – and somehow I got the idea Mr. Williams was betting on the Panthers."

"Now, you just keep your mouth shut about this," replied Mrs. Clancy, pressing her lips together determinedly. "I've had that same idea, and I think that's what's worryin' Willie. You just lead that fellow on to talk and I'll put a bug in Willie's ear. Only," she added, "Willie is likely to snap my head off for buttin' into his business. He's got to know, though."

Clancy came into the apartment soon afterward and Betty Tabor, making a hasty excuse, gathered up her fancy work.

"It's going to rain," remarked Clancy resignedly. "I think the game will be called off. If the game's off, I've got tickets to a theatre, and you and mother and I can go. Which one of the boys shall I ask to go with us?"

"If you don't mind," replied Betty Tabor steadily, "ask Mr. Williams."

The rain came down steadily and before one o'clock the contest was called off. The postponement was believed to lessen slightly the chances of the Bears to win the pennant, and they lounged dismally around the hotel, watching the bulletin board record the fact that the Panthers were winning easily, giving them the lead in the race by a small fraction in percentage.

Manager Clancy, his wife and Betty Tabor, with Williams rode away in a taxicab to the theatre. McCarthy declined Swanson's proposal to play billiards, and, going to their rooms, he commenced to read. Presently five of the players trooped in, led by Swanson, to play poker, and, shoving McCarthy's bed aside, ignoring his protests, they dragged out chairs and tables and started the game. Scarcely had they started when the telephone bell rang and Swanson answered:

"No, he's not up here," he said. "No. Who wants him? All right, put them on. Hello! Who is this? Oh, all right. No, Williams isn't here. Yes, I'm sure. He went out with the manager an hour ago – to a theatre, I think. All right. I'll tell him."

"Fellows," he said, as he hung up the receiver, "some friends want Williams to meet them as soon as he can. He'll know where. Fellow says it's important."

He glanced meaningly at McCarthy, who nodded to show that he understood, and as he sat down he remarked:

"Kohinoor, I guess it's up to us to go to a show or something to-night."

"All right," replied McCarthy, striving vainly to continue his reading, while puzzling over the fresh development.

At that same instant there was an acrimonious conversation in progress in the room from which the telephone summons for Williams had just come. Easy Ed Edwards hung up after his brief talk with the player at the other end of the line, an ugly gleam in his cold eyes.

"He isn't there," he reported to Barney Baldwin, who was sitting by the table, jangling the ice in a high-ball glass. "Either he's trying to cross us or he's playing wise and keeping his stand-in with the manager."

"Sure he isn't trying to cross us?" asked Baldwin. "He won yesterday's game instead of losing as he agreed to do."

"He tried hard enough to lose it," sneered the gambler. "He tossed up the ball and those dubs couldn't beat him. I tell you you've got to handle that red-headed kid at third base as you promised you would. He saved that game twice. We've got to get rid of him."

"He's stubborn," snarled Baldwin. "I tried to get him to quit the team and go back home. He's as bull-headed as his uncle, and that's the limit."

"You know who he is?" queried the gambler in surprise. "Why don't you tell the newspaper boys and show him up. That would finish him. He's under cover with his identity, and if we can prove he hasn't any right to play with the Bears they'll have to throw out the games he's won."

"That's just the trouble," replied Baldwin bitterly. "He's straight as a string. He never played ball except at college. We can't tell who he is because that would prove he's all right and make him stronger than ever."

"Who is he?" inquired the gambler.

"He's the nephew of old Jim Lawrence, of Oregon, one of the richest men out there. Lawrence is his guardian. They had some sort of a run-in and the boy left."

"How do you know these things?" demanded the gambler.

"The boy and my niece were sweethearts at home. I coaxed her to tell me when I discovered she knew him. They were engaged once, I understand, but it was broken off."

"Then," said Edwards determinedly, "get your niece on the job. If anyone can handle that fellow a woman can."

