THE FLYING BALL TEAM
At the heart of The Pines next morning, Johnny found Meg seated on a log
waiting. This spot, so quiet and secluded, disturbed only by the chirp of
a robin and the chatter of a squirrel, held for them many pleasant
memories. Here, as small children, they had tumbled on the grass. Here,
in early ’teens, together with other playmates, they had done cart wheels
and wild, hilarious Indian dances. Now it was a sober-faced, eager Meggy
who awaited him.
“Johnny,” she exclaimed with a little catch of breath, “what are you
going to tell me?”
“That you helped me a lot last night, that I can find out anything that
any person is thinking, and that at this moment I’m scared stiff.” With a
heavy sigh Johnny dropped to a place beside her.
“Why, Johnny?” She gripped his arm. “Why are you frightened?”
“It’s that Chinaman, Tao Sing! There’s a tong war, and I’m in the midst
of it—or at least I’m likely to be. But then—” Johnny checked this wild
flow of words. “I’d better start at the beginning. It all began when that
little Chinaman loaned me that thought-camera.”
“Thought-camera!” Meggy stared.
“I—I’ll tell you all about it.” So, seated there in the sun with only a
robin and a squirrel, as he supposed, listening in, he told Meg the
amazing story of Tao Sing’s great invention and some of its startling
revelations.
“And last night,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, “last night I
squinted the thought-camera first at the Federal agent, and then at that
wise old owl Wung Lu up there in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Then,
after I’d been chased and almost captured by some wild-eyed Chinks, I
sneaked along home to develop those last think-o-graphs. And what do you
suppose the thoughts of that Federal agent told me?”
“What?” Meggy’s breath came quick.
“That a Chinese tong war has started with half a hundred Chinamen
carrying big blue pistols, and any one of these ready to start popping at
any moment, and—”
Johnny broke off abruptly. “What was that?”
“What?” Meggy was all aquiver.
“Something back in the pines.”
Johnny sprang back into the pine boughs. He found nothing. “Perhaps it
was a squirrel,” he said quietly when he returned.
“So now you see,” he whispered, “I’m between the devil and the deep blue
sea. The thought-camera belongs to Tao Sing. He loaned it to me. I should
return it. But where is he? A tong war is a terrible thing. It’s a fight
between two Chinese secret societies. If it gets going right, several
people will be killed. On the Pacific coast two Chinamen have been
killed. The thing is spreading. Tao Sing is at the bottom of it all. He’s
in this country without permission. These two Federal agents know he’s
been here—found his finger-prints at the back of the Chinese spice shop.
Perhaps someone has told them I know about Tao Sing—I’m not sure. Someone
_does_ know I have the thought-camera, or at least they think I have.
That’s why I was chased last night. I’m sure of it.” Johnny mopped his
brow. “I—I suppose I helped Tao Sing discover secrets. Probably when I
brought him Wung Lu’s think-o-graphs he read what he wanted to know.
“Meggy,” Johnny said solemnly, “there’s no good in stealing anyone else’s
thoughts! This thought-camera! I’d like to give it back right now. But I
can’t. Tao Sing has vanished.”
“Johnny, let me see it,” Meg whispered.
Johnny drew the thought-camera from beneath his coat. Meg looked at it,
starry-eyed as she might had she seen a ghost. “Johnny, where do you keep
it?”
“In my trunk.”
“In your room?”
“In my room.”
“Well,” said Meg, shaking herself as if to waken from a bad dream, “it’s
the strangest thing I ever heard of. It—
“There!” Her voice dropped. “I heard something back there!”
“Come on!” Johnny shuddered. “This place is haunted today.”
Together they hurried away through the pines and were soon upon the
sunlit streets of old Hillcrest.
In the meantime the “Flying Ball Team,” as someone had aptly named it,
had arrived at its first destination, and things were doing.
They arrived an hour before sundown, after a thrilling ride high in air,
at the little city of Cannon Ball on the wheat-growing Dakota prairies.
The moment their plane came to a standstill, they were surrounded by a
crowd of boys, shouting: “Where is he? Where is he? Show him to us!”
“Where’s who?” Doug asked with a smile.
