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.