SHOTS IN THE DARK
That was the beginning of a fine friendship. Toby and Arnold became
well-nigh inseparable. They spent hours and hours together in the
_Frolic_ or the _Turnover_, swam, fished, canoed occasionally, explored
by land and sea, and spent much time curled up in a favorite corner of
the boat-yard building glorious plans for the future. Sometimes Phebe
was their companion, and sometimes, though less frequently, Frank
Lamson. Toby put up with Frank for Arnold’s sake, but never got to like
him. For his part, Frank failed to see why Arnold wanted to associate
with a fellow whose father worked “like a common laborer” and who
“slopped around in clothes you wouldn’t give to the ashman!”
But Frank’s disapproval didn’t influence Arnold to any great extent,
and Frank soon learned to keep it to himself. He viewed Phebe more
tolerantly because she was pretty and presentable, even if her dresses
would have failed to pass muster over at the Head. But what Frank
thought of her bothered Phebe little, since she liked him no better
than Toby did, although she was a trifle more careful to disguise the
fact.
Once and only once Toby went home with Arnold to luncheon. It happened
that a trip down the bay in the _Turnover_ had taken more time than
they had foreseen, and when the launch floated up to the Deerings’
pier to let Arnold off it was long after Toby’s dinner hour. Toby had
resisted a while against Arnold’s pleading, but he was horribly hungry
and Arnold assured him that what he had on wouldn’t matter a bit, and
finally he had yielded. What had happened was not at all terrifying,
for Arnold’s aunt, who, since the death of the lad’s mother many
years before, had presided over the Deering establishment, was very
gracious indeed to the guest; while Mr. Deering was in New York. And
the wonderful things that were placed before Toby tasted finely and
surely filled an aching void. But for all that he wasn’t comfortable.
He had never seen so many dishes and glasses and forks and knives and
spoons, nor so many servants. Nor had he ever had his table manners put
to so severe a test. Afterwards, although Arnold for a while frequently
extended invitations to luncheon, Toby always found some excuse for
declining. He never gave the real reason, however, although possibly
Arnold guessed it. Eventually Arnold gave it up as a bad job, but that
didn’t keep him from partaking of the Tucker hospitality, and he was a
frequent guest at the dinner table in the little cottage above Harbor
Street. Every one liked Arnold, even Mr. Murphy; and Mr. Murphy was
constitutionally suspicious of strangers.
Mr. Murphy sat on a perch in the corner of the dining-room, by
the window that looked along the winding street, an uncannily
wise-appearing old parrot with a draggled tail and a much-battered
beak. Phebe explained that he used to have a perfectly gorgeous tail,
but that he would insist on pulling the feathers out no matter how
she scolded him. Like most parrots, Mr. Murphy had his periods of
inviolate silence and his periods of invincible loquacity. During the
former all enticements failed to summon even a squawk from him, and
during the latter only banishment to a certain dark closet under the
hall stairs would stop the flow of his eloquence. It wasn’t so much
that the parrot’s repertoire was extensive as that he made the most of
it. Unlike Shakespeare, he repeated! Having spent several years of an
eventful life before the mast, he had learned a number of remarks that
brought embarrassed apologies from Phebe. On the whole, though, and in
view of his early environment, his conversation was remarkably polite.
His usual welcome was “Hello, dearie!” followed by “Won’t you take off
your bonnet?” After that he usually laughed jeeringly, sidled across
his perch, lowered himself and gravely hung by his beak. “All hands,
stand by!” was generally delivered in a peremptory shriek that, at
first, had had a devastating effect on Mrs. Tucker’s nerves. As though
realizing the fact, Mr. Murphy thereupon chuckled wickedly and murmured
softly and crooningly: “Well, well, well! Did you ever?” Phebe had
taught him to say, “Come to breakfast,” and he had grown very partial
to the remark, making use of it at all times of the day with cheerful
disregard for appropriateness. For a while he had made the cat’s life
a burden to her by calling “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! Come, pretty Kitty!”
and then going into peals of raucous laughter the minute the poor
cat’s head appeared around the door. Arnold won Mr. Murphy’s undying
affection by feeding him pop-corn surreptitiously, pop-corn being an
article of diet strictly forbidden by Phebe. He also spent much time
during the summer trying to induce the bird to say “Arnold,” but it
wasn’t until late in August that Toby, passing the dining-room door one
afternoon, heard Mr. Murphy croaking experimentally in a low voice:
“Say Arnold, you chump!”
