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Title: Baseball Joe, champion of the league

Or, The record that was worth while

Author: Lester Chadwick

Illustrator: Thelma Gooch

Release date: May 31, 2024 [eBook #73737]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Cupples & Leon Company, 1925

Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASEBALL JOE, CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE ***

JOE HAD STARTED AT THE CRACK OF THE BAT AND WAS DOWN TO FIRST LIKE A FLASH.

Baseball Joe
Champion of the
League

OR

The Record That Was Worth While

By LESTER CHADWICK

Author of

“Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars,” “Baseball Joe,
Captain of the Team,” “The Rival Pitchers,”
“The Eight-Oared Victors,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

BOOKS BY LESTER CHADWICK

THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS
BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE
BASEBALL JOE AT YALE
BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE
BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE
BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS
BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES
BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD
BASEBALL JOE, HOME RUN KING
BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE
BASEBALL JOE, CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM
BASEBALL JOE, CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE

THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE RIVAL PITCHERS
A QUARTERBACK’S PLUCK
BATTING TO WIN
THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN
FOR THE HONOR OF RANDALL
THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York

Copyright, 1925, by
Cupples & Leon Company

Baseball Joe, Champion of the League

Printed in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER |  | PAGE
I | A Promising Start | 1
II | The Jaws of Death | 15
III | Consternation | 33
IV | Reggie Turns Up | 42
V | A Surprise Party | 57
VI | Whizzing Them Over | 67
VII | A Bitter Struggle | 76
VIII | Hitting a Homer | 85
IX | Skirting the Edge | 93
X | Quick Punishment | 105
XI | Discomfited Crooks | 117
XII | On the Upward Climb | 124
XIII | A No-Hit Game | 133
XIV | Stealing Bases | 140
XV | A Singular Occurrence | 148
XVI | Knocked Out of the Box | 156
XVII | A Bewildering Mystery | 162
XVIII | The Spider and the Fly | 168
XIX | In the Web | 175
XX | The Mystery Deepens | 180
XXI | Going Down | 186
XXII | Staging a Comeback | 192
XXIII | On the Rampage | 198
XXIV | A Startling Discovery | 204
XXV | The Jinx | 211
XXVI | The Deadly Ray | 216
XXVII | Too Late | 221
XXVIII | Racing Toward the Pennant | 226
XXIX | Rounding Up the Scoundrels | 231
XXX | A Merited Thrashing | 237

BASEBALL JOE
CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE

CHAPTER I
A PROMISING START

“Great Scott, Joe, what are you trying to do?” demanded Jim Barclay, as he threw back the ball he had just caught and wrung the hand that had got the brunt of the impact. “Trying to murder me, or just cripple me for life?”

Joe Matson, “Baseball Joe,” as he was known to idolizing fans all over the country, looked at his comrade with a grin.

“Was it as hot as all that?” he asked.

“Hot!” exclaimed Jim. “I should say it was! It was fairly smoking as it came in. Have a heart. Save those whizzers for the Pirates and the Cubs when the season opens.”

“I’ll ease up a little,” promised Joe. “I didn’t realize that I was putting so much tabasco into the pitching. But the old soup bone feels so good that it’s a big temptation to let it out for all it’s worth.”

“You’re ready for the gong right now,” declared Jim. “You’ve rounded into form sooner than any other member of the team.”

“If I felt any better I’d be afraid of myself,” said Joe, with a smile. “I’m mighty glad of it, for I’ve mapped out a program this year that will keep me hustling to make good on it.”

“Seems to me if you just keep up to the standard of last year, you’ll be all to the merry,” said Jim. “A pitching percentage of over .900 and a batting average that tops the .400 mark. Isn’t it enough to lead the league in both departments? Aren’t you ever going to be satisfied?”

“Not on your life!” replied Joe emphatically. “The minute a man’s satisfied he starts to go back. He may not know it, but he’s sliding all the same. I’ll never be satisfied as long as I am in the game. If I strike out eight men, I’ll be sore because I didn’t make it ten. If I make a base hit, I’ll kick myself because it wasn’t a double, a three-bagger, or a homer.”

“That’s the way I like to hear a man talk,” came in a hearty voice from behind him, and Joe turned to see McRae, the veteran manager of the Giants, who had led his men to more championships than any other in either league. “Put that spirit in your men, Joe, and we’ll just breeze through to another flag this year.”

“Sure as shooting,” chimed in Robson, the fat, rubicund coach and assistant manager, who had come up with McRae and whose closest friend he had been since they had played together on the famous old Orioles. “It’s that spirit or the lack of it that makes or breaks a team.”

“I’ll do my best,” replied Joe, who was not only the star batter and pitcher of the team, but its captain as well. “I’ve got a lot of good material to work with,” he added, as he looked with pride at his men who were batting out flies and grounders and shooting the ball around the bases in practice.

“Yes,” admitted McRae thoughtfully, “it seems to me that we’ve plugged up the weak spots on the team pretty well. We’re stronger at short, for one thing. Young Renton is developing fast and plays with his head as well as his hands. Mechanically, he’s not as good yet as Iredell was, but he can play rings about him when it comes to brain work.”

“He’s a comer, all right,” affirmed Joe confidently.

“Then, too, that exchange we made of Wheeler for Ralston was a good one, I think, even if we did have to throw in a lot of coin in addition,” went on McRae. “That boy can certainly lam the ball, and he has added strength to our outer garden.”

“His coming has given us the strongest outfield in the league, bar none,” replied Joe. “Ralston is a little hard to manage, but he’s there with the goods all right.”

“Jackwell and Bowen ought to be worth more to us than they were last year,” mused McRae.

“They’re championship material,” declared Joe. “They got off on the wrong foot last year. That Texas oil trouble had them buffaloed a good deal of the time. But now that that’s off their mind, they’re going along like a house afire. Jackwell’s a regular Jerry Denny at third, and Bowen is gobbling up everything that comes his way in center. They’re slamming them out with the stick too.”

“Take it by and large,” put in Robbie, as Robson was invariably called, “I don’t remember when the Giants ever had a better balanced team. It’s strong in batting, fielding, base-running and inside stuff. And when it comes to pitching—well, with Joe and Jim here as our first string and Bradley and Merton and Markwith to help them out, to say nothing of the rookies we picked up in the draft, there isn’t a staff in the league that has any license to beat us.”

“It certainly looks good,” assented the cautious McRae. “But don’t bank too much on appearances, Robbie. There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, and if that’s true anywhere, it’s especially true in baseball. I’ve seen a team that looked unbeatable on paper go to pieces in a week. Suppose, for instance, Joe should get his arm broken—all our hopes would go geflooey.”

“May the saints forbid!” exclaimed Robbie with such fervor that Joe could not repress a grin.

“Oh, I guess the Giants would come through all right,” said Joe. “It isn’t a one-man team.”

“No,” agreed McRae. “But it’s nearer to it than it’s ever been before in my experience. There have been many times in the last few years, my boy, when you’ve carried the team on your back. But now it’s time to pick a couple of teams for this afternoon’s practice. Come here, you fellows!” he shouted, waving his hand to the other members of the team, who quickly left their positions and gathered around him.

“Now, boys,” the manager went on, while they gave him close attention, “I haven’t ridden you very hard since we’ve been down here in this training camp because I’m a believer in slow development. I’ve wanted you to get the kinks out of your muscles and the fat off your waistlines before I put you through the hoops.

“But now you’ve got to the point where I want you to play ball as it ought to be played and as you’ve got to play it when the bell rings. So I’m going to pick out two teams this afternoon and I want each team to play against the other as though it were playing the Pittsburghs or the Chicagos. One team will be made up chiefly of the regulars, and they’ll play in the positions they’re expected to play in this season.

“The other team will be made up largely of the rookies and substitutes. For the sake of a name, we’ll call them the Yannigans. And I want them to play their heads off against the regulars and take some of the conceit out of them. I’ll be watching every move and so will Robbie. Any man that lies down on the job will get the rough side of my tongue, and some of you fellows know how rough that is when I get going.”

There was a general grin among the players, who could corroborate this to their cost, for McRae, though a just man, was a severe one.

“I want to even up things a little so that each side will have a chance,” continued the manager. “So I’m going to have Matson pitch for the Yannigans.”

There was an exclamation of satisfaction from the rookies at this, and the rather supercilious smiles that had come on the faces of the Regulars disappeared and they lost some of their confidence.

“Markwith will do the hurling for the Regulars,” concluded McRae.

He then went on to pick out the men who were to play on the second team and assign them their respective places. A coin was tossed to decide which nine should go to the bat first, and luck pronounced against the Regulars, who for the occasion posed as the visiting team.

Joe drew his recruits aside to have a little talk with them before the game began.

“Now, boys,” he said, “the old-timers think we’re going to be easy meat, and we want to give them a surprise party. I’m looking to every one of you to do your level best. Don’t let them block you off the bag or get your goat by gibing at you or by any other tricks of the game. I’m not going to try much for strike-outs, because I want you to do your share of the work and get the practice you need. But I’ll try to tighten up in the pinches. Now get out to your positions and show these fellows what you’re made of. And remember that McRae is watching you like a hawk. Now’s your chance to make good with him.”

Curry came first to the plate for the Regulars and grinned at his comrade.

“Put over a good one, Joe, and I’ll give this punk team of yours a little exercise,” he said.

“Just for that I’m going to make this first one a strike,” laughed Joe.

He wound up with deliberation and the ball whizzed over the plate like a bullet.

It plunked into the catcher’s mitt as Curry swung at it. A laugh went up from the bench, and Curry looked sheepish.

“The fielders of my punk team didn’t get much exercise that time, did they?” asked Joe tantalizingly.

“I hadn’t got set yet,” grunted Curry, as he took a firm toehold for the next ball.

Thinking that Joe would rely on a change of pace, Curry looked this time for a floater or a curve. But again the ball shot over, splitting the plate for a perfect strike. Again the big left fielder swung and missed.

“Did you see that, John?” asked Robbie, bringing his hand down with a resounding slap on McRae’s knee. “That arm of his isn’t an arm at all. It’s a cannon!”

“It sure is,” agreed McRae. “His speed is blinding. But for the love of Pete, Robbie, remember that knee of mine is flesh and blood and keep that big ham of yours off it.”

“I’m going to let you hit this one, Curry,” Joe promised, “but it won’t do you any good.”

He put one over that forced Curry to hit it into the dust. It came on a bound to Joe, who threw to first in plenty of time for an out.

“’Twas just playing with him he was, like a cat with a mouse,” gloated Robbie, as Curry came back discomfited to the bench. “What that boy can do to a batter is a shame.”

Burkett, the burly first baseman, took a ball and a strike and then knocked a grasser to short. It had all the earmarks of an easy out and ordinarily would have been just that. But as luck would have it, the ball struck a stone and took a sudden bound over the shortstop’s head. It rolled out into center and before it could be retrieved Burkett was roosting on second.

“First blood for the Regulars!” he shouted in glee, as he cavorted about the bag.

Joe caught the ball as it was thrown in and turned round to face the plate. But instead of making a half turn, he swung completely around and shot the ball to second and before the startled Burkett could get back to the bag the baseman had put the ball on him.

“How about that first blood?” asked the grinning Joe as Burkett passed him on his way in. “Dried up pretty quickly, didn’t it?”

“Wriggling snakes!” chortled Robbie, while McRae quickly shifted his knee out of reach, “was that quick work or wasn’t it? I’m asking you, John.”

“Greased lightning,” agreed McRae. “His arm is working some of the time. His head is working all the time.”

Larry Barrett, the jovial second baseman, came next, and, hitting the ball on the under side, sent it up in the air for a towering foul that the catcher nabbed without moving from his tracks.

“You made monkeys of us that time, Joe,” laughed Larry, as he went out to his position, “but the game’s young and we’ll get back at you yet.”

Markwith, the lanky southpaw, was on his mettle too, and he made short work of the rookies who faced him, setting them down in one, two, three order.

The game went on with varying fortunes, both sides playing good ball. All the players were on their toes, the Regulars to avoid the ignominy of being beaten by the youngsters and the Yannigans inspired by the ambition to show their manager the best they had in stock.

The Regulars scored one in the third, but the Yannigans came back at them in the fifth on a triple by Joe with the bases full that scored three runs, though Joe himself was left at third because of Ledwith’s inability to bring him in.

In the seventh a temporary case of rattles among the youngsters let in three runs, putting the Regulars one ahead.

Then Joe, who, in accordance with his plan to give his fielders exercise, had made few attempts for strike-outs, settled down and pitched the brand of ball that had made him famous. In the eighth and ninth he struck out six men in succession, not giving them, as Larry complained, “even a sniff at the ball.”

Still the Regulars were a run ahead, and that run loomed large as the Yannigans came in for their last time at bat.

The first man up struck out, and a groan went up from the bench as the rookies saw their hopes go glimmering. But the next moment a cheer arose as young Thompson laced out a clean single to center. Gloom resumed its sway, however, when Markwith put on steam and struck out Bailey.

It was Joe’s turn next, and he came to the bat with a gleam of determination in his eyes that made Markwith uneasy. He had seen that look too often not to recognize what it meant. He knew the execution the old wagon tongue that Joe swung was capable of. So he promptly decided to play safe and take his chance with the next batter.

He signaled to Mylert and sent up a ball that was six feet off from the plate.

“Be a sport, Markwith,” pleaded Joe.

“Not a chance,” grinned Markwith. “I’d rather be a live coward than a dead hero.”

It was the highest kind of a compliment, but Joe was not looking for compliments just then. The one thing he craved was to get that ball within reach.

Another impossible one came over in the track of the first.

“Playing the baby act!” taunted Joe. “The Regulars afraid of the Yannigans!”

“What are you kicking at?” retorted Markwith, as the ball was returned to him. “You’re going to get a base without working for it, aren’t you? What more do you want? Some fellows are never satisfied.”

Another ball came up that was over Joe’s head and that Mylert had to jump to reach.

“A dead game sport,” jeered Joe. “Say, Markwith, you wouldn’t bet that you’re alive.”

Whether Markwith was nettled by the laugh that rose from the bench or whether he really lost control, no one knew. But the next ball came barely within reach and Joe caught it full on the seam near the end of his bat.

There was a mighty crash, and the ball sailed out between right and center almost on a line but rising slightly as it went. On and on it sped as if with wings. Still on and on! Would it never stop?

Bowen and Ralston had started at the crack of the bat with their backs to the diamond, legging it toward the fence, while the Yannigans had leaped to their feet and were yelling like mad.

On the ball went and on until at last it cleared the fence and disappeared from view.

Joe had rounded first like a deer, but as he noted the course of the ball he slackened speed and just jogged around the bases, following his comrade over the plate with the run that won the game for the Yannigans.

McRae and Robbie were all smiles as Joe dented the rubber.

“That was some wallop,” beamed McRae. “I’ll bet there has never been such another one made on these training grounds.”

“Sure, the ball’s going yet,” exulted Robbie. “It won’t stop till it crosses the state line. Joe, my boy, you’re there with the goods. Keep up that kind of batting and pitching all through the season and we’ll have the flag sewed up.”

There was a lot of good-natured chaffing in the clubhouse, as the players changed into their street clothes. The Regulars were a little chagrined and the Yannigans correspondingly elated, but there was none of the glumness that would have followed a defeat by an outside team. When everything was said and done, it was all in the family. And the game had shown that the Giants as a team were in fine fettle and ready for the opening of the championship season.

The game had been quickly played, and it would be some time before supper would be ready in the hotel where the Giants were putting up during their stay in the little southern town where they were going through their spring training. So, instead of going directly back to their quarters, Joe and Jim took a roundabout way that led through the outskirts of the town.

They had reached a sparsely settled district where the houses were few and far between when an exclamation broke from Joe.

“Look!” he said, grasping his friend’s arm and pointing to a house a little way in front of them. “That house is on fire!”

Jim looked in the direction indicated.

“I don’t see any flames,” he said doubtfully. “Maybe it’s just the reflection of the setting sun on the window panes.”

“It’s fire, I tell you!” cried Joe.

There was a crash of glass and a great volume of smoke and flames burst through a window and roared up the side of the building.

The next instant Joe was running toward the house with the speed of the wind with Jim close on his heels.

CHAPTER II
THE JAWS OF DEATH

The burning house was a frame structure, three stories in height, very old in appearance, and so dry that if the flames got a good hold on it it would evidently burn like tinder.

On their way the ball players had to pass a small store over the door of which Joe saw a pay telephone sign.

“You go in there, Jim, and call up the fire department,” he panted. “Then join me as quickly as you can.”

Jim dashed into the store and Joe kept on, his steps quickened still more, if that were possible, by shrill shrieks that came from the imperiled house.

The thick volume of smoke made it difficult at first to detect the owner of the voice, but as he drew nearer Baseball Joe saw the head and shoulders of an elderly woman hanging out of a window of the third story.

She was evidently frantic with fear and her screams were heart-rending.

As Joe reached the house and looked up he saw that she had climbed to the window sill and was supporting herself by holding on to the jamb.

“Don’t jump!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Stay there till I come. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

He looked wildly about him for a ladder. He spied one at a little distance, ran and got it and set it up along the side of the house. But it fell full ten feet short of the window at which the woman was standing.

He left it and ran to the front door. It was locked, but he put his shoulder against it and drove it in.

As the door yielded a terrific blast of smoke came out that fairly knocked Joe off the low porch. He picked himself up and saw at a glance that there was no hope of getting in at that entrance. The interior of the hall was a seething mass of flame in which no human being could live for a minute.

There seemed to be but one chance left, and Joe took it.

“Jim,” he said to his chum, who, having called up the fire department, had just arrived breathless, “stay here and try to keep the woman from jumping until there’s nothing else left to do. Perhaps with the help of these men”—he indicated several who, attracted by the flames, were running toward them—“you can rig up something to catch her in if she should make the leap. But tell her not to jump. Tell her some one’s coming to get her.”

Before Jim could answer Joe started for the back of the house.

The door at the back stood open and dense volumes of smoke were coming from it. But though Joe could hear a fierce crackling, he caught no sight of fire. The flames so far seemed to be confined to the front of the house.

There was a rain barrel half full of water standing near the porch. Joe stripped off his coat, plunged it into the water, and then wound the dripping garment around his neck and face, leaving just room for his eyes to see where he was going.

Then he plunged into the reeking fumes and groped about for a staircase. He was not sure that there was one in the back and he breathed a sigh of relief as his hand touched a banister.

He went up the stairs quickly, guided only by the sense of touch, for his eyes were smarting so from the smoke that they refused their office. Even if they had not done so they would have been of very little use in that dense blackness.

But there was light enough—too much—when he reached the second floor. Here the flames had secured a strong grip. The front rooms were ablaze and red tongues were licking at the stairs that led to the third story.

Joe had hoped that the back staircase would extend to the top of the house. But he found it ended at the second floor. From that landing he had to traverse the hall and make the rest of his journey up through the front of the house.

He drew his wet coat more tightly around his face and made a dash for the stairs. The flames reached out for him. The heat was intolerable. The chances were ten to one that if he ever went up that staircase he would never come down.

But he did not hesitate a second. Up he went, shielding himself as best he could, and found himself on the top floor.

To his right was the room in which the woman was trapped. Luckily she had shut the door after the one terrified glance that had revealed to her the fire below. That shut door had held off the flames temporarily, but now it was beginning to blaze.

Joe burst in. He was just in time, for already the frenzied woman was poising herself for the leap that would have meant maiming or death.

Joe ran to the window and pulled her off the sill.

“Come!” he shouted. “Quick! Here, take this!”

He stripped off the coat and threw it over her head and shoulders.

She was trembling so that she could hardly stand and he had to support her while he adjusted the garment.

“Oh!” she screamed, as he led her toward the door which he had taken the precaution to close after him. “I cannot go down! Everything is afire down there! I will be burned!”

“Not if you do as I tell you,” said Joe hurriedly. “Keep your eyes shut and bury your mouth and nose in this coat. I will hold your arm and we will get down all right.”

He dragged her toward the door and opened it. As he did so the draft from the window drew in a sheet of flame that drove them back.

The woman screamed and sank inert to the floor and Joe knew that she had fainted.

There was not an instant to lose. Joe stooped, lifted her, threw her over his shoulder and staggered out of the door, shutting his eyes for a moment as the flames swirled round him.

He reached the stairs and, holding on to the banisters with one hand while the other held close his unconscious burden, he made his way down, pressing his nose and mouth against the coat so as not to inhale the flames.

As he reached the next to the last step on the stair the charred step gave way beneath him, letting a leg through. By a mighty effort he clutched the banister and drew the leg back and a moment later found himself in the hall of the second story.

His lungs felt as though they were bursting, for he did not dare to draw a full breath. He felt as though he were one blister from head to heel.

But he kept on, summoning all his strength for one supreme effort. His head was reeling from the smoke fumes. If only he were sure of retaining consciousness for one minute longer!

Between him and the top of the back staircase the flames were mounting high. The floor sagged under him as he tottered through the hall. He shut his eyes, dashed through and swung himself around to descend the stairs.

As he did so his foot slipped and he almost dropped his burden. But he recovered himself and staggered on.

Choking, half-fainting, he reached the lower hall. A lightening of the murk showed him the direction of the door. He made one last effort and reached it, reached the blessed sunshine and the outer air and deposited his burden on the porch.

He had won through!

As in a daze he heard the cheers that rang out as he appeared and saw the figures that surrounded him, patted him, supported him, applauded him, beat out the fire that at various places was eating through his clothes, drenching him with water.

What he had done counted for nothing with him, viewed as an exploit. But he was thankful beyond words that he had saved a human life from one of the most terrible of deaths.

And while he is seeking to steady his dizzy head it may be well for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this series to tell who Joe Matson was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story opens.

Joe’s birthplace was Riverside, a thriving little town in a middle western state. His parents were estimable people of moderate means and respected by the citizens of the town, with whom Joe became a prime favorite as he grew up. He early became a leader of the boys of his own age in all kinds of sports, but especially in baseball, for which he developed a natural aptitude. His inclination drew him toward the pitcher’s box, and here he showed such skill and speed, combined with coolness and good judgment, that he became a fixture in that position. His reputation quickly spread beyond the confines of his own town, and under his leadership the local team won many victories from nines of the same age throughout the county. What difficulties he encountered in climbing the first rungs of the baseball ladder and the way in which he overcame them are narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled: “Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars; or, The Rivals of Riverside.”

He won new laurels on his school nine, a little later on, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by the bully of the school. The experience he there gained stood him in good stead when, on the completion of his course there, his parents sent him to Yale. Here he maintained an excellent rank in his studies, but found plenty of opportunities to develop his skill and muscle in the pitcher’s box. By a combination of unlooked for circumstances he was called upon to assume the pitcher’s burden in a critical game with Princeton. The Tiger had come down from old Nassau prepared to claw the Bulldog to bits, but Joe’s great work sent him back to his lair with his tail between his legs and another victory was chalked up for Yale.

Such a light as Joe’s could not be hidden under a bushel, especially with keen-eyed scouts ranging over the country in search of talent. One of them had witnessed the Yale-Princeton game, and shortly afterward Joe got an offer from the Pittston team of the Central League. He accepted it, and soon became known as far and away the best twirler in that organization.

Still he was in “the sticks,” and his ambition reached much higher. It was realized sooner than he had expected when the St. Louis team of the National League put in a claim for him at the end of the season and secured him through the draft.

Now he was at last in “fast company,” and the acid test was applied to him when he was called on to hold up his end against the greatest boxmen of the country. But he refused to be daunted by their reputation, and in his duels with the best won oftener than he lost. His team played behind him with confidence, for they knew that he would never quit until the last man was out.

McRae, the manager of the Giants, himself an old-time player of remarkable ability and one of the best judges of men in either league, laid his lines for Joe and at last succeeded in getting him.

Now at last Joe felt that he had the chance of his life time. He was on the pitching staff of the most renowned team in baseball, and it behooved him to make good. And this he did to such purpose that he soon became the mainstay of the team.

In baseball parlance, Joe “had everything,” curves, drops, hops, slants and speed. But it was not only his arm of steel and his eye of a hawk that made him a wizard in the box. Those were physical assets, indispensable to be sure, but valuable only as a foundation. What made him the greatest pitcher of the national game was the brain that dominated his nerves and muscles. As McRae had said, he played with his head all the time. He studied the characteristics of every man who faced him, learned his weaknesses and his strong points, what he could hit and what could fool him; and what he learned he never forgot. He was unequaled in outguessing the batter. Many a game that with any other pitcher would have been absolutely lost he had put in the winning column by his quick thinking, which led him to some unexpected move that had never been seen before on the diamond.

Nor was the prowess that had several times led the Giants to the championship of the National League and to victory in the World Series confined wholly to the pitching mound. Joe had developed into the leading batsman of his circuit. When he hit the ball, it traveled. His timing was perfect, and when with all the strength of his mighty shoulders he “leaned” against the ball, it was usually ticketed as a homer. Soon it became a habit with the crowds to pack the baseball parks in the various cities of the league not only to witness his wonderful pitching but to see Baseball Joe “knock another homer.”

Joe Matson had won prizes in other fields than baseball. He had saved a charming girl, Mabel Varley, from serious accident in a runaway, and the acquaintance so romantically begun had ripened into a deeper feeling that led them to the altar. Their married life was ideal.

Joe’s pretty sister, Clara, had been introduced by him to Jim Barclay, a Princeton man, who was also a pitcher on the Giant team and second only to Joe himself in skill. The young folks had fallen in love and had been married at the end of the season just preceding the opening of this story.

How Joe had been made captain of the Giants when they were in a slump, how he brought them out of it and led them to victory, how he thwarted the attempts of enemies to overcome him, are told in the preceding volume entitled: “Baseball Joe, Captain of the Team; or, Bitter Struggles on the Diamond.”

And now to return to Joe as he sought to control his reeling brain after his escape with the woman from the burning house.

“Are you badly hurt, old man?” asked Jim, in a voice husky with emotion.

“I guess not,” gasped Joe. “I feel pretty well done up and I’m blistered in various places, but nothing of any account. I’ll be all right as soon as I can get my breath back. How’s the woman getting on?”

“They’re attending to her now,” replied Jim, pointing to a doctor and a woman who were ministering to her on the grass a little distance away. “The fright has probably hurt her worse than anything else. You had that coat of yours wound so tightly over her head and shoulders that she couldn’t have got burned much.”

At this moment the doctor rose and came over to Joe and Jim. His professional air gave way to one of surprise as he looked at the stalwart young hero of the occasion.

“Baseball Joe!” he exclaimed.

“You seem to know me,” remarked Joe, with a smile.

“Who doesn’t?” replied the doctor. “Many’s the time I’ve seen you pitch when I was at my studies in New York. So it was your million dollar arm that carried this woman downstairs!”

“I’m afraid you rate the arm too highly,” replied Joe, grinning.

“Not a bit of it,” returned the doctor, a young man named Templeton. “It’s earned more than that for the Giants. And now, in addition to saving many a game, it’s saved a life. It’s a magnificent thing you’ve done, Mr. Matson. I only hope you haven’t been seriously injured in doing it. Suppose you let me look you over?”

Joe submitted, and a hasty examination seemed to prove that his burns were superficial, though the doctor looked long and somewhat gravely at his pitching arm.

“Scorched!” he muttered to himself.

“Nothing serious there, is there, doctor?” asked Joe. “I need that arm in my business, you know.”

He tried to speak lightly, but his heart sank as he realized what a terrible calamity it would be to him if that mighty pitching arm were put out of commission.

“I don’t think so,” replied the doctor, but not with the conviction in his voice that Joe would have liked to hear. “But you’ll have to let up on your practice for a time and take the best of care of it. I’ll give it a temporary dressing now and drop around later at your hotel, if you say so, to go over it more carefully.”

