Читать книгу What the Dark Room Revealed - Roy J. Snell - Страница 5

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Jimmie’s opportunity to begin his study of the “Suspected Six” came sooner than he had hoped. Scarcely had he finished his lunch, eaten out of a paper bag at the back of the caddy-house, when a long, red roadster swung in over the circular drive to stop in front of the club house. Jimmie recognized the car instantly and was all keyed up for a chance at caddying. As the door opened, to his surprise he saw not Blackie Nevers, but Ned Hunter alight from the car. His surprise did not last long, for Blackie slid his long legs out on the running board, to remain half in the car talking to Ned.

There seemed to be something of an argument going on. Jimmie could tell this from the expression on their faces. Blackie was a tense, nervous person. Twice he half rose from his seat to snap his fingers. Jimmie noted this gesture. It might prove helpful in the future.

“All right!” Ned Hunter’s voice rose excitedly at last. “Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll play eighteen holes of golf. If you win the match, I’ll do as you say. If I win, the deal is off.”

“Done!” Blackie sprang out of the car. “Now where is that caddy of mine? They call him Tarzan.”

“Here,—Here I am.” A stocky fellow half boy, half man, sprang forward.

Jimmie knew Tarzan and did not like him. He caddied very little on this course. His home was in the big city. Jimmie suspected that he came out only when asked to do so by some rich man. Then he was sure to get a good tip. He was what the boys called a “California caddy,” one who caddied only for men who can afford to spend their winters in California. He had won the name Tarzan by attempting a Tarzonian feat of leaping from limb to limb in a large maple tree. Having missed a branch, he had come down on his head, barely escaping death.

Jimmie was thinking of this and eyeing Ned Hunter with extra longing when to his joy he heard Ned say:

“Ah! There’s just the boy for this match. Jimmie, how would you like to go round with me?”

“I—I’d sure like to!” Jimmie was stammering for pure joy. His study of six characters was well on its way, for two of them would be well within his sight half that afternoon.

Jimmie had never seen Blackie Nevers play. On his first truly long drive, where par was four, he was astonished at the power there was in that slender, spring-like body. Blackie’s ball sped up and away, a full three hundred yards, to land almost on the green.

“Almost, but not quite.” Jimmie heaved a sigh of relief. Something about Ned Hunter’s movements, or perhaps the unaccustomed tenseness of his face, convinced Jimmie that the deal he had promised should he lose the match, was a very large and important one, and that it was one which he was reluctant to enter into. That made the match an important one, and admiring Ned as all loyal caddies of Indian Hill did, he fairly ached in his desire for Ned’s victory.

As for Ned, once the game had started, he did not appear to care. He always played golf with an ease and grace excelled by none. He swung at the ball as a truly great dancer moves about the floor, with ease and without apparent concern. Having seen Blackie’s splendid shot, he set his ball, took two practice swings, then with no special effort sent his ball a bare two-thirds of the way to the distant green.

As he shouldered his bag of clubs, Jimmie felt disappointed and let down. Ned was not even trying. Or was he?

Blackie’s next shot put him on the green, but that was all. To make the cup from where he lay would be difficult indeed. To his great joy, Jimmie saw Ned lay his ball closer in than Blackie’s. Thus far there was no advantage. Nor was there when the flag had been replaced. Both players had made it in par.

The play that followed was an interesting and beautiful thing to see. Tense, eager, ever ready to throw his whole body into the shot, time and again Blackie outdistanced his opponent only to find in the end that, with all the indifference and grace of a practiced dancer, Ned had placed his ball on the green with the same number of strokes and with no apparent effort.

Such action as this was sure to irritate Blackie. It did. On the fifth hole he swung a little wild and went away into the rough. This cost him a stroke and lost him the hole.