"Oh, I say," protested Baldwin, with a show of indignation, "I can't ask her to get into anything like this."

"She probably was willing enough to get into it until she thought the boy didn't have any money," replied Edwards coldly. "I don't want the girl to do anything wrong. Just get her to make up with this McCarthy, or whatever his name is, and get him away from this ball team for a week. Baldwin, this is getting to be a serious matter with me, and with you, too, if you want to hold your political power."

"All right, all right," said Baldwin hastily. "Maybe I can persuade the girl to help us out. I'll try."

"You'd better succeed – if you want to send your man to the Senate," said Edwards threateningly.

"I'll go right away," assented the politician.

Baldwin arose leisurely, went down to his limousine that was waiting and ordered the man to drive home, although it was his custom to remain downtown until late. At home he sent at once for his niece, and, after a brief talk, during which he was careful to hint that McCarthy had made overtures toward reconciliation with his uncle, the girl went to the telephone.

McCarthy, summoned to the telephone, talked for a few moments and, as the poker game broke up, he called Swanson aside and said:

"You'll have to go alone to-night. I've got to make a call."

"Who is she?" asked Swanson insinuatingly.

"Barney Baldwin's niece – and at his house."

"Run on, Kohinoor," said the big shortstop. "I'll take Kennedy with me and if I'm not mistaken you'll find out more than I will."

CHAPTER XVI
McCarthy Makes a Call

It was a little past seven o'clock, when McCarthy, arrayed in what Swanson referred to as his "joy rags," which had been rescued from impound in an express office after his first renewal of prosperity, came out of the hotel. He was undecided, wavering as to whether or not it was wise for him to keep the appointment to call on Helen Baldwin.

They had met during his college career, and, after a courtship that was a whirlwind of impetuosity on his side, she had agreed to marry him. He recalled now, with rather bitter recollections of his own blindness, her seemingly careless curiosity regarding the extent of the Lawrence wealth and his own expectations. He had told her how, when his father had died, Jim Lawrence had taken him to rear as his own child and heir.

The boy had grown older and broadened with his short experience in the world outside the protecting circle that had been round him in preparatory school and in college, and he determined to write that night to his guardian the letter he had so long delayed and to apologize and admit that he had been headstrong and foolish.

During the long ride uptown to the city residence of the Baldwins he had time to think clearly. He knew that Barney Baldwin was wealthy, but he was unprepared for the magnificence of the garish house, set down amid wide lawns in the most exclusive part of the River Drive section.

Helen Baldwin entered the room in a few moments, and McCarthy gazed at her in admiring surprise.

She came forward with both hands outstretched, smiling, a strangely transformed girl from the cold, half-scornful one with whom he had parted only a short time before.

"I wanted to see you so much, Larry," she said. "I have been so blue and depressed since I – since we – since we last met. Why didn't you call?"

"I only reached the city last night," he replied as he took a seat beside her on a divan. "And – well, Helen, I hardly thought you would wish to see me."

"You foolish boy," she chided. "Don't you know yet that you must never take a girl at her word? Of course, I was annoyed to find you playing baseball with a professional team, but I didn't mean we never were to meet again."

"I thought your ultimatum settled all that," he answered, ill at ease. "It was rather a shock to find that you cared more for what I was than for what I am."

"You know, Larry, that you placed me in a painful position. It isn't as if I were a rich girl, able to share with the man I love. My father and mother are not rich, and Uncle Barney has supplied me with everything. He has spoiled me – and I would make a wretched wife for a poor man."

"I would not have proposed marriage," said McCarthy quietly, "unless I had thought I would be able to provide for you as well as your uncle could. When circumstances were changed I could not ask you to sacrifice yourself unless you were willing – unless you cared enough for me to adapt yourself to the circumstances."

"But, Larry, aren't you going to quit all this foolishness and go back? Haven't you been reconciled with Mr. Lawrence?" she asked in surprise.

