Читать книгу Lefty Locke Pitcher-Manager - Standish Burt L. - Страница 6

Jones was rather tall and almost slender, although he had a fine pair of shoulders. His arm was as long as Walter Johnson’s. His face was as grave as that of the Sphinx, and held more than a touch of the same somber sadness. His eyes were dark and keen and penetrating; with a single glance they seemed to pierce one through and through. And they were ever on the move, like little ferrets, searching, searching, searching. As he approached the hotel, he met a man going in the opposite direction, and he half paused to give the man a sharp, lance-like stare. Involuntarily the man drew aside a trifle and, walking on, turning to look back with an expression of mingled questioning and resentment. But Jones had resumed his habitual pace, his appearance that of a person who, already overburdened, had received one more disappointment.

Barney O’Reilley, the shortstop, laughed. “Sure,” said he, “it’s a bit of a jump old Jonesy hands any one he looks at fair and hard.”

Lefty Locke felt a throb of deep interest and curiosity. There was something about the deaf-mute pitcher of the Wind Jammers that aroused and fascinated him instantly. His first thought was that the man might be mentally unbalanced to a slight degree; but, though he knew not why, something caused him to reject this conviction almost before it was formed. Apparently Jones was well named “Mysterious.”

“There’s the bird, Lefty,” said Cap’n Wiley proudly. “There’s the boy who’d make ’em sit up and take notice if ever he got a show in the Big League. Yours truly, the Marine Marvel, knew what he was doing when he plucked that plum in the far-away land of lingering snows.”

A queer sound behind him, like a hissing, shuddering gasp, caused Locke to look around quickly. The sound had come from Weegman, who, face blanched, mouth agape, eyes panic-stricken, was staring at the approaching pitcher. Amazement, doubt, disbelief, fear–he betrayed all these emotions. Even while he leaned forward to get a better view over the shoulder of a man before him, he shrank back, crouching like one ready to take to his heels.

Like a person pleased by the sound of his own voice, Cap’n Wiley rattled on in laudation of his mute pitcher. No one save Locke seemed to notice Weegman; and so wholly fascinated by the sight of Jones was the latter that he was quite oblivious to the fact that he had attracted any attention.

“Smoke!” Wiley was saying. “Why, mate, when he uses all his speed, a ball doesn’t last a minute; the calorie friction it creates passing through the air burns the cover off.”

“Ya,” supplemented Shaeffer, the catcher, “und sometimes it sets my mitt afire.”

“Some speed!” agreed Lefty, as Jones, his head bent, reached the foot of the steps. “He looks tired.”

“He’s always that way after he tramps around a strange town,” said the owner of the Wind Jammers. “Afterward he usually goes to bed and rests, and he comes out to the games as full of fire and kinks as a boy who has stuffed himself with green apples. I’ll introduce you, Locke.”

The southpaw looked round again. Weegman was gone; probably he had vanished into the convenient door of the hotel. Cap’n Wiley drew Lefty forward to meet the voiceless pitcher, and, perceiving a stranger, Mysterious Jones halted at the top of the steps and stabbed him with a stare full in the face. Lefty had never looked into such searching, penetrating eyes.

Wiley made some deft and rapid movements with his hands and fingers, using the deaf-and-dumb language to make Jones aware of the identity of the famous Big League pitcher. Already the mute had lapsed into disappointed indifference, but he accepted Locke’s offered hand and smiled in a faint, melancholy way.

“He’s feeling especially downcast to-day,” explained Wiley, “and so he’ll pitch like a fiend this afternoon. He always twirls his best when he’s gloomiest; appears to entertain the delusion that he’s taking acrimonious revenge on the world for handing him some sort of a raw deal. It would be a shame to use him against you the whole game, Lefty; he’d make your Grays look like a lot of infirm prunes.”

“Spare us,” pleaded Locke, in mock apprehension.

Jones did not linger long with his teammates on the veranda. With a solemn but friendly bow to Lefty, he passed on into the hotel, Wiley explaining that he was on his way to take his regular daily period of rest. Through the open door the southpaw watched the strange pitcher walk through the office and mount a flight of stairs. And from the little writing room Locke saw Bailey Weegman peer forth, his eyes following the mysterious one until the latter disappeared. Then Weegman hurried to the desk and interviewed the clerk, after which he made an inspection of the names freshly written upon the hotel register.

The man’s behavior was singular, and Lefty decided that, for some reason, Weegman did not care to encounter Jones. This suspicion was strengthened when, scarcely more than an hour later, Charles Collier’s private secretary appeared at the little cottage occupied by Locke and his wife, and stated that he had made a change from the Magnolia Hotel to the Florida House, a second-rate and rather obscure place on the edge of the colored quarter.

“Couldn’t stand for Wiley and his gang of bushwhackers,” Weegman explained. “They made me sick, and I had to get out, even though I’m going to leave town at five-thirty this afternoon. That’s the first through train north that I can catch. Thought I’d let you know so you could find me in case you changed your mind about that offer.”

“You might have spared yourself the trouble,” said Locke coldly.

Weegman made a pretense of laughing. “No telling about that. Mules are obstinate, but even they can be made to change their minds if you build a hot enough fire under them. Don’t forget where you can find me.”

Lefty watched him walking away, and noted that his manner was somewhat nervous and unnatural. “I wonder,” murmured the pitcher, “why you put yourself to so much discomfort to avoid Mysterious Jones.”

Directed by Locke, the Grays put in an hour of sharp practice that forenoon. As Lefty had stated, the team was practically comprised of winter visitors from the North. Some of them had come South for their health, too. Three were well along in the thirties, and one had passed forty. Yet, for all such handicaps, they were an enthusiastic, energetic team, and they could play the game. At least five of them had once been stars on college nines. Having never lost their love for the game, they had rounded into form wonderfully under the coaching of the Big League pitcher. Also, in nearly every game they pulled off more or less of the stuff known as “inside baseball.”

They had been remarkably successful in defeating the teams they had faced, but Locke felt sure that, in spite of the conglomerate and freakish appearance of the Wind Jammers, it was not going to be an easy thing to take a fall out of Cap’n Wiley’s aggregation of talent. The self-styled “Marine Marvel” had a record; with players culled from the brambles as he knocked about the country, he had, in former days, put to shame many a strong minor league outfit that had patronizingly and somewhat disdainfully consented to give him an engagement on an off date. Unless the eccentric and humorously boastful manager of the Wind Jammers had lost much of his judgment and cunning during the recent years that he had been out of the public eye, the fastest independent team would have to keep awake and get a fair share of the breaks in order to trounce him.

Locke warmed up his arm a little, but, even though he felt scarcely a twinge of the lameness and stiffness that had given him so much apprehension, he was cautious. At one time, when the trouble was the worst, he had not been able to lift his left hand to his mouth. A massage expert in Fernandon had done much for him, and he hoped that he had done not a little for himself by perfecting a new style of delivery that did not put so much strain upon his shoulder. Still, until he should be forced to the test, he could never feel quite sure that he would be the same puzzle to the finest batsmen that he had once been. And it must be confessed that he had looked forward with some dread to the day when that test should come.

Suddenly he resolved that, in a way, he would meet the test at once. Doubtless the Wind Jammers were batters of no mean caliber, for Wiley had always got together a bunch of sluggers.

“I’ll do it,” he decided; “I’ll go the limit. If I can’t do that now, after the rest I’ve had and the doctoring my arm has received, there’s not one chance in a thousand that I’ll ever be able to pitch in fast company again.”