THE FRAME-UP
At nine o’clock on Saturday evening, two men sat talking in confidential
tones in the Bancroft office of Lawyer Rufus Kilgore. The lawyer himself
was not present; he had not even seen Bob Hutchinson follow Mike Riley
into that office. But he had loaned Riley the key, with the full
knowledge that some sort of a secret conclave was to be held there.
Riley was paid to manage a winning team, and he was at liberty to
negotiate what conspiracies he chose for Bancroft’s advantage; but,
for the ease of his conscience, Kilgore wished to know as little as
possible about such plots.
On this occasion, Hutchinson had made the appointment with Riley,
specifically stating that no third party was to be present during
the interview. In his heart bitter rancor toward Tom Locke gnawed
like canker; his hatred for the man who had indiscreetly told him the
fearless truth concerning his own treacherous character was like a
wound that would not heal. Alone with Riley in that office, with the
door locked, he unhesitatingly announced his determination to “put the
knife into Lefty.” Mike listened, grinning his satisfaction.
“What’s happened?” he asked, leaning back in the creaking swivel chair
and elevating his big, flat feet on the open, littered desk. “You and
him been havin’ some sort of a diff’runce?”
“The cub dared to shoot his face off to me,” explained Hutchinson. “I
told him his baseball career at college was ended, and that it would be
mighty short in this league. I shall notify the proper authorities at
Princeton, and furnish proof that he is a professional, and I propose
to put him on the blink here so that no team in the Northern League can
use him.”
Riley suddenly looked doubtful.
“Now, look here, Hutch,” he said. “Why not put him on the blink as far
as Kingsbridge is concerned, and let us have him, if we can get him? As
long as you get your dough for managing, you don’t care a rap whether
the Kinks win or not. If he can keep up the pace he’s set, he’d be a
mighty valuable man fer Bancroft.”
“No,” returned Hutchinson coldly and grimly; “after what he’s said to
me, I’ll not give him the satisfaction of holding a job anywhere in
this league. Don’t you see, Riley, if he were to come over to you and
be used successfully against Kingsbridge, he might think that he was
getting back at me? I’ve made up my mind to put him down and out, and
when it is done I intend to let him know I did it. It will benefit you
if he is barred entirely, and that should be sufficient to make you
ready to help put him to the mat. You don’t really need him, anyhow.”
“Mebbe not,” agreed Mike. “I’m out after a southpaw right now that can
make this college lefty look like a frappéd lemon, and I’ve got my
left-hand hitters practicing against a kid left-hander with speed and
curves, so that they can pound that kind of pitchin’. Didn’t know but
my claims to him might fall through, y’see.”
“Then,” questioned the treacherous Kingsbridge manager, “you haven’t
any real claim? You haven’t a letter from him speaking of terms, or
anything like that?”
“I haven’t,” confessed Riley. “I writ him twict, but I never got no
answer. It made me sore to think that old doughhead, Cope, should beat
me to it, and I made up my mind to bluff the thing through as fur as
possible. Didn’t calc’late the youngster, knowin’ how it would bump
him at college, would relish the advertisin’ he was bound to get, and
thought mebbe, to hush it, he might give in, admit I did have a claim,
and come over to us.”
“Not in a thousand years,” said Hutchinson; “not unless you’ve really
got a claim. He’s just bull-headed enough to fight it out. I saw that
by the way he met me when I showed him the piece in the _News_. He
wouldn’t admit that his name was Hazelton.”
Suddenly Riley let his feet fall with a thud to the floor, the swivel
chair swinging forward with his huge body, and brought his clenched
fist down on the desk.
“By thunder!” he exclaimed.
Hutchinson looked at him expectantly.
“By thunder!” repeated Mike. “Perhaps it ain’t!”
“Isn’t what?”
“Perhaps it isn’t Hazelton. I have private information that, being
cornered fair and square, he has denied it flat.”
For a fleeting moment Hutchinson seemed startled out of his usual cold
indifference, but he quickly recovered.
“Preposterous,” he said. “The fellow must be Hazelton.”
“I dunno. I reckoned so myself, but――”
“Look here, Mike, if he isn’t, why should he let this controversy over
him go on? Then, there’s Cope, who thinks――”
“Nobody in the Northern League knows Hazelton. Even Cope may be fooled.”
“How? He signed Hazelton to pitch.”
“But even he had never see the man. He made arrangements entirely
by letter. What if Hazelton, not caring to come himself, sent a
substitute? Jupiter! If that’s how the land lays, this Locke would have
the laugh on ev’rybody when the truth came out. We’d all feel like a
man caught tryin’ to spend plugged money.”
Hutchinson pondered. The possibility suggested by Riley was something
that had not occurred to him, but, although he could perceive that such
a thing might be true, a brief bit of meditation led him to reject it
as improbable.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I’ll stake my life that he is Hazelton.”
“We’ve got t’ be sure,” growled the Bancroft manager. “It won’t do to
go ahead until we are. Say, I wouldn’t have him put one like that over
on me for a cool thousan’. I’d be guyed aplenty. Think of us howlin’
about Hazelton and claimin’ that Locke was him, only to have it pan out
that we’d been makin’ a lot o’ jacks of ourselves. I wouldn’t hear the
last of it in a year.”
“Then I’ll find a way to get the proof that he _is_ Hazelton,” promised
Hutch. “But when we’ve got it, what are we going to do? I thought you
had some semblance of a claim which would give us an excuse to get
together and sign an agreement not to use him, either one of us.”
“And have him go over to Fryeburg or Lakeport?”
“No. We could fix that by faking up a claim that, on account of
crookedness on his part, he was suspended. A man suspended can’t be
taken up by another team in the same league; they’ve got to wait for
his release, and we’d both refuse to release him. Settlement of the
matter could be hung up until the season was over.”
Riley thumped the desk again, grinning at his worthy associate in
conspiracy.
“You’ve got a head, Hutch,” he complimented. “You alwus was clever
at framin’ up jobs, and I reckon, together, we could put it through.
If I knowed f’r sure Locke was Hazelton, and had some of his
handwritin’――well, I cal’late I could get a letter faked that would
cook his goose. I know a clever guy who’d do the pen-work. You bring
me proof that he’s Hazelton, together with a workin’ sample of his
penmanship, and we’ll put him down, both shoulders to the carpet. I’ll
have old Cope weepin’ briny tears for his lost wizard.”
“It’s a bargain,” said Hutchinson, rising. “But it must be agreed that
we simply hang him up so that no team in the league can use him. Leave
it to me; I’ll settle the question regarding his identity, and get the
sample of penmanship you want. He’s practically a dead one this minute.”
“If I land that new southpaw, I won’t need him, anyhow,” said the
Bancroft manager. “But don’t lose no time, Hutch.”
“I won’t. I’m too eager to fix him to dally.”
It was late before Hutchinson retired that night, but still he lay
awake a long time, and finally a method by which he could possibly get
hold of some of Tom Locke’s handwriting flashed through his mind.
“Ah!” he breathed. “Now I can sleep. He attended church last Sunday;
if he does so to-morrow, I’ll see if I can’t find a way to look over
the contents of that writing desk in his room. It’s possible I may find
something more than a mere specimen of his chirography.”
With this comforting thought, he soon drifted off into slumber as
peaceful and unbroken as that of a healthy man who has no reason for a
single troubled qualm.