CROOKED WORK
Quick as a panther, Joe had leaped at his friend’s shout of warning.
Not so quickly, however, as wholly to escape injury. Two of the falling
boards struck him a glancing blow on legs and arms and threw him to the
ground.
Jim was at his side in a second and pulled him to his feet.
“Are you hurt, Joe?” he cried, frantic with alarm.
“Nothing to speak of, I guess,” replied Joe, as he steadied himself and
found to his infinite relief that his legs held firm under him. “A few
bruises and scratches, but nothing worse. It was a close shave though.
I’d have been a dead man if that pile had caught me full and square.”
The sleeve of his left arm was torn, and there was a slight cut near
the shoulder from which the blood was oozing. This, however, apart from
bruises, was the extent of his injuries.
“Lucky it wasn’t my pitching arm,” he remarked. “That would have been
hard luck. Hello, Jim, where are you going?”
This last ejaculation was caused by Jim’s action in leaving his side
and rushing round to the front of the half-built house from the
scaffold of which the lumber had fallen.
Jim did not stop to make reply, but scurried as fast as he could to the
street in front of the house. It was deserted, except for a solitary
figure that had already covered a large part of the distance to the
next corner. The man was not in overalls and did not look like a
workman.
Jim hallooed to him and the man looked back. But instead of stopping he
broke into a run.
In a moment Jim was after him like a hare. But the man was now near the
corner, and by the speed he put on showed that he was no mean runner
himself. He reached the corner just as a trolley car, going at a rapid
rate, came dashing down the side street.
With a recklessness that might have cost him his life, the man made a
jump for the rear platform, clutching the rail with his extended hand.
The shock seemed as though it might have wrenched his arm from its
socket. But he held on desperately, and finally drew himself up on the
platform and entered the car.
By the time Jim reached the corner the car was a block away.
Jim shouted and waved his hands, but the conductor was inside,
expostulating with his passenger for the risk he had taken, and did not
see or hear him.
The case was hopeless, and Jim, inwardly raging, gave up the chase and
retraced his steps. Joe, who had come to the front of the house to see
what had caused Jim’s sudden departure, came forward to meet him.
“What’s the big idea?” Joe asked, in some wonderment.
“The idea,” panted Jim wrathfully, “is that I came near getting my
hands on a big rascal and just missed doing it.”
“A rascal?” exclaimed Joe.
“That’s what I said,” replied Jim. “Come to the back of the house and
I’ll show you what I mean.”
“All right, Jim.”
“You thought,” said Jim, “that when that pile of lumber came down it
was an accident. So did I at first. I thought the scaffold had given
way under the weight. But when I glanced at it I saw, as you can see
now, that the scaffold hadn’t broken.”
Joe looked and saw that Jim was right.
“You mean――” he began slowly.
“I mean,” said Jim, “that somebody pushed that lumber over the edge of
the scaffold. And whoever that somebody was, he meant that the falling
lumber should cripple you.”
Joe looked at his chum with rage and horror dawning in his eyes. And
while the full meaning of the dastardly act was sinking into his mind,
it may be well for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding
volumes of this series to leave him and his chum for a moment and tell
who Joe was and by what steps he had reached his present position as
the greatest pitcher that baseball had ever known.
Joe Matson’s first experience on the diamond was gained in the little
town of Riverside in a Middle Western State, where he had been born
and brought up. From early boyhood he had loved the game and displayed
a natural aptitude for pitching. His success in this restricted field
soon made him known as one of the best amateur boxmen of his own and
surrounding towns. His early exploits and the difficulties he had to
overcome are narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled:
“Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars; Or, the Rivals of Riverside.”
In the second volume, “Baseball Joe on the School Nine,” can be noted
the steady progress he was making in pitching skill. The bully of the
school did all he could to throw obstacles in his way. But Joe throve
on opposition and his grit first won and then increased his reputation.
When, a little later, he went to Yale, he found a larger field for his
prowess in the box. It is a hard thing for a newcomer to break into
the ranks of the veteran upper classmen who have gained glory in the
athletic field. But by a singular chance Joe found his opportunity
when the “Princeton Tiger came down to put some kinks in the Bulldog’s
tail.” It was a sadly bedraggled Tiger, however, that went back to his
lair when Joe had got through with him and had chalked up a glorious
victory for Yale.
But Joe, although he stood well in his studies, was not altogether
happy at the great university. His mother wanted him to study for the
ministry, but Joe, although he respected that noble profession, felt
too strongly the call to the outdoor life. He felt that he had it in
him to make good in the ranks of professional baseball, and finally
gained his mother’s reluctant consent to make the venture. His chance
came when a minor league manager, who had been struck with his work in
the game with Princeton, made him an offer. Joe promptly accepted, and
it was not long before his manager learned that he had drawn a prize in
getting a man on his team who had all the earmarks of a star. How Joe
began to climb in professional baseball is told in the fourth volume of
the series, entitled: “Baseball Joe in the Central League.”
In these days of keen-eyed scouts no player can long hide his light
under a bushel, and before long Joe, to his great delight, was
drafted by the St. Louis team of the National League and ceased to be
a “busher.” Here he was brought into competition with the greatest
players of the game, and it soon became apparent that he could hold his
own with any of them.
No one realized this sooner than McRae, the famous manager of the New
York Giants. Several books of this series are devoted to his exciting
experiences with this great team, of which he was still the mainstay
when this volume opens. It was his magnificent work in the box that won
for the Giants the championship of the National League and carried them
to victory in several World Series with the champions of the American
League. After one of his greatest years he went with the team on a
tour about the world, in the course of which he had many hazardous and
thrilling adventures.