"I expect to go back after the season is over and tell him how sorry I am that I caused him trouble."

"Please go, Larry. You'll go to please me, won't you?" she said appealingly.

"I cannot see why it would please you to have me quit now, when I'm most needed," he replied stiffly. "Surely you cannot know what you are asking."

"It is such a little thing I ask," she pouted, "I'm sure you would if you loved me."

The girl's eyes were filling. She had found him easy to handle by that appeal only a few short months before, but now, as he saw her, he was seized with a desire to laugh, as he realized that she was acting. The words of Swanson: "You'll find out more than we will," flashed into his mind, and he determined to meet acting with acting.

"Perhaps, Helen," he said softly, "if you could explain just why you want me to quit playing I could see my way to do it."

"That is being a sensible boy," she said, bathing her eyes with a bit of lace. "I don't like to see you making an exhibition of yourself before a crowd – for money." She shrugged her beautiful shoulders disdainfully.

"Is that all?" he asked quietly.

"All? Isn't it enough? And then there's Mr. Lawrence. I know he is worrying about you."

"Any other reasons?" he inquired.

"Then there's Uncle Barney" —

"What has Barney Baldwin to do with it?" His voice was sharp, and the girl hesitated under his steady scrutiny.

"You mustn't speak that way of my uncle," she said reprovingly. "I'm sure he's only interested in you because of me. He says it is imperative that you do not play any more with the Bears."

"Then Barney Baldwin ordered you to telephone for me to come here?" he asked harshly.

"He merely wanted me to persuade you to quit that ridiculous game and go back to Mr. Lawrence right away. He was only trying to save you."

For an instant he sat staring at the girl steadily. Then he said slowly:

"What a fool I've been."

"Oh, Larry, Larry!" she exclaimed, frightened by his manner. "What's the matter – is anything wrong?"

"Nothing wrong," he said, laughing mirthlessly. "Nothing wrong. You may tell your uncle, with my compliments, that I will continue to play with the Bears to the end of the season, and that, in spite of him and his dirty work we will win that pennant."

He arose and passed into the hall without a backward glance, ignoring the sobs of the girl, who buried her face in her handkerchief and wept gracefully, telling him between sobs that he was cruel. He took his hat from the servant and strode rapidly down the steps, his mind a turmoil of emotions.

How far did the plot to beat the Bears out of the pennant extend? How many were in it? Gradually he commenced to draw connected thoughts from the chaos of his brain. He realized that he was the storm center of a plot and that he was dealing with dangerous enemies.

The girl he had left so abruptly continued her stifled, stagey sobs until she heard the front door close. Then she sat up quickly, glanced at her features in a wall mirror, brushed back a lock of ruffled hair and rubbed her eyes lightly with her kerchief.

"How he has changed," she said to herself. "He is getting masterful, and three months ago one pout was enough. I could almost love him – even without old Jim Lawrence's money.

"At any rate," she said, looking at the handsome solitaire on her finger, "I can keep the ring. He never mentioned it. I must go tell Uncle Barney."

She ran lightly up the stairs to the den where Baldwin, smoking impatiently, was waiting for her.

"Well?" he inquired. "Did you land him?"

"Don't speak so vulgarly, Uncle Barney," the girl replied. "No, I did not. He has grown stubborn. He told me to tell you he intended to keep on playing to the end of the season, and that they would win – I've forgotten what he said they would win. Does it make much difference, just these few more games?"

"Does it make any difference?" he stormed. "Any difference – why, you fool, my whole political future may be ruined by that red-headed idiot. Get out of here. I'm going to telephone."

The girl, weeping in earnest now, hurried from the room as Barney Baldwin seized the telephone. A moment later he was saying:

"Hello, Ed. She fell down. He's stubborn and says he'll keep on playing. You'd better see your man and break that story in the newspaper. What? They got him? Where? Well, then, they've got the wrong man. McCarthy left my house not five minutes ago."