FOR WANT OF A LIE
Locke would scarcely have been so self-contained had he known what had
taken place at the hotel about the time he was feverishly pacing the
platform at Flat Rock Junction.
Through some pretext, Bert Elgin managed to leave the ground a few
minutes ahead of the others. He had concealed his nervousness all
morning, taking hope from the nonappearance of Lefty on the field,
and reveling in Brennan’s openly expressed anger at the puzzling
occurrence. But now he felt that he must find out something definite.
Arriving at the hotel, he hastened up to the corridor above his own,
taking care to use the stairs for the last flight, and made his way to
a certain door, which he pushed open without ceremony.
For an instant he stood staring curiously around the disordered
room. Then a triumphant smile curved his lips, and his eyes danced
maliciously.
“Looks like the kid worked it, all right,” he said, in a low tone. “I
was afraid he might slip up on something. What’s this?”
Striding over to the table, he picked up the note addressed to Buck
Fargo, opening it without hesitation. Having read it hastily through,
he smiled again and thrust it into his pocket.
“‘Tell Brennan all about it,’” he quoted, in a jeering voice, “‘and
make him understand how I had to go.’ I guess we won’t tell anybody;
it’ll be lots more fun to keep ’em guessing till you come back.”
He hastened to the door, and stepped out into the hall. “I should say
your goose was cooked nice and brown,” he muttered, with venomous
satisfaction. “I wouldn’t give a whole lot for your chances with the
Hornets after this little performance.”
Happily for Lefty’s peace of mind, he guessed nothing of all this.
As it was, he had worries enough to keep him company during that
maddeningly slow trip back to Ashland. Time and again he went over
the situation from the beginning, trying his best to see it from Jim
Brennan’s point of view, and always he ended by a despairing grasp
on that one frail straw: the manager might forgive the desertion as
long as the absent man had done his best to let him know about it
beforehand.
Stepping off the train shortly after seven, the southpaw went at once
to the hotel. The first man he ran into in the lobby was Buck Fargo.
The expression on his chum’s face made Lefty’s heart sink into his
boots.
“Where the deuce have you been?” the backstop inquired directly, and
with force. “How’d you happen to duck?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Buck,” the young pitcher appealed fervently, “don’t
tell me you didn’t get my note?”
“If it explained what in thunder made you do such a fool trick as this,
I most certainly didn’t,” Fargo returned.
Locke groaned aloud. “I left it on the table. I told you just what had
happened and why I had to rush off. I asked you to explain to the old
man――”
Catching a sudden warning in Fargo’s eyes, Lefty stopped abruptly and
turned slowly around. Brennan stood just behind him, his hands on his
hips, an expression on his square, heavy-jowled face which even the big
backstop had rarely seen there before.
“Well?” he questioned in an ominous voice, his sharp, deep-set eyes
boring into Lefty’s brown ones. “Did I hear you say anything about an
explanation? Strikes me it’s about time something of the sort was
dished up.”
His voice, cold, hard, and unrelenting, sent a flicker up and down
Locke’s spine. If the man had only flared out at him, roared, bellowed,
it would have been better than this. But that harsh, flinty, absolutely
pitiless tone struck a chill to the youngster’s heart, and quenched the
last spark of hope in him.
“I had――a telegram――this morning,” he explained unevenly. “It came just
as I was leaving for the field. It was from――a close friend of mine who
is at Billings, with her father. She said that her father was dying,
and asked me to come at once. She was all alone in a strange place.
They knew no one. They had been in the South only a few weeks. I _had_
to go.”
He hesitated an instant, glancing desperately at Brennan’s face.
Something in it――the flicker of an eyelash, perhaps, or the faintest
possible relaxing of that steely, set expression,――made a tiny spark of
hope revive in Lefty’s breast.
“Well, go on,” growled Brennan.
“There wasn’t time to send you word,” Locke continued. “I had to make
the nine-five train. So I wrote a note to Fargo explaining things, and
asked him to tell you about it. I left it on the table in our room.
You must have missed it, Buck, or didn’t you go to the room?”
He turned eagerly to his friend, but the latter shook his head.
“There wasn’t any note,” he said slowly. “I was up there at noon and
again to-night. There ain’t nothing on the table but a couple of
magazines and a lamp. Mebbe it got blown off.”
“Perhaps that was it,” Lefty agreed. “I wrote it and stuck it up where
you’d see it the first thing.”