During this time he was not only showing phenomenal skill as a pitcher,
but was rapidly growing in repute as a batsman. He was a natural
hitter, timing and meeting the ball perfectly and landing on it so
hard that it sought the farthest corner of the field. Before long the
fans began to crowd the grounds not only to see a ball game but to
“see Matson knock out another homer.” How his batting and pitching
combined made him a national baseball idol is narrated in the preceding
volume of this series, entitled: “Baseball Joe, Home Run King; Or, the
Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record.”
But Joe had also won another victory that he prized above all his
baseball triumphs. He had met and fallen in love with Mabel Varley, a
charming girl whom he had met under romantic circumstances near her
home at Goldsboro, North Carolina. The course of true love did not run
altogether smoothly in his case more than in others, but all attempts
to part them had been triumphantly overcome and at the close of the
previous season on the diamond, Joe and Mabel had been married. Joe
esteemed himself the happiest and luckiest of men.
Joe had as his closest friend, Jim Barclay, a Princeton graduate who
had entered the ranks of organized baseball and joined the Giants as a
“rookie.” Joe had taken to him at once and they were speedily on the
best of terms. Jim had a great deal of pitching ability, and under the
careful tutelage of Joe he had blossomed out into a regular member of
the pitching staff. At the present time he stood only second to Joe
himself as a twirler, and bade fair to become one of the great stars of
the game.
Jim had met Joe’s sister Clara when the latter had come on to see her
brother pitch in one of the World Series games and had lost his heart
at once. She, for her part, had at once conceived a marked admiration
for the stalwart, handsome friend of her brother, and this had soon
ripened into a deeper feeling. So that when Jim the year before had
asked her the momentous question he had got the answer he craved, and
their marriage was to take place as soon as the playing season was over.
Now to return to the two chums as they stood beside the pile of lumber
that a few minutes before had so nearly caused the death of one of them.
“You see then, Jim, that my hunch was right and that what I said to you
a little while ago wasn’t imagination,” said Joe.
“Some one is out to do you, for a fact,” assented Jim soberly. “And all
I ask is that I may get my hands on him for five minutes. Just five
little minutes! I’d make him wish he’d never been born!”
“That fellow you were chasing must have been the one who did it,”
ruminated Joe. “Did you get a good glimpse of him? Had you ever seen
him before?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Jim. “It certainly wasn’t either Hupft
or McCarney, or I should have recognized him at a glance. But that
doesn’t say that he mightn’t have been a tool of theirs. At any rate,
you can be sure that he was the man that actually pushed over that pile
of boards. His very running was a confession of guilt. And, by the way
he ran, I shouldn’t wonder if he were a ball player himself. I’m not so
slow myself, but he almost held his own. What a bit of bad luck it was
that that trolley came along just at that minute.”
“What did he look like?” asked Joe. “Was there anything you could
identify him by if you should happen to meet him again?”
“Well,” said Jim, cudgeling his memory, “I could see that his hair
was light and that his ears stuck out more than most men’s. But I
suppose there are ten thousand men in New York that would answer that
description. He didn’t look like a workman and he didn’t have overalls
on.”
“How did he happen to be Johnny on the spot, I wonder,” mused Joe. “Do
you suppose he’s been following us this morning?”
“Hardly likely,” conjectured Jim. “What is more probable is that he
knew that we were in the habit of practicing in this particular spot.
It hasn’t been any secret, and more than once in the clubhouse I’ve
mentioned what a dandy place we had for morning pitching practice. That
probably led the plotters to reconnoiter about this neighborhood and
get the lay of the land. The scaffold and the pile of lumber carried
their own suggestion. Work on the building has stopped, and there’s
nothing to prevent anybody lurking in the place ready to take advantage
of any chance that might offer itself. Perhaps that fellow has been
hiding in there every day for a week, figuring that some time in the
natural order of things you’d be standing near that scaffold. And that
he didn’t calculate wrongly is shown by what happened this morning.”
“It was an infernal scheme all right,” said Joe. “A cunning one, too.
If that stuff had really landed on me, it would have been put down as
an accident, and no one would ever have been the wiser.”
“Well,” remarked Jim, “a miss is as good as a mile and some good
Providence must have been watching over you this morning. But it gives
you a desperate feeling to realize that enemies are working against you
in the dark and that you have no way of forcing them into the open.”
“They’ll overreach themselves yet,” declared Joe confidently. “There
never yet was a crook that didn’t give himself away at some time or
other. In one way I’m glad this happened. It makes a certainty of what
before had been only a probability. Now we know that somebody is trying
to down me, and it will put us doubly on our guard. But of course I
needn’t tell you, Jim, that Mabel and Clara must never hear a word of
this. It would simply drive them crazy with worry.”
“Trust me,” replied Jim. “We’ll keep this up our sleeves and tell them
nothing about it until we’ve squelched the rascals who have been trying
to get your number. And even then I guess we’d better keep mum. What
they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“Righto,” assented Joe. “But now I guess we’d better have our lunch and
get ready for the game. We won’t have any more time than we need to
reach the grounds.”
“I’m just as glad that it isn’t the turn of either of us to pitch
to-day,” commented Jim. “I guess we’re both a bit too shaken up to be
in our best form. But if my arm is idle to-day my eyes won’t be, and
you can bet that from this time on I’ll watch Hupft and McCarney like a
hawk.”
“Same here,” responded Joe grimly. “And if I get the goods on them, may
heaven have mercy on them――for I won’t!”