THE PERPLEXING QUESTION
The following morning Lefty Locke received two letters. One was from
the Federal League headquarters in Chicago, urging him to accept the
offer of the manager who had made such a tempting proposal to him. The
position, it stated, was still his for the taking, and he was pressed
to wire agreement to the terms proposed.
The other letter was from Locke's father, a clergyman residing in a
small New Jersey town. The contents proved disturbing. The Reverend
Mr. Hazelton's savings of a lifetime had been invested in a building
and loan association, and the association had failed disastrously.
Practically everything the clergyman possessed in the world would be
swept away; it seemed likely that he would lose his home.
Lefty's face grew pale and grim as he read this letter. He went directly
to his wife and told her. Janet was distressed.
"What can be done?" she cried. "You must do something, Lefty!
Your father and mother, at their age, turned out of their home! It is
terrible! What can you do?"
Locke considered a moment. "If I had not invested the savings of my
baseball career in Blue Stockings stock," he said regretfully, "I'd
have enough now to save their home for them."
"But can't you sell the stock?"
"Yes, for half what I paid for it--perhaps. That wouldn't he enough.
You're right in saying I must do something, but what can I--" He
stopped, staring at the other letter. He sat down, still staring at
it, and Janet came and put her arm about him.
"Here's something!" he exclaimed suddenly.
"What, dear?"
"This letter from Federal League headquarters, urging me to grab the
offer the Feds have made me. Twenty-seven thousand dollars for three
years, a certified check for the first year's salary, and a thousand
dollars bonus. That means that I can get ten thousand right in my hand
by signing a Federal contract--more than enough to save my folks."
Janet's face beamed, and she clapped her hands. "I had forgotten about
their offer! Why, you're all right! It's just the thing."
"I wonder?"
She looked at him, and grew sober. "Oh, you don't want to go to the
Federals? You're afraid they won't last?"
"It isn't that."
"No?"
"No, girl. If there was nothing else to restrain me, I'd take the next
train for Chicago, and put my fist to a Fed contract just as soon as I
could. I need ten thousand dollars now, and need it more than I ever
before needed money."
Janet ran her fingers through his hair, bending forward to scan his
serious and perplexed face. She could see that he was fighting a battle
silently, grimly. She longed to aid him in solving the problem by which
he was confronted, but realizing that she could not quite put herself
in his place, and that, therefore, her advice might not come from the
height of wisdom and experience, she held herself in check. Should he
ask counsel of her she would give the best she could.
"I know," she said, after a little period of silence, "that you must
think of your financial interest in the Blue Stockings."
"I'm not spending a moment's thought on that now. I'm thinking
of old Jack Kennedy and Charles Collier; of Bailey Weegman and his
treachery, for I believe he is treacherous to the core. I'm thinking
also of something else I don't like to think about."
"Tell me," she urged.
He looked up at her, and smiled wryly. Then he felt of his left shoulder.
"It's this," he said.
She caught her breath. "But you said you were going to give your arm
the real test yesterday. The Grays won, and the score was three to one
when you hurt your ankle and were forced to quit. I thought you were
satisfied."
"I very much doubt if the Grays would have won had not Cap'n Wiley
insisted upon pitching the opening innings for his team. The man who
followed him did not permit us to score at all. I was the only one who
got a safe hit off him. The test was not satisfactory, Janet."
Her face grew white. It was not like Lefty to lack confidence in himself.
During the past months, although his injured arm had seemed to improve
with disheartening slowness, he had insisted that it would come round
all right before the season opened. Yet lately he had not appeared quite
so optimistic. And now, after the game which was to settle his doubts, he
seemed more doubtful than before. She believed that he was holding
something back, that he was losing heart, but as long as there was any
hope remaining he would try not to burden her with his worries.
Suddenly she clutched his shoulders with her slender hands. "It's
all wrong!" she cried. "You've given up the best that was in you
for the Blue Stockings. You've done the work of two pitchers. They
won't let you go now. Even if your arm is bad at the beginning of the
season, they'll keep you on and give you a chance to get it back into
condition."
"Old Jack Kennedy would, but I have my doubts about any other manager."
"You don't mean that they'd let you go outright, just drop you?"
"Oh, it's possible they'd try to sell me or trade me. If they could
work me off on to some one who wasn't wise, probably they'd do it.
That's not reckoning on Weegman. He's so sore and vindictive that
he may spread the report that I've pitched my wing off. I fancy he
wouldn't care a rap if that did lose Collier the selling price that
could be got for me."
"Oh, I just hate to hear you talk about being traded or sold! It
doesn't sound as if you were a human being and this a free country.
Cattle are traded and sold."
"Cattle and ball players."
"It's wrong! Isn't there any way--"
"The Federals are showing the way."
"Your sympathy's with them. You're not bound to the Blue Stockings;
you're still your own free agent."
"Under the circumstances what would you have me do?"
At last he had asked her advice. Now she could speak. She did so eagerly.
"Accept the offer the Federals have made you."
"My dear," he said, "would you have me do that, with my own mind in
doubt as to whether or not I was worth a dollar to them? Would you have
me take the ten thousand I could get, knowing all the time that they
might be paying it for a has-been who wasn't worth ten cents? Would
that be honest?"
"You can be honest, then," she hurriedly declared. "No one knows for
a certainty, not even yourself, that you can't come back to your old
form. You can go to the manager and tell him the truth about yourself.
Can't you do that?"
"And then what? Probably he wouldn't want me after that at any price."
"You can make a fair bargain with him. You can have it put in the
contract that you are to get that money if you do come back and make good
as a pitcher."
Lefty laughed. "I think it would be the first time on record that a
ball player ever went to a manager who was eager to sign him up, and
made such a proposition. It would be honest, Janet; but if the manager
believed me, if he saw I was serious, do you fancy he'd feel like coming
across with the first year's salary in advance and the bonus? You see
I can't raise the money I need, and be honest."
She wrung her hands and came back to the first question that had leaped
from her lips: "What can you do?"
"I don't think I'll make any decisive move until I find out what sort
of queer business is going on in the Blue Stockings camp. I could get
money through Kennedy if he were coming back. Everything is up in the
air."
"How can you find out, away down here? You're too far away from the
places where things are doing."
"I've been looking for a telegram from old Jack, an answer to mine. I
feel confident I'll get a wire from him as soon as he reads my letter.
Meanwhile I'll write to my parents and try to cheer them up. It's bound
to take a little time to settle up the affairs of that building and loan
association. Time is what I need now."
That very day Locke received a telegram from Jack Kennedy:
Meet me at the Grand, Indianapolis, the twenty-third. Don't
fail.
A train carried Lefty north that night.