GETTING A CONFESSION
“It cuts me to the heart, Jim,” said Joe, with deep feeling, laying his
hand affectionately on his chum’s arm. “I can’t tell you how sick I
feel about the whole thing. Nothing that affects you can fail to affect
me. You know that, don’t you, Jim?”
“Of course I do, Joe. You’ve been a brother to me ever since I joined
the Giants. Whatever success I’ve had in my work has been due to your
kindness, your teaching, your encouragement. Don’t think I’ll ever
forget it. I shouldn’t have burst out the way I did, but you can’t know
the misery I’ve endured in the last few weeks. It was bad enough when
I only had a vague suspicion that things weren’t right. Now it seems
more than I can stand. It’s hard, Joe, to see your house of cards come
tumbling to the ground.”
“I know it is, Jim,” replied Joe, with warm sympathy. “But take it from
me, Jim, your house hasn’t fallen yet. I’m sure that Clara is true
blue at heart, and that no matter how things look, there must be some
explanation that will clear up everything.”
“I hope so,” said Jim, though there was not much hopefulness in his
tone. “I’ve got to know soon or I’ll go crazy. You see how this thing
has knocked me out of my stride. I’m not pitching up to my usual form,
and you know it.”
“I’ve noticed it, of course,” said Joe. “And I’ve guessed the reason.
You’ve got all the old stuff, all the strength and cunning, but you
haven’t been able to use it because of the burden on your mind. Even
at that, though, you’ve been turning in more victories than the other
fellows.”
“Which isn’t saying much, the way the team is running now.”
“All the more reason for taking a big brace, old boy!” exclaimed Joe,
giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder. “Try to throw off your
troubles and work your head off for the success of the team.”
“I’ll do it,” promised Jim, as he shook his chum’s hand to bind the
bargain.
“Good,” said Joe, heartily. “And promise me one thing, Jim. Don’t
hint at anything of this in your letters to Clara. Nothing can
really be explained in a letter. Nothing in the world has caused
so much estrangement, so much heartache, as trying to arrange a
misunderstanding by letter. You can’t say just what you want, and what
you do say is never understood just in the way you want it to be. Wait
until you can see Clara face to face, and I’ll bet the whole thing will
be cleared up in five minutes.”
“But that will be at the end of the season!” exclaimed Jim, in dismay.
“Not so long as that, I guess,” said Joe. “I’m going to see if I can’t
by some means get Clara to make a flying visit to New York.” He paused
a moment, and his brow clouded with anxiety. Then he resumed: “Of
course she can’t do it right now because my mother is in too critical a
condition. But if the operation turns out all right and she has a good
recovery, it might be managed. If not, I have something else in mind
that I’ll talk to you about later.”
To Joe’s already overburdened mind was added another worry in the game
with the Bostons the next afternoon.
Jackwell and Bowen, while they had been affected by the general
slump of the team, had given no evidence of a return of the peculiar
nervousness that had marked their actions earlier in the season. But
Joe noticed on that afternoon, the frequent looks at the stand and the
pulling of their caps over their faces for which he had before taken
them to task.
Merton was pitching, and Joe was playing in left. In the fourth
inning, an easy fly came out to Bowen and he made a miserable muff.
Jackwell also made a couple of errors at third. In each case the
blunders were costly, as they let in runs.
“What made you drop that fly, Bowen?” Joe asked, as the Giants came in
from the field.
“I lost it in the sun,” replied Bowen. “At this time in the year the
sun comes over the grandstand in such a way that it’s right in my eyes.”
“Haven’t heard you complain of it before,” remarked Joe, dryly. “For
the rest of this game I’ll play center, and you shift over to left.”
The change was made accordingly. In the eighth inning another fly came
to Bowen and again he dropped it while the crowd booed. The error let
in what proved to be the winning run for the Bostons.
“I want to see you fellows after the game,” said Joe, curtly, to the
two men. “Wait around the clubhouse after the others have gone.”
When the clubhouse was finally deserted by all but the three, Joe
turned to them sternly.
“I’m fed up with this mystery stuff,” he said. “It’s got to end right
here. It lost the game for us this afternoon, but it isn’t going to
lose another. Come across now and make a clean breast of it.”
The two men looked at each other uncertainly.
“You heard me,” said Joe. “Out with it now, or I’ll see that you’re
fired off the team.”
“All right, Mr. Matson,” Jackwell spoke up with sudden resolution.
“I’ll tell you just what the trouble is. Ben and I are afraid that
detectives are after us.”
“Detectives!” ejaculated Joe, with a start. “What are they after you
for? What have you been doing?”
“Nothing wrong,” declared Jackwell, earnestly, and Bowen echoed him.
“Why should they be after you, then?” asked Joe, with a faint tinge of
skepticism in his tone.
“We got mixed up in a shady business,” explained Jackwell, with a look
of misery on his face. “But we didn’t know there was anything wrong
about it till it went up with a bang. You see, Mr. Matson, this is
the way it came about. Last winter, Ben and I were rather up against
it--short of ready money. You know what poor salaries they pay in the
league we came from. We were down in Dallas, Texas, and the oil boom
was on. We saw an ad for men to sell oil stocks, and we answered it.
The fellow at the head of it--Bromley was his name--was a smooth sort
of chap and could talk any one into anything. From his description,
we thought his oil well was an honest-to-goodness well, and we sold
a lot of stock for him. Then came the blow-up, and it turned out
that his well was just a dry hole in the ground. He got out from
under just before the crash came, and I heard he went to Mexico. The
federal officers got after him and all connected with it. We heard that
warrants were out for us, and we skipped North. But until the company
broke we thought they were straight as a string. We wouldn’t have had
anything to do with it if we had thought it was crooked. We were just
roped into it. That’s as true as that we’re sitting here this moment.
All that either of us got out of it was part of our salaries and part
of the commissions that were promised.”