On the next hole, however, Ned fell into a sand-trap. He too lost a hole, and they were again tied. It was thus that matters stood when they reached the seventh green. This was the most deceiving spot on the whole course. The green lay level and inviting, a short three hundred yards away. But it was laid out on a bunker all of twelve feet high. At the back of the bunker were broad sand-traps and beyond these a fence which put a player out of bounds.

Ned Hunter knew of all these things. He had played the hole a hundred times. Why was it then that he could act as he did? Roger Hardy’s pretentious summer home lay beyond that fence. Hardy was a member of the “Suspected Six,” as Jimmie was coming to call them in his own mind. Could it be that Ned had seen something disturbing about the Hardy home? Be that as it may, his shot for the green was just too strong. His ball glided over the green to roll down the bunker and out of sight. When he saw this Jimmie could have cried. Nor did he experience any relief when Blackie’s ball dropped neatly on the green in easy reach of par.

Ned’s ball had rolled down the side of the bunker to stop within a foot of the sand. He was in a bad spot. Jimmie held out the bag of clubs. Ned hesitated, then selected a broad, tilting niblick built especially for sand. With a quick snap he sent the ball spinning upward. For a split second Jimmie thought it would curve out upon the green. Then he stifled a groan as it straightened up to fall back and roll out on the sand.

Ned shrugged his shoulders, then with the same club and after a single practice swing, he shot the ball up and over to a spot not six feet from the cup. He made it in four, but since Blackie had made a birdie on this hole, one under par, Ned was two strokes to the bad and had lost the hole. And yet as Jimmie watched him he thought “You’d never guess that he cares.” The slight slouch of his shoulders, his jaunty swing,—were still the same.

“You can’t lick him,” Jimmie said to Tarzan without thinking.

“Oh, yeah?” was Tarzan’s query. “You wait and see!”

The game from there on was nip and tuck—Blackie lost the ninth hole to regain his lead on the eleventh. Never had Jimmie seen a closer match. Three times in a row they played even, making their holes in par. Blackie continued with his long drives. Ever content with his rythmic swing and a modest strut, Ned marched on down the field.

That Ned’s apparent indifference and his playing with such ease irritated Blackie more and more, Jimmie knew right well. Time and again Blackie went through the motion of snapping his fingers. Then too, he had a habit of dropping onto a bench to rest there, like a bird prepared for flight, then springing up without touching the bench with his hands.

“These are his characteristic gestures,” Jimmie told himself. “I’d know him from a distance in near darkness just from those movements.” When no one was looking he took snapshots of the player going through these motions.

He took three pictures of Tarzan too, though he hardly knew why. Tarzan was a fly-catcher. While waiting for the shots on the green he would sit down on the bench. He was very generous with the flag, allowing Jimmie to take it all the time, sure sign of a slacker. While Jimmie held the flag away from the hole for the shots on the green, Tarzan would allow a fly to light on his knee, then with a quick swing, catch and crush the fly with his bare hand. Once by mistake he took a small bee. That was another story. Jimmie laughed and Tarzan hissed:

“Smart guy, ain’t yuh?” Tarzan sneered. Jimmie made no reply.

Ned was still trailing his opponent by one hole when they prepared to tee off for the fifteenth green. This shot was a “dog leg,” crooked as a dog’s hind leg. You did not see the flag from the teeing off green. You knew it was off somewhere ahead and to the right behind a clump of trees. You shot straight ahead, followed through to your ball, sighted the green, then shot again.

Somehow Ned’s shot was bad. The ball curved off to the right and landed in the rough. Jimmie had no trouble in finding the ball, but he heaved a deep sigh as he saw that his idol was well behind that clump of trees. This meant that he would almost surely lose the hole, and so perhaps the match. The boy had not for a moment lost the impression that this game was being played for large stakes, perhaps the largest he had ever known.

Ned Hunter’s shoulders appeared to droop a little more as he followed Jimmie to the spot. When, however, he stood by the ball and looked at a tall cottonwood tree that in Jimmie’s imagination fairly towered over them, a strange light came into his eyes.