He glanced again at Brennan and met the man’s searching gaze
unflinchingly. For an instant there was silence as the manager scowled
deeply to hide his annoyance.
“You’d ought to have sent word,” he snapped. “You knew you was to pitch
this afternoon. Why didn’t you leave a letter with the clerk, addressed
to me?”
“I never thought of that,” Lefty apologized. “I was so shaken up and
worried and rushed that I couldn’t seem to think of anything but making
that train.”
The spark of hope had been fanned into a little blaze. Brennan was
certainly relenting. Everything about him pointed to that. He stared at
the cub pitcher from under his bushy eyebrows for a moment or two as
if vainly searching for something more to find fault with.
“You seem to have got back mighty sudden,” he said presently, in a tart
voice. “Must have taken the first train. Didn’t your friend’s father
die?”
It had come, the question which Lefty had been dreading from the
beginning and trying to get away from! For an instant he was
tempted――desperately tempted. The manager was plainly influenced in his
favor. If he lied and told some plausible story of Mr. Harting’s sudden
recovery, all would be well, and the matter would probably be dropped.
If he told the truth and admitted that no message had ever been sent――
In that second of hesitation, many things flashed through his mind. He
was already morally certain that he had Bert Elgin to thank for the
trick. He told himself that a lie which would result in foiling the
plotter would be no lie at all. The very words of a glib falsehood were
on his lips when suddenly he brought his teeth together and threw back
his head. He would tell the truth at any cost.
“He was never sick at all,” he said swiftly, his face rather pale.
Brennan stared. “Never sick!” he repeated sharply. “Then what in time
did she send the telegram for, I’d like to know?”
Lefty thrust both hands behind his back, gripping the fingers tightly
together. His eyes met Brennan’s squarely.
“She didn’t. She knew nothing about it. It was sent by some one else.”
“What for?”
The words came from Brennan’s lips like bullets. Suspicion,
incredulity, anger, showed in his piercing eyes.
“I don’t know,” Lefty answered. “It looks as if some one wanted to get
me away from the game.”
Brennan’s laugh was harsh and mirthless. “That’s likely, ain’t it?
That’s a clever idea, that is! Where’s the telegram? Show it to me.”
With leaden heart, Locke remembered what he had done with it. “I
haven’t――got it,” he stammered. “I wrote a message on the back――and
gave it to the boy to send.”
“Is that so?” sneered the manager. “Did it get to the girl? Did it come
while you were there?”
“N-o.”
“I thought so. It never went. Just so the other never came.”
“But it did come,” protested Lefty, though he had a feeling that
further words were futile. “The boy handed it to me on the steps. I
opened it, and wrote an answer right there. That’s the truth.”
“Is it?” retorted the manager incredulously. “Just you wait a minute
and I’ll find out if it is or not.”
Turning abruptly, he hurried over to a telephone booth and shut himself
in. The instant the manager’s back was turned Buck Fargo groaned.
“What the devil did you tell him for?” he said sadly. “I’m afraid
you’ve gone and done for yourself, kid. I have never seen the old
man in such a temper since Billy Smith sold a game to the Pinks last
spring.”
“I wanted to lie,” the youngster confessed, “but I simply couldn’t,
Buck.”
“You’re awful particular! Who do you s’pose done it, that cur Elgin?”
“I can’t think of any one else equal to it,” Lefty answered. “It
wouldn’t be the first miserable trick he’s worked.”
He broke off as a door slammed and Brennan came striding toward them,
his eyes savage and his face the color of a beet.
“I knew it!” he said. “No such message went through the office.”
He paused a second, his legs spread wide apart, regarding Lefty with a
cold, contemptuous scrutiny.
“I’m through with you!” he burst out, at length. “I can put up with a
lot, but I haven’t any use for a quitter. I thought you was one when
I first saw you, but now I know. You skipped out to-day because you
were afraid――nothing else. You pretty near pulled me with that tale of
yours――but not quite. You fooled me with that dirty spiking trick, too,
but I’m wise now. I’m done with you! Go back to the bushes or the hot
place, whichever you prefer!”
He wheeled round and took a few steps across the lobby. Suddenly he
turned back.
“Mebbe you’re thinking of that fine offer you say was made by the Blue
Stockings?” he sneered. “I wouldn’t give much for your chances with
Jack Kennedy.”
Lefty’s eyes were blazing. His lips parted for a hot retort, but he
seemed to change his mind and choke it down. For an instant he stood
absolutely still. Then, slowly, he turned and looked at Fargo.
Neither man spoke.