Toby still performed odd jobs and picked up an occasional quarter or
half-dollar, but it must be acknowledged that he was far less earnest
in his endeavors to find employment than he had been before Arnold’s
advent on the scene. But he was only fourteen――“going on fifteen,” as
he would have put it――and so it isn’t to be greatly wondered at that
he found his new friend’s companionship more enjoyable than running
errands or delivering groceries in out-of-the-way places for Perkins &
Howe. Mr. Tucker at first viewed Toby’s frivolity with displeasure, but
Mrs. Tucker declared that it would do him more good to play and have a
good time with a nice boy like Arnold Deering than to loiter about Main
Street on the lookout for a job. I think that struck Toby’s father as
being good sense, for he never after that taxed the boy with idleness.
Sometimes Toby had qualms of conscience and for a day or two resisted
all Arnold’s blandishments and gave himself up sternly to commerce.
Frequently at such times Arnold likewise eschewed the life of pleasure
and threw in his lot with that of Toby, and together they sat in the
back room of the grocery store awaiting orders; or canvassed the other
places of business on the chance of finding service. It was at such a
time, seated on boxes by Perkins & Howe’s back entrance, with a strong
odor of spices and coffee and cucumbers enveloping them――it happened
that Arnold was seated on the crate of cucumbers――that the plan of
the baseball series between the town boys and the summer visitors was
evolved. The sight of two youngsters passing a ball on the side street
that ran down to the fish wharf put the idea into Arnold’s head.
“Do you play baseball, Toby?” he asked. Toby nodded. “Well, then, let’s
have a game some time.”
“You and me?” asked Toby, with a grin.
“No, silly! We’ll get up a couple of teams, of course. There are plenty
of fellows on the Head and around there to make up one, and you could
find enough here in town for the other, couldn’t you?”
Toby nodded again. “Most of the fellows on the school team would play,
I guess. What would we do, draw lots?”
“Yes; or we could have it summer visitors against town fellows. How
would that do?”
Toby reflected. “I’d rather play on the team with you, Arn,” he said at
last.
“So would I with you, Toby, but it would be more interesting the other
way, wouldn’t it? Where do you play?”
“Me? Oh, most anywhere. I played third base this spring, and last year
I played center field part of the time, and part of the time I caught.
I’m what you call an all-round player, a sort of general utility man!”
“Fine! I played first on my class team this spring. Let’s do it, eh?
Where could we play?”
“I guess we could use the school most any day except Saturday. Does
Frank play?”
“Yes, he’s a pretty good pitcher. I guess I’d ask him to pitch for us.
Who would you get?”
“Tim Chrystal, probably. He’s about the best we have. I don’t know,
though, if he’d have time. He works for his father, you see. When would
we play?”
“Today’s Wednesday, isn’t it? How about Saturday?”
“We mightn’t be able to get the field Saturday. Besides, it’ll take
me two or three days, I guess, to find a team. Let’s say a week from
today.”
“All right. It’ll be piles of fun. You call your nine the ‘Towners’ and
I’ll call mine the ‘Spaniards.’ Couldn’t you go after your fellows
today?”
Toby hesitated. “Maybe. I guess there isn’t anything to do here. I
might start after dinner.”
“Good! And I’ll beat it around the Head this afternoon and see who I
can get hold of. There are two or three fellows I don’t know very well,
but that doesn’t matter, I guess. I wish your folks had a telephone so
that I could call you up this evening and see how you’d got along.”
“Dad says telephones waste too much time. Why don’t you come over in
the launch? It’s moonlight now.”
“I suppose I could,” replied Arnold doubtfully. “I’ve never run her at
night, though.”
“Better begin, then. It’s no harder than running in daylight. Easier, I
guess, because there aren’t so many boats about. Come over about eight
and I’ll meet you at the town landing. It’ll be low tide at our pier,
and you might get aground, seeing you don’t know the cove very well.”
They talked it over further during the next half-hour, and then, as it
was dinner time, they abandoned the search for labor and went their
ways. Toby wanted Arnold to have dinner with him, but the latter was
so filled with his new scheme that he insisted on chugging back to
the Head so he might start right out after luncheon on his quest for
baseball talent. They parted with the understanding that Arnold was to
be at the town landing about eight, and that they were to meet there
and report progress.
The moon was up, a big silver half-disk, when Toby reached the float
at a few minutes before eight, and the harbor was almost as light
as day. He had to wait some time for the _Frolic_, and, when it did
appear, heralded by tiny red and green lights, it was moving slowly and
cautiously. Presently Arnold’s hail floated across the water and Toby
answered.