“Jimmie, a niblick.” His words came short and crisp. “The broadest and tiltingest one we have,” he ended with a chuckle.

As he passed him the club Jimmie’s hand trembled.

“Boy, you’re losing your nerve,” Ned warned. “Never do that. I’m going to hit this ball as I never hit one before. You go after the ball like a—well—never mind what—but you go after it hard.”

Jimmie was away before the club clicked, but his keen eye watched the ball curve high and wide, right over the top of that cottonwood tree. It was a magnificent shot. He wanted to stop and cheer, but he sped on.

As he rounded the last tree he saw, with unbelieving eyes, the white spot that must be Ned’s ball, resting on the green. “What a shot!” he fairly shouted.

But what was this? Nearer the ball than he, Tarzan was approaching it with rapid strides. Dark suspicion crossed Jimmie’s mind.

“What a shot!” he sang out.

“Mag-ni-fi-cent.” Tarzan stopped dead in his tracks. “I—I just wanted to see how it laid.”

Jimmie made no reply. He was wondering what Tarzan would have done if he, Jimmie, had not arrived on the scene. He had a notion that he would have found the ball once more in the rough where Tarzan would throw it. As for Blackie, he was standing with back turned, contemplating the clouds. The whole business made Jimmie angry and sort of sick. But he was only a caddy. There was nothing he could do except stand guard over the ball. One thing was sure. Ned had the hole cinched and that made the score a tie. It was any man’s game. And the three remaining shots were to be made straight away in the clear.

“Congratulations, old man.” Blackie held out a hand to Ned after the hole was made. “Lady Luck is on your side.”

“And a fine caddy as well,” Ned grinned, but Tarzan scowled darkly.

The sixteenth and seventeenth holes were halved, all done in par. The eighteenth was a long straightaway shot. To get on in one was next to impossible, yet Blackie tried and all but made it. He gritted his teeth as his ball rolled into the sand just in front of the green.

With an easy, almost careless swing, Ned Hunter sent his ball three hundred yards. On his second shot Blackie made the green but too far off for a sure shot at the cup. Shooting a clean hundred and fifty yards with a No. 7 club, Ned landed eight feet from the cup.

“Keen!” Jimmie exclaimed. “The match is in the bag!”

“Never till the ball clicks in the can.” Ned strode forward.

To Jimmie’s surprise he saw Tarzan hurry forward toward the flag. This was not like him. What did it mean? Jimmie was not long in finding out. Just as he passed before Ned’s ball Tarzan sank his heel ever so lightly in the soft turf.

“He’s heeled that ball!” Jimmie thought in a sudden burst of anger. This meant that a sure shot from Ned’s club would be slowed down by the dent made by Tarzan’s heel in the sod and the hole would be lost.

For once in his life Jimmie felt helpless and hopeless. He was not in a position to warn his player, nor would that be considered good golf. What was to be done? He made up his mind quickly. When Blackie had moved his ball into easy position for scoring, Jimmie turned to Ned and handed him a No. 5 niblick.

The words “No. Not that one,” were on Ned’s lips. Jimmie fairly poked the handle of the club into his hand. Then a light came into the player’s eyes. Did he understand? Jimmie could not be sure. He held his breath as he saw Ned place the No. 5 before his ball, swing it back, then prepare for the shot. Blackie and Tarzan were staring with all their eyes. The club swung back, hung in mid-air for a split second, then descended. The ball moved forward, rose the least bit from the ground, sank down ten inches before the cup, then dropped in with a click that sounded loud in that stillness—right into the cup.

“Good!” exclaimed Blackie. “Couldn’t have done better myself.”

“You sure couldn’t!” thought Jimmie.

At that Blackie turned his back and swinging his club wide and high, sent his ball spinning away into the blue.

“Congratulations, old man,” Blackie turned to Ned. Jimmie thought his tone was a trifle flat, but it was at least a fair try at being a sport.