He bandaged the arm with deftness and skill.

“You’d better get right back to your hotel now,” he recommended. “You’ll feel the reaction from the strain pretty soon, and you’ll need to rest for a day or two. There are a number of cars around, and the owner of any one of them will be proud to give you a lift. I’d take you in mine, but I’ve got to take the woman over to the hospital.”

“Who is she anyway?” asked Joe. “Do you know her?”

“Slightly,” replied Doctor Templeton. “Her name is Bultoza. A foreigner of some kind, though she speaks fairly good English. She and her husband have lived here for some time. He’s a queer kind of chap, but he’s gone to New York, I believe, where she intended to join him. That old house has been condemned and was going to be torn down that another one might be built on its site, and the other families that were living there have moved away. That’s the reason she happened to be the only occupant. Well, the fire has done the work now, and there won’t be much left of the old house to be pulled down.”

At this moment a woman detached herself from the group gathered about Mrs. Bultoza and came over to Joe.

“She wants to see you and thank you for saving her life,” the messenger said.

Joe would have liked to escape this, for he was as modest as he was brave.

“Better go,” urged the doctor as Joe hesitated. “It will relieve her mind and help in her recovery from the shock.”

Thus adjured, Joe, with Jim and the doctor, went over to the group, which parted to let them through.

Mrs. Bultoza, her face and hands bandaged, was propped against a tree. She had a swarthy complexion that betrayed her foreign origin. Joe saw that she was no longer young.

Her eyes, which were kindly and intelligent, brightened as she looked at Joe and then filled with tears.

“How can I thank you?” she cried brokenly, as she stretched out her hands to him. “You are so brave! So brave! You saved my life. And you did not know me! But you went through the fire for a woman you did not know. Oh, I shall pray God every day to bless you, you brave young man!”

“That’s all right,” said Joe, greatly embarrassed, but touched by her fervent gratitude. “I’m glad I happened to be near by. And I hope you will soon be all right again.”

She reiterated her thanks, and it was with some difficulty that Joe at last was able to get away.

He and Jim accepted an offer of one of the many cars that were eagerly put at their service and were whirled away to their hotel.

“I must look like something that the cat dragged in,” remarked Joe, as he gazed ruefully at his discolored and bedraggled clothing.

“Like a tramp,” admitted Jim, with a grin. “But heroes aren’t supposed to be dolled up like an Adonis.”

“Let’s try to slip in through the back door of the hotel and get up to our rooms without being seen,” suggested Joe.

“All right,” agreed Jim. “Though I’m afraid there isn’t much chance,” he added. “The car will have to pass the front in trying to get around to the side, and a bunch of the boys are sure to be hanging around the veranda.”

“I only hope that I can keep this thing from Mabel,” said Joe, as his thoughts recurred to his young wife. “She’d worry her heart out for fear that I was hurt worse than I’d admit.”

“You can’t keep it from her, old boy,” declared Jim. “That’s one of the penalties of fame. You’re as much in the public eye as the President of the United States. The local paper here will tell all about it in screaming headlines. And do you suppose the newspaper correspondents here with the crowd are going to pass up a nice juicy item like that? Not on your life. To-morrow morning the sporting page of every newspaper in the country will have a big story of how Baseball Joe, the idol of the fans, the mainstay of the Giants, the most famous pitcher the game ever knew, climbed the stairs of a burning house and brought an old woman on his shoulder through the flames. Swell chance you’ll have to keep it from Mabel! And, after all, why should you want to? She’ll be worried of course, but she’ll be as proud as Punch. Though, heaven knows, she doesn’t need to be any prouder of you than she is.”

“I suppose it will be impossible to keep the thing from her,” conceded Joe, “and I guess the best thing I can do is to send her a night letter telling her positively that I’m all right. But there’s another thing,” he added, with a shade of anxiety. “How do I know that I am all right? The doc didn’t seem to be any too sure about my pitching arm. If that arm gets out of kilter, I’m done for.”

“And so are the Giants,” said Jim soberly. “It would kill their pennant chances right at the start. You don’t realize, Joe, with that confounded modesty of yours, just what you mean to the team. Their greatest pitcher, their heaviest hitter, and the cleverest captain that ever wore baseball shoes. But there,” he added, with a forced assumption of lightness, “we’re not going to admit even the possibility of anything being the matter with your arm. It’s probably only a superficial burn that hasn’t affected any of the muscles, and in a few days you’ll be shooting them over again as fast as ever. We’ll have Dougherty give the arm the once over as soon as you get to your room. Here we are at the hotel now.”

As they had conjectured, a number of the Giants were lounging on the porch waiting for the supper gong.

Joe and Jim pressed back as far as they could into the tonneau in the hope of avoiding recognition, but not far enough to escape the eagle eye of McRae.

“Hello!” he shouted in surprise, as the auto did not stop in front of the hotel but made for the entrance that led to the back. “Where are you fellows going?”

Joe threw up his hands, literally as well as figuratively.

“It’s all off!” he exclaimed, as he requested the driver to stop.

He and Jim jumped out and a shout went up from their teammates as they noted Joe’s appearance.

McRae rushed toward him in consternation.

“What’s the matter, Joe?” he shouted. “Are you hurt? Don’t tell me that you’re hurt!”

CHAPTER III
CONSTERNATION

McRae’s exclamation of alarm was echoed promptly in various forms by Robbie and the members of the Giant team, who came crowding around Joe and Jim.

“No, I’m not hurt, Mac,” replied Joe reassuringly, “though I don’t wonder you think so, from the way I look. That is, I’m not hurt seriously. A bit of a burn and blister here and there, that’s all. Wait till you see the supper I pack away and you’ll know I’m all right.”

“But what has happened, anyway?” asked McRae.

“Oh, I got a bit too near to a burning house down there a way and got singed,” returned Joe.

“Listen to him!” exclaimed Jim. “Here’s the straight of it. Joe went up through a house that was burning like tinder, got an old woman who was trapped in one of the rooms, threw her over his shoulder and made his way down with her through the flames and smoke. Outside of that he didn’t do anything!”

“Just like the old rascal!” exclaimed Robbie, with a glint of admiration in his eyes. “Always Johnny on the spot when there’s anything to be done.”

“But you couldn’t do all that without getting hurt,” declared McRae. “You’re not trying to cover up anything from me, are you, Joe?”

“Not at all, Mac,” returned Joe. “My lungs feel all right, so I know I didn’t inhale any of the flame. And I kept my eyes shut at the worst places. The only hurts I’ve got are a few superficial burns here and there that don’t amount to anything. I’ll be right as a trivet in a day or two.”

“But your arm, your pitching arm?” persisted McRae. “Was that burned at all?”

“Scorched a bit,” replied Joe. “But a doctor down there dressed it. He’s coming around to take another look at it later on.”

“We won’t wait for him,” declared McRae. “Dougherty,” he said, addressing the trainer of the club, who had joined the group, “come right up with Joe to his room and look at that arm. I’d rather have your judgment of it than that of any doctor round here.”

Joe and Jim, together with McRae, Robbie and Dougherty, repaired at once to Joe’s room where the latter was at once subjected to the most careful examination.

“Absolutely all right except the arm,” pronounced Dougherty at last.

“Except the arm!” McRae fairly shouted. “Why, man, that’s everything!”

“I don’t mean that there’s anything serious with that either,” explained the trainer. “I only mean that I’m sure the other burns don’t amount to anything, while I’m not so sure about the arm. It depends on how deep the burn went. Probably it didn’t go deep enough to affect or twist any of the muscles. But we’ll have to wait a little while until the inflammation subsides before we can be absolutely certain.”

He made Joe flex the muscles, which the latter did with so little appearance of pain or flinching that McRae was partially reassured. Then the doctor, who had come in, dressed the arm with exceeding care and went away and the anxious party adjourned to the dining room.

But the clean sweep that the hardy athletes commonly made at the table was not in evidence that night. Their usual appetites were lacking. The mere possibility that anything could have happened to their kingpin twirler to mar his effectiveness was felt by each as a personal calamity.

They all felt that Joe was the keystone of the Giant arch. If that keystone gave way, the whole structure threatened to fall.

McRae and Robbie scarcely ate anything and soon left the table to seek a secluded corner of the porch where they could brood undisturbed over their troubles.

“Just when everything was going as smooth as oil this thing had to happen,” growled the manager, as he viciously bit off the end of his cigar. “What was it I told you just this afternoon? That if Joe should break his arm all our hopes would go geflooey. The greatest pitching arm that baseball ever knew!”

“There, there, John,” soothed Robbie. “Don’t be so quick in borrowing trouble. Joe hasn’t broken his arm, and by the same token he probably hasn’t hurt it at all, at all. Just keep your shirt on and be patient for a day or two. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

“I hope so,” said McRae. “But if Joe doesn’t come through all right it’s all up with the Giants for this season as far as the championship is concerned. I was counting on him to turn in thirty victories this year, and that, with what the other pitchers could do, would practically cinch the pennant.”

“To say nothing of the other games he’d win with his bat on the days he wasn’t pitching,” added Robbie. “He’s as much of a wonder with the stick as he is in the pitcher’s box.”

“Oh, why couldn’t it have been his left arm that was hurt, if it had to be either!” groaned McRae.

“Be thankful, John, that ’tis no worse,” adjured Robbie. “Suppose he’d never come out of that house alive. And from what Jim said, it was just a matter of touch and go. I tell you, John, that boy is a regular fellow to risk his life for an old woman he’d never seen before.”

“Of course he is,” agreed McRae. “And of course I wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything else than he did. All the same, I wish that house hadn’t taken a mind to burn.”

While this colloquy was taking place on the veranda, another was going on in Joe’s room, where he and Jim had gone directly from the table in compliance with Dougherty’s command that Joe should go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.

On the way Joe had stopped at the clerk’s desk and sent a long night letter to Mabel and another to his mother, reassuring them against any lurid accounts that they might see of the affair in the next day’s papers.

“Pretty well all in, old boy,” remarked Jim solicitously, as Joe dropped into a chair after reaching the room occupied by him and his chum.

“I am, for a fact,” admitted Joe. “The reaction, I suppose. Tired physically and worried a little mentally.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jim in quick alarm. “You don’t really think that you’ve seriously injured your arm, do you?”

“I try not to,” returned Joe, with a forced smile. “But naturally I can’t help feeling anxious about it. That arm brings me in my livelihood. I suppose I feel somewhat as a violinist might who had hurt his fingers and didn’t know whether they were going to be permanently crippled or not.”

“But you worked your arm without any apparent pain when Dougherty asked you to!” exclaimed Jim.

“‘Apparent’ is right,” rejoined Joe. “But I don’t mind admitting to you, old boy, on the dead quiet, that it hurt me like the mischief all the same. But good old Mac was so worried that I didn’t have the heart to add to his burdens. So I just grit my teeth and stalled through.”

“Of course, though, that may not have meant anything,” said Jim comfortingly, though his own heart had sunk down into his boots with apprehension. “The arm was naturally inflamed from the burn and any motion would have hurt it. But that doesn’t say that it won’t be all right as soon as the inflammation subsides.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself,” said Joe. “All the same there’s a great big if behind it, and I can’t help thinking what it may mean if the worst comes to the worst.”

“There isn’t going to be any worst,” declared Jim stoutly. “In a couple of days this will be only like a bad dream and we’ll be laughing over the worry we’ve had for nothing.”

“Here’s hoping that you’re a true prophet,” said Joe. “Well, I’m not going to grizzle over it anyway. It isn’t for myself I care so much. It’s what it will mean to Mabel! To mother, too, and to Clara and to dad. They’d take it to heart more than I would myself. And then—there’s the Giants!”

“It would be a terrible blow to the chances of the team,” Jim admitted. “It would mean more to them than the loss of any other three men. Why, you could take the Yannigans, just as you did this afternoon, and with you pitching and batting you could lead them to the pennant.”

“I’m afraid it’s just your friendship that’s talking now,” deprecated Joe. “But honest, Jim, the old team is more to me than anything on earth except my family. My heart is bound up in its success. They’ve done an awful lot for me. They’ve given me my chance, they’ve backed me up, they’ve helped me make whatever reputation I have. And to think of failing them now—well, I don’t dare think of it.”

“I know just how you feel about it,” replied Jim sympathetically. “All the same, don’t forget that if you owe a lot to the Giants, they owe still more to you. There have been years when they wouldn’t have been anywhere at all in the race if it hadn’t been for you.

“And don’t forget, Joe,” his friend went on earnestly, “that even if your right arm did go back on you, that wouldn’t put you out of baseball. What’s the matter with that left arm of yours? In a little while you could develop that so that you would become as great as a southpaw as you are as a right-hander.”

“I suppose I might do something with it,” said Joe, brightening a little. “By Jove, I hadn’t thought of that!”

“And even leaving that out of the question,” pursued Jim, “there’s that old noddle of yours, full of baseball brains and able to out-think any other on the diamond. Why, there’s any number of clubs in the league that would fight each other to a frazzle to get you as manager at any salary you might want to ask. It would be a matter of writing your own contract.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose I should starve,” said Joe, with a whimsical smile. “But it would be a mighty wrench to get out of the active part of the game. The roar of the crowds, the thrill of striking out a batter with the bases full, the crash of the bat when you knock out a homer! Gee, it’s the breath of life!”

“Well, you’re going to draw in a good many of those breaths yet,” declared Jim, with decision. “Now, let’s cut out all the gloom stuff and you get to bed with the belief that everything’s going to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. McRae would have a fit if he knew I’d kept you up talking.”

Just then there came a knock at the door.

“Who on earth can that be?” asked Jim, a little impatiently.

“A bellboy perhaps,” surmised Joe. “Better let him in and see what he wants. Come in,” he called.

The door opened, and in the doorway stood framed a resplendent vision, a young man dressed from head to foot in the very height of fashion.

CHAPTER IV
REGGIE TURNS UP

“Reggie!” came from Joe and Jim in chorus as they made a rush for the visitor.

The newcomer smiled affably as Joe and Jim grasped his hands, slapped him on the back and drew him boisterously into the room, where they plumped him into a chair.

“My word!” he ejaculated, in an accent that he tried to make as English as possible. “Might almost suppose you fellahs were glad to see me, eh what?”

“You’re as welcome as the flowers in spring, Reggie, old boy,” declared Joe. “What good wind blew you down this way?”

“Guv’nor had a bit of business that needed attendin’ to in New Orleans,” explained Reggie. “Lot o’ tiresome blighters I had to see, dontcha know, an’ when I got through I felt no end ragged an’ thought I’d freshen up by takin’ a run down here an’ see what my bally brother-in-law an’ the Giants were doin’.”

He carefully crossed his legs so as to interfere as little as possible with the knife-edged creases in his trousers, settled back in his chair and beamed on them.

Reggie Varley was Mabel’s brother and consequently Joe’s brother-in-law. Their first meeting had not been propitious, but when Joe learned that Reggie was Mabel’s brother, he was so deeply in love with that young lady that he was ready to pardon and forget the shortcomings of any of her relations. So he tolerated Reggie at first for Mabel’s sake and later on was surprised to find that he had developed a real liking for Reggie on his own account.

For when he once got below the surface he found that Reggie was a genuinely good fellow, despite his little foibles and affectations. His chief defect, and after all not a very serious one, was his love of clothes. He was always dressed, as he was now, in the very extreme of fashion, fawn-colored gloves, creamy spats, cut-in coat and costly tie, the whole finished off with a cane and a monocle. He was inordinately fond of anything English, and cultivated an accent that he thought would pass current in London and stamp him as one to the manner born.

But beneath these superficial oddities, that often provoked a smile from Joe and Jim, he was kindly, genial, honorable and clear-headed in business affairs. He was devotedly attached to his sister and his brother-in-law. Then, too, he was an ardent baseball fan, and that in Joe’s eyes was sufficient to cover his trifling shortcomings. He and Joe got on famously together, and Reggie’s pride and delight in Joe’s prowess on the diamond were only second to those of Mabel herself.

But now a look of apprehension came into Reggie’s eyes as he noticed Joe’s bandaged arm.

“What’s the matter with the old wing?” he asked. “Nothing serious, I hope, eh, what?”

“I hope not,” replied Joe, and then in response to Reggie’s eager questioning told him the story of the afternoon.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Reggie, with instant sympathy. “Too bloomin’ bad, old topper. Mabel will go off her head when she hears of it.”

“I’ve already sent her a night letter telling her all about it,” replied Joe. “And mind, Reggie, if you see the dear girl or write to her, you want to make light of the whole affair. Ten to one it will be all right in a day or two.”

“I’ll keep mum,” promised Reggie. “My word! it’s too bad that you should come a cropper at the very beginnin’ of the season. Guess it’s worried McRae no end, what?”

“He’s as glum as an undertaker,” put in Jim. “And no wonder, for if anything happens to his star twirler it will make it mighty hard sledding for the Giants.”

“By the way, boys,” said Reggie, “speakin’ of the Giants—I noticed something mighty queer while I was in New Orleans. The bettin’ was heavily against the Giants that they don’t cop again this season.”

“I don’t see why,” remarked Joe. “We’re stronger this year than we were last. We’ve got rid of some of the dead wood and we’ve got a lot of new men that look like the real thing.”

“That’s what I think,” replied Reggie. “And that’s what made the bettin’ look bally odd to me. Looked as though the bookies had something up their sleeves.”

“They may be plotting something that they think will put us out of the race,” surmised Joe. “It’s been tried more than once, but they didn’t put it across. We’ve downed the crooks before, and I guess we can do it again. But let’s talk of something pleasanter. How long are you going to stay with us, Reggie?”

“Oh, a couple of days or so,” replied Reggie. “I’m hungry to see a little baseball, and I thought I’d hang around a little and see how the team sized up. And I was especially keen to see you swing the old soup bone once more. But I suppose this nasty accident puts that out of the question.”

They talked a little longer and then Reggie said he must leave them for his own room, which was on the same floor of the hotel.

“Guess I’ll let you woo the balmy,” he said, as he rose and smoothed down his trousers. “Hope you’ll feel rippin’ in the mornin’. ’By.”

The pain of his burns kept Joe restless a good part of the night, and it was nearly morning before he fell into a heavy sleep from which Jim refused to rouse him, so that it was nearly nine o’clock before he opened his eyes.

He wondered drowsily why he woke with such a feeling of oppression instead of the usual light-heartedness with which he welcomed the day. Then he remembered.

His arm! That arm which meant so much to him!

He raised it, flexed it.

A thrill of delight ran through him as he realized that he did this without pain. The soreness of the night before had gone. Apart from a little tenderness, it felt almost as good as ever.

He sprang from his bed with a whoop, bathed, shaved, dressed, and went down the stairs to the dining room three steps at a time with a light in his eyes and a whistle on his lips.

McRae and Robbie were waiting for him with two professional looking men, and the gloom on their faces lightened as they noted his joyous mien.

“How are you feeling, Joe?” asked McRae eagerly.

“Fine as silk,” laughed Joe. “The old wing feels as though I could go in and pitch a no-hit game.”

“Glory hallelujah!” cried McRae.

“Ye can’t keep a good man down,” exulted Robbie, his red face glowing with delight.

“Perhaps there was no need of our coming after all,” remarked one of the strangers, with a smile.

“That reminds me,” said McRae. “Joe, these are two of the finest specialists in this part of the country, Doctors Wilson and Koerner. We telegraphed to them last night, urging them to come by the first train, for I couldn’t take any chances on the local talent, good as that young man seemed to be, when it came to dealing with that arm of yours. What these gentlemen don’t know isn’t worth knowing, and they’re going to examine you right away.”

“Let Mr. Matson have his breakfast first,” said Doctor Wilson, with a genial smile. “Then we’ll put his arm through the third degree.”

“Sounds rather ominous,” remarked Joe, “but I’m betting that you’ll give me a clean bill of health.”

He ate heartily to make up for his abstention of the night before, and then went with the specialists and the local doctor to his room, accompanied by Jim, Reggie, McRae and Robbie, all on edge to hear the doctors’ verdict.

The examination of the specialists was thorough, and when they had finished their decision was unanimous.

“Purely superficial,” said Doctor Koerner, as spokesman for both. “Not a thew or sinew or muscle is affected. The arm is absolutely as good as it ever was.”

A shout arose from the group of baseball men that swelled into a perfect yell of delight. They surrounded Joe and pounded and mauled him hilariously until he laughingly protested that they’d make him a cripple anyway if they didn’t let up. The medical men looked on, smiling understandingly, as they packed up their testing instruments and prepared to leave.

Good news travels fast, and the anxious crowd of Giants waiting below stairs for the verdict knew perfectly well the significance of the happy tumult above. They tore upstairs and piled into the room with little ceremony, a laughing, noisy, rapturous bunch, lifted in a moment from the depths of gloom to the heights of joy. They could scarcely have been more elated if they had just won the championship.

It was some time before the hullabaloo subsided and his teammates filed out of the room, filled with new heart and hope, leaving Joe with those who had been there during the examination.

“What the doctors say has lifted a thousand tons from my mind, Joe,” said McRae. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night worrying over it.”

“Same here,” echoed Robbie. “It seemed as if bad luck had handed us a knockout blow right at the beginning of the season. But, glory be, we were only borrowin’ trouble after all. You’re dead sure about it, doctor,” he added, appealing to Doctor Wilson, who was standing next to him.

“As sure as we can be of anything,” replied the doctor. “All Mr. Matson has to do is to let his arm rest for two or three days until the inflammation has wholly disappeared, and he’ll be ready to go in and pitch the game of his life. He had, of course, better let Doctor Templeton dress the arm. But there is nothing seriously wrong.”

“I hope you gentlemen will have a chance to see him pitch,” said McRae. “If you should be in New York or in any city of the circuit when the Giants are playing, just ring me up and I’ll see that you have the best box in the stand.”

They thanked him and, after shaking hands all around, departed, each of the specialists with a handsome check in his pocket that McRae made out on the spot. Had it been ten times as much he would not have cared, so jubilant was he at their verdict in the case of his star pitcher. Doctor Templeton’s check would come later.

“Now let them bring on their Pirates and their Cubs and all the rest of them,” exulted Robbie, as he and McRae went out on the veranda, which had a much more cheerful aspect for them now than it had had the night before. “An’ say, John, I was just thinking—” He hesitated. “Just thinking——”

“Well, go ahead and spill it, you big stiff,” said McRae jovially, as he settled down in his seat.

“Why, it’s this way,” said Robbie, whose heart was almost as big as his body—which is saying a great deal. “Why not give Joe a little vacation, now that we’re so near the end of the training season? He’s on edge now, as you can see by the way he struck out six men in succession in the last two innings yesterday. And as for his batting eye—well, you saw for yourself how that ball traveled.”

McRae pondered the matter a moment.

“I don’t see why not,” he remarked slowly. “As you say, he’s right at the top of his form just now, and if he overtrains he might go a little stale. Then, too, he’s got to follow the doctor’s directions and not pitch for a few days anyway. And of course we know the kind of care he takes of himself, whether he’s under our eyes or not. I guess you’re right, Robbie. He can have a good rest up in New York and be all ready to jump in when the bell rings.”

“I wasn’t thinking of New York exactly,” said Robbie.

McRae looked at him in astonishment.

“What did you mean then?” he inquired.

“Well, it’s like this, John,” explained Robbie a little sheepishly. “I was standin’ by him when he sent that night letter to his wife last night. He was trying to reassure her—but you know what women are, John. She’ll be scared to death for fear things are worse than he admits they are. And Joe will know she’s scared, and that will make him restless and unhappy. An’ if he’s feeling that way it won’t do the Giants any good. So I just thought if we sent him to Riverside first—let him stop off there for a day or two an’ see Mabel and let her see for herself there’s nothing the matter with him—why, don’t you see? it will be a good thing all around, especially for the Giants.”

McRae burst out laughing.

“Especially for the Giants!” he repeated. “Robbie, you soft-hearted, romantic old rascal, all you’re thinking of is to give those two young folks a chance to see each other.”

Robbie grinned self-consciously.

“Well, s’posin’ I am? Who is there in the world that deserves it more than that young couple? We know them both. Joe’s one of the finest lads that ever wore shoe leather, and Mabel’s a peach, an’ each one of them thinks that the sun rises and sets in the other. You were young yourself once, John.”

“And I’m not so old now,” rejoined McRae. “Go ahead and get the transportation. We’ll give Joe a little surprise party.”

“That’ll be fine!” exclaimed Robbie, highly gratified. “And say, John, I was just thinkin’——”

“For the love of Pete!” broke in McRae, “that confounded thinking of yours is getting me scared. What do you want me to do now? Give the whole team a lay-off from training?”

“Not at all, not at all!” protested Robbie. “But—but there’s Jim Barclay now, just married, you know, at the end of last season to Joe’s sister, an’ there’s the two little women, Mrs. Joe and Mrs. Jim, both in the one house visitin’ Joe’s folks. I was just thinkin’——”

“Yes, just thinking!” exclaimed McRae with sarcasm, though there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Just thinkin’,” went on Robbie, “of Joe breakin’ in there to surprise them an’ of the kind of heart-warming welcome he’d get from Mrs. Joe, an’ of course from Mrs. Jim, too, seein’ she’s Joe’s sister, an’ then how Mrs. Jim would go peekin’ around Joe to see if he didn’t have Jim concealed about him anywhere and then the look in her pretty eyes when she saw that there was no Jim at all, at all——”

“I suppose all this is for the good of the Giants, too?” remarked McRae, trying to frown but not succeeding very well.

“Sure thing!” maintained Robbie stoutly. “Don’t you remember, John, how Jim was in the doleful dumps last year an’ losin’ more games than he won, an’ how you gave him a few days off to go down to Riverside, an’ how he came back an’ trimmed the other teams as fast as they came on?”

“Robbie, you old stiff, you’ve got me going!” exclaimed McRae. “Stop that blarneying old tongue of yours or you’ll be selling me the Brooklyn Bridge. I suppose we might as well do the thing up brown while we’re about it. And I feel so good about Joe’s arm that I’m willing to do most anything. I’ll make just this one condition. Jim is going to pitch this afternoon and I’m going to watch every move. If I find that he’s right up to the mark and doesn’t need any further training, he can go along with Joe. If I think he needs more training, he stays here and gets it. That’s all.”

“And that’s enough, for I never saw that boy in better shape,” said Robbie jubilantly. “I’ll be going now and look up the matter of transportation.”

“All right,” agreed McRae. “But don’t buy the tickets till after the game.”

In the meantime Joe had sent off another long telegram to Mabel, with sublime disregard of the cost, telling her what the doctors had said. Then he left an order with the florist for a lot of flowers to be sent to the hospital for Mrs. Bultoza, who, he had assured himself by a telephone call, was getting along favorably and would probably be up and around again in a week at furthest.

That afternoon the Giants played an exhibition game with one of the crack teams of the Southern League. The mere fact that the Giants naturally outclassed such opponents was no proof that they would win the game, for on such occasions the “bushers” usually played their heads off to win while their haughty opponents, knowing that there was nothing particular at stake, were apt to suffer from over-confidence.

Jim had been selected to pitch, and the wily Robbie, taking care that McRae was not within hearing distance, gave him a word of advice.

“Trot out everything you have in stock to-day, Jim,” he urged. “Just try to think that you’re pitchin’ against Axander of the Cubs or Rance of the Brooklyns.”

“I’ll do my best,” replied Jim, somewhat surprised. “But what’s the big idea?”

“There’s a reason,” said Robbie, with a portentous wink that spoke volumes.

Whether or not Robbie’s mysterious hint had anything to do with it, Jim pitched a superb game that ranked well up with that of Joe’s the day before. He held his opponents in the hollow of his hand. His speed and control were as good as anything he was accustomed to show in mid-season, and McRae’s eyes gleamed with gratification as Jim mowed down the batsmen as fast as they came to the plate. He decorated the bushers with a row of goose eggs, not a man getting farther than third.

