A MAN OF MYSTERY
The swarthy little fabulist rose hastily to his feet, making a quick
survey of the southpaw. "Am I indeed and at last in the presence of the
great Lefty Locke?" he cried, his face beaming like the morning sun
in a cloudless sky. "Is it possible that after many weary moons I have
dropped anchor in the same harbor with the most salubriously efficacious
port-side flinger of modern times? Pardon my deep emotion! Slip me your
mudhook, Lefty; let me give you the fraternal grip."
He grabbed Locke's hand and wrung it vigorously, while the other members
of the Wind Jammers pressed nearer, looking the Big League pitcher over
with interest.
"In many a frozen igloo," declared Wiley, "I have dreamed of this
day when I should press your lily-white fingers. Oft and anon during my
weary sojourn in that far land of snow and ice have I pictured to myself
the hour when we should stand face to face and exchange genuflections and
greetings. And whenever a smooched and tattered months-old newspaper
would drift in from civilization, with what eager and expectant
thrills did I tremulously turn to the baseball page that I might
perchance read thereon how you had stung the Hornets, bitten the Wolves,
clipped the claws of the Panthers, or plucked the feathers from the White
Wings!"
"And I have been wondering," confessed Lefty, "if you could be the
original Cap'n Wiley of whom I heard so many strange tales in my
boyhood. It was reported that you were dead."
"Many a time and oft hath that canard been circulated. According to
rumor, I have demised a dozen times or more by land and sea; but each
time, like the fabled Phoenix, I have risen from my ashes. During the
last few fleeting years I have been in pursuit of fickle fortune in
far-off Alaska, where it was sometimes so extremely cold that fire froze
and we cracked up the congealed flames into little chunks which we sold
to the Chilkoots and Siwashes as precious bright red stones. Strange to
say, whenever I have related this little nanny goat it has been received
with skepticism and incredulity. The world is congested with doubters."
"When you wrote me," admitted Locke, "proposing to bring your Wind
Jammers here to play the Fernandon Grays, I thought the letter was a
hoax. At first I was tempted not to answer it, and when I did reply it
was out of curiosity more than anything else; I wanted to see what the
next twist of the joke would be."
"Let me assure you that you will find playing against the Wind Jammers
no joke. I have conglomerated together the fastest segregation of
baseball stars ever seen outside a major league circuit, and I say it
with becoming and blushing modesty. Look them over," he invited, with
a proud wave of his hand toward the remarkable group of listeners.
"It has always been my contention that there are just as good players
to be found outside the Big League as ever wore the uniform of a major. I
have held that hard luck, frowning fate, or contumelious circumstances
have conspired to hold these natural-born stars down and prevent their
names from being chiseled on the tablet of fame. Having gathered unto
myself a few slippery shekels from my mining ventures in the land
where baseball games begin at the hour of midnight, I have now set out to
prove my theory, and before I am through I expect to have all balldom
sitting up agog and gasping with wonderment."
"I wish you luck," replied Lefty. "If you don't do anything else,
you ought to get some sport out of it. I presume you still ascend the
mound as a pitcher?"
"Oh," was the airy answer, "on rare occasions I give the gaping
populace a treat by propelling the sphere through the atmosphere. When my
projector is working up to its old-time form, I find little difficulty
in leading the most formidable batters to vainly slash the vacant
ether. The weather seeming propitious, I may burn a few over this p.m.
I trust you will pitch also."
"I think I shall start the game, at least."
Bailey Weegman butted in. "But he won't finish it, Wiley. Like
yourself, he's not doing as much pitching as he did once." His laugh
was significant.
The owner of the Wind Jammers looked startled. "Tell me not in mournful
numbers that your star is already on the decline!" he exclaimed, looking
at Locke with regret. "That's what the Big Leagues do to a good man;
they burn him out like a pitch-pine knot. I've felt all along that
the Blue Stockings were working you too much, Lefty. Without you on
their roster ready to work three or four times a week in the pinches,
they never could have kept in the running."
"You're more than complimentary," said Locke, after giving Weegman a
look. "But I think I'll be able to shake something out of my sleeve
this season, the same as ever."
"Then don't let them finish you, don't let them grind you to a
frazzle," advised Wiley. "For the first time in recent history you
have a chance for your white alley; the Federals are giving you that. If
you're not already enmeshed in the folds of a contract, the Feds will
grab you and hand you a square deal."
Weegman rose, chuckling and snapping his fingers. "All this talk about
what the Feds can do is gas!" he declared. "They're getting nothing
but the soreheads and deadwood of organized baseball, which will be
vastly better off without the deserters. Cripples and has-beens may
make a good thing out of the Feds for a short time. Perhaps Locke would
find it profitable to jump." His meaning was all too plain.
Lefty felt like taking the insinuating fellow by the neck and shaking him
until his teeth rattled, but outwardly he was not at all ruffled or
disturbed. "Mr. Weegman," he said, "is showing pique because I have
not seen fit to sign up as manager of the Blue Stockings. He professes
to have authority from Charles Collier to sign the manager, Collier
having gone abroad for his health."
"If anybody doubts my authority," shouted Weegman, plunging his hand
into an inner pocket of his coat, "I can show the documents that will--"
The southpaw had turned his back on him. "I understand you have a clever
pitcher in the man known as Mysterious Jones, Wiley," he said.
"A pippin!" was the enthusiastic answer. "I'll give you a chance to
see him sagaciate to-day."
"He is a deaf-mute?"
"He couldn't hear a cannon if you fired it right under the lobe of his
ear, and he does his talking with his prehensile digits. Leon Ames in
his best days never had anything on Jones."
"Strange I never even heard of him. Our scouts have scoured the bushes
from one end of the country to the other."
"I never collided with any baseball scouts in Alaska," said Wiley.
"Oh! You found Jones in Alaska?"
"Pitching for a team in Nome."
"But baseball up there! I didn't know--"
"Oh, no; nobody ever thinks of baseball up there, but in the all too
short summer season there's something doing in that line. Why, even
modern dances have begun to run wild in Alaska, so you see they're right
up to the present jiffy."
"Where did this Jones originally hail from?"
"Ask me! I don't know. Nobody I ever met knew anything about him,
and what he knows about himself he won't tell. He's mysterious, you
understand; but his beautiful work on the slab has caused my classic
countenance to break into ripples and undulations and convolutions of
mirth."
"Where is he? I'd like to give him the once over."
"I think he's out somewhere prowling around the town and sizing up
the citizens. That's one of his little vagaries; he has a combustable
curiosity about strangers. Every place we go he wanders around for hours
lamping the denizens of the burg. Outside baseball, strange people
seem to interest him more than anything in the world; but once he has
taken a good square look at a person, henceforth and for aye that
individual ceases to attract him; if he ever gives anybody a second
look, it is one of absolute indifference. Oh, I assure you with the
utmost voracity that Jones is an odd one."
"He must be," agreed Lefty.
"Ay tank, cap'n," said Oleson, the Swede outfielder, "that Yones now
bane comin' up the street."
Wiley turned and gazed at an approaching figure. "Yes," he said,
"that's him. Turn your binnacle lights on him, Lefty; behold the
greatest pitcher adrift in the uncharted regions of baseball."