For reply one boy held up a crumpled handbill on which had been pictured
a grotesque mechanical man with sparks shooting from his finger tips and
flames of fire pouring from his nostrils. Beneath were the words:
IRONS O, THE STEEL-FINGERED PITCHER WHO LIVES ON FIRE. SEE HIM PERFORM AT
THE BALL FIELD TOMORROW!
At sight of this, Doug felt his knees sag. “Somebody,” he grumbled, “has
been over-playing the thing. And now if we fail! Man! Oh man!”
“Where is he? Where is he?” the boys were still shouting. “Show him to
us.”
“He goes to bed an hour before sundown.” Doug chuckled in spite of
himself. “He’s asleep in one of the plane’s wings now. You can’t see him
until tomorrow.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” came in a disappointed chorus.
“It’s a good place to leave him,” Sheeley the pilot whispered to Doug.
“Nothing like a little secrecy to make people keen for a thing.”
“But will he be safe there?” Doug’s brow wrinkled.
“Sure! Oh sure!” Sheeley assured him. “In a place like this, I roll up in
my blankets and sleep on the cabin floor.”
So Doug and Goggles wandered away from the town to have a look at the
glorious rolling prairies. Lit up as they were by the slanting rays of
the setting sun, they offered the boys a view that time would never erase
from their memories.
“Think of it!” said Doug, “tomorrow the wheat country; the next day the
cattle country; then the gold-mining city. After that Spokane, and then
the Pacific coast!”
“Don’t be too sure.” Goggles’ tone was a bit gloomy. “If we fail
tomorrow, this place is our only destination.”
“You’re tired,” Doug said reassuringly. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.” He
did; but not for long.
The fame of the mechanical pitcher who, with his steel fingers, could
pitch a curve like a flesh and blood man, had spread afar in this land of
golden grain. This was a slack period for wheat farmers. They began
pouring in before noon.
“You have such a crowd as that there ball ground never saw before!” a
tall, lanky lad in a ten gallon hat assured Goggles. You might believe
this would stir up in the boy’s mind a feeling of joy. Instead, it made
him feel shivery all over.
“We’ve got to be careful,” he said to Hop Horner. “Every crowd’s a mob.
You can never tell what it’s going to do when things go sort of queer.”
“Everything’s going to be O.K.,” Hop said coolly.
The appointed hour arrived at last. Never had the boys from the quiet
little city of Hillcrest seen such a crowd, and never had they looked
upon such a sea of sun-tanned faces.
Irons O had been carried secretly to the grounds in a covered truck.
Assembled within the shelter of the truck, he was then assisted with much
ceremony and shouting to his place in the pitcher’s box. Solemnly the
Hillcrest boys took their places in the field.
“The zero hour has arrived,” Goggles muttered to Hop. His tongue stuck to
the roof of his mouth.
“Game! Game!” shouted a group of high school boys in a corner. “We want
baseball! We want baseball!”
“Hey, Mister!” a small boy in the front row squeaked. “Make him spit
fire, will ye?” Everyone laughed.
Only one person sat staring in silence. That was Doug Danby. Sitting
alone in the bleachers, he had caught sight of a vaguely familiar face.
At this moment he was staring at the person in open-mouthed astonishment.
“How did he get there? How could he?” he was asking himself.
“But perhaps I’m wrong,” he hopefully reassured himself. Something told
him he was not. A voice seemed to whisper in his ear, “You’re in for it,
all right. That is really the same little dark man who caused you so much
trouble at home—”
As for the little dark man himself, he sat staring at Irons O, and on his
face was a look hard to describe. It was a look in which was mingled
hate, contempt and triumph.
“Play ball!” the umpire roared. He was a western man of the old school.
“Play ball!”
Goggles threw a switch. He pressed a button. With a circular sweep of his
ludicrous head and a broad grin, Irons O lifted his good right arm; then,
to Goggles’ utter dismay, swung it around three times instead of once, to
at last discharge the ball in the manner of a cannon. The batter and the
catcher both saw the action and dodged, each in good time. Quite
unembarrassed by the wire screen behind the catcher, the ball went right
on through to lose itself on the boundless prairies of the Dakotas. The
crowd let out a terrible roar. But Goggles murmured weakly, “Something’s
gone wrong again at the very start.”