“Get the tickets, Robbie,” said McRae, as the last man on the opposing team struck out in the ninth inning. “That boy is trained right up to the minute. He’s ready for the gong right now.”

After supper that night McRae told Joe and Jim that he wanted a word with them out on the veranda.

“I think you boys have got all the training you need,” he said. “You’re right on edge now, and I don’t want you to go stale. So I’m going to send you on to New York to rest until the season opens next week.”

The unexpected statement took the boys off their feet. They looked at each other thunderstruck.

“We’ve already arranged for your transportation,” went on McRae. “Robbie, hand me over those tickets.”

Robbie pulled them out of his pocket. McRae glanced at them and handed one to each of the boys.

“Here they are,” he said. “It’s a pretty long trip, so I think you’d better take it by easy stages. The first stop-off will be Riverside.”

CHAPTER V
A SURPRISE PARTY

Joe and Jim stood as though paralyzed, scarcely daring to believe their ears.

Then they let out a shout of glee and grabbed the hands of the grinning McRae and Robbie and almost wrung them off in their delight.

“Mac, you’re the real goods!” exclaimed Joe.

“You’ve got a heart that’s as big as a house,” cried Jim.

“Thank Robbie,” replied the smiling McRae. “He suggested it.”

“And you fell in with it,” added Joe, as they overwhelmed Robbie with their thanks. “You’re both of you princes.”

“That’s all right,” replied McRae. “You boys deserve something for the way you’ve worked this spring. Now be off with you and look up your time-tables.”

They needed no urging, and rushed into the office of the hotel, hardly knowing whether they stood on their heads or their heels.

“My word!” blurted out Reggie, as he sauntered up to them as immaculate as though he had just stepped from a bandbox. “What’s all the dust-up about? That yell outside made me think you’d gone off your bloomin’ heads.”

“We did, almost!” exclaimed Joe, and went on to tell Reggie the cause of their exhilaration.

“Great!” cried Reggie, almost as delighted as they were themselves. “Maybe the girls won’t be glad to see you. They’ll go batty. You boys are so busy gettin’ ready, suppose I send ’em a wire tellin’ them you’re comin’?”

“Not on your life!” protested Joe. “Thanks just the same, old boy, but we’re going to make this a surprise party. They’re not going to know a thing about it till we burst in on them. What time does the next train go, Jim?” he asked of his chum, who had avidly seized a schedule and was trying to mark out their route and time.

“We can catch the midnight express at Ormsby Junction,” answered Jim. “If we make any sort of connections, we can get into Riverside before noon day after to-morrow. Oh, boy, at noon day after to-morrow! Say, Joe, pinch me so that I’ll know that I’m not dreaming.”

Joe complied so vigorously that Jim jumped.

“No need of being so confounded literal,” he remarked, as he rubbed his arm.

“Wish I were goin’ with you,” remarked Reggie wistfully.

“Why don’t you?” asked Joe.

“Can’t,” said Reggie, shaking his head. “Got to give in my report to the guv’nor, so I’ll just have to toddle on to Goldsboro. But I’ll be up in New York a good many times this season to see you boys strip the bloomin’ hides off the other fellahs.”

There was a great deal to do and little time to do it in, but it would have taken nothing short of an earthquake to have stopped the boys from getting the midnight express at the Junction.

With handshakings all around, with repeated thanks to McRae and Robbie, and followed by the best wishes of all their comrades, they left the hotel and ensconced themselves in the train. Luck was with them, and they made good connections throughout the trip.

The second morning they woke to a glorious day that fitted admirably into their joyous mood and did full justice to the abundant breakfast to which they sat down in the dining car.

“Where will we be eating our next meal, old man?” chuckled Joe, as he called for another cup of coffee.

“Don’t tantalize me with such suggestions,” replied Jim. “Isn’t it hard enough for me to wait, without stirring me up this way?”

“Only about three hours now,” murmured Joe happily, as he looked out of the window, “and by the way this old train is skipping along, we’ll get there right on time.”

Suddenly Jim slapped his knee as a thought struck him.

“What are you hitting yourself for?” asked Joe.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Jim. “It just came across me why Robbie was so anxious that I should make a good showing yesterday afternoon. The old rascal had this very thing in mind, and he and McRae had cooked it up that I’d get this vacation only if I earned it.”

“Just like the big-hearted old boy to give you the tip,” declared Joe. “He’d have felt almost as bad as you would if you had fallen down. But you sure came through like a stake horse.”

“Wouldn’t I have been kicking myself if I hadn’t!” observed Jim, as they rose from the table and repaired to their seats in the Pullman.

They were devoured with impatience as the time went by, far too slowly to suit them. But at last they found themselves drawing near to Riverside and began to get their suitcases out in the aisle ready for a quick exit.

“Just how are we going to stage this surprise party?” asked Jim. “All in a rush or on the installment plan?”

“Let’s tease the girls a bit,” suggested Joe. “One of us will go in first while the other hangs about in hiding. Then when they’ve decided that there’s only one of us, number two will come in and get his share of the fun. We’ll toss a coin to see who goes in first. How about it?”

Jim agreed, but did not think so well of it when Joe won the toss.

The choice had barely been made when the porter came in for their bags and said:

“Next stop Riverside.”

“All out for Riverside,” chuckled Joe, as with Jim close on his heels he jumped down on the station platform.

From previous experiences they knew that if they started to walk home they would be stopped every few feet by friends and admirers who by the time they reached the house would have formed something of a triumphal procession, for Joe was far and away the most important figure of the little town that his baseball prowess had “put on the map.”

So before they could be recognized by more than one or two, they jumped into a taxicab and were driven rapidly toward the Matson home.

They dismissed the driver when within a block of the house and made their way as inconspicuously as possible to the comfortable but unpretentious home that held all that was dearest to them on earth.

“Sneak around to the back, Jim,” whispered Joe. “I’ll go to the front door, and when they all come rushing to welcome me home, you come in on tiptoe and do your stuff.”

Fortunately no one was at the windows, and Joe got up on the porch unobserved and rang the bell.

A moment later he heard a light step that he knew, and his heart skipped a beat. The door opened, and Mabel, as dainty and sweet as a rose, stood framed in the doorway.

Into her eyes came astonishment, wonder, rapture!

“Joe!” she cried in wild delight. “Oh, Joe——”

Whatever else she said was indistinguishable, for Joe had swept her into his arms and effectually cut off her speech.

Then came a rush from the other rooms, and Clara, prettier than ever, and Mrs. Matson had to have their share of the welcome, and for a few minutes it was a happy pandemonium.

But Clara’s eyes wandered towards the door, and they were full of wistful longing.

“If only Jim could have come with you!” she faltered.

“He wanted to come all right, Sis,” said Joe. “In fact, he was crazy to come. Sent lots of love and all that——”

Just then there was a little squeal from Mabel and a pair of hands were placed over Clara’s eyes.

“Guess who it is,” came a voice, and then——

In a little while Mr. Matson came home for lunch and the excitement was renewed.

It was a happy homecoming and a most satisfactory surprise party, and if there was a happier group in the whole United States than those who gathered around the lunch table a little while later in that cozy Matson home, Joe and Mabel refused to believe it. So did Jim and Clara.

Enchanting days followed, days when the young folks felt as though they trod on air. If McRae and Robbie had known of the blessings that were showered upon them they would have felt amply repaid for the generous impulse that had given their two star pitchers this brief vacation.

All too soon the days slipped by and the moment came when Joe and Jim had to gird on their armor for the strenuous season awaiting them. It was a hard task to say good-by, but it had to be done, and the grief of parting was softened to some extent by the promise of the girls to come on before long for a stay in New York!

Joe and Jim were rather quiet for a while after the train had started, with the girls waving to them as far as they could see them, and it was not till after supper that they found themselves chatting about the baseball season that was to open on the third day from then.

“We’ve drawn the toughest team in the East for the opening day on the Polo Grounds,” remarked Joe. “Those Brooklyns are hard nuts to crack.”

“They are for us, at any rate,” agreed Jim. “What is it that gets into those birds when they cross bats with us? Other teams can sometimes make them roll over and play dead. And then, after playing like a lot of bushers, they’ll take us on and play like champions.”

“Right you are,” declared Joe. “More than once they’ve fairly wiped up the ground with us. And even when we’ve won, we’ve usually known that we’ve been in a fight. I suppose they’ll put up Rance to pitch for them in the opening game.”

“Likely enough,” assented Jim. “He’s their kingpin without any doubt. Though when it comes to that, all their pitchers are strong. I shouldn’t be surprised if they made a strong bid for the flag this year.”

“Yes, we’ll have to reckon them in as contenders. For that matter, almost all the teams have a chance. I don’t remember a season when there have been so many dark horses that may at any time show up in front.”

“So much the better,” observed Jim. “It’s a good thing for the game. As long as every team has a chance the games are fought for blood and the boys are on their toes all the time. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a baseball procession with one or two up in front and the others straggling far behind.”

“I can scarcely wait for the bell to ring,” said Joe. “I never felt so eager for the fight in my life. I’m out this year for a record that’s worth while.”

“That’s what you were saying to me the other day, and I was rather puzzled to know what you meant,” said Jim. “It seems to me that with your pitching and batting last year you’d got just about as much of a record as it was possible to have. You topped them all in the matter of homers, and as for pitching—well, the whole world knows what you did in the box.”

“There’s always room for improvement, and I’m going to try to set up a mark in every department of the game for the other fellows to shoot at,” was the reply. “I don’t know that I have it in me to do it. But I have at least the determination to do it, and if I fail it won’t be for the lack of trying.”

“You can do it if any one can,” declared Jim, with conviction. “But say you lead the league in pitching and in batting—and I’ve no doubt you can—what else are you aiming for?”

“Just this. Now don’t laugh, old man, or tell me that ‘’twas through ambition that the angels fell’ or any more of those bromides. I want to lead the league in homers. That’s number one. I want to lead the league in general batting. That’s number two. I want to lead the league in base stealing. That’s number three. I want to lead the league in strike-outs. That’s number four. I want to lead the league in the percentage of earned runs I allow opponents. That’s number five. I want to lead the league in consecutive victories. That’s number six. I want, as captain, to have the Giants win more games than they’ve ever won before in a single season. That’s number seven, the lucky number. Let’s hope it brings me luck.”

Jim was staring at him open-mouthed.

“Wow!” he ejaculated. “Is that all?”

CHAPTER VI
WHIZZING THEM OVER

Joe grinned at his comrade’s question.

“All I can think of just now. If anything else occurs to me I’ll let you know.”

“Gee, but it’s a big program!” ejaculated Jim. “It’s never been done before by any one man in the history of the game. But I wouldn’t put it past you, at that. I’m sure you’ll do it as regards the pitching and the batting. Nobody in the league has any license to beat you at either of those things. And there’s no reason why you can’t hang up the base-running scalp in your wigwam either, for you’re as quick as a flash in going round the bags. In other words, I believe you’ll make good in anything that depends on yourself alone. As to hanging up more victories for the Giants than they’ve ever made before in one season, that will depend in part upon the Giants themselves. But, good gracious, man, if you only do half that you’re planning to do it will be next door to a miracle.”

“Well, there’s no harm in trying to hitch your wagon to a star. If a man aims high, he may not reach the mark but he’ll come nearer to it than he would if his standard were lower. And don’t think for a moment, Jim, that I’m trying to brag or anything like that. I wouldn’t tell my ambition to any other living soul and I only speak of it to you because you’re my other self, so to speak. This is just between you and me.”

“I’ll keep mum,” promised Jim. “Go to it, old man, and more power to you. I’ll be tickled to death if you carry out your program, not only for your own sake, but because with that kind of work it means a sure championship for the Giants.”

They reached New York the next day to find the city agog for the opening of the season. The newspapers were devoting columns of their space to a discussion of the chance of the Giants as compared with those of other teams in the league. The question of the hour was whether the Giants would repeat.

That question was asked everywhere—on the streets, in the subways, in brokers’ offices, in business establishments, at social and sporting gatherings. The whirlwind finish of the Giants the year before was recalled and discussed from every angle. The roseate reports that had come from the southern training camp were duly weighed and considered.

The one point regarding which considerable doubt was expressed concerned the pitching staff. The injury that Joe had sustained in his rescue at the fire had provoked considerable shaking of heads. Of course, the verdict of the doctors had been telegraphed broadcast and that had brought some measure of reassurance. But doctors were not always right, and if they proved wrong in this case it was generally agreed that the Giants’ chances for the pennant had gone glimmering and that, in fact, they might have all they could do to finish in the first division.

Joe smiled to himself as he read the various prophecies of the sporting writers. While they had been at Riverside he and Jim had practiced for an hour or two every day and he knew that his arm was as good as ever. The inflammation had disappeared, all the soreness was gone, and all his curves, slants, hooks and hops went over without a twinge of pain. So he awaited the public test with serene and smiling confidence.

Before the team had gone to the training camp Joe and Jim had engaged a pleasant suite in the Westmere Arms, a quiet uptown apartment hotel, comfortably and handsomely furnished and within easy distance of the Polo Grounds.

While they were waiting for the return of the rest of the team, the boys practiced at the ball park every morning and afternoon, taking care not to overdo, but working just enough to keep them in superb fettle.

At last the opening day of the season arrived, a perfect day for baseball, bright and glorious, with just enough breeze stirring to temper the heat of the sun.

The city was baseball mad, and it was evident that a crowd would be present that would tax the capacity of the park. Even the night before people had begun to gather at the entrances and stood in line all night, waiting for the precious pasteboards that would give them admission to the grounds. By daybreak the lines extended for a block or two, and the assistance of a squad of police was necessary to keep order and prevent any one getting in out of his turn.

Shortly after ten o’clock it seemed as though the whole city had turned out en masse for the festive occasion. Hundreds of automobiles were parked in the adjacent streets. Tallyhos with flags and pennants brought up their hilarious loads. Subway and elevated trains, packed to the doors, groaned slowly along and deposited their burdens at the stations nearest the gates. When at last the entrances were thrown open the stands and bleachers were filled in a twinkling. An hour before the game was scheduled to begin there was not even standing room left. Almost as many were turned away as were packed in the park.

The Polo Grounds themselves had never looked more beautiful. The grass was like green velvet. The base paths had been rolled and scraped until they were almost as smooth as the top of a billiard table. Gleaming streaks of white marked out the foul lines, extending far down into left and right fields. The stands were black with humanity, relieved by the gay colors of the women, who were present in appreciable numbers and as ready to cheer and applaud as their masculine escorts. A band played lively music to keep the crowds patient while waiting for the appearance of the players. Everywhere was light, color, eagerness and hilarity. The crowd was out for a good time and had no doubt about getting it.

In the Giants’ clubhouse there was an air of confidence and elation as the men changed into their uniforms. They had come back from the South in the pink of condition and full of pep and ginger.

When they were ready to go out on the field Baseball Joe gathered his men together for a little talk.

“Now, boys,” the young captain said as the players clustered about him, “we’re out for another championship.”

There was a general clapping of hands at this, and Joe smiled with gratification.

“That’s the spirit!” he said approvingly. “But it’s a long, long road to Tipperary, and it’s a long, long road to the pennant. Now, I want every man to play in every game just as though the winning of that game depended upon himself alone. You know a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. A team is no stronger than its weakest player. Now I don’t think we have any weak players. Every one of you knows how to play his position to the queen’s taste. I believe this and I want you to prove it to the world.

“I want you to go after everything. Try for it, even if it seems impossible. Lots of impossible things, or things that look so, become possible when you make a stab for them. Don’t mind if they result in errors. I’ll forgive any error a man makes as long as he keeps trying.

“We’ve got a tough assignment to-day in the Brooklyns. You fellows know what those birds are. They’re dangerous every minute. You never know when they’ll stage a rally. Rance will probably pitch for them, and you’ll have your work cut out for you. I want you especially to win this game, because there’s a good deal in getting the jump on the other fellows right from the start.

“That’s about all, boys, except just this: I’ll have my eyes on you all through the game. So will McRae. So will Robbie. You’ll get full credit for every bit of good work you do. But if you let down anywhere you’ll get a call-down. Now let’s go out and show these fellows from across the bridge just where they get off.”

A thunderous cheer went up from the crowd as the team emerged from the clubhouse with Joe and Jim in the van and marched across the field. Again and again the waves of sound drowned out the music of the band. As by one impulse, the crowd sprang from their seats, waving their hats and yelling in delirium.

It was a welcome from the metropolis to its athletic heroes that warmed the hearts of the latter because of its spontaneousness and sincerity. The players’ bronzed faces were flushed as they removed their caps again and again in response to the plaudits. Then they scattered for batting practice while the pitchers went out to the bull pen to warm up.

“How are you feeling to-day, Joe?” asked McRae as the pitcher approached the bench on which the manager and Robbie were sitting just under the grandstand.

“Fine and dandy,” returned Joe, as he smilingly greeted them. “Ready to pitch for a man’s life.”

“Good!” replied McRae, while Robbie’s rubicund face glowed with satisfaction. “You’ll probably need all your stuff to-day, for the Dodgers seem to be in fine shape. Just see the way those fellows are shooting the ball around the diamond.”

Their eyes turned to the Brooklyn infield, who, as the visitors, were having their first turn at practice on the bases.

“They’re certainly doing good work,” pronounced Joe, after a moment’s scrutiny. “I guess the crowd is going to get its money’s worth.”

“Of course you’re going to pitch this game,” said McRae, “and I suppose you’ll stack up against Rance. He’s the Brooklyn’s best bet. I hear he’s been going great guns in practice at the training camp.”

“He’s always a tough bird to handle,” replied Joe. “The game won’t be any walkover.”

The Giants took their turn at practice on the diamond and their snappy and brilliant plays brought round after round of applause from the spectators.

Then the bell rang, the members of the home team scattered to their positions, and the umpires took their places, one at the plate and the other out in the field just beyond the base line from first to second.

The plate umpire took off his cap, lifted the megaphone and announced:

“Ladies and gentlemen: The battery for Brooklyn will be Rance and Tighe——”

There was a burst of applause from the Brooklyn supporters who had come in thousands from across the bridge.

The umpire went on:

“The battery for New York will be Matson and Mylert.”

Then uprose a terrific yell compared with which the previous outburst had been almost insignificant. The shouts swelled into a roar of redoubled volume when Joe walked out to the box drawing on his glove, and the applause continued until he was compelled to doff his cap again and again.

There was no mistake as to the position that Baseball Joe held in the affections of the people of New York.

The umpire stooped down and dusted off the plate.

“Play ball!” he commanded.

CHAPTER VII
A BITTER STRUGGLE

Leete, the slugging left fielder of the Brooklyns, a veteran who for a dozen years back had averaged .300 and for two years had led the league, came swaggering to the plate, carrying three bats.

He threw two of them away and faced the pitcher.

“Why don’t you throw that other one away, too?” chaffed Joe. “It won’t do you any good.”

“It won’t, eh?” returned Leete. “Just put one over and see me murder it.”

“Oh, very well, since you insist on going through the motions,” retorted Joe, “murder this one.”

He sent the ball over like a bullet. Leete swung at it and missed.

“You’ll never get hung for murder,” grinned Joe. “I knew you weren’t as bad as you painted yourself.”

“Close your trap and play ball!” snapped Leete.

The next, judging from the wind-up, was to be another fast one, but it drifted slowly up to the plate and Leete nearly broke his back trying for it.

“Strike two!” called the umpire.

“Perhaps you’d better try another bat,” suggested Joe, with simulated concern. “That one seems to have holes in it.”

Leete growled something inarticulate and got a firmer toehold.

Joe wound the next one around his neck, but Leete refused to bite and it went as a ball.

The next whizzed across the plate, rising with a sharp hop just as it reached the rubber, and Leete swung six inches beneath it.

“You’re out!” cried the umpire, and Leete went back disconsolately to the bench while a cheer arose at the first strike-out of the season.

Mornier, the Brooklyn first baseman, came next and dribbled a little one to the box that Joe got to first in plenty of time. Tonsten was third man up, and Joe set him down on three called strikes, the batsman not even offering at them.

“What did you stand there like a dummy for and not even take a chance?” asked Thompson, the Brooklyn manager, as Tonsten came back.

“Guess he had me hypnotized,” mumbled Tonsten. “They came so fast I couldn’t see ’em. But he can’t keep that up and I’ll get him next time good and proper.”

“Fine work, Joe,” approved McRae, as the pitcher came in to the bench. “Just keep that up and it will be all over but the shouting.”

“All the boys need to do is to give him a run or two and we’ll have the game sewed up,” exulted Robbie.

But it was evident from the way Rance, the Brooklyn pitcher, started that that run or two was going to be difficult to get. He was in splendid shape, all his slants and curves were working well, and his control left nothing to be desired.

Tonsten at third made a fast play on Curry’s bunt and threw him out at first. Renton took two strikes and three balls and then struck out on an incurve. Burkett failed utterly to find Rance and fanned.

It was a snappy, quickly played inning and demonstrated that the Brooklyns were trying to enact their old rôle as Giant-killers, and Rance got a generous meed of applause even from the home fans for his good work.

“Looks as if it were going to be a pitcher’s duel,” muttered McRae, as the Giants went out into the field.

“If it comes to that I know who’ll win,” declared Robbie with confidence.

The next three innings went far toward justifying McRae’s prediction. Each pitcher was “making monkeys” of the members of the opposition. Rance kept up his good work and Joe was pitching like a man possessed.

That long sinewy arm of his was working with the regularity of a piston rod. In those three innings only nine men faced him. He struck out five men and forced the others to send up fouls that were caught by Mylert or feeble grassers to the infield that were easily relayed to first.

He made the ball do stunts that stood his opponents on their heads. It dipped, rose, and did everything that the batsman did not want or expect it to do. It was a wonderful exhibition of pitching skill.

Rance was the first to weaken under the strain. Joe had found him for a single in the fourth and Burkett had been robbed of a hit only by a phenomenal leap and catch by Naylor at second. But Rance put on steam, and none of Joe’s comrades were able to bring him in.

The Brooklyns came in to bat in the fifth inning, but they were hardly in long enough to know just why. Joe contented himself with just three pitches. Maley grounded out to Burkett at first who only had to set his foot on the base, Reis hoisted a high foul that Mylert gathered in and Trench sent up a pop fly that came gently into the shortstop’s hands. It was just a case of coming up, taking a swing, and going away to hide.

Thompson, the Brooklyn manager, was furious.

“If you can’t hit him why don’t you wait him out?” he snarled to his discomfited henchmen. “If we can only get a man on base, he may work himself around.”

“Wait him out!” returned Trench. “That would be suicide, the way that bird is working the corners of the plate. He isn’t giving any bases on balls. If we don’t strike at ’em the umpire will call ’em strikes anyway. We might as well die one way as another.”

“You’re a lot of old women,” growled Thompson. “I’m going to fire this team and get another from the Old Ladies’ Home.”

In the fifth the Giants broke the ice.

Ralston was first at bat. He swung at the first one and missed. Then came two wide ones that Ralston, with good judgment, passed up, and they went as balls. The next he sent out toward right. It was a corking blow and had all the signs of a homer, but the wild cheer that rose from the stands died down when it fell foul by a matter of inches.

Ralston, who had already rounded first, came back grumbling and picked up his bat. The count was now three and two, and Rance was “in the hole.” Perhaps that colossal hit had shaken him somewhat, for the next one came up to the plate as big as a balloon and Ralston laced it out sharply between first and second. Naylor made a dive for it but could not reach, and the ball rolled out to center, where Maley retrieved it smartly and got it back to second in time to prevent Ralston from stretching the hit into a two-bagger.

Jackwell was next up and Joe ordered him to sacrifice. He made one or two ineffectual attempts, but finally laid down a baby bunt that Rance got in time to put Jackwell out at first. But it had accomplished its purpose, for Ralston was roosting on second.

Bowen made a mighty effort and poled out a long fly to center that Maley pulled down after a long run. As soon as the catch was made Ralston legged it for third and made it, though it was a close race between him and the ball that came on a beautiful line throw to Tonsten.

With two out and a man on third, it was up to Mylert to bring him in.

Twice he swung at the ball and missed. The next three were wide of the plate. Mylert bent down, rubbed his hands in the dirt, pulled his cap down closer and set himself for the next.

The mighty arm of Rance uncoiled and the ball sped toward the batsman. Mylert was crowding the plate for a long reach. At first it looked as though the ball was going wide of the rubber. But it curved in just as it neared the plate, and Mylert caught it on the end of his bat. There was a sharp crash and the ball darted like a bullet between second and short. It was the cleanest of clean hits and Mylert galloped to first while Ralston came down the third base chalkline and dented the rubber for the first run of the game.

A tremendous shout went up from the stands.

“We’ve got him going!”

“He’s cracking!”

“Get after him!”

But Rance was too much of a veteran to let the crowd get him rattled. He pulled himself together and struck out Curry on three pitched balls, leaving Mylert cooling his heels on first.

But a run was a run, and it was with fresh heart and courage that the Giants took the field.

Two more innings passed without any change in the score. The Giants were finding Rance now as they had been unable to do earlier in the game. They were meeting the ball on the trademark, and the bats rang as they crashed against it. But again and again he was saved by superb support. Leete committed highway robbery by picking a ball off the fence that, if he had missed, would have been a three-bagger at least and probably a homer. Naylor at second took a Texas Leaguer toward left, running with his back to the ball and barely picking it off his shoe tops.

“They’re certainly getting all the breaks,” grumbled McRae.

“They sure are,” agreed Robbie. “But we’ve got to admit, John, that those boys are playing ball.”

Joe in the meantime was breezing along under wraps. He had not winded himself in the least. He was conscious of enormous reserve force if he should be called upon to put it in play. His fast ball was working perfectly. He worked the corners of the plate to perfection. His curves were breaking sharply. On occasion he called on his hop and fadeaway. He had never felt more completely master of the situation.

But a game is never won until it is over, and in the Brooklyn’s ninth, their last chance, the unexpected happened.

Tonsten came up first and Joe set him down on strikes. Maley followed and popped up an easy fly to Renton at short. It was the simplest kind of catch, and perhaps for that very reason Renton let it slip through his fingers.

There was a startled roar from the crowd and those of the spectators who had begun to move toward the gates, thinking the game was as good as over, promptly sat down again.

Rattled by his misplay, Renton hurriedly picked up the ball, which had rolled a little distance away, and hurled it toward first. The ball was high, and although Burkett made a desperate leap it went over his head and rolled toward the right field stands.

By the time Burkett had retrieved it Maley had rounded second and was making for third. Burkett threw to Jackwell. It struck the dirt in front of him, bounded over his head, and before it could be secured Maley had crossed the plate for the run that tied the score!

CHAPTER VIII
HITTING A HOMER

As Maley crossed the plate a tremendous chorus of cheers rose from the Brooklyn rooters while his comrades rushed from their dugout and surrounded him, dancing and shouting in jubilation.

Maley himself looked a little sheepish at the congratulations showered upon him, for after all it was by the sheerest luck that his feeble little pop-up had slipped through the hands of Renton, to be followed by two wild throws that had brought him around the bases.

But after all it was a run, and more than that, the tying run, and it counted just as much in the score as though it had been the fruit of a homer. It put the Brooklyns again in the running just at the time that the Giants seemed to have the game stowed away in their bat bags.

Probably the most disgusted men on the grounds were Renton and Burkett, whose faces were flushed to a fiery red and who carefully avoided looking toward the bench where McRae sat, his eyes flashing with anger.

Joe, however, was as cool as an icicle. Many a pitcher would have lost either his temper or his nerve or both at such a slip-up on the part of his support. But Joe, though naturally chagrined, let not a trace of irritation betray itself in his bearing. He was his old confident self as he sauntered easily to the box.

The Brooklyn coaches hurried down to the side lines and began a line of unceasing chatter designed to rattle the pitcher.