“All clear at the end of the float, Arn! Come on straight in!”
“All right, but it’s pretty dark where you are. How far away am I?”
“Oh, nearly a hundred yards, I guess. Pull her out and float in. Can
you see those boats at the moorings?”
“Yes; but I can’t see the float yet. They ought to have a light there.”
The chug-chug of the _Frolic_ exhaust lessened, and the white launch
slid silently into the shadows. Presently:
“Way enough,” called Toby. “Reverse her a couple of turns, Arn.”
In a moment the _Frolic_ thrust her bow into Toby’s waiting hands, and
he fended her off and brought her side-to. “Want to tie up?” he asked.
“Or shall we run around awhile?”
“If you’ll take her,” replied Arnold. “I don’t like this moonlight
business. It’s awfully confusing after you get into the harbor.”
“All right. Swing your wheel over hard and I’ll push her off. That’s
the ticket.” Toby sprang aboard and took the wheel from Arnold and the
launch set off again. Once outside the harbor, with the engine throttle
down until it made almost no sound, the two boys compared notes.
“I’ve got seven fellows,” Arnold reported, “and I know where I can get
four more. Frank will pitch for us and a chap named Dodson is going to
catch. Frank says he’s a dandy. All I need now is a good shortstop and
another fielder. All the fellows,” he added ruefully, “want to play the
bases――or pitch. It’s funny how many of them are wonderful pitchers,
when they tell it! How did you get on?”
“Me? Not very well. Tim Chrystal has promised to pitch if he doesn’t
have to do any practicing, and I got three other fellows to promise
to play. The trouble is, you see, most of them are older than I am
and they don’t like the idea of my being captain. Tim said he thought
Billy Conners ought to be. What do you think?”
“Nothing doing! You’re getting up the team, and you’re captain, of
course. If they don’t like it, get some one else.”
“Yes, but there aren’t so awfully many, you see. I’ve still got to find
five or six more. There’s Tony George, but he has to be at the fruit
stand.”
“At the what?” asked Arnold.
“Fruit stand. His father’s the Italian man who has the stand next to
Chapin’s drug store. He’s a mighty good third baseman, too, Tony is,
and I wish he could play.”
“Looks like this was going to be a sort of international affair,”
laughed Arnold. “Americans, Spaniards, and an Italian!”
“And my second baseman’s a Portuguese, Manuel Sousa. He’s pretty good,
too. How old will your fellows be?”
“They’ll average about sixteen, I guess. Dodson must be seventeen, but
most of them are about my age. I hope you can find the rest of the
fellows you need, Toby.”
“I guess I can. I wish they didn’t all want to be captain, though. I
don’t mind not being, but they can’t all have it.”
“You’re going to be captain,” replied Arnold, decisively. “If you
aren’t we won’t play you. You can tell them that, too.”
Toby sighed. “All right. I’ll stick out for it. I guess lots of the
others would do it better, though. You see, Billy Conners captained our
school team, and――――”
Toby stopped abruptly, and the two boys turned their heads and stared
startledly across the moonlit water of Nobbs’ Bay.
“What was that?” asked Toby.
“Sounded like a shot, didn’t it? Over that way. There!”
Two tiny yellow flashes of light pricked the darkness of the further
shore, followed by as many sharp reports, and then, more faintly, a
shout. Instinctively Toby swung the launch shoreward.
“Some one on that houseboat, I guess,” he said. “Probably shooting at a
bottle or something in the water. That’s about where she’s moored.”
“Anyway, it was a pistol, all right,” murmured Arnold. They listened,
but heard no more shots, and Toby was straightening the _Frolic_ out
again for the run around the Head when the sound of a muffled exhaust
reached them. Toby looked intently into the shadows of the Head.
“That’s funny,” he muttered. “There’s a launch just kiting along over
there and not a light showing. Can you make her out, Arn? She’s about
half-way to the Head, from the sound.”
But nothing was visible in the darkness there. Only the throb of an
exhaust reached them. And then, startlingly loud, came a cry across the
bay:
“Thieves! Thieves! Stop them!”
Some one on the houseboat had seen the _Frolic’s_ lights and was
shouting through a megaphone. And at that moment a shadow seemed to
detach itself from the shore and slip away into the moonlight beyond
the point. The cry from the houseboat was repeated.
“What shall we do?” cried Toby.
“Go after them!” Arnold jumped toward the throttle and pulled it
down, and the _Frolic_, responding instantly, leaped forward as Toby
unhesitatingly swung the wheel over.