“He’s just about ready for the showers,” gibed one.

“Up in the air for fair,” called out another.

“We’ve just been stalling so far,” declared the first. “Now watch our smoke!”

In the natural order, Reis would have been the next to bat, but Thompson took him out and sent in Hines, his pinch hitter, in his place. But the jockeying for advantage did no good, for the first two balls that Joe sent over were so mystifying and bewildering that Hines, though he offered at them, missed them by inches and in despair of lining it out tried a baby bunt on the next ball pitched.

Joe had guessed his intention by the way he shortened his hold on the bat, and by an imperceptible signal had called in his infield. So when Hines laid down his bunt Renton ran in on it, gathered it in and sent it down to Burkett like a flash for an out.

Trench, the shortstop of the Dodgers, refused to bite at the first two that Joe sent up, and as they were outside the plate they went as balls. Encouraged by this, Trench decided to wait, in the hope that Joe would pass him. Guessing his intention, Joe split the plate with a beauty that Trench let pass for a strike. The next one followed, just cutting the corner of the plate for strike two.

The waiting for balls did not seem so good to Trench then, and he stooped to rub his hands in the dirt so that he might take a firmer hold of the stick. Before he could get fairly straightened out Joe whizzed across his hop ball. Trench, flurried, made a desperate stab at it, but Mylert’s hands closed on the ball even as he swung.

It was classy pitching, head and arm working in perfect unison, and the Giant rooters split the welkin with their cheers as Joe pulled off his glove and walked in to the bench.

“That’s what you call choking a rally before it has fairly got started,” chuckled Robbie.

“Trust Joe to clap the kibosh on them when they get too frisky,” said McRae, with a sigh of relief. “That doesn’t alter the fact though that those gazabos have tied the score, thanks to those sandlot throws of Renton and Burkett. Now, when we ought to be running to the clubhouse with the game chalked up to our credit, we’re just where we were when we started.”

Burkett was the first man up and he went to the plate in a hurry, glad to get away from the tongue lashing that poor Renton was already getting for his share in the mishap.

Determined to atone for his misplay, he crouched at the plate, watching Rance like a hawk. The latter cut the corner of the plate with an outcurve that Burkett thought was too wide. But it went for a strike just the same.

The next was a fast straight one, a little high, but Burkett caught it full and lined out a beautiful single to center. It looked at first as though it might be stretched, but Maley made such a quick pick-up and throw to second that Burkett was held at first.

Larry was next, and was exhorted by the crowd, now in a high state of excitement, to line it out. A shout of delight went up as he hit the first ball pitched and the pellet started on its journey toward left.

It seemed a sure hit, as it was well over the shortstop’s head. But Trench made a stupendous leap and collared the ball with his gloved hand.

Burkett had started toward second, thinking the ball was safe, and before he could get back to the bag Trench had sent the ball whistling down to first, completing the snappiest double play of the day.

It was one of the miraculous stops that make baseball the most fascinating game in the world, and though it killed their hopes, the Giant supporters were as generous in their applause as the partisans of the team from across the bridge.

Joe was the next at bat, and the air became a medley of sounds as he took up his position at the plate.

“Win your own game, Joe!”

“Knock the cover off the ball!”

“Give it a ride!”

“Show them where you live!”

Rance looked Joe over with exceeding care. At that juncture he would rather have had any other man in the league facing him.

“Sizing me up, Dizzy?” asked Baseball Joe, with a grin. “Don’t you know it’s impolite to stare at a man that way? It makes me feel as though I were a suspicious character.”

“You won’t feel so gay when I strike you out,” retorted Rance as he took up his position in the box. But Rance’s grin was a little forced.

“I would have a queer feeling,” admitted Joe, “for you’ve never done it yet and I don’t know just how it would seem.”

Rance shot one over that would surely have caught Joe full in the head if he had not dropped like a flash to the ground.

“Trying to bean me?” he inquired, as he picked up his bat and resumed his position.

“Sorry,” said Rance, with evident sincerity.

“That’s all right, old man,” said Joe, who knew that Rance never resorted to dirty tricks. “But now give me a good one and I’ll lose it for you.”

The next was a sharp drop that Joe swung at and missed. Two balls followed in succession.

Then Joe suddenly swung himself around so that he was in the position of a left-handed batter.

A shout of astonishment rose not only from the crowd but from the Giants’ bench, for Joe had never batted left-handed in his life.

Rance was so astonished that he stood with his mouth gaping wide open.

“What’s the matter?” grinned Joe. “Paralyzed? Oh, well, if you’re going to feel that way about it I’ll bat the other way,” and instantly he swung around again to his normal position.

The whole thing had taken place with kaleidoscopic suddenness and Rance was clearly rattled. He felt foolish, and his annoyance deprived him of his usual control.

So when the next ball came over it was minus the usual “stuff” and Joe timed it perfectly, “leaned” against it with his mighty shoulders, and the ball started out like a bullet between right and center, rising as it went.

Maley and Hines cast one startled look at it and then turned and ran in the direction of the ball.

Joe had started at the crack of the bat and was down to first like a flash. As he rounded the bag he saw that the ball would clear the heads of the fielders. But he also saw that in all probability it would strike the low fence that separated the field from the bleachers and bound back, thus lessening the distance the fielders would have to run for it.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he turned second, he saw Maley setting himself to get the ball as it rebounded. He knew the power of Maley’s arm, who was famous for his long throws to the plate. Could he beat the ball on the throw in?

Now he was running as he had never run before. The wind whistled in his ears. He could hear the thunderous voices of the crowds, who had risen to their feet and were cheering like maniacs.

Jim had run out to the third base coaching line and was yelling encouragement at him.

“Come on, you Joe!” he shouted. “Come on, old man, come on!”

Joe rounded third and streaked it for the plate.

Down the stretch he tore. He seemed to be flying.

But the ball was flying, too, coming fast. He knew it by the shouts of the Brooklyn players, by the look in the eyes of Tighe, the catcher, as he set himself to receive it.

When within twenty feet of the plate, Joe launched himself in the air and slid. He heard the ball thud in Tighe’s mitt. He swung himself in a sweeping slide away from the catcher, his outstretched fingers touching the plate a fraction of a second before the ball was brought down upon him.

“Safe!” cried the umpire.

CHAPTER IX
SKIRTING THE EDGE

The game was won, won at the last moment by the mighty hit that rounded out Joe’s marvelous exhibition of pitching skill. The Giants had got the jump by capturing the first game of the season.

The instant Joe rose to his feet he made for the clubhouse, intent upon evading the rush of the excited fans who were already beginning to swarm over the field to surround him and hoist him upon their shoulders.

Before he could reach that haven of refuge he had fairly to fight his way through the mob of admirers that blocked his path, eager to touch their idol.

But he was inside at last and could draw a free breath as he hastily stripped for the shower. Jim was close behind him, and soon the place was filled with hilarious Giants, jubilant over the game that had been plucked from the fire.

McRae and Robbie were there, too, their faces beaming with gratification.

“Wonderful work, Joe,” congratulated McRae, as he slapped the captain of the team on the shoulder. “That old wing of yours was never in better shape. And that homer was a beauty.”

“And here we were worrying our hearts out about that arm of yours,” grinned Robbie, happy beyond expression. “Sure, that fire down in the training camp has done you good rather than harm. Some of the other boys ought to get a dose of it.”

“That left-handed batting stunt of yours was a peach,” laughed McRae. “I’ll admit I was startled when I saw you take up that position. It looked for a minute like suicide. Then I tumbled.”

“It sure had Rance up in the air for a minute,” replied Joe. “When he pitched the next one he hardly knew what he was doing.”

“Always something new every minute,” chuckled McRae. “If I could put a head like yours on every member of this team we’d simply walk in.”

“Well,” said Joe, “we’ve got off to a flying start anyway. The Brooklyns have used up their best pitcher, and we ought to get three out of four at least in this series.”

“I wish I’d had a stop watch to-day,” remarked Jim, as in the cool of the early evening they walked toward their rooms.

“What for?” asked Joe in some surprise.

“To time you as you went around those bases,” replied Jim. “Gee, Joe, you were like lightning. Honestly, I don’t think it took you more than eleven seconds. I never saw you run so fast.”

“I had to,” laughed Joe. “There was no time for loafing when a thrower like Maley had hold of the ball.”

“It came in on a line right into Tighe’s hands,” declared Jim. “I never saw a prettier throw. My heart was in my mouth. It would have surely nipped any other runner in the league. And that slide of yours was a dandy. Remember what you said to me the other day about winning the base-stealing championship of the league? Well, after what I saw to-day I believe you’ll cop it. You’ll have the catchers standing on their heads.”

“That’s yet to be proved,” deprecated Joe. “But I’m going to make a try at it anyway.”

The newspapers the next day devoted a vast deal of their space to the game, dwelling especially upon Joe’s brilliant work in the box and at the bat. It could be seen between the lines what a universal sense of relief the metropolis felt at the demonstration that their favorite, despite the accident of the training season, was in superb shape, and predictions were confidently made that the Giants were in for another championship.

Joe would not have been human if he had not taken pleasure in the praise that had been so honestly earned. But far more gratifying than the plaudits of the press and public was the telegram that came from Mabel, telling him how proud she was of him and how relieved she was to know that he suffered no bad effects from the rescue at the fire.

His own heart sang with exultation for the same reason. For deep down had been the lurking fear that when it came to the real test the doctors’ verdict might prove erroneous. And what that would have meant to him he scarcely dared to think.

The Giants repeated the next day with Jim in the box. Grimm opposed him and pitched a rattling game. But Jim pitched a still better one and the Giants won by a score of 6 to 2. And when Young Merton turned in another victory the next day it began to look as though the Giants would make a clean sweep of the series. But Markwith was unsteady in the fourth game and the Giants had to be resigned to taking the short end of the 7 to 4 score.

Still, three out of four from the most formidable of the eastern competitors was a thing not to be despised and formed an auspicious beginning for the season, and when they swept the boards with the Phillies, taking four games in a row, Giant stock took a further bound upward.

But Baseball Joe was too wary a campaigner to draw unjustified conclusions from a good beginning. He knew that a team could play like champions one week and like “bushers” the next. Seven games out of eight sounded good, to be sure. But the season was young and he knew that no such percentage could be maintained throughout the hundred and fifty-four games that the schedule called for.

“The real test is yet to come,” he remarked to Jim as they were discussing the prospects. “I’ll feel a good deal clearer in my mind after we’ve tried out the western teams. That’s where the real strength of the league lies. Take the Pittsburgh, the Chicagos, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds. Those birds are the ones that will keep us hustling. Any of them is liable to take the bit in its teeth and run wild. If we can swing around the western circle and do a little better than break even on the trip, we can fatten up our percentages on the eastern clubs.”

“Let’s hope our first trip West won’t be such a frost as it was last year,” observed Jim. “Gee, how they tied the can to us! Soaked us right and left, knocked us down and then picked us up and knocked us down again. Made doormats of us. Walked all over us. Remember how we sneaked back into New York at the end of the trip hoping nobody would recognize us?”

“I remember, all right,” grinned Joe. “And the memory of it ought to keep us from being too chesty when we meet those birds again. But we’re a stronger team now than we were then and I don’t believe we’ll be easy meat for anybody on our next trip.”

But in order that his prediction might prove true, Joe worked like a beaver, bending every energy to the improvement of the team. He was determined to make the same success as a captain as he had as a pitcher and batsman.

Not that the young captain nagged or bully-ragged his men. There was nothing of that kind in his nature. The authority with which he had been clothed was nothing to him in itself. All he valued it for was the opportunity it gave him to make the Giants a better team. If any one more fit for the job could have been found, Joe would have relinquished his captaincy gladly and would have done his utmost to make his successor’s work a success.

His men felt this, and because they felt it, yielded readily to the suggestions he preferred to make instead of commands. Not in years had there been so much smoothness and lack of friction in the handling of the Giants. When he pointed out faults he did it without ugliness. When he had occasion to commend a player he did it ungrudgingly and whole-heartedly. So he bound his men to him and welded the team into one harmonious unit whose one purpose was to play the game for all it was worth.

Especially did he get in close, sympathetic touch with the rookies, the younger members of the team. Most of them were of first-class material and many gave promise of becoming stars. But they were naturally nervous at finding themselves in fast company, and their errors were many. He brought them along, encouraged them, gave them their opportunities. This spirit, together with their unbounded respect and admiration of his own ability, enabled him to mold them to his liking.

So very soon he had a lot of reserve material that greatly enhanced the prospects of the Giants. Joe was a profound believer in the old baseball adage that the strength of a team lay in its substitutes. He worked on this theory and before long was in a position where if half of the regular team should be disabled by accident or sickness he could put men in their positions who could play them admirably.

What helped Joe immensely in this developing work was the full confidence and backing of McRae. That shrewd baseball general believed in putting faith in his lieutenants. When he found a good man he gave him a free hand and backed him to the limit. What he looked for were results. As long as these were forthcoming he asked no more.

“It was a mighty lucky day when I took Iredell out and made Joe captain of the team,” he confided to Robbie.

“Ye had a rabbit’s foot in your pocket sure enough that day, John,” agreed Robbie. “He’s the best captain in the league, bar none.”

“I never doubted that he would be, as far as his ability was concerned,” observed the manager. “But I was a little doubtful whether the burden of responsibility wouldn’t affect his pitching and batting. It was a new experiment making a captain out of a pitcher.”

“Sure, that boy has eyes in the back of his head,” asseverated Robbie. “There isn’t a move of his own men or of the fellows on the other side that he doesn’t see in a second. He thinks as fast as chain lightning.”

“And he’s thinking all the time,” declared McRae emphatically.

The series with the Bostons resulted in an even break. The Braves had been strengthened in the field and the pitcher’s box by the trades and deals they had made in the winter, and they put up an unexpectedly stiff opposition. Joe won one of the games and Jim accounted for another victory, but Bradley was batted out of the box and the Bostons just nosed out Markwith in a hot game that went to twelve innings.

“Well,” remarked Jim at the close of the series, “nine out of twelve isn’t as good of course as seven out of eight, but it isn’t bad.”

“It might be worse,” agreed Joe. “And the encouraging thing is that in all the games our boys played good ball. Even when they were beaten they were not disgraced.”

The fans who attended the games at the Polo Grounds were made up of all classes and conditions of men and boys from the office boys to heads of great business corporations and powers in the financial world.

All of them of course knew Baseball Joe by sight and reputation and many of them were eager to know him more intimately. Men would stop him on the street to congratulate him upon his playing, others were introduced to him in the lobbies of hotels. Some of the acquaintances he made were very pleasant and congenial and he valued them. He was showered with invitations to balls and theaters and social functions.

These he rarely accepted during the playing season because of his rigid adherence to training and his avoidance of late hours. Occasionally, however, he made an exception and dined out, always with the proviso, expressed or understood, that he would eat sparingly and leave early.

At the beginning of the season he had been introduced to two Wall Street men. Their names were Harrish and Tompkinson. They were suave and polished men of the world and entertaining talkers. They were almost daily attendants at the game and took occasion whenever they could to exchange a few words with Joe, for whom they professed an unbounded admiration.

More than once they had invited Joe to dine with them, but he had usually found some way to decline the invitation without offense. One day, however, at the conclusion of the game, they renewed their invitation so pressingly that he hardly saw his way clear to refuse.

“I’ll come,” he said, “if you won’t mind my slipping away shortly after dinner. I’ll have to be like the beggars and eat and run. My men have to be in bed by a certain time and I can’t ask them to do what I don’t do myself.”

“That will be all right,” said Tompkinson, and Harrish acquiesced with a nod of the head. “We’ll leave that absolutely to you. Suppose you meet us then at the Corona grill at eight o’clock. We’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”

Joe assented and they departed, professing themselves delighted.

“I’d infinitely prefer a quiet evening at home,” Joe confided to Jim as he donned his evening suit later on. “But they’ve been pestering me so of late that I might as well go now and have it over with.”

“That’s one of the penalties of fame,” laughed Jim. “So long, old man, and don’t take any rubber dimes.”

The hotel was radiant with lights and filled with gay and laughing groups as Joe threaded his way through the lobby. Tompkinson and Harrish spied him at once and made their way toward him.

“So glad you’ve come,” said Tompkinson cordially as he led the way to the elevator which carried them up to a private dining room on the third floor.

He noted Joe’s look of surprise and hastened to explain.

“You see,” he said, “we thought it would be much more pleasant to have a cozy little room to ourselves. In the big dining room downstairs you wouldn’t be there five minutes before the word would be passed around that the famous Joe Matson was there and everybody would be passing our table to get a closer look.”

Joe knew by experience the truth of this and thought nothing more about it.

A beautifully set table was all ready and a soft-stepping and efficient attendant awaited their orders.

The dinner was very choice and well served and the conversation interesting and sparkling. Joe’s hosts exerted themselves to make things pleasant. They had traveled widely and had a fund of jokes and anecdotes that made them excellent table companions.

For a time the talk ran along general lines, but later veered toward baseball.

“The Giants have made a good start this year,” remarked Harrish casually. “Do you think they’re going to win the flag again, Mr. Matson?”

“We hope so,” replied Joe, with a smile. “We’re certainly going to do our very best to land it.”

“As loyal New Yorkers, we hope so, of course,” said Tompkinson, “though I confess that I’ve sometimes wondered whether it’s for the best interest of the game that they should win so frequently.”

Joe pricked up his ears at this.

CHAPTER X
QUICK PUNISHMENT

“I don’t quite get you,” said Joe coldly. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“Only that it gets rather monotonous to see one team out so far ahead of the others year after year,” remarked Tompkinson carelessly, as he flicked the ash from his cigar. “It seems to me that a new interest would be given to the game in general if, for instance, the pennant should go West for a while, say to Pittsburgh or Chicago.”

“But they do get it every once in a while,” protested Joe. “Look at the years that Chicago took it time after time in the days of Frank Chance and Pop Anson. And Cincinnati got it with Pat Moran leading them. Pittsburgh has had it too. And in the East, Brooklyn has copped it off more than once and so have the Bostons. As a matter of fact, every team has a chance. Look at last year, when we won only on the last day of the season. When the Giants win, it’s because they deserve to win.”

“Oh, no doubt of that,” put in Harrish smoothly. “I suppose what Mr. Tompkinson has in mind is that it would give a little variety to the game if they didn’t win so often in succession. Let’s see, they’ve won for the last three years, haven’t they?”

“Yes,” said Joe. “And strictly on their merits,” he added.

“Of course,” assented Harrish. “But as it happened, the Yankees took the flag in their league during the same three years, so that the World’s Series was held altogether in New York. It made it a family affair, a close corporation, so to speak. What Mr. Tompkinson means is that the interest may die out in other sections of the country when they see their teams bringing up the rear time after time.”

“I haven’t noticed that the interest was dying out to any extent,” said Joe. “Last year we played to packed grounds almost all through the season.”

“No doubt that was because you were with them,” said Harrish graciously. “Half of them came to see you pitch or knock out a homer or both.”

“Another thing I had in mind,” remarked Tompkinson, “was that the winning of the pennant by some other team would put to rest to some extent the dissatisfaction caused by the fact that New York is the richest team in the league. The club has unlimited money and it can buy the best talent. It can get men that the other clubs are unable to buy. You know it’s common talk that while other managers have to develop their stars all McRae has to do is to buy them.”

“I’ve heard that old wheeze!” exclaimed Joe indignantly. “I want to nail it right here as a falsehood. To be sure McRae has money, but the money wouldn’t do him any good if he didn’t know what to buy. He’s the best judge of ball players in the country. And as for not developing them, I know of dozens of rookies that he has developed into stars. Why, McRae has more baseball brains in his head than half a dozen other managers put together.”

“Of course every one has a right to his own opinion,” said Tompkinson suavely. “It’s natural that you should stand up for the manager of your team.”

“He’s a prince,” declared Joe. “One of the best friends I have. He brought me to New York and gave me my chance. He’s one of the fairest, squarest men I know, and when it comes to baseball he’s the ablest.”

“Personally, I don’t question that at all,” replied Tompkinson. “I’m only repeating what I’ve frequently heard said. Whether that is true or not is beside the question. The fact is that many people believe it, and that belief is reinforced by the many victories of the Giants. And that leads me to think that if some other team got the pennant it might stir up renewed interest in the game. I think there are a good many people in New York who agree with me.”

“And those very people,” said Joe grimly, “would be the first to pan us if they came to the Polo Grounds only to see us beaten.”

“Of course they would, if you were beaten too often,” agreed Harrish. “But if you maintained a good standing in the race—say good enough to come in second or third at the end of the season—the New York public wouldn’t kick very much.”

Their persistent harping on this theme got on Joe’s nerves and at the same time he felt a faint stirring of suspicion.

“Speaking of McRae,” went on Tompkinson, “I understand he’s very liberal in the matter of salaries.”

“I don’t know a man on the team that’s dissatisfied,” replied Joe. “There’s nothing mean or niggardly about the Giant management.”

“And some of the salaries I imagine are almost princely,” remarked Harrish. “I’ve heard rumors, for instance, that you were drawing down more money than most railway or bank presidents.”

“The matter of my salary is a matter between me and the club,” said Joe curtly. “They pay me enough.”

“They couldn’t pay you too much,” replied Tompkinson. “You’re the biggest drawing card in the club. They probably pull in a half million dollars a year more than they would if you were not on the team.”

“You say they pay you enough,” put in Harrish. “But my experience is that nothing is enough if you can make more. Do you ever take a flier in stocks, Mr. Matson?”

“Not I,” returned Joe. “I never play another man’s game. Baseball is my game, and I’m going to stick to it. There are enough lambs getting shorn in Wall Street without my adding to the number.”

“Very true,” admitted Tompkinson, with a careless laugh. “At the same time fortunes are being made there. The reason that the lambs, as you call them, get shorn is because they go in blindly. If they had skillful guidance from some of the men who are really on the inside of what is going on they could pick up thousands of easy money.”

“No doubt,” agreed Joe. “The thing is to find the insiders.”

“I think without patting ourselves on the back Mr. Tompkinson and I can be fairly counted as insiders,” remarked Harrish. “We’re on the directorates of a number of important corporations and we know when dividends are going to be passed or paid or increased. And we know that several days before the public does. If the dividend is to be passed, we can buy for a fall. If it’s going to be increased, we buy for a rise. In either case we make money.”

“In other words you’re betting on a sure thing,” remarked Joe dryly, with a growing distaste for his companions.

“Doesn’t seem exactly sportsmanlike, does it?” smiled Harrish. “As a matter of fact, we don’t put it that way. It is simply capitalizing our knowledge, a perfectly legitimate thing to do.”

“But the money you make is lost by somebody else,” remarked Joe.

“That’s their lookout,” said Tompkinson. “They don’t have to buy or sell unless they want to. If we have first-hand knowledge that other people haven’t, that’s our good fortune. If we utilize that knowledge, that’s our brains. But leaving all that out of the question, the point is that we know how to make money for ourselves in Wall Street, and sometimes, when we like a man very much, we pass the knowledge on to him.”

He paused for a moment to let this sink in. Joe said nothing, and Tompkinson, with a quick glance at Harrish, a glance that did not escape Joe, went on:

“Now, there’s no reason on earth, Mr. Matson, why you shouldn’t get in on this. We can give you tips on stocks from which the element of chance is almost wholly eliminated. Why shouldn’t you pick up thousands of dollars that are fairly begging to be gathered in?”

“Thanks, just as much,” replied Joe, “but I’ll stick to the game I know, and hold on to what I have.”

Again a quick glance passed between the two associates.

“Safe and sane, is it?” smiled Tompkinson. “Don’t want to risk your capital even on such conservative lines as we propose? Well, suppose then, just to try the thing out, we carry your account for a while without your investing a dollar?”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Joe.

“Just this,” was the reply. “We’ll purchase a certain number of stocks that we feel absolutely sure will rise, and when that rise comes we’ll turn over the profits to you. We’ll carry it on our books in your name, but you won’t have to advance a dollar.”

“But suppose the stocks are sold at a loss. I’ll be owing you money,” protested Joe.

“If there’s any loss,” said Tompkinson impressively, “you’ll never get a bill for it. We’ll pocket the loss ourselves as a punishment for our bad judgment.”

“In other words,” said Joe slowly. “I can’t lose and I may win.”

“You will win,” corrected Tompkinson. “We’ll see that you do.”

“Let me see if I understand you,” said Joe. “My investment is purely a paper one. I don’t advance a dollar. You credit me on your books with having bought a certain amount of stock. If the market registers a rise I get the profits. If it’s a loss you bear it and wipe the whole thing off your books.”

“You couldn’t have put it better,” said Tompkinson. “And what is more, I’ll guarantee that before this year is over you’ll have cleared fifty thousand dollars.”

“In other words,” said Joe, “you’re offering to make me a present of a clean fifty thousand dollars.”

“Substantially that,” agreed Tompkinson. “Though I would prefer to put it that we are offering you an opportunity to make fifty thousand dollars.”

“You guarantee that?” asked Joe, with a pretended show of excitement that elicited a gleam of satisfaction from the eyes of both his companions.

“Absolutely,” declared Tompkinson. “So surely, in fact, that I’d have no hesitation about giving you the fifty thousand in cash at once if you’d prefer it that way. That’s how sure I feel that I could make the money for you in the way I say.”

“But why should you do this?” asked Joe, pretending bewilderment. “I scarcely know you. I have no claim upon you. I’ve never done anything for you.”

“Not yet,” drawled Tompkinson, as he lighted a fresh cigar. “But of course there’s no knowing but what you might do something for us in the future.”

Joe rose from his chair and began to pace the room restlessly. His two companions exchanged a significant glance. They believed that Joe’s cupidity had been aroused and they were perfectly willing to have him take all the time he wanted to mull over in his mind the enchantment of that fifty thousand dollars.

At last Joe resumed his seat.

“I didn’t quite get what you meant by that reference to something that I might be able to do for you in the future,” he said.

Tompkinson and Harrish felt pretty sure that Joe had risen to the bait. Still they proceeded warily.

“Oh, nothing but what you might be able to do for us easily and with perfect safety,” replied Tompkinson. “Just think for a moment of what you said a little while ago about sticking to your own game. That game is baseball. Naturally, it would be in the baseball game that you would be able to be of service to us.”

“For instance?” asked Joe.

“Well,” replied Tompkinson, “everybody knows that you’re the mainstay of the Giants. You’re the keystone of the whole team. Whether the Giants win or lose the pennant this year depends more on you than any one else.”

“I don’t admit that,” replied Joe. “The Giants had won more than one pennant before I joined it. They can do it again.”

“Ah, but that was when they had Hughson as their star pitcher,” put in Harrish. “He carried the team on his back for a dozen years or so. Now you’ve taken Hughson’s place—in fact, you’ve more than taken it, for Hughson in his best days never approached your record. That’s why the Giants have won the pennant for the last three years in succession. And they’ll win it again this year if you keep up the pace at which you’ve started.”

“Let that pass,” said Joe. “Just what have you got in mind?”

Tompkinson cleared his throat.

“As I was saying a little while ago,” he remarked, “I don’t think that it’s a good thing for the game to have the Giants win so steadily. I have a lot of friends who feel the same way. In fact, we felt so strongly about it, especially after we’d heard that your arm had been burned at the training camp, that we backed our judgment and our feelings to the extent of putting up quite a little pool of money that this wasn’t the Giants’ year to win. Now that you’ve come back so strongly we stand to lose something like two hundred thousand dollars.”

“I see,” said Joe, trying to restrain himself, though his blood was boiling.

“Well,” went on Tompkinson. “We’re not the men to ask for anything without giving something in return. And I don’t think you’d be the man to take fifty thousand dollars without having a kindly feeling toward the men who gave it.”

“You mean that you want me to throw enough games to make the Giants lose the pennant?” asked Joe, still trying to keep his voice steady.

“You have a disconcerting way of putting things,” replied Tompkinson, with a smile. “I—ah—just thought that if you found out suddenly that your arm was burned a little more seriously than the doctors thought and that you had to let up in your work and, ah——”

Joe rose slowly from his seat.

“I can think better when I’m on my feet,” he explained, as he strolled toward the side of the room.

Harrish and Tompkinson exchanged a smile of evil triumph as they rose also and walked over to where Joe was standing. Their prey was hooked!

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Joe murmured dreamily.

“In cash if you like!” exclaimed Tompkinson eagerly. “What’s the answer?”

“Here’s the answer!”

Joe’s fist shot out and crashed against Tompkinson’s jaw!

CHAPTER XI
DISCOMFITED CROOKS

It was a terrific blow that Joe gave Tompkinson and the man went down like a log.

There was a shout of terror from Harrish who hastily sought refuge behind the table.

“Come here, you dirty crook, and get some of the same medicine!” cried Joe, advancing upon him.

He was interrupted by a frightened shout from the attendant who had rushed to the side of the fallen man and was trying to raise his head.

“He’s choking!” he cried. “You’ve knocked his teeth down his throat!”

Joe looked at Tompkinson and saw that he was becoming black in the face.

“Run for a doctor,” he commanded, at the same time throwing himself down beside Tompkinson.

He held the fellow’s head with his left hand and hastily thrust his fingers into the rascal’s mouth. Far down, he could feel the obstruction. He reached still farther, caught it with one of his fingers and with a great effort pulled it out. It was, as the waiter had said, a set of false teeth that had been dislodged by his blow.

He propped Tompkinson up against the side of the room, tore his collar open and chafed his wrists.

“Bring me some water from the table,” he commanded Harrish, who stood white and shaking.

The latter complied and they dashed the water into Tompkinson’s face.

The treatment was effective, and in a few moments Tompkinson opened his eyes and looked around. His eyes glowed with malignity as they fixed themselves on Joe.

“I’ll fix you for this,” he mumbled, as well as he could from the absence of his teeth.

Joe and Harrish lifted the man to his feet and seated him in a chair. Hardly had they done so when the waiter returned with the house physician, the manager, and a policeman, who had been hastily summoned.

They closed the door behind them so as to insure privacy and faced Joe and Harrish.

“What does this mean?” the manager of the hotel asked sternly.

“Ask him,” said Joe coolly, motioning toward Harrish.

“It means—” began the latter savagely, then checked himself.

“Why don’t you go on?” asked Joe amusedly, knowing full well how difficult it would be for the crooks to explain.

“I’ll wait and see what the doctor says first,” muttered Harrish, his face flushing.

In the meanwhile the policeman had moved over to Joe’s side.

“If you’ve done this—” he began grimly.

Then his face lighted up as he recognized the culprit.

“Why, it’s Baseball Joe!” he exclaimed delightedly. “How are you, Mr. Matson? ’Tis glad I am to see you. Many’s the time I’ve watched you pitch and seen you paste the ball over the fince.”

“Never thought you’d have to pinch me, did you?” grinned Joe.

“Begorra, I haven’t pinched you yet,” whispered the policeman, with a wink. “An’ by the same token, I don’t think I’m goin’ to now. Not if I can annyways git out of it.”

The doctor rose from his examination of the patient.

“Nothing serious,” he announced. “His lip is cut and his throat will be sore for a while. That’s all.”

“Now I want to know just what happened,” demanded the hotel manager. “This may be a case for the courts.”

“I knocked the man down,” admitted Joe. “And he’s lucky to have got off with just that. He can tell you why I did it if he wants to.”

“Jist a little mix-up betwane gintlemen,” murmured Lonergan, the policeman, minimizing the matter. “’Tis happenin’ every day.”

“Do you want to make a charge against this man?” asked the manager, turning to Tompkinson.

The latter looked hesitatingly at Harrish.

“My friend and I will confer for a moment,” said Harrish, and bending over his companion a whispered colloquy ensued.

It ended as Joe had supposed it would. The scoundrels would never dare to take the chance of the cause of the quarrel being revealed. It would mean financial damage and social ostracism. No man could live in New York after it had become known that he had tried to bribe Baseball Joe to destroy the Giants’ chance for the pennant.

“My friend has been the victim of a felonious assault,” Harrish said stiffly, “but we do not care to make a charge. You may consider the incident ended.”

“Glory be!” muttered Lonergan under his breath. It would have been a sore trial to him to have to arrest the man whom he admired above all others.

The attendant brought their hats and canes to the crestfallen rascals and they left the room with much less dignity than they had entered it.

Joe left a moment later, pausing for a moment to shake hands with Lonergan.

“Keep mum about this, old man,” he counseled. “There’s been nothing done that you or any other decent man wouldn’t have done in my place, but I don’t want anything to get in the papers.”

“Trust me, Mr. Matson,” said Lonergan. “Niver a word will any one git out of me. An’ I’m glad,” he added, with a broad grin, “that it was some other feller than mesilf that got the crack from that home-run arm of yours. It must have been a lallapaloozer.”

Jim was reading a book when Joe strode in, and he sensed at once that something had happened.

“Hello! What’s come o’er the spirit of your dream? Don’t look so spick and span as when you went out. Anything happened?”

“Met a couple of crooks and beat one of them up,” answered Joe, as he threw off his coat and donned a lounging jacket.

“Held up by footpads?” asked Jim, in some alarm.

“Not exactly,” grinned Joe. “Footpads take your money, but these fellows were giving it away. Offered me fifty thousand dollars.”

Jim bounded from his chair.

“Stop talking in riddles,” he adjured him, “and give me the low-down of the thing.”

Joe described the affair from beginning to end while Jim listened with interest and growing indignation.

“My, but I’m glad you soaked him!” he exclaimed.

“He’d have gotten more yet if his teeth hadn’t gone down his throat,” returned Joe. “That was the only thing, too, that saved Harrish from a thrashing.”

“I guess you’ve made a new record to hang alongside of your other ones,” said Jim, with a smile.

“How’s that?” queried Joe.

“Why, I guess you’re the first man in history that ever knocked a man’s teeth down his throat for offering him fifty thousand dollars.”

“I guess that hasn’t happened very often,” admitted Joe.

“You’ll have to be on your guard now,” warned Jim. “You’ve made two bitter enemies. Those fellows are vindictive, and their money gives them power. They could easily buy thugs to beat you up, cripple you—anything for revenge and to get you out of the way.”

“True enough,” assented Joe. “It wouldn’t be the first time enemies have tried to do me up. Do you remember the live rattlesnake they sent to me in a box in the hope that it would get me when I opened the box?”

“Will I ever forget it!” exclaimed Jim, with a shudder. “You came within an ace of getting yours that time, old boy.”

“But I imagine that these fellows will be a little more subtle in their methods,” mused Joe. “Gunmen and thugs as apt to blab if they’re caught. Oh, well, we won’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles us. But I will keep my eyes wide open.”

“You can’t be too careful,” cautioned Jim anxiously. “They’ll have a double motive now, one to get revenge for the licking and the other to save that two hundred thousand dollars that they’ve got up against us.”

“They’d better kiss that money good-by,” declared Joe grimly, “for we’re going to play our heads off to win.”

CHAPTER XII
ON THE UPWARD CLIMB

“Are you going to tell McRae about your fight with those fellows?” asked Jim.

“Surely,” answered Joe. “It’s a matter that concerns the club too nearly to keep from him. When there’s any underhand work going on, he ought to be the first one to know about it.”

“That’s right,” agreed Jim.

“Then, too,” Joe went on, “McRae knows practically everybody in New York. There isn’t anybody in the Police Department, for instance, that wouldn’t do anything in reason that he wanted. He can get them to look up these fellows, find out just what their standing is, and learn if the cops have anything on them. Information of that kind may stand us in good stead if it comes to a showdown.”

There was no game scheduled for the next day, and Joe telephoned down to McRae’s home and made an appointment with him.

“What’s up, Joe?” asked the manager as he came into the room where Joe had been shown by the maid.

“Plenty, Mac,” replied Joe, and then went on to tell him of the events of the night before.

McRae listened with a frown that grew ever deeper and was only lightened when Joe described the blow that knocked Tompkinson down.

“I’d have given a thousand dollars to have seen that,” he cried. “The low-down sneaks! I’d like to run them out of town, and, by thunder, I will if there’s any way to do it!”

He looked up their office addresses in the directory and then took up the telephone and called for a certain extension number at police headquarters.

“That you, O’Brien?” he said when he had got the connection. “This is McRae. Feeling fine, thanks. How’s yourself? Good! Listen, Tom. I want you to look up a couple of Wall Street men and see if you have anything on them. Tompkinson and Harrish, brokers. Got it? Yes, that’s it. On the dead quiet, understand? See what kind of a place they’re conducting, if they’ve ever been in trouble with the courts or police, indicted or anything like that. You will? Good! Do as much for you some day. Yes, the Giants are going fine. Run up and see them play whenever you can. What, didn’t you get the pass I sent you? Must have been lost in the mail. Send you another one to-morrow. All right, Tom. Give me the low-down on those fellows as soon as you can. Thanks. So long, old man.

“Well, that’s that,” said McRae, as he hung up the receiver and turned again to Joe. “It’s just as well to know all we can about these scoundrels and their connections. It may come in handy some time. I’ll pass the tip to Robbie and we’ll all be on the lookout for any developments. Of course, I suppose you’ve told Jim about it, but don’t let any other members of the team get hold of it. It might get them nervous and unsettled and affect their playing. Gee, Joe, I can’t thank you enough for the way you trimmed those fellows. It does me good every time I think of it. And we’ll all do our best to see that the dirty crooks lose their two hundred thousand.”

It was now the Giants’ turn to visit the grounds of the other eastern teams, and they braced themselves for the struggle. Thus far they had had the advantage of playing on the Polo Grounds, where they knew every inch of ground, were familiar with the lights that slanted across the field in the late afternoon, knew just at what angle the ball should be played when it struck a fence or wall, and, above all, had the inspiration and encouragement that came from the crowds who were anxious to see them win.

Now conditions were reversed and it was the turn of the other fellows to fight on their own stamping grounds. But the Giants were known as a good “road team,” and they faced the issue with confidence.

Joe had inspired the others with his own never-say-die determination and the team had never been in better fighting trim. Like the proverbial war horse, they sniffed the battle from afar and were eager to plunge into the struggle.

Boston came first, and the team from the city of culture went down before the savage onslaught of the Giants. The latter fairly swept their opponents off their feet, and when, at the conclusion of the series, the men from Gotham jumped to Philadelphia they had four additional scalps at their belt.

The downtrodden Phillies did a little better, but not much. They got one game from the invaders and another was prevented by rain. But of the three that were played the Giants annexed two and then moved on to Brooklyn.

Here, as usual, they met their stiffest opposition. Every one of the games was played for blood. One resulted in a tie after seventeen scoreless innings. The Brooklyns took another, but the other two were swept into the Giants’ bat bags.

So the results of the short tour were eight victories, two defeats, and one tie for the Giants.

“Rather nifty record, if you ask me,” exulted Jim, whose own fine work, supplementing that of Joe’s, had been largely responsible for the fine showing of the team.

“Good as far as it goes,” agreed Joe. “But now the western teams are coming down like wolves on the fold and we’ll be put to the hardest test we’ve been up against yet.”

“Let them come,” grinned Jim. “I’m fond of wolf meat.”

Bear meat, however, proved to be on the menu, for the Chicago Cubs were the first of the western teams to invade the Polo Grounds. Of late they had been clawing their way through the other teams in their section and they were full of pep and ginger as they opened in New York.

An immense crowd that filled every seat in the grandstand and bleachers was on hand to witness the first combat. The traditional rivalry between the two cities that had existed since the days of “Pop” Anson and Frank Chance could always be depended on to furnish contests that would be for blood from the first stroke of the gong.

Evans, the Chicago manager, himself a famous veteran of the game, strolled up to McRae and shook hands. The two were bitter enemies on the playing field but the best of friends off it.

“Sorry, John,” chaffed Evans. “It’ll hurt me a lot more than it hurts you, but we’ve got to have this game. We need it in our business.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard something like that before,” smiled McRae. “Some day when dreams come true you may manage to squeeze through, but that won’t be this day. I’ve already chalked the game up on my side of the ledger.”

“Turn over, turn over, you’re on your back,” gibed the Chicago manager. “Axander was never in better trim, and he’s just honing to get at you.”

“Axander isn’t so bad,” admitted McRae. “But then, you know, I’ve got some twirlers myself that are not rotten. One of them is named Matson—‘Baseball Joe’ they call him. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

Evans grinned and moved on.

The practice was smart and snappy on both sides, and a hush of suppressed excitement settled down on the spectators when the bell rang for the game to begin.

The hush was broken by a roar of applause as the Giants scattered to their positions and this swelled into a hurricane of cheers as Joe pulled on his glove and walked out to the box.

The first inning was short and sweet—sweet at least for the Giants. Seven of them might as well have been off the field, for all the work they had to do.

Joe shot the ball across the plate like a catapult and Burton, the first man up, was set down on strikes. McGee, the second batter, raised a towering foul that Mylert caught after a long run close to the Giants’ dugout. Henderson, the third in the Cub batting order, took three whiffs at the circumambient and went growling back to the bench while Joe was forced to raise his cap as he made his way to the dugout.

“That’s what you call putting them over, Joe,” commended McRae. “Keep it up, and we’ll win in a walk.”

“You sure had them buffaloed,” beamed Robbie. “They didn’t get even a bowing acquaintance with the ball.”

Axander walked to the box with a confident smile and got a generous hand from the Chicago supporters in the crowd and also from the New York fans, who liked the veteran twirler for his skill, his sportsmanship, and his long years of service during which he had been an honor to the national game.

He whipped over the first ball for a clean strike. The second just missed slicing the corner of the plate and went for a ball, Curry refusing to bite. The next was a fast one, shoulder high, and the big Giant fielder laced it into right for a sharp single.

It was an auspicious beginning, and it looked still better when Renton, attempting to sacrifice, laid down a baby bunt that Axander ran in for but fell down while attempting to field.

Burkett came up amid frantic adjurations from his mates and the crowd to send his comrades in. He worked the count to two and three and then sent a sharp grasser to Gallagher at short. The latter made a superb stop and threw the ball to third, putting out Curry. Henderson returned the ball to Holstein at second, who muffed it, permitting Renton to get back to the bag.

The ball had rolled several feet away and Renton thought he saw a chance to make third. Holstein, however, retrieved the ball quickly and got it to third in plenty of time. Renton, seeing that he was lost if he went on, doubled on his tracks. But the ball shot back to second and he was trapped. He ran back and forth until the ball was put on him for an out. But in the mix-up, Burkett, by fast running, reached second.

With two out, Joe, who occupied the position of “clean-up” man in the batting order, came to the plate.

A cheer went up from the crowd and the air was vocal with urgent entreaties for Joe to win his own game.

Axander looked him over carefully.

“You seem to be rather popular with this crowd,” he said, with a grin.

“I’ll be more so when I straighten out that curve of yours,” laughed Joe, in response.

“Come out of your trance,” retorted Axander, as he whizzed the first one over.

There was a terrific crash as Joe caught the ball fair on the nose and sent it screaming between right and center.

“Blistering billikens!” yelled Robbie, jumping up and down in his excitement. “He’s killed it!”

CHAPTER XIII
A NO-HIT GAME

Robbie had shouted too soon.

McGee at center and Burton at right had started running at the crack of the bat.

It seemed as though it was impossible that either should reach the ball in time. The sphere was going with the force of a bullet almost on a line.

But just as it was passing him Greaves, by an almost superhuman effort, launched himself into the air straight ahead of him and nabbed it with his gloved hand.

The force of the impact knocked him down and rolled him over and over. But when he got up the ball was in his hand.

It was an almost miraculous catch, such as occurs on the ball field only two or three times in a season.

There was a moment of stupefaction and then the crowd burst into a roar of applause. It had spoiled a perfectly good home run for Joe and prevented two scores for the Giants. But it was baseball of the finest kind, and the Giants themselves, despite their disappointment, were sportsmanlike enough to admire it.

“Highway robbery, Joe,” condoled McRae, as Joe came in. “That was a whale of a hit.”

“It was a whale of a catch too, and don’t you forget it,” replied Joe, with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve seen a finer one since I’ve been in the National League.”

“Well, anyway,” Robbie consoled himself, “it shows that the boys are getting to Axander.”

The second inning was a blank for both sides. Joe was invincible and Axander, too, had tightened up.

But even at this early stage a difference could be noted between the two masters. Not one of the Chicagos met the ball full and square. They either struck out, knocked up fouls, or dribbled little ones into the dirt that were easily gathered up by the infield.

Axander, on the contrary, while he permitted no scoring, had allowed one base on balls and two of the outs had been on long flies to the outfield, which, though they had been gathered in by the men of the outer garden, had left the bats with a decided ring that was music to the ears of Robbie and McRae.

“They’re finding him,” gloated the rubicund coach. “It’s only a matter of time before he’ll wilt.”

But the fulfillment of Robbie’s prophecy was long postponed. Again and again Axander was saved by splendid support. Wherever the Giants sent the ball a Chicago fielder seemed to be in the way. Up to the sixth inning Axander had allowed six hits, but most of them came when two men were out and the batter, though he gained his base, could not complete the circuit.

Joe, on the other hand, was pitching like a man inspired. He was at the top of his form. He played with his opponents as a cat plays with a mouse. His control was perfect and his change of pace had his opponents up in the air. Never had his consummate artistry been more in evidence.

When at the end of the sixth inning the crowd woke to the realization that he had not yielded a hit, not given a pass, and that not a single one of the Chicagos had reached first base, excitement reached fever heat. The spectators realized that they were looking on at an epic of the ball field.

It was no longer a question of seeing one side or the other win the game. That was lost in the other question that passed from lip to lip.

Could he keep it up? Could he hold that bunch of sluggers down? Were they really looking on at what would prove to be that rarest of all things on the diamond, a no-hit game?

In the seventh inning Joe turned the Chicagos back to the bench as fast as they came up to the plate, and the tumult as the last man went out on strikes was deafening.

“Frozen hoptoads!” ejaculated Robbie, so keyed up that he seemed threatened with apoplexy. “He’s put a spell on the ball.”

“He’s got them eating out of his hand all right,” declared McRae. “I never saw such demon pitching, and all so easy that it looks as if he wasn’t half trying. But now get busy, you fellows,” he stormed at his men. “Are you going to let Joe do it all alone? He can hold the other fellows down, but it’s up to you to give him some runs. Get up there now and knock the cover off the ball.”

It seemed at first that his adjurations would have their effect. Jackwell and Bowen cracked out two singles in succession. It looked as though the long expected rally had arrived.

Robbie ran down to first on the coaching lines, his face as red as the setting sun.

“Here’s where we score, boys!” he shouted. “We’ve got him going! He’s due for the showers! On your toes, now, on your toes!”

As he bent over with his hands on his knees he looked like a round gigantic ball.

A bellowing voice came from the stand:

“Hey, McRae, what time does the balloon go up?”

A roar of laughter arose from the spectators and Robbie straightened up indignantly and glared in the direction from which the voice had come. But he was equal to the occasion.

“It’s already gone!” he shouted back. “Don’t you see that Axander’s up in the air?”

The laugh was with him now, and the crowds yelled gleefully.

With two on bases and none out, the Giants’ chances looked bright. But here again the uncertainty that lends fascination to the game took a hand. Mylert hit sharply to Henderson at third, who made a wonderful stop, stepped on the bag, putting out Jackwell and relaying the ball to second in time to nip Bowen on a snappy double play.

Then Axander put on steam and set down Curry on strikes and the inning that had promised so much went glimmering.

The eighth also passed without scoring. The Chicagos, desperate now at their inability to line the ball out, resorted to bunting, but with no better success than before. Joe had called in his infield when he saw the change in tactics and they were on the bunts like a flash.

Still not a hit, not a base on balls, and that wonderful arm of Joe’s tirelessly mowing down his opponents as the sickle cuts through the wheat.

As the ninth inning began the strain upon the spectators became almost unbearable. Could Baseball Joe keep up the pace?

Perhaps the coolest man in all those thousands was Joe himself. He had never felt so completely the master of himself or the occasion. His nerves were like steel and his heart never missed a beat.

In that memorable ninth inning he pitched just nine balls to the three men who faced him. Every one went over the plate, but with such blinding speed, such hops, such drops, that they were simply unhittable. One, two, three, the Cubs came up to the plate. One, two, three, the Cubs went back to the bench.

When the last one went out on strikes an uproar came from the stands that was simply thunderous, that rose and sank and rose again as though it would never stop.

At last the umpires, with frantic wavings of their hands, restored a semblance of order and the Giants went in for their half. It was the irony of fate that, although nine hits had been registered off Axander while Joe had not permitted a single one, the score was still a tie at 0 to 0.

Renton was first at bat and shot one down the first base line that the baseman picked up neatly and stepped on the bag while the spectators groaned. Burkett raised a towering fly that Axander caught without moving from his tracks, and the groans redoubled. But they gave way to frantic cheers when Joe came to the bat.

There was no one on the Giant team that Axander would not rather have seen at the plate at that critical juncture. For all through the game his curves had held no terrors for Joe. He had already ripped out two doubles and a triple, but unluckily they had come at times when there was no one on base and his mates had failed to bring him around.

Now with the appeals of the crowd to Joe to line out a homer, Axander took stock of the situation and promptly decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

“Be a sport, old man,” begged Joe, who read his opponent’s decision in his eyes.

“I’d rather be a winner,” grinned Axander, as he deliberately threw the first ball six feet wide of the plate.

CHAPTER XIV
STEALING BASES

A roar of derision went up from the crowds at this indication that Axander was bent on keeping the ball out of Joe’s reach, and this grew in volume when the next thrown ball was quite as wide as its predecessor.

“Play the game!”

“You’re a fine sport—I don’t think!”

“Where’s your nerve?”

“Crawl into a hole and draw it after you.”

But these and similar cries that came from stands and bleachers had no effect on the Cub pitcher. He had planned his course of action and adhered to it. And, of course, in this he was wholly within his rights. With two men out, it was good strategy to pass the man who was famous for his home runs and take a chance on Barrett who, though a good sticker, seldom went beyond a double or a triple.

Joe was desperate, for the one thing he wanted more than anything else at that moment was one good swing at the ball. But the next two that came up were wholly beyond his reach and he dropped his bat disgustedly and trotted down to first while the crowds howled their disappointment at being cheated out of the chance of seeing him hit.

Axander grinned triumphantly as Joe from first good-naturedly shook his fist at him. Then he took up his position in the box as Larry Barrett came to the plate.

Joe, from first, caught Larry’s eye and gave him a secret signal which meant that he was to take his time and either wait Axander out or foul off as many as possible.

Larry, who had come to the bat full of pep, was somewhat disconcerted by this order, but it spoke well for the discipline that Joe as captain had infused into the team that he did not think of disobeying.

He stooped down to fasten his shoelace while Axander, all ready to pitch, fumed and fretted at the delay. His nerves were strained to the highest tension and anything a little out of the usual order tended to throw him out of his stride.

In the meantime, Joe danced about first, taking a lead just long enough to tempt Axander to throw but not too long to prevent a quick dart back to the base. The more throws he could draw, the greater the chance that one of them might go high or wide.

Axander was noted for his ability to hold runners close to the bags. His quick snap had caught many a player napping. It was generally considered good policy to hug the bags closely when Axander was on the mound.

But Joe had found by careful study that almost every pitcher had a certain individual move, a telltale mannerism, when he meant to throw to first. Axander was no exception, though few players had found it out.

Joe’s hawklike eye had observed that Axander, who always held the ball with both hands near his chin when he was pitching with men on the bases drew his hands up against his breast for an instant before he started to wind up. He had watched him all through the game and saw that he never threw the ball to the base after pressing the ball against his chest. As long as the hands were free from his body there was danger of his snapping the ball down to first at any moment. But as soon as they were gathered toward the chest, the ball went only in the direction of the plate.

Here was Joe’s “ace in the hole,” and he instantly determined to make the most of it. In the meantime, the more that Larry delayed the more irritated Axander was likely to become.

The shoelace once carefully adjusted, Larry found that the bat he had chosen did not balance just as well as he thought it ought to, and took some time in picking out one more to his liking.

Then he came to the box, hit the bat against one heel after the other for luck, and when the umpire began to glare at him for stalling, set himself for the pitch.

Joe, with his eye on Axander’s slightest motion, took as long a lead as he dared.

Up went Axander’s hands against his chest. He was going to pitch. Joe set himself and by the time the ball had shot from the pitcher’s hand was already halfway to second. He came into the bag standing up, for by the time the ball had reached the catcher he had gained such a commanding lead that that individual saw that it was useless to make the throw.

So far, so good. A great deal had been gained. Now, even a single would bring him in.

Larry, too, was elated, for now he thought he would be permitted to take his chance with the ball.

But what was his perplexity and consternation when Joe from second again gave him the signal to wait.

Baseball Joe had figured out the situation carefully, weighing all the chances. Larry might of course make a hit. If he did, that would win the game.

But the chances were at least three or four to one that Larry would not hit safely. In that case, Joe would be left on the base and the game would go into extra innings with all the chances of a possible final defeat for the Giants.

Of course, Larry’s attempt to wait Axander out was itself fraught with danger. He might be called out on strikes. Even if he resorted to fouling off, one of the fouls might be caught and the jig would be up.

It was all a gamble. And since it was a gamble, Joe decided to bet on himself.

He danced around second, trying to draw a throw on the chance that it might be wild and the ball go out to center. Twice Axander took the chance, wheeling and throwing like a flash. But Joe’s foot was always on the bag and he grinned tantalizingly at the worried pitcher.

Drawing away from the bag foot by foot, Joe watched his adversary. Again the pitcher’s hands touched his chest, and again, almost before the ball left his hand, Joe, with nearly half the distance already covered, was legging it to third.

This time he slid in, for the throw from catcher to third was much shorter than to second. But his hands were on the bag as Henderson bent down and stabbed at him frantically.

Axander by this time was clearly nervous. The big lead that Joe had got on him each time perplexed him. What was it that had told him so unerringly just the right time to steal? It must have been something in his pitching motions. But just what was it?

He motioned to his catcher, who went forward to meet him, and they held a brief conference while the crowd howled in derision.

“You’ve got his goat, Joe!”

“He’s up in the air!”

“Oh, you base stealer!”

The conference ended and the pitcher and catcher resumed positions.

But Larry’s position was now growing precarious and whatever was done must be done quickly. A strike had been called on him and two balls. He looked pleadingly toward Joe, but the latter again gave him the signal to wait.

Joe in the meantime, while the colloquy between Axander and Lange, his catcher, had been going on, had been chaffing Henderson, the third baseman. The latter was a good mechanical player, but a slow thinker and easily razzed.

“You were pretty slow in trying to put that ball on me,” said Joe. “I slid into the bag without any trouble.”

“Oh, I guess I’m fast enough,” growled Henderson.

“You couldn’t catch me once in a thousand years,” gibed Joe.

“Wait till I get a chance at you next time,” retorted the third baseman.

“You couldn’t catch me if I were running on my hands,” declared Joe.

“You’ve got another guess coming,” replied Henderson, his face flushing.

Joe eyed longingly the stretch between third base and home. But Axander was partly facing him now and watching his every movement. The catcher too was on the alert. The chances of a clean steal home were too heavy to take. It would be little less than suicide.

But Joe was not yet at the end of his tether.

He stepped off the bag and edged along just far enough to draw a throw from Axander. The ball came like a shot into the hands of Henderson. Joe saw the look of triumph in the latter’s eyes. He made an apparent effort to go back that brought him within five feet of the third baseman. Then, as though finding he was trapped, he turned toward home with Henderson after him with outstretched arm.

Down the stretch they went, less than three feet separating them. Joe knew that he was the faster man, but he deliberately let Henderson keep close to him, so close that at every moment the latter thought he was going to touch him. He was already wrought up by Joe’s gibes at his slowness and he wanted the satisfaction of putting him out himself.

The field stands were a pandemonium. The Giants were shouting and jumping up and down like mad. The whole Chicago infield were rushing toward the plate, while Axander and Lange were frantically shouting to Henderson to throw the ball.

But the latter, in frenzied pursuit of that flying figure that he seemed at every instant just about to touch, kept on. Then, when near the plate, Joe let out a burst of speed that showed Henderson his chase was fruitless. He threw then, but the ball was too late.

It went high to Lange, who grabbed it and fairly threw himself down on Joe, who in one tremendous fling had launched himself toward the plate.

There was a cloud of dust, a medley of flying arms and legs, a wild chorus of yells.

“Safe!” cried the umpire.

And then twenty thousand people promptly went mad.

CHAPTER XV
A SINGULAR OCCURRENCE

The most brilliant game of the season that far was over and the Giants had won by a score of 1 to 0.

When Baseball Joe, after battling his way through the crowds that swarmed down over the playing field, found himself in the midst of his rejoicing mates in the clubhouse he received one of the greatest ovations of his career.

“If ever there was a one-man game it was this one to-day,” gloated McRae, as he slapped Joe on the shoulder. “To think of shutting those birds out without a single hit. I’ll bet Evans is savage enough to bite nails.”

“The boys played mighty well behind me,” said Joe modestly. “No pitcher could have asked for better support. They batted well too, considering that they had to face Axander.”

“To think of your working your way round the bases after Axander passed you,” grinned Robbie. “He thought that he had cheated you out of a run, but you got there just the same.”

“I never saw finer base stealing in my life,” went on McRae. “It seemed as if you knew just when Axander was going to pitch.”

“I did,” replied Joe, and he told them of that peculiar chest motion of the Cub pitcher that had stood him in such good stead.

“Haven’t I told you, John, that that headpiece was working all the time?” chuckled Robbie.

“I thought Joe’s goose was cooked though when that throw of Axander’s caught him off third,” put in Larry.

“It didn’t catch me,” replied Joe, with a grin. “I let him do that deliberately. I wanted to be caught, and he rose to the bait.”

“What?” exclaimed McRae, as though he could not believe his ears.

“Sure thing,” said Joe. “I thought at first I might try to make a clean steal of home. But you know that would have been a hundred to one shot with Axander partly facing me. So I concluded that I might work Henderson. You know what an ice wagon he is. So I razzed him about how slow he was until he began to see red. Then I drew the throw, and he thought he had me trapped. I figured that, all heated up as he was by what I had been saying to him, it would be an immense satisfaction for him to catch me and put the ball on me himself. So I ran just slowly enough for him to keep right on my heels and think every moment he was going to touch me. You saw how the game worked. When at last he woke up it was too late. It was very simple.”

McRae looked at Robbie. Robbie looked at McRae. Then they both looked at Joe.

“S-simple!” stuttered Robbie helplessly.

“Simple!” exclaimed McRae. “Oh, yes! Very simple! Painfully simple! The most brainy bit of ball playing that I’ve ever seen on the diamond. Come on, Robbie, let’s get out of here before Joe thinks of some other simple thing.”

The newspapers the next day devoted columns of their space to describing that wonderful no-hit game and the dazzling exhibition that Joe had given in the box, at the bat, and on the bases. It was generally agreed that the game stood out as one of the most memorable in the annals of the diamond.

The next day Jim turned in another victory in a game that had no eventful feature beyond his own excellent pitching and a homer that the center fielder poled out in the seventh inning.

In the third game, young Bradley was knocked out of the box after pitching a good game for six innings. In the seventh, the Chicagos rallied and knocked his offerings to all corners of the field. Markwith was sent in as a relief and held the invaders down for the rest of the game, but the damage had already been done and the game went into the bat bag of the Cubs.

Merton, in the fourth game, turned in one of the best exhibitions of his career and the Chicagos left the metropolis a somewhat chastened bunch with only one game of the series out of four to their credit.

The St. Louis Cardinals were next, and they held the Giants to an even break, owing largely to Mornsby’s phenomenal work at short and his prowess with the bat. So far that season he had been hitting at a .400 clip, and he slightly increased that average while in New York. It seemed quite evident that he was the man whom Joe would have to beat if he led the league that year.

“That baby is right there with the stick,” remarked Joe to Jim, after one of the games.

“He’s a dandy all right,” agreed Jim. “It takes a mighty good pitcher to fool him. But you’re ahead of him now in your batting average, and when it comes to long hits—triples and homers—you have him skinned.”

“He’ll bear watching, just the same,” observed Joe. “I wish we had him on our team. I urged Mac to try to get him last year, and he tried his best to do it, but it was no go.”

“No wonder,” replied Jim. “The St. Louis management might as well shut up shop if they let him go. I guess we can get along without him, anyway, the way the boys are playing now.”

The Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburghs followed in order. The Giants swept the series with the Reds, but the Pirates were another story. They put up a bitter fight and captured two games out of three, the fourth being prevented by rain.

Still the western invasion resulted very satisfactorily from the Giants’ point of view. They had met the most formidable teams in the league and gathered in ten out of the fifteen games actually played.

For this stage of the season they could scarcely have asked for a better showing. They were leading the league, six games out in front of the Chicagos, their nearest competitor. And with all the players in excellent condition so that they could always put their strongest team on the field, the outlook for the pennant was rosy.

One night as Joe was strolling toward home after the game, Jim having had an errand downtown, he stopped to buy a paper at a newsstand.

As he picked up the paper and turned away, an elderly man, poorly dressed and rather unkempt in appearance, bumped into him, nearly knocking him off his balance. Joe looked up, annoyed, but when he saw that the man was old said nothing. The man did not apologize, but glared at Joe as though the ball player instead of himself had been the offender. He bought a paper and hurried away.

“Who is our genial friend?” asked Joe of the newsdealer, whom he knew well.

“That old fellow?” replied the dealer. “I don’t know his name. Lives round here somewhere, for he often comes here for papers. He’s a queer dick. Think he’s a little touched in the upper story. Some one round here told me that he was a nut on science—a chemist or an electrician or something of the kind.”

“Doesn’t look much like a highbrow,” remarked Joe.

“No,” agreed the newsdealer, as he arranged his papers. “Still, you can’t always tell from a frog’s looks how far he can jump,” he added philosophically.

Following the departure of the western teams there was an off day in the schedule, and the Giants, with a team composed mostly of rookies, went down to Bridgeport for a game with the local team. Joe had not gone along, as the game was an exhibition one of no importance, and as he had been under a steady strain of late he welcomed the opportunity for a day off.

It was a bright sunny afternoon, and Joe, who happened to be alone, had taken his favorite seat in the bay window of his apartment.

As he glanced idly across the street to a window nearly opposite, he caught sight of the queer-looking old man who had bumped into him at the news stand. The man caught Joe’s eyes, stared at him stupidly for a moment, and then disappeared behind the curtains.

“So that ‘nut on science,’ as the newsdealer called him, is a neighbor of mine,” Joe said to himself with a smile, and promptly forgot the incident.

He had never felt more at peace with the world. He had had a delightful letter from Mabel that morning, full of affection, and had answered it in kind. He had enjoyed a good dinner, and now, with a sigh of contentment, relaxed in his chair to bask in the sun and read the paper.

He was in his shirtsleeves, not having troubled to throw on his lounging jacket, as he expected no visitors and it was a relief to get out of harness.

He picked up the paper and began to read.

Some time later he awoke with a start and looked about him.

The paper had fallen from his hand and lay upon the floor. He himself had slumped down so that his back was resting on the edge of the chair. A little more and he would have slipped off it altogether.

“What do you know about that?” he muttered to himself in surprise. “I must have been asleep. Queer for me to have dropped off that way in the day time. Oh, well, I suppose I just dozed off for a moment.”

He looked at his watch and gave an exclamation of surprise. It had been about two o’clock when he had settled down in the chair. It was now nearly five. A glance at the changed position of the sun told him that there was nothing the matter with the watch.

“Beats me,” he murmured. “First time since I was a kid that I’ve done anything like that.”

He pressed his hand against the arm of the chair as he rose, and his own arm almost gave way under him.

“What in thunder!” he exclaimed.

At the same time he was conscious of a prickling sensation in his arm as though a thousand little needle points were jabbing it.

CHAPTER XVI
KNOCKED OUT OF THE BOX

For a moment Joe was genuinely alarmed. He was usually so free from pains and aches and he kept himself in such superb physical condition that any marked deviation from this enviable state came to him with a shock. Visions of paralysis darted across his mind. He knew, of course, that this was usually to be dreaded only by the old. Still, men as young as he had sometimes, though rarely, been the victims of a stroke.

This thought, however, he entertained for only a fleeting moment.

“What am I mooning like this for?” he scolded himself. “It’s simple enough. I’ve just had the arm in a strained position and it’s gone to sleep like the rest of me. A bit of a rub, and it will be all right.”

He massaged the arm vigorously with his left hand and in a little while could feel that it was becoming normal again. He kept up the friction until at last all the queer feeling had disappeared.

Then he took a shower bath, rubbed himself down vigorously, gave himself a shampoo, and went down to the dining room, where, after an excellent meal, he found himself feeling as well as ever.

The Bostons were to play the Giants at the Polo Grounds the next day and Joe was slated to pitch.

It was an easy assignment, for the Bostons had been “meat” for him in all the games he had pitched against them this season. They were not an exceptionally heavy batting team, although they had a few noted sluggers on their roster. But Joe knew their idiosyncrasies, and usually when he stepped into the box it was a signal for the Braves “to roll over and play dead.”

“Might as well chalk this game up for us in advance,” remarked Jim, just before the game began.

“No game is dead sure before it is played,” returned Joe. “But I never felt in better form for pitching, and if the boys give me a few runs I guess we can make a go of it.”

The early part of the game was full of promise for the Giants. Joe twirled in superb form and up to the sixth his opponents had made only three hits off him and not a Brave had got as far as third base.

Schiff was in the box for the Bostons and pitched an excellent game. He was a good pitcher, and his eccentricities had provoked many a laugh around the circuit and had won him the nickname of “Crazy Schiff.”

His memory was poor, and one of his oddities was his carrying about of a small notebook which he sometimes consulted when he was faced by a batsman whose special weakness, real or supposed, he had forgotten.

He would study this gravely while the stands rocked with laughter and his opponents jeered at him. But he cared little for that. After he had learned what he wanted he thrust his book back into the pocket of his baseball shirt and wound up for his pitch.

The Giants had their batting clothes on that day, and although Schiff pitched fairly well they had nicked him for four runs by the end of the fifth inning and the game seemed carefully tucked away on ice, in view of the way that Joe was pitching.

Joe himself had accounted for one of those runs on the first occasion he came to the bat. Schiff had never pitched to him before, and looked him over carefully.

He cudgeled his brains to remember what he had been told about Joe’s special weakness, but could not recall anything. Then he had recourse to his little book while the spectators proceeded to jeer him.

He scanned the names in alphabetical order until he got to the Ms.

“Matson. Matson,” he murmured. “Vere iss dot Matson?” He was a German. “Oh, here it vos.”

He looked with some bewilderment and then beckoned to his catcher.

“I got id,” he said to him. “Dere ain’t noddings here about a curve oder a fast ball; so I gif him a base on balls. Dot must be his veakness.”

He was not far wrong at that, and it was the wisest thing he could have done. But unluckily, although he tried his best, one of the balls that he tried to throw wide came within reach of Joe’s bat and he spanked it for a homer, speeding around the bases and denting the rubber while the crowd chaffed Schiff unmercifully.

The first man up in the Boston’s half of the sixth inning, Thompson, clouted a single to left that sharp fielding prevented from being stretched to a two-bagger. Jackson came next, and was given a base on balls.

Joe himself was as much surprised at this as the spectators. It was rarely that he passed a man to first, especially when that bag was occupied and a pass meant putting a man on second. And a thing that increased the oddity of the occurrence was that there had been no strikes sandwiched in between. He had simply thrown four balls in succession, and not one of them had even cut the corner of the plate.

“Here, this won’t do!” he said to himself. “I’ve got to brace up.”

But the bracing up proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Thornhill bunted the first ball pitched in the direction of third. Joe ran over for it, but the ball bounded out of his hand and before he could retrieve it the batter had reached first and each of the two other runners had advanced a base. The bags were full with no one out.

The stage was set for a double play. Ordinarily, under such conditions, Joe would have made the next batter hit a grounder to the infield with a good chance of two going out on a snappy double.

He tried to do it now, but to his consternation found that his arm refused to obey his head and his will. It felt heavy, inert. His fast ball was that only in name. His curves were floating up wide of the plate.

Gunton caught one of them on the end of his bat and sent out a long sacrifice fly to center, on which Thompson crossed the plate for the Bostons’ first run. It was an out for Gunton, but that was simply a bit of luck, for he had met the ball squarely. And on the throw in, the other runners had reached second and third.

McIntyre, one of the weakest of the Boston batters, trotted up to the plate. The Braves had waked up to the fact that something was the matter with Joe. Their arch-enemy had been delivered into their hands.

The crowning proof of this came a moment later when McIntyre poled a mighty home run between right and center driving in two runs ahead of him, tying the score.

The handwriting on the wall was plain.

Joe was through.

He had been knocked out of the box!

CHAPTER XVII
A BEWILDERING MYSTERY

To be knocked out of the box is a humiliation that every baseball pitcher has had at times to face. No one has ever escaped it if he has remained any length of time in the game. But it had happened so seldom to Joe that it came upon him this time with crushing force.

The crowd, too, seemed stunned. It was almost unbelievable. Baseball Joe, the king of pitchers, the idol of the fans, the hero so recently of that wonderful no-hit game about which people were still talking—Baseball Joe batted out of the box!

But there was the fact that the Bostons were hitting him almost at will, that they had scored four runs in that inning with only one man out.

Under similar conditions Joe would have pulled any other of his pitchers out of the box. So he did not hesitate a moment about yanking himself out.

He slowly pulled off his glove and walked in to the bench, his face flushed but his head erect. As he did so the crowd rose like one man and burst into a volley of cheering that brought a lump into his throat.

It was a spontaneous and overwhelming proof of the sympathy and affection in which they held him.

McRae, his face full of anxiety and solicitude, came from the dugout to meet him.

“How about it, Joe?” he asked. “Under the weather?”

“Arm just went dead,” was the reply. “Feels as though it weighed a ton. Can hardly get them up to the plate. Better let Jim finish the game.”

It was such an unheard of thing for Joe to be replaced on the mound in the course of a game that nobody had been warming up in the “bull-pen” and Jim was forced to go in “cold” to take up the pitcher’s burden.

But the responsibility thus suddenly put upon him stiffened him, and the inning ended without further scoring. And in the succeeding innings, aided once or twice by Joe’s advice about the kind of balls to pitch to certain batters, Jim held the Bostons down while his comrades gave him a run in the eighth that just enabled the Giants to win the game by the close score of 5 to 4.

This to a certain extent lessened Joe’s chagrin at his sudden collapse. It had hurt him personally, but it had not been fraught with disaster to the team, and he was so bound up in their success that this, after all, was all that counted.

“Don’t think of it twice, Joe,” counseled McRae, at the conclusion of the game. “The best pitcher on earth has to take his medicine now and then. The clock can’t strike twelve all the time. You’ll be feeling as fine as a fiddle to-morrow.”

“I hope so,” replied Joe. “I never gave out so suddenly before. Up to that inning everything was moving like clockwork. Then in a moment the arm went limp.”

“Perhaps you’ve been overworking a trifle,” suggested Robbie. “That no-hit game the other day may have taken a lot out of you. If I were you, I’d have Dougherty give the arm a good massage this afternoon. That will probably put it in fighting trim again.”

It was a very quiet Joe who walked home with Jim that afternoon after Dougherty had outdone himself in a vigorous treatment of his pitching arm.

“Snap out of it, old man,” urged Jim, as he noted his comrade’s depression. “You’ve just had a bad day. Most twirlers get something like that once a month or oftener. You have it less than once a year, and here you are as glum as a funeral. You can’t expect to be working miracles all the time.”

“It isn’t that, Jim,” explained Joe. “Of course I feel as sore as the mischief to have had this thing happen. But I hope I’m enough of a philosopher to stand for a setback now and then.”

“Well, then, if it isn’t that what is it that’s making you so downcast?”

“Just this,” replied Joe. “I was wondering if possibly this trouble to-day mightn’t be due to the burns I got in that fire down at the training camp.”

“Forget it,” counseled Jim, though Joe’s words had stirred up a certain uneasiness in his own mind. “You don’t have to find any special reason for having a bad day in baseball. You’ve just been a little off, and that’s all there is about it. The next time you go into the box you’ll have them standing on their heads as usual.”

A new turn was given to their thoughts when they entered the hotel and their eyes fell on a fashionably dressed young man who had evidently just preceded them and was handing his suitcase to a bellboy.

“Reggie, by all that’s lucky!” cried Joe, rushing up to his brother-in-law and shaking his hand warmly while Jim grasped with equal warmth the unoccupied hand.

“How are you, old chaps!” responded Reggie. “Though I needn’t ask, for I can see you’re top form. Wanted to reach town in time for the game to-day, but the bally old train was late and I just got in.”

“Come right up to our rooms,” said Joe. “Of course you’ll be our guest while you’re in town. How long are you going to stay?”

“Not more’n a day or two,” responded Reggie. “The guv’nor doesn’t even twig that I’m in the city. Thinks I’m in Philly on some business of his. But I had to run over on a little business of my own. Hope to see at least one game while I’m here.”

They had little time to do more than get ready for dinner, and the baseball players forbore to question Reggie further.

“I see you boys are going great guns in the pitcher’s box,” remarked Reggie as they seated themselves at the table. “Trimmin’ the blighters as fast as they come along. Nothin’ to it but the Giants, if you keep it up. The whole country’s talking yet about that no-hit game of yours, Joe.”

“It’ll be talking about something else to-morrow,” said Joe, with a wry smile. “I was knocked out of the box to-day.”

“My word!” exclaimed Reggie, his eyes bulging with astonishment. “You’re spoofin’ me, Joe!”

“Joe just had a bad inning,” explained Jim, and went on to narrate the events of the afternoon.

“Oh, well,” said Reggie consolingly, “one swallow doesn’t make a drink—I mean doesn’t make a summer. You know what that poetry fellah says that even Homer sometimes nods and Milton flaps his wing—or is it droops his wing? You can’t expect to win all the time, old top. You’ll get revenge the next time you go on the mound. We all come a cropper some time. I do myself. To tell the truth, I’m in a bloomin’ mess right now.”

“How’s that?” asked Joe with quickened interest, as they rose from the table and proceeded upstairs to his apartment.

“Why, it’s this way,” began Reggie, as he seated himself in a comfortable chair and carefully pulled out the knife-edged creases of his trousers. “I’ve been takin’ a little flier in stocks in Wall Street, an’ I’m afraid I’ve been jolly well done.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Joe. “You know what I think of playing the market. I hope you haven’t been stuck for much?”

“I’m afraid it may be as much as ten thousand dollars,” admitted Reggie ruefully.

Joe started from his chair.

“Ten thousand dollars!” he exclaimed, aghast.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

“Have you dropped as much as that, Reggie?” asked Jim, sharing Joe’s astonishment.

“I don’t yet know whether I’ve dropped it,” replied Reggie. “But I’ve invested that much, and the way the bally thing looks now I’m not likely to get any of it back.”

“Tell me all about it,” urged Joe.

“Well,” said Reggie, his usually placid face creased with lines of anxiety, “you know perhaps that I had quite a bunch of stocks left to me by a relative in trust that became mine when I came of age. I’ve always had a hankerin’ to try my luck in the market—so many fellahs pickin’ up fortunes there you know—an’ so I put some of these stocks in the hands of a broker who told me he could double the money for me in a little while. Oh, I know jolly well what you’re thinkin’—a fool and his money are soon parted and all that, a sucker born every minute and sometimes they’re twins—but it looked good, and I took the chance. He seemed to have lots of experience——”

“No doubt,” put in Joe. “In other words, you had the stock and he had the experience. Now he has the stocks and you have the experience. Is that it?”

“I’m afraid so,” confessed Reggie.

“What is the name of the broker?” asked Joe.

“A fellow named Harrish——”

“Harrish!” interrupted Joe and Jim in one breath.

“Yes,” said Reggie in some surprise. “Do you know him? He’s in Wall Street near Nassau.”

“I know him all right,” said Joe grimly. “Know him only too well. It was only a little while ago that I came within an ace of giving him the thrashing of his life.”

“My word!” ejaculated Reggie. “What had he done to you?”

“Offered me fifty thousand dollars to throw games so that the Giants would lose the pennant,” replied Joe. Then after exacting a pledge of secrecy, he told Reggie of the night he had dined with Harrish and Tompkinson.

Reggie gasped as he heard the story.

“The bally crook!” he exclaimed. “So that’s the kind of fellow Harrish is! Makes it look bad for the stocks I trusted him with.”

“He’s so crooked that he could hide behind a corkscrew,” declared Joe. “But I knocked one of his crooked schemes endways, and perhaps we can thwart the skin game he’s trying to play on you. But you haven’t told me yet the ins and outs of your business dealings with him.”

“I’m rather mixed on it myself,” confessed Reggie. “But it was something like this. I put in the scoundrel’s hands ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock. He undertook to advance a certain amount of money on those and use the money in playing the market for my benefit. Whatever profit there was, was to be placed to my credit after deducting his commission. If there were any losses—but he said that with his experience there would hardly ever be any losses——”

“Of course not,” put in Joe sarcastically.

“If there were any losses,” went on Reggie, “they would be charged up against my account.”

“Just wait a moment,” interrupted Joe, as a thought struck him.

He reached for the telephone and called for McRae’s number.

“Hello, Mac,” he said, as a voice came to him from the other end of the wire. “This is Matson speaking. Oh, it’s feeling all right now, thanks. Guess I’ll be in shape for my next turn in the box. Listen, Mac. Did you get any dope on those fellows, Harrish and Tompkinson? Did, eh? Good. Let’s have it.”

He was silent for a minute or two, listening intently.

“Thanks, Mac,” he said at last. “Just about as I thought. No, they haven’t been bothering me. Guess they don’t want any more of my game. I want these pointers for a friend of mine. Will tell you all about it to-morrow. Good-by.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to his friends.

“Harrish is a pretty slick proposition,” he said. “O’Brien at headquarters has been looking him up for McRae. Came here from Chicago. Had been indicted there for a shady deal, but the indictment was quashed. Been under suspicion here in connection with some queer transactions, but they haven’t been able to get anything definite on him. Foxy, and has managed to keep out of the clutches of the law since he’s been in New York.”

“That doesn’t make anything look better for me, does it?” said Reggie dismally.

“No, it doesn’t,” admitted Joe. “How did you come to get mixed up with him anyway?”

“Just a chance acquaintance picked up in a hotel lobby,” explained Reggie. “He got to talking about the easy money to be made in Wall Street and asked me to drop in at his office.”

“‘Will you walk into my parlor said the spider to the fly,’” murmured Jim under his breath, too low for Reggie to hear.

“So I went into the bally place one day,” went on Reggie. “Swell offices, too, if you ask me. My word! Mahogany desks, Persian rugs, all the fixin’s. Treated me like a prince, dontcherknow. Advised me to put a hundred on a stock that he said was sure to go up, and, by Jove, it did! I cleared quite a bit of money.

“Then he said it was a pity I wasn’t livin’ in the city so that I could watch the ticker and take advantage of opportunities. That was the only way, he said. Watch the tape and jump in instanter, get in on the rise. Since I couldn’t be here, though, he said that, if I liked, he would attend to that for me, look after my money as if it were his own, and send me daily statements of the way things were going. It was to be a sort of discretionary account, I think he called it. I was to trust his judgment and he’d do the best he could for me.”

“What he meant was that he’d do you the best he could,” commented Joe. “Well, did he send you the statements? And what did they show?”

“I got the statements all right,” said Reggie. “But they mostly showed a loss. Once in a while I’d make a little, but nine times out of ten I had a loss. He kept callin’ for more margins, and each time he did it I had to borrow a little more money from him on the stocks he was holding as collateral to supply the margins. And now, by his showing, the money he has advanced to cover the losses has just about eaten up the value of the stocks.”

“In other words, he has your ten thousand dollars’ worth of stocks, you have some phony statements showing pretended losses, and you’re left holding the bag,” summed up Joe. “It looks to me like the old bucket shop game. Ten to one he’s never bought a single one of the stocks he told you he was buying on your account. It’s just been a matter of juggling his books. At the end of each day he’s simply picked out a stock that has registered a loss, put that stock down in your statement as one he had purchased on your account, and pocketed just that much more of your money. Once in a while he let you win just to keep you on the hook. You haven’t even had a run for your money.”

“Probably that’s the game, but it may be a mighty hard thing to prove it,” remarked Jim. “It’s likely that he’s covered his tracks pretty well.”

“Not so well that we may not be able to find them!” exclaimed Joe, jumping to his feet. “Reggie, we’ll go down and have a showdown with Harrish the first thing to-morrow morning.”

“Beard the lion in his den?” asked Jim.

“No,” said Joe grimly. “Trail the skunk to his hole!”

CHAPTER XIX
IN THE WEB

At about eleven o’clock the next morning Joe and Reggie reached Wall Street and were whizzed up in an elevator to the floor on which Harrish had his offices.

Joe found them quite as sumptuous as Reggie had described. There was a large outer room, in which a score or more of customers were moving about, watching the ticker, or noting down the quotations on the various stocks that were chalked up on a big blackboard. Beyond this room was a group of offices, from which came the click of typewriters, and the private office of Harrish himself.

Joe had anticipated some difficulty in reaching the inner sanctum when his name should be announced, but had made up his mind that unless the door were actually locked nothing would prevent him from getting in there.

He was saved the necessity of any abrupt measures, however, for almost the first man their eyes fell upon was Harrish himself, who had been at the desk of the security clerk and was returning to his own room.

He caught sight of his visitors and there was a slight stiffening of his attitude that showed he had thrown himself on his guard.

He hesitated only a moment and then came forward with an oily smile and extended his hand to Reggie.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Varley,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to see you privately in your office,” said Reggie. “This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Matson.”

“Oh, yes,” said Harrish, reaching out his hand, which Joe failed to notice. “Didn’t recognize him at first. I have met Mr. Matson before. Come right into my office.”

He ushered them into the room and when they were seated he pushed toward them a box of cigars. Neither availed himself of the implied invitation.

It had been understood between them that Joe should do most of the talking, and, as was his habit, he went at once to the point.

“Mr. Varley has come to demand the return of the stocks he placed in your hands some time ago,” he stated bluntly.

Harrish started a trifle, but recovered himself instantly.

“Isn’t Mr. Varley able to make his own demands?” he asked with a sarcastic smile. “Are you his guardian?”

Reggie flushed.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a guardian,” he said. “Mr. Matson represents me and has full authority to speak for me.”

“That being understood,” said Joe, “suppose you cut out the stalling and come straight to the point. Mr. Varley demands his stocks.”

An ugly glint came into Harrish’s eyes, but his voice was as suave as usual as he replied:

“Mr. Varley has no equity in those stocks. The money that he owes me for the advances I have made on the stock to cover his losses in the stock market amounts to the full value of the collateral he placed in my hands.”

Joe drew an arrow at a venture.

“He hasn’t suffered any losses in the stock market.”

“What do you mean by that?” Harrish asked.

“I mean by that,” Joe answered, still stating as a fact what he believed with all his heart but was at the moment unable to prove, “that you haven’t bought or sold a single share of stock for Mr. Varley in the market. I mean that you’ve been bucketing his orders, pretending to buy or sell, and charging against him any losses suffered by any stock that you happened to pick out as suitable for your purpose.”

Harrish summoned up a look of virtuous indignation.

“I bucket an order!” he ejaculated. “I never bucketed an order in my life. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t if I wanted to. It’s against the law. Every broker is required to furnish his customer with a written statement showing the execution of the order, the exact time it was made on the floor of the Exchange, and the name of the floor broker who put the order through. Mr. Varley will tell you that he has received such a statement every time a transaction has been put through on his account. Isn’t that so, Mr. Varley?” he asked, turning to Reggie.

“I guess it is,” admitted Reggie.

“Well, there’s positive proof that the purchases and sales were bona fide,” said Harrish triumphantly. “Mr. Varley has lost his money in legitimate speculation, and he has to take his medicine like any other loser. I think you owe me an apology, Mr. Matson.”

“Do you?” asked Joe. “Then you have another think coming. I wasn’t born yesterday, and you needn’t think that the pretended regularity of your transactions can pull the wool over my eyes. I’m not a lawyer, but I have a lawyer friend close to the district attorney’s office, and he’s put me wise to some of the ways the bucket shop keepers circumvent the law. Here’s what you did. You went through the form of making the purchases and sales on the floor of the Exchange so that you could have a comeback if the law got after you. But every time you did it you put through a duplicate selling or purchasing order for yourself on a fictitious account that exactly neutralized the first one.

“You went on with these matched orders through the day, and at the close of business you charged Mr. Varley with the transactions that showed a loss and kept for yourself the ones that showed a profit.”

An unmistakable look of fear came into Harrish’s eyes.

CHAPTER XX
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

That the broker’s poise was badly shaken was undeniable. He was not talking now to one of the meek lambs that he had been accustomed to shear with such adroitness and dispatch. In the steely glitter of Joe’s eyes he thought he read disaster. In those curt, crisp accents he heard the tolling of what might prove the knell of doom.

He abandoned his suavity of manner and took refuge in bluster.

“All that is tommyrot!” he declared, with a fine pretense of outraged virtue. “My books will show——”

“I know what they would show,” broke in Joe. “They would show that you have been matching orders right along on Mr. Varley’s account. That’s a felony under the law. We could subpœna your books and bring them into court but that would give you immunity. We’ll prove it in another way, for you’re going to get no immunity at our hands, Mr. Harrish. And if you get indicted here, you won’t get off so easily as you did in Chicago.”

A dull flush crept into Harrish’s cheeks.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Never mind what I mean,” replied Joe. “I’ve had tabs kept on you. I’ve known what you are ever since the night you tried to bribe me to throw games.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” declared Harrish. “I never tried to bribe you to do anything.”

“That adds another to the final score you’ll have to pay,” declared Joe. “Tompkinson’s had his licking and you’ll get yours before I’m through with you. But that isn’t the question just now. Come across with those stocks that belong to Mr. Varley.”

“They don’t belong to him,” asseverated Harrish. “They’re mine. If you get them you’ll have to sue for them.”

“That’s your final word, is it?” demanded Joe.

“My final word,” asserted Harrish.

“All right, Harrish,” Joe said as he rose. “You’ve had your chance, and you’re too big a fool to take it. You’d better begin practicing the lockstep. We’re on your trail, and we’re going to run you down. Come along, Reggie.”

Baseball Joe and his brother-in-law left the office, followed by a look in Harrish’s eyes in which hate strove for the mastery over fear.

“My word, old man!” exclaimed Reggie when they were once more in the street, “you’ve got my bean whirlin’. How did you ever know so well what the rascal had been doin’?”

“I didn’t,” said Joe. “I was simply bluffing him to a showdown. But I happen to know how bucketing is worked, and I went on the conviction that that was what he had been doing. If you had been dealing with a reputable broker I’d have gone at things in quite another way. But I already knew Harrish for a crook, and a man who is crooked in one line will be crooked in another. And I studied his eyes all the time I was talking, and saw fear and falsehood in them. I’m convinced in my own mind that I hit the truth.”

“Now, what next?” asked Reggie.

“The next thing,” Joe replied, “is to put the matter into the hands of a lawyer. I’m going to go over the whole thing again with Bigelow, the assistant district attorney you heard me mention. Of course he can’t do anything until and unless the case comes before him in a criminal action, but he can recommend some shrewd lawyer, and we’ll have him take up the case. In the meantime, you can give me your power of attorney so that I can act for you in the matter. Just leave the whole thing to me, Reggie, and you go back to Goldsboro and stop worrying. I have a hunch that we’re going to give Harrish a good lively time before we get through with him.”

That Reggie was only too glad to do this goes without saying. The last thing he wanted was to have his father learn of his speculations. In the course of the next few days Joe had taken up the matter with an able lawyer, a Mr. Haworth, and set a train of inquiries in motion calculated to cause still more uneasiness to the already badly agitated Mr. Harrish.

On the afternoon of the day that he had visited Harrish, Joe told McRae in the clubhouse of the events of the morning. McRae knew Reggie well and liked him, and he was sincerely sorry to hear of the loss that threatened him.

“That fellow’s bad medicine,” he remarked. “He’s rotten through and through. Keep right after him, Joe, and in the meantime I’ll have O’Brien on the job and do all I can to put a spoke in his wheel. I can see Sing Sing yawning for him. But how are you feeling now, Joe? How’s the old soup bone?”

“Pretty fair,” replied Joe. “Most of the time it feels as well as ever, but at times I have a strange tingling sensation in it. I guess it will be all right pretty soon.”

“I’m afraid we’ve been overworking you,” said McRae. “Riding a willing horse to death. You’d better let up for a few days and let the other pitchers bear the brunt of the work.”

As Jim had pitched only a few innings on the preceding day, McRae put him in for the second game with the Bostons and he justified his choice. He gave a superb exhibition of pitching and turned in a victory with an ample margin.

Merton, Bradley, and Markwith were called on to a much greater extent than usual in the games that followed. They did fairly good work, but the absence of Joe was severely felt. The team did not play behind the other twirlers with the confidence they showed when Joe was in the box, and the Giants began to lose games with a frequency that was profoundly disturbing to McRae.

With the eastern teams they scored little more than an even break. And as the Chicagos and Pittsburghs were playing at the top of their form, the commanding lead that the Giants had enjoyed was rapidly diminished.

On one of the days that the Phillies were scheduled to play in New York the day was dark and lowering, and as rain began to fall about noon the game was called off. As it developed, the game could have been played after all, for the rain ceased and the sun shone out brightly about two o’clock, but it was then too late to change the arrangements.

Jim had taken advantage of the unexpected vacation to go downtown on a business errand and Joe had taken his favorite seat in the bay window of his apartment with a book in which he was interested.

Two hours later Jim returned. He entered the apartment in his usual breezy manner.

“What do you think, Joe—” he began, and stopped.

Joe’s book had dropped to the floor and he himself was sprawled out in the chair fast asleep.

“By the great horn spoon!” exclaimed Jim. “You lazy old galoot!”

He pranced up to his friend and shook him vigorously.

“Snap out of it, old boy!”

Joe remained absolutely inert. Jim shook him harder this time, but failed to elicit any response.

Now Jim was frightened.

CHAPTER XXI
GOING DOWN

Jim gripped Joe by the shoulders and half lifted him from the chair.

“Wake up, old man,” he shouted. “What’s the matter with you?”

Joe sleepily opened his eyes and looked around him with a dazed expression.

“Wh-what are you shaking me for?” he asked, as he tried to get his wits together.

“Trying to get you out of your trance,” explained Jim, vastly relieved though still greatly puzzled and anxious. “You were sleeping the sleep of the dead.”

Joe rubbed his eyes rather vaguely.

“That’s queer,” he remarked. “I didn’t feel at all tired when I sat down here. And I was mightily interested in the book.”

“One might almost think you had been doped,” declared Jim. “I never saw you so dead to the world. Could it be anything you’ve eaten or drunk that’s affected you?”

“Haven’t touched anything since we ate lunch together,” replied Joe. “You had substantially the same things I did, and you’re none the worse for it.”

“It’s mighty odd,” commented Jim.

“It sure is,” agreed Joe. “And the more so because I fell asleep in just the same way the other day, although that time I waked up of my own accord. Guess I must be getting old,” he added as a facetious touch to relieve Jim’s anxiety and reassure himself as well.

“I wonder if it’s anything in the apartment itself,” said Jim. “Perhaps there’s sewer gas or illuminating gas or something of the kind escaping from a pipe and sifting into the room. Perhaps we ought to speak to the management and have an inspection made.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” agreed Joe. “If anything is shown to be wrong, we’ll have to shift our quarters.”

He started to rise from his seat but the hand that he placed on the arm of the chair bent under him and he almost lost his balance.

“That old wing of mine seems to have gone on the blink,” he remarked. “Crumples up like a chocolate éclair.”

“Let me rub it for you,” said Jim, and forthwith set to work until the strength came back into the arm.

“Perhaps you ought to see a specialist,” Jim suggested. “A little electric treatment might be the thing you need. What I really think is that, as McRae says, you’ve been overworking your arm.”

“Oh, I guess it will come around of itself,” said Joe. “I’m not going to baby it. Perhaps when we go on our western trip I may take a day or two off and run down and see old bone-setter Neese. He’s a wonder at manipulating arms. Perhaps a sinew or muscle has got a little twisted and a touch of his will set it all right again.”

A few days later Joe took another turn in the box. But this time he pitched more with his head than his arm, in accordance with his own judgment and also with McRae’s advice.

“Don’t try for strike-outs, Joe, except perhaps in certain cases,” the veteran manager advised him. “Remember there are nine men on the team. Let some of the rest of the boys earn their pay. I’d rather lose a whole raft of games, even the pennant itself, than to have you tax your arm too much.”

Joe followed the advice, though the old winning habit was so strong with him that it was hard not to let himself out for all he was worth. But he cut out his fast ball to a large extent and depended more upon his drifters and his curves. He spared himself as much as possible as long as men were not on the bases, and only when the bags were occupied did he tighten up.

He won that game, which was against the Brooklyns, but it was a free hitting contest throughout. And it was a day when the boys from over the big bridge were full of errors that they had to get out of their systems. So that when the game was finally chalked up to the credit of the Giants Joe admitted to himself that he had won not because he was so good, but because the other fellows were so bad.

Still it was a game to the good, and just at that time the Giants needed all the games that they could get. They had had to relinquish the lead to the Chicagos and it looked, too, as though the fast-traveling Pittsburghs would soon shove them down into third position.

The hilarity that had filled the atmosphere of the Giant clubhouse in the early part of the season was now conspicuous by its absence. Never before had it been so completely demonstrated that the Giants without Joe were like the play of “Hamlet” with Hamlet left out. They were like a charging regiment who had been sweeping their enemies before them and then were suddenly dismayed by the fall of their leader.

It was no wonder that they looked forward with apprehension to their forthcoming western trip. If they had been barely able to hold their own with the confessedly weaker eastern teams, what could they expect when they met the Cubs, the Pirates, the Reds, and the Cardinals on their own stamping grounds?

This peace of mind was not increased by the fact that the betting was heavily against them. Increasingly bigger odds were being offered that they would not win the pennant. Of course the reason for this was not far to seek. It was evident to all that Joe, the mainstay of the team, was not “right.”

But the trip had to be faced, and they started on their swing around the circle. Their first stop was at Pittsburgh, where they found the Smoky City boys primed to take them into camp.

Forbes Field was crowded to capacity on the day of the first game. The Giants always drew full houses in Pittsburgh, but this time the attendance was even greater than usual, for the fans expected to see the Giants slaughtered. The Pirates themselves were chock full of confidence.

“We may let you have one game, Mac,” chaffed Elwood, the Pirates’ manager, before the bell rang. “But no, on second thought, I guess we’d better make a clean job of it and take the whole series.”

“See me after the game and you’ll sing another tune,” retorted McRae with a confidence that he was very far from feeling.

Joe, with the other pitchers, had been warming up in the bull-pen, and one of his hunches prompted him to seek out McRae.

“Mac,” he said, “I’d like to pitch this game.”

McRae looked at him in some surprise.

“But it’s only two days since you last pitched,” he said. “You ought to have at least a four-day let-up.”

“I know,” said Joe. “But to-day my arm feels like a million dollars.”

“Glory be!” exclaimed Robbie. “The best news I’ve heard in many a long day.”

“You bet!” echoed McRae fervently. “Well, Joe, I’d rather trust your judgment than my own. Go in and win.”

CHAPTER XXII
STAGING A COMEBACK

Miles, the kingpin pitcher of the Pirates, was in the box, and that he was at the top of his form was evident by the way he whipped the ball over the plate, setting down the heavy hitters at the head of the Giant batting order in jig time.

A murmur went through the crowd as Joe pulled on his glove and walked out to the box. All knew the indifferent way in which he had been going of late, and they had not expected to see him pitch in the first game of the series.

Perhaps a new thrill was in store for them, the novelty of seeing the greatest pitcher of the national game knocked out of the box. Was the superman of baseball at last to be dethroned?

The majority of them thought so. The Pirates themselves were of the same opinion. Many a time they had suffered at Baseball Joe’s hands. He had put them through the hoops, made them roll over and play dead. He had been the one invincible obstacle to their winning of the coveted pennant. Now that they had caught him at a supposed disadvantage, they promised themselves sweet revenge.

“Send him to the showers, boys,” adjured Elwood. “Now’s your chance. Give it to him good and plenty.”

Platz, the heavy-hitting left fielder of the Pirates, swaggered to the plate and set himself to begin the slaughter.

“Trot out your stock and let me look it over,” he said, with a grin. “That is,” he added, “if you’re able to get the ball up to the plate.”

The next instant the ball fairly whistled past him as it cut the plate. Platz was so startled at the swift response to his gibe that he did not even offer at it.

“Strike one!” cried the umpire.

“Did it get up there?” asked Joe mockingly as the ball was returned to him.

“It won’t get past me again,” retorted Platz.

He set himself for another fast one, but this time the ball just drifted up, looking as big as a balloon when it left Joe’s hand but as small as a pea as it neared the plate. Platz nearly broke his back reaching for it.

“Hope you didn’t strain yourself,” said Joe solicitously.

Platz flushed and took a firmer foothold. This time the ball sped in a line until it was within three feet of the rubber. Then it took a sudden hop and Platz struck four inches under it.

“You’re out!” barked the umpire.

“Yes,” laughed Joe, “we have no base hits to-day.”

Platz went back raging to the bench.

“Thought you said that fellow was all in,” he growled to his manager.

“Just a flash in the pan,” declared Elwood. “We’ll have him hollering for help before long.”

But Joe was not just then displaying any SOS signals. The next two men whiffed the air, as had their predecessor, and the hearts of the Pirates and their supporters sank into their boots as the third man in succession went out on strikes.

Robbie’s face was like a full moon and McRae was jubilant as Joe came in to the bench.

“Glory hallelujah!” exulted Robbie. “’Tis the same old Joe once more.”

“You can’t keep a squirrel on the ground!” exclaimed McRae. “That was demon pitching, Joe. But for the love of Pete, old boy, don’t throw your arm out.”

“No fear,” laughed Joe happily. “I feel as though I could pitch all day. I just wanted to throw a scare into them at the start.”

“You did that all right,” grinned Robbie. “Now throw another one into them by cracking out a homer.”

“I’ll do my best,” promised Joe, as he picked up his bat and started for the plate.

“Got any curves you want straightened out?” Joe asked of Miles as he faced him.

“Try to straighten out this one,” challenged Miles, as he put over a fast incurve between knee and waist.

Joe caught it full and square and the ball sailed out between right and center. The fielders took one look at it and threw up their hands. It soared into the center field bleachers, where one of the fans pocketed it as a souvenir of one of the longest and cleanest home run clouts ever made on Forbes Field.

Joe slackened up as soon as he rounded first and just jogged around the bases while the Pittsburgh players looked at each other in consternation. Was this the man who rumor had said was ready for the toboggan?

Joe dented the rubber and came in flushed and smiling to the Giants’ dugout, to be mauled and pounded by his rejoicing mates.

“Joe, old boy, you’re a wonder!” exclaimed Jim as he threw his arms about him. “Those birds are standing on their heads. They don’t know where they’re at.”

“I hope they’ll feel that way all through the nine innings,” laughed Joe.

“They will,” predicted Jim confidently. “It’s your day, old boy, and you won’t be denied. I watched you while you were in the box. You’ve got the same easy swing, the same perfect control, the same mastery of the batsman that you had in the early part of the season.”

That Jim was right was demonstrated as the game progressed. Never did Joe justify more fully his great reputation. He had his opponents swinging like a gate. In vain did they resort to bunting, to kicking at the umpire’s decisions, to trying to get hit by the ball. They were one of the heaviest hitting teams in the league, but in that game Joe made them look like bushers.

Inning after inning went by while the spectators watched breathlessly. Man after man of the Pirates went up to the bat, only to be turned back by Joe’s wizardry of arm and brain. He outpitched them and outguessed them. They were as helpless as babes.

Elwood stormed and raged at his men, but all to no purpose. He put in pinch hitters until his batting order looked like a crazy quilt. Joe did the pinching. They did no hitting.

Miles was doing excellent work, but compared with Joe’s it was like a tallow candle to an electric light. He kept his hits fairly well scattered, but every now and then a run came over the plate until the Giants had accumulated four tallies while the Pittsburghs’ column showed nothing but goose eggs.

Joe’s batting eye ran a close race with his pitching arm. Three times he came to the bat, and three times he knocked out homers. After that, Miles kept the ball out of his reach, to the disappointment even of the Pittsburgh crowd, who were rooting by this time for him to knock out another and equal the record of Delehanty’s that had stood for years—four homers in a single game.

When at last Joe called it a day and put out the last man on strikes that hostile crowd surrendered and there was a tempest of tumultuous cheers that could not have been surpassed on the Polo Grounds.

As for the Giants, they were simply in delirium.

Their pitching ace was still supreme, still the king of twirlers, the master of all the famous boxmen that had illuminated the history of the game.

Baseball Joe had come back!

CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE RAMPAGE

Baseball Joe’s mates crowded around him and patted and thumped him until he was sore.

“Let up, boys,” he laughingly protested. “You’ll make a cripple of me if you keep on.”

As for McRae and Robbie, their relief and delight were beyond words.

“Wrigglin’ snakes!” ejaculated Robbie. “Such pitching! Such batting! Joe, old boy, I thought I was going to die of heart failure!”

“You won the game almost alone, Joe,” declared McRae as he wrung his hand. “I never saw anything like it. They’ll be barring you from the league if you pitch many games like that. They’ll figure that no other team has a chance.”

Elwood himself, although a hard loser, was a good sport, and came over to extend his congratulations.

“I’m as sore as a boil at losing the game, Matson,” he said. “But I want to say that I’ve been in the game as player and manager for twenty-five years, and I don’t think I ever saw such magnificent work. No team in the league could have beaten you to-day.”

Jim Barclay was in the seventh heaven of delight. For weeks past his heart had been as heavy as lead at Joe’s unexplainable slump. Now it was as light as thistledown.

“You were the old master for fair to-day, Joe,” he said exultingly, as after the game he and his chum made their way to their hotel. “They couldn’t touch you, couldn’t come within a mile of you. And how you whaled the ball!”

“Well,” laughed Joe, “as Reggie said, one swallow doesn’t make a drink, but I hope that this is a good omen for the rest of the trip. But, do you know, Jim, I have the feeling that if this game had been played on the Polo Grounds I’d have lost it?”

“Nonsense!” protested Jim. “What puts such an idea as that in your head? Why should you play better on the Pirates’ field than on your own?”

“Does seem rather foolish, doesn’t it?” admitted Joe. “But I’ve had an odd feeling that a jinx was hovering over me in New York. I’ve felt that way for weeks past. That old arm of mine wouldn’t behave. I lost games that I ought to have won, and even when I did get by, it was largely a matter of luck and the poor playing of the other fellows. You know that as well as I do.”

“I knew that you weren’t yourself,” said Jim. “But I just put it down to overwork.”

“It was more than that,” asserted Joe. “I’ve worked just as hard in other years and my arm has never gone back on me. This time, though, the old wing just went on strike. No apparent reason for it. It just quit.”

“Well, it came back gloriously to-day,” said Jim, with infinite relief.

“I had a hunch it would when I was warming up, and that’s the reason I asked McRae to let me pitch to-day. It’s been feeling more and more like itself ever since I left New York. By and by, if this keeps on, they’ll be saying that I’m all right on the road, but no good at home.”

“No danger of that,” asserted Jim. “Now that your arm’s come back, all grounds will look alike to you.”

The sudden comeback of Joe, apart from his own achievements in the box and on the field, put new life into the Giant team. The pall of depression that had been resting on them was swept away as in a moment. The real class of the team came to the front.

For the rest of that western trip they were like a team of runaway horses that could not be stopped. The other members of the pitching staff took on a new lease of life. Everybody was on the rampage.

When they had come into Pittsburgh they would have been glad enough to get an even break. As a matter of fact, they swept the whole four games into their bat bags and moved on to Cincinnati with the intent of giving the same medicine to the Reds. This they did not quite succeed in doing, as Bradley faltered in one of the games, but they took the other three by a substantial margin.

With seven out of eight safely stowed away, they tackled the Cubs in their lair. Here they met with their stiffest resistance. Axander, pitching against Markwith, nosed through with one victory. The Giants took the next two and would probably have grabbed a third if it had not been stopped by rain at a time that the Giants were in the lead.

On that rainy day the Giants got a laugh out of the game even if they did not register a victory. Four innings had been played and the Giants were two runs to the good. The rain threatened to come down hard every minute, and the Chicagos were doing everything in their power to delay the game so that it might end before the necessary five innings had been played that would have permitted it to be called a game.

But the umpire was obdurate, and even when a drizzle set in kept the game going. Then a diversion was caused by the appearance of one of the Chicago substitutes, “Dummy Masterson,” so called because he was deaf and dumb, who emerged from under the grandstand in raincoat and rubber boots in which he pretended to be wading about in derision of the umpire who was at the plate.

A roar of laughter went up from the crowd and the umpire flushed angrily at this mockery of his decision to go ahead with the game. He wrathfully waved Masterson off the field.

“Dummy” went slowly, but as he did so he “talked” vehemently with his companions on the bench, who were doubled up with laughter at the opinion of the umpire he was expressing. From their association with him they had learned enough about the sign language to understand it readily, while Masterson felt safe, as far as the umpire himself was concerned.

What was Masterson’s consternation, however, when suddenly the umpire’s hands went up and his fingers also began to work.

“I’m a robber, am I?” his fingers said. “I’ve got mud in my eyes, have I? All my head is fit for is to hang a cap on, is it? That’ll cost you twenty-five, Masterson, and if you don’t get off the field in a hurry I’ll make it fifty.”

The discomfited “Dummy” wilted and vanished, and the laugh was with the umpire, who, as it happened, had a brother-in-law who was deaf and dumb and from whom he had learned the sign language.

But the incident had been effective as far as delaying the game was concerned, and before it again got fairly under way the rain came down in torrents and the Giants were cheated out of another probable victory.

With only two losses out of eleven games they moved on to St. Louis.

There, what they did to the Cardinals was, as Jim expressed it, a sin and a shame. They wanted those games and they took them, all four of them, winding up in a blaze of glory the most successful trip that any Giant team had made for years.

“Oh, you pennant, come to papa!” sang out Larry Barrett, as the hilarious crowd swung aboard the train and started on the long journey home.

CHAPTER XXIV
A STARTLING DISCOVERY

The Giants did not have to slink into New York this time as they did on the return from the disastrous western trip of the year before.

They were almost mobbed by their admirers at the station and the press of the city welcomed them back as conquering heroes.

In the columns devoted to their exploits Joe got the lion’s share of attention. His great pitching and batting received their full meed of praise, and it was generally agreed that it was his comeback that had revived the flagging spirits of the team and set them again on the road to victory.

Joe would not have been human if he had not been gratified at this recognition of his work. But he did not lose his head or become unduly vain. He was only profoundly grateful at his sudden recovery on the road from the mysterious ailment that his arm had suffered from at home.

Had it fully and permanently recovered? This was the question that must yet be answered, and answered favorably, before the apprehension that still lurked to some extent in his heart could be dispelled.

Of course, what Joe had said to Jim about a jinx hovering over him at the Polo Grounds had been a joke. Joe was too intelligent to be superstitious. He was not worried about being threatened by anything supernatural.

But he knew that there were many natural things that were so mysterious and bewildering that they might easily seem to be supernatural until their causes were ferreted out. Some such thing as that it must have been that had made his arm so powerless in New York but seemed to have no effect when he had left the city behind him.

So it was with some secret apprehension that he went into the box in the first game he pitched after returning to the Polo Grounds.

To his delight, he found that his arm worked as well as it had on the western trip. He mowed down the opposing batsmen with all his old skill and turned in a brilliant victory, in which only three hits were made by the enemy and one run registered.

“How about that jinx that was waiting for you at the Polo Grounds?” chaffed Jim at the conclusion of the game.

“Guess he must have pulled up stakes and vamoosed,” answered Joe happily.

Jim, too, was now at the top of his form and was pitching great ball. He had come along wonderfully since, fresh from Princeton, he had joined the Giants. He had a powerful physique that had not been weakened by dissipation and he had, as well, curves, slants and hops that were only second to those of Joe himself. And his association with Joe had aided him marvelously in the development of his powers and his knowledge of the weak points of the batsmen who faced him. There were few pitchers in the entire league who could hold their own against him.

With these two as the mainstays and the rest of the string to help out, the Giants were well fortified in the pitcher’s box. And as the rest of the team were doing excellent work both in the field and at the bat, the prospects of the Giants for winning the pennant could scarcely have been more promising.

On the days that Joe was not in the box he took the place in the field of either Curry or Bowen, according to which one of them was going the better with the bat. In this way the hitting strength of the Giants was vastly increased, for his batting eye had never been keener and he was crashing out the hits with great regularity.

Doubles and triples again and again cleared up the bases and almost every other day he ripped out a homer.

“Guess you’re going to hang up that record you spoke about at the beginning of the season,” said Jim one day, shortly after their return from the western trip. “All you’ve got to do is to keep up your present gait and no one else will have a look in. And that goes not only for our league, but for the American as well. Already you’ve made a dozen more homers than Kid Rose of the Yankees, and the gap is getting wider all the time.”

“Knock wood,” grinned Joe, as he tapped three times on the table. “Perhaps the jinx is listening.”

It seemed as though the jinx was, for on the very next day Joe’s arm went bad again and Markwith had to be called on to finish the game.

“Remember what I said about the jinx,” Joe reminded his chum. “He’s on the job again.”

“Just an off day,” pooh-poohed Jim. “You’ve got to remember that Napoleon sometimes lost a battle. You can’t win always.”

Three days later the Giants moved to Boston and Joe pitched one of his old-time games, winning with ease. He took the first game and repeated in the fourth.

They moved on to Philadelphia, and here again Joe lived up to his reputation. He was simply invincible. But in Brooklyn he once more fell down.

“Singular thing, isn’t it?” he remarked to Jim, “that I can go like a house afire the minute we get away from the city, but go bad again as soon as I get back.”

“I’ll tell you just why it is,” declared Jim. “It’s because you were first knocked out of the box at the Polo Grounds. That was such a shock to you that you associate the grounds in some vague way with the incident. You think that what happened there once may happen there again. You’ve brooded over it. It’s made you nervous. You feel as though you were hoodooed. Snap out of it, old boy!”

But Joe refused to accept Jim’s explanation. It was not psychological. It was physical. He was as cool and nervy as ever when he went into the box, but his arm was wrong. It felt queer, heavy, with little electric tinglings rippling along it from hand to shoulder.

Dougherty could find nothing the matter with it. A leading specialist whom he consulted had no solution except that the arm must have been overworked. Rest was his only prescription. And neither Dougherty nor the specialist could explain the difference between Joe’s work in New York and that which he did on the enemy’s grounds.

One thing that relieved somewhat the gloom that was gradually settling on Joe’s mind was the fact that Mabel was coming to New York for a visit. Both had been looking forward to it eagerly, and Jim was welcoming her coming also, for he hoped that it would cheer his chum, give a different trend to his thoughts, and banish his depression.

Clara had at first intended to come with Mabel, but Mrs. Matson had had one of her bad turns and Clara had to defer her trip, much to poor Jim’s disappointment.

On the morning of Mabel’s expected arrival Joe went down to the station to meet her, his heart beating with delighted anticipation.

“Won’t you come along?” Joe asked Jim.

“Not on your life!” grinned Jim. “I know when two’s company and three’s a crowd. You’ll want her just to yourself for a little while. I’ll see the dear girl when you bring her up here. In the meantime, I’ve just had a long letter from Clara and I’ll try to console myself with that while you luckier folks are renewing your honeymoon.”

So Joe went down alone and his heart skipped a beat when Mabel, more distractingly beautiful than ever she seemed to him, came through the gates and he rushed forward to meet her. For the next few moments they forget that there was any one else in the world.

Then they called a taxicab, and in a short time were whirled up in front of the Westmere Arms and went up to their suite.

“Jim’s in the next room,” said Joe, as Mabel removed her hat and fluffed her hair. “I’ll just tell him you’re here.”

He went to the door and knocked.

There was no answer.

“That’s queer,” remarked Joe. “I know he wasn’t planning to go out anywhere.”

He tried the door. It was locked.

He had a key to it, however, and with a little feeling of apprehension he fitted it into the lock, turned it, and went in.

The next moment he uttered a shout that brought Mabel flying into the room.

CHAPTER XXV
THE JINX

On the floor lay Jim. The letter that he had been reading had fallen from his hand. He had slipped from the chair and lay crumpled up in a heap.

“Oh, Joe!” Mabel cried, as she knelt down and took Jim’s head on her knee. “What has happened to him? Is he dead?”

“Nothing like that, honey,” Joe reassured her, as he felt for Jim’s heart and noted that it was beating. “Just fainted I guess. We’ll have him all right in a jiffy.”

He rushed for some water, which he dashed into Jim’s face. Then he tore off Jim’s collar and chafed his wrists so vigorously that in a few moments Jim opened his eyes.

He encountered those of Mabel and essayed to smile.

“Hello, Mabel!” he said as he tried to get up. “What seems to have happened to me? This is a nice reception to give you, isn’t it?” he added sheepishly.

“Oh, I’m so thankful to hear you speak,” sobbed Mabel. “I feared at first that you were dead.”

“Oh, I’m worth a dozen dead men yet,” returned Jim, as Joe helped him into a chair. “Never felt better in my life than I did this morning. Don’t know what came over me. Must have tripped over something and hit my head. It’s whirling yet a bit. No, it wasn’t a fall either. Don’t think I got up from this chair after Joe left. Must have had a touch of vertigo and slipped from the chair. That’s funny, too. Never had anything like that happen to me before. Last thing I remember I was reading Clara’s letter. Where is it?” he asked, as he looked around.

Joe picked it up from the floor and handed it to him.

“Nothing in the letter itself to upset you, was there?” asked Joe.

“Nothing in the world,” replied Jim. “Clara is well and it is one of the most delightful letters the dear girl has ever written. I was just feasting on it when suddenly I didn’t know anything. But I’m ashamed to think that I should topple over that way. And just at this time too, when Mabel was coming.”

“Don’t think of that twice,” said Mabel. “I’m so relieved to know that the thing wasn’t as serious as I feared. How are you feeling now?”

“The old bean is getting steady again,” replied Jim. “But my arm feels queer. Something like a pin cushion with all the pins strictly on the job.”

“Give it to me,” commanded Joe, and he rubbed the afflicted member till it glowed and the queer symptoms disappeared.

“Well, that’s that,” said Jim as he adjusted his collar and tie and smoothed his rumpled hair. “Now let’s forget the whole thing. It makes me feel sheepish every time I think about it. And above all, Mabel, don’t breathe a thing about it to Clara. She would worry herself to death about it and after all it’s only a trifle.”

Mabel promised, and they were soon chatting gayly about other matters. Mabel could stay for only a few days, as she had promised a visit to her parents at Goldsboro.

But she and Joe made the most of those golden days while they lasted. Mabel’s mornings passed rapidly in shopping and sightseeing, her afternoons were spent at the Polo Grounds, and in the evenings they took in some of the best theaters and concerts in the metropolis.

All too soon the visit was over and Mabel departed, but not until after arranging for a much longer visit as soon as the Giants should have returned from their next western trip.

Two days after the queer occurrence in their rooms, it was Jim’s turn to go into the box. He entered it with the confidence born of a long series of recent victories.

But, to his surprise and consternation, he was sent to the showers before the fourth inning was over. Almost from the start he was batted freely, but one or two sparkling plays by his fielders pulled him through. But in the fourth came the slaughter.

Base hits fairly rained from his opponents’ bats and in a twinkling the bases were full with none out. Then Joe reluctantly gave the signal and Jim walked in, his face flushed with mortification.

“Can’t understand it,” he remarked, as he handed the ball to Merton who replaced him on the mound.

Merton took up the burden and by good pitching, aided by a few breaks, pulled the game out of the fire.

“What in thunder do you suppose got into me this afternoon?” Jim asked Joe, as they were walking back to their rooms after the game.

“The same thing that got into me, I guess,” replied Joe. “We’re brothers in misfortune, old boy. And now that this has happened I’m beginning to get hold of one end of the string that may furnish a clew. As long as I was the only one affected I put it down to something connected with me alone, something in my mental attitude or my physical condition. I’ve been mulling it over and over in my mind and couldn’t make head or tail of it. But when you were knocked out of the box to-day an idea began to take shape in my mind. It grew clearer and clearer.

“Then suddenly I saw something in the grandstand and I had a blinding flash of light. I believed I had found——”

“What?” interrupted Jim eagerly.

“The jinx!” answered Joe.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE DEADLY RAY

Jim looked at his chum in astonishment.

“What do you mean?” he gasped.

“Who do you suppose are our worst enemies in this city just now?” replied Joe, adopting the Yankee method of answering a question by asking one. “Who is it that is most interested in having us downed, in seeing the Giants lose the pennant?”

“Harrish and Tompkinson, I suppose,” answered Jim promptly. “They and their gang stand to lose two hundred thousand dollars if we win.”

“Precisely,” agreed Joe. “Well, I saw them in the grandstand this afternoon.”

“But what if you did?” replied Jim, somewhat disappointed at what seemed an anti-climax. “They are there almost every day. I’ve seen the scoundrels a dozen times since you had your mix-up.”

“Right enough,” admitted Joe. “In itself that stands for nothing. But right behind them was sitting a man whom I know but you don’t. Did I ever mention to you the incident of the old fellow who bumped into me at the newsstand?”

“I don’t think you did,” returned Jim, wondering what his friend was driving at.

Joe briefly sketched the happening.

“He’s a scientist of some kind,” he explained. “A scientific ‘nut’ or ‘bug’ I think the newsdealer called him. A few days later I saw him looking at me from a window across the street. He stared at me stupidly for a moment and then vanished behind the curtains.”

“Well,” remarked Jim perplexedly, “that simply shows that he was a neighbor of ours.”

“Yes,” said Joe. “And that neighbor of ours bent over two or three times this afternoon and whispered to the worst enemies we have. They know each other. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not necessarily,” answered Jim, in bewilderment. “A bit of a coincidence, perhaps.”

“Let it go as that for a moment,” said Joe. “Now put your mind on this. You and I live in the same rooms. Our favorite chair is in that bay window of ours. The window is almost directly opposite that of the old scientist, who, bear in mind, is evidently on friendly terms with our worst enemies. I sit there and suddenly go to sleep, an unusual thing in the day time. Shortly afterward I get knocked out of the box. You sit there and go to sleep, also an unusual thing. Shortly afterward you get knocked out of the box. Do you suppose that’s due to coincidence?”

A light burst upon Jim.

“You think then,” he asked in a voice that fairly trembled with excitement, “that that old scientist has been putting something over on us?”

“Exactly,” replied Joe with conviction. “The facts fit into each other like the blades of a pair of shears.”

“But—but—” stammered Jim, “how can he do it? It seems like witchcraft, and the days of witchcraft are over.”

“True,” replied Joe. “But the days of science have just begun. Science is working every day what in the old times would have been looked upon as miracles. Look at the marvels of radio. Marconi would have been burned at the stake as a wizard a few hundred years ago. Have you read about that English scientist who has discovered what he calls the death ray? It seems almost diabolical. He claims that by its use he can stop airplanes in their flight, that he can sink ships, that he can demolish fortifications, that he can kill a whole regiment at a stroke.

“Now those claims may be exaggerated, but it has been pretty well proved in experiments that the ray will paralyze and sometimes kill small animals, such as rabbits and guinea pigs, at quite a distance away. It’s been done in the presence of spectators.”

“It’s an invention of Satan!” ejaculated Jim.

“Let it go at that,” replied Joe. “Now, just suppose that this old scientist has developed something of this kind. Suppose he’s been hired by Harrish and Tompkinson to turn it on us with the hope of spoiling our pitching arms and so ruining the Giants’ chances for the pennant.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Jim, “I believe you’re right. That would explain everything, especially the tingling in our arms after we came out of those mysterious sleeps. Joe, you’re a wonder.”

“Just a matter of putting two and two together,” deprecated Joe.

“Oh, if we could only prove it!” exclaimed Jim. “If we could only hang it on those rascals what we would do to them would be plenty!”

“We’re going to try to prove it,” declared Joe. “We’ll match each other to see who will be the goat. One of us will sit in that window in our shirt sleeves to-morrow morning reading a paper. The other will take that strong pair of field glasses of mine and go into the other room and hide behind the curtains, leaving just space enough to see through with the glasses. Then we’ll see what happens.”

Jim agreed eagerly. The matching decreed that he should be the one to occupy the chair in the window while Joe from the other room would bring the glasses to bear on the apartment across the street.

The sun was shining brightly the next morning as Jim carelessly settled himself in the chair while Joe, behind the curtains in the adjoining room, scanned the window opposite.

For some time nothing happened. But suddenly Joe noted a fluttering of the curtains opposite. He saw the old scientist cast a crafty eye across the street. In the shadows behind the old fellow Joe thought he could discern the figures of two others.

Then a small table came into view on which was an oddly shaped instrument with a small tube something like that of a camera.

As Joe watched it breathlessly a sharp flash darted from the tube, quickly followed by others, until the instrument seemed to be spitting a shower of sparks.

The mysterious ray was getting in its work!

CHAPTER XXVII
TOO LATE

Joe tiptoed to the door between the two rooms.

“Feel anything queer, Jim?” he asked his companion.

“Just beginning to,” answered Jim, not turning his head or taking his eyes off the paper. “I’m starting to feel drowsy and the old tingling sensation is going through my arm.”

“Pretend to nod,” counseled Joe. “Then let the paper fall from your hand and slump down off your chair to the floor. We don’t want to let that infernal machine do any more mischief. We’ve got all the proof we want.”

Joe returned to his post of vantage. The sparks were still coming from the machine.

Jim, with excellent acting, kept up the pretense of reading a moment longer then slowly let the paper drop and himself slid down off the chair to the floor. Thus out of sight of the conspirators, he crept below the level of the window into the other room.

Joe saw the curtains across the street part a little and the face of the old scientist appeared. It wore a smile of satisfaction at having achieved its purpose. At the same time the power behind the instrument was evidently turned off, as the sparks ceased and the table was wheeled away from the window.

Again Joe caught a glimpse of two figures behind that of the old man and the hand of one of them came down congratulatingly on the scientist’s shoulder.

“I’d give a farm to be able to see the faces of those two men,” Joe said to Jim, who was standing out of range of the window, rubbing his arm. “Though of course,” he added, “I have no doubt as to who they are.”

“Harrish and Tompkinson of course,” remarked Jim. “They’re the subtle scoundrels who’ve engineered this thing. The old man is simply their tool. And now they’re congratulating him on the way he’s done his work. They can already hear the rustling of that two hundred thousand dollars they’re going to win.”

“That they were going to win,” corrected Joe, as he laid aside the field glasses. “But that’s all gone glimmering now. They’ll get no further chance to cripple us. We’ll get after them at once. How is the arm feeling, Jim?”

“It’s all right again,” was the reply. “That wasn’t kept up long enough to do any harm. I suppose at other times they’ve kept that thing going at us for an hour or more at a time.”

“Well, let’s get ready for lunch now,” said Joe. “We’ve done the best morning’s work of our lives.”

“Thanks to that old noddle of yours,” put in Jim. “The best detective on the force couldn’t have worked that thing out better than you have done. But now what’s your next step?”

“To put McRae wise to the whole thing,” replied Joe. “He’ll get the whole police department at work if necessary. We’ll hurry to the Polo Grounds and see him before the game.”

They cornered McRae and Robbie as soon as the manager and his assistant entered the clubhouse.

“I’d like a word with you and Robbie in private, Mac,” Joe began without any preliminaries.

“Sure thing,” replied McRae, in some surprise at the state of repressed excitement under which the young men seemed to be laboring. “Come over in my office.”

“Mac,” said Joe, as they seated themselves after the manager had carefully closed the door, “Jim and I have found out why we’ve been knocked out of the box.”

“What do you mean?” demanded McRae.

“I mean just this,” said Joe, and went on to tell in detail the events of the morning.

The faces of McRae and Robbie were a study as Joe unfolded the rascally scheme. Incredulity, conviction, and rage beyond expression succeeded each other in turn.

“The scoundrels! The skunks! The thieves!” gasped Robbie, his face apoplectic.

McRae leaped for the telephone.

“This you, O’Brien?” he said when he had secured the extension he wanted. “Listen, Tom. Come up here to the Polo Grounds on the jump. Bring a good man with you. Yes, one will be enough. We’ll give you any further help you want. Tell you all about it when I see you. All right, Tom. Thanks. Good-by.”

He put up the receiver and turned to the others.

“We’ll get after those scoundrels right away,” he announced. “And all I ask is that I may get a chance to lay these two hands of mine on any or all of them. If I do, there’ll be little mercy shown them!”

Nothing was said about the matter to the other members of the team for fear of upsetting them by the knowledge of the plot against their chances, and the game went on as usual. Bradley was in the box and pitched one of his best games, scoring a victory by an ample margin.

Before the game ended O’Brien of the detective squad was on hand with a policeman accompanying him whom Joe recognized as Lonergan.

“What’s up, Mac?” asked O’Brien, a burly, powerful man, after he had shaken hands and been introduced to the others.

“Plenty, Tom,” replied McRae and briefly sketched the situation. “I want to nab the bird who’s operating that infernal machine. Probably he’ll peach on his confederates. Of course, I haven’t had time to swear out a warrant——”

O’Brien grinned.

“I guess we can get over that little formality,” he said. “Any one of several things will do, ‘suspicious character,’ ‘disorderly conduct,’ ‘assault with a deadly weapon.’ Leave that to me and pile into the car.”

They climbed into the department car in which O’Brien had come up and were whirled up to the apartment house in which the old scientist dwelt.

They went upstairs, headed by O’Brien, who knocked on the door. There was no response and he tried the knob. It yielded and they entered.

An exclamation of chagrin escaped their lips.

The bird had flown!

CHAPTER XXVIII
RACING TOWARD THE PENNANT

On every hand was evidence of the frantic haste with which the apartment had been evacuated.

Drawers had been flung open, papers scattered upon the floor, electric fixtures ripped from their connections. There was no trace of the mysterious electrical instrument, though the imprints of its feet could be seen on a small table.

The members of the group looked at each other in bitter disappointment.

“He’s taken alarm at something,” remarked O’Brien. “Perhaps got a tip that you were on to his track. Maybe the quickness with which his machine worked this morning made him suspicious. Possibly he or his accomplices had field glasses, too, and they may have seen Mr. Matson keeping tabs on them. Well, I’ll put some of my men on his track and I guess we’ll round him up before long.”

“How about Harrish and Tompkinson?” asked Joe.

“No use bothering with them just yet,” replied the detective. “No doubt they’re guilty, but you haven’t a thing in the world on them in connection with this plan. You just saw them speak to this man. But any fan at a ball game may speak to another. No, the only chance you have is to get this scientific bug and trust that he’ll peach on them.”

They were sorely disappointed, but they recognized the truth of what O’Brien said. They had not a scintilla of legal evidence as yet, and a premature accusation would simply put Harrish and Tompkinson on their guard. They must wait.

But despite their chagrin, the hearts of Joe and Jim were simply singing at their discovery of the morning. No more mystery! No more apprehension! No more sleepless nights! No more fears that their livelihood was threatened, that their usefulness was ended!

They had taken on a new lease of life. They had laid the jinx!

And how completely they had laid him was evident in the weeks that followed. Never had they pitched with such deadly precision, such complete mastery over their opponents. Their arms, freed from the malign rays that had gradually been undermining their strength and that would undoubtedly if continued have led to eventual paralysis, had quickly regained their former cunning and power. All teams looked alike to them, and their going into the box soon came to be recognized as almost synonymous with chalking up a victory.

The rest of the pitching staff caught the spirit of victory. The infield and the outfield played like men possessed. Whether at home or on the road, it made no difference.

Steadily the gap widened between the Giants and the Pittsburghs and the Cubs, their most formidable competitors. It seemed as though one of the records that Joe had hung up as a goal was sure to be realized, namely that the Giants should win more games than they ever had before in a single season. A continuation of their present work would make that dream a certainty.

And in the games played at home, it was an immense satisfaction to view the faces of Harrish and Tompkinson in the grandstand as victory after victory was hung up for the Giants. Those rascals attended the games regularly, and that they were rooting violently for the Giants to lose was evident from the glumness of their faces as they saw the other teams mowed down.

“Regular undertakers’ party!” chuckled Jim as he watched them.

“No wonder,” laughed Joe. “Two hundred thousand iron men, simoleons, bones, bucks, coin of the realm of standard weight and refinement—all to be thrown into the gutter because that infernal ray of theirs went wrong. Who wouldn’t be like a mourner at a funeral?”

“With worse to come as soon as that old scientist can be rounded up,” exulted Jim. “It’s funny O’Brien and his men haven’t found hide or hair of him.”

“He’s certainly some crafty old fox,” admitted Joe. “But the cunningest fox can be run to his hole some time.”

“How’s Reggie’s law suit coming on?” asked Jim.

“Haworth says that it will be on the calendar at the next term of court,” replied Joe. “He’s been tracing up the work of those fellows and he tells me that he has a dead open and shut case against them. The papers will be served just as soon as Reggie comes to town to sign them, and he’s due next week.”

Reggie did come into town a few days later, as immaculate as ever, delighted with the success of the Giants and elated at the prospects that his lawyer held out to him regarding his suit.

The day following his arrival Reggie and Joe were going down the stairs of a subway station on their way to visit Haworth’s office.

At the foot of the stairs an elderly woman bumped into Joe and dropped one of her packages. Joe picked it up and handed it back to her with a pleasant smile.

Recognition flashed into the woman’s eyes and with a scream of delight she dropped all her packages and threw her arms about Joe’s neck.

CHAPTER XXIX
ROUNDING UP THE SCOUNDRELS

To say that Joe was astounded would be putting it too mildly. He was almost paralyzed with astonishment. He was not accustomed to being embraced by women, elderly or otherwise, in public places.

He flushed a fiery red as he gently loosened the firm hold of the woman’s arms, and his embarrassment was not lessened by the grins of the spectators who had paused to witness the scene nor by Reggie’s undisguised amusement at his plight.

As the woman fell away from him he saw that her face was somewhat scarred, as if from burns. He looked again and something familiar about her appearance brought the truth to his mind like a flash.

It was Mrs. Bultoza, the woman whom he had saved from the burning house down at the southern training camp!

“Oh, you brave young man!” she said, with her foreign accent. “How glad I am to see you and thank you again. I have remembered you in my prayers every night. You saved my life. And you did not forget the lonely old woman in the hospital and sent her flowers. Oh, I am so happy to see you again!”

She made as though to embrace him again, but Joe diplomatically evaded this by stooping to pick up her scattered packages. Then he took her by the hand and led her to a bench at the extreme end of the subway station.

“I am very glad that you seem to be all right again after your accident,” he said kindly. “I never expected to see you so far north as this. Are you visiting friends here?”

“I have just come to join my husband,” she said. “He has been living and working here for some time, and now he has sent for me to join him.”

“In what line of business is he?” Joe asked, more to make conversation than anything else.

“He is a scientist,” returned Mrs. Bultoza. “He is poor because he has spent all his money on making an invention. And now he has succeeded, he tells me. Oh, he is a very smart man,” she added proudly.

Joe had pricked up his ears at the word “scientist.”

“What is his invention?” he asked.

“I do not know exactly,” she replied. “It is electric—something like what you call an X-ray, I think. But I have no head for such things.”

This reply interested Baseball Joe more than ever and he asked the woman to describe her husband’s appearance and this she did so well it instantly brought a gleam of satisfaction to Joe’s face.

“Where does your husband live?” he asked.

She gave him a crumpled slip of paper on which an address in an uptown district was written.

“I’ll go up with you,” volunteered Joe. “Come along, Reggie. We’ll take a taxi and get up there in a few minutes.”

Mrs. Bultoza protested that he must not take so much trouble, but Joe overrode her protests, helped her into the taxicab, and in a little while they were at the address given.

They inquired of the janitor, and were directed to a room on the top floor.

A door opened at their knock and Joe saw the face of the old scientist who had lived opposite him.

But the old man had eyes only for his wife, and they rushed into each other’s arms in a way that bespoke the deep affection that existed between them.

Joe and Reggie averted their eyes and lingered about uneasily.

The first effusion having passed, Mrs. Bultoza exclaimed:

“And what do you think? I met the brave young man who saved my life in the fire. Oh, I was so happy to see him and thank him again! He was kind enough to bring me all the way up here, and now you can thank him, too.”

The old scientist advanced with beaming face and extended hands. Then, for the first time, he saw Joe’s face.

For a moment he stood as if paralyzed. Then he dropped into a chair, covered his face with his hands, and cried like a child.

“He saved your life!” he cried hoarsely between sobs. “He saved your life! And I have injured him, might have killed him! God have mercy on me!”

Then to his wife, who knelt by his side, pale and horrified, the old man told his story, with frequent interruptions and questions on the part of his wife and Joe, told how he had needed money to finance his invention, how he had met Harrish in trying to raise funds for his experiments, and of how the latter had advanced money on condition that he should test his invention on Joe. He had been sorely pressed, he had been told that the conspirators did not want to injure Joe permanently but just to weaken him for the next few months, and he had yielded to temptation, not realizing the enormity of the project.

“Now you can put me in prison,” he said brokenly. “I deserve it. I would give my life to undo what I have done to you—to you who saved my wife’s life!”

Mrs. Bultoza’s imploring and tear-wet face was too much for Joe. He thought quickly.

“I am not going to put you in prison,” he said. “But you must do one thing for me. I want you to send a telephone message to Harrish and Tompkinson telling them that you must see them at four o’clock this afternoon. Tell them that it’s important and they must come. They won’t dare not to.”

The agreement was made and Joe and Reggie hurried down to the cab and were borne to the Westmere Arms, where Joe put in a busy half hour with the telephone.

A few minute before four o’clock Harrish’s limousine stopped at the house where Bultoza lived. The owner, accompanied by Tompkinson, hurried up to the top floor.

They knocked at Bultoza’s door and he admitted them. The old scientist’s wife had been sent away for the time being.

“What’s up?” asked Harrish, as he and his companion entered the room.

“I need some more money,” said Bultoza. “My wife is coming to live with me and my expenses will be greater.”

“You’ve had all you’re going to get,” snarled Tompkinson. “I’m tired of being panhandled. You’ve fallen down on your job anyway.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Harrish. “You haven’t kept your contract by a long shot. We paid you to ruin Matson’s pitching arm with that infernal ray of yours. Did you do it? Here he is going along better than ever. What have we got for our money?”

“Nothing much so far,” said Joe, stepping out from the adjoining room. “But you’re going to get a good deal more before I’m through with you!”

CHAPTER XXX
A MERITED THRASHING

The effect of Baseball Joe’s sudden entrance was electric. If a thunderbolt had torn its way through the room, the consternation of the conspirators could not have been greater.

Their terror deepened as McRae, O’Brien, Robbie, Lonergan, Reggie, Jim, and Haworth, the lawyer, filed in from the next room.

Then in panic the rascals made a break for the door. But O’Brien was already standing there placidly, his broad back against it.

“Just a minute! Just a minute,” he drawled.

They took just one look at him and dropped back.

“Now, gentlemen,” said Joe, “you’re going to learn that Matson’s arm is not yet ruined nor Mr. Barclay’s either. But first there are some little formalities to be gone through with. I suppose,” he added, as he turned to his companions, “that you all heard Mr. Harrish’s confession?”

They nodded their assent.

“Eight witnesses,” remarked Joe. “I guess that would be enough in any court of law to put you men behind the bars. The jig is up, Harrish. You’re done. You’re through. And that goes for you, too, Tompkinson.”

The rascals cringed visibly at this. Their teeth were chattering.

“That is,” continued Joe, “if we decide to make a charge against you.”

He paused a moment to let this take effect.

“How about that case of Mr. Varley’s, Mr. Haworth?” Joe asked suddenly.

Haworth stepped forward.

“Perfectly clear,” replied the lawyer. “I have absolute proof that Harrish has been matching orders in violation of the code. I have proof that he has been pledging Mr. Varley’s stocks as collateral for a loan greater than he has made on it to Mr. Varley. Another violation of the code. Of course, if Mr. Harrish wants to stand suit—” He stopped and smiled serenely and significantly.

“I don’t think that Mr. Harrish wants to stand suit,” mused Joe. “He doesn’t want to change that well-tailored suit of his for a striped suit. Now if he only had his check book here— Let’s see, what was the value of the stock, Reggie?”

“Ten thousand, five hundred and sixty dollars,” replied Reggie.

“A mere trifle to a man who could pay fifty thousand dollars for throwing baseball games,” mused Joe. “Oh, I see that Mr. Harrish is drawing out his check book. And he has a fountain pen, too. How lucky!”

Harrish wrote out a check for the full amount. Joe scanned it.

“On one of the day and night banks, I see,” he remarked. “It will be open now. Suppose you indorse this, Reggie. Mr. Harrish will O. K. your signature and you can go right over and cash it now.”

The indorsement and O. K. were made and Reggie hurried out to collect his money.

“And now, gentlemen,” said Joe, turning to his friends, “would you mind going outside and waiting for the rest of us? Mr. Barclay and I want to settle a little matter with Mr. Harrish and Mr. Tompkinson in private. It won’t take us long.”

A flash of understanding passed among the group and they went with alacrity, though Harrish started to make a protest which they ignored.

Joe went to the door, closed it after them, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

“And now, Mr. Tompkinson,” he said, as he threw off his coat, “will you kindly remove your false teeth?”

“What do you mean?” asked Tompkinson, as pale as death.

“I mean,” said Joe, “that you both are going to get the licking of your lives. I could send you both to prison, but I don’t care to raise a scandal in the baseball world. Jim, you take Tompkinson. I licked him once. And now, Harrish, throw off your coat.”

The men, desperate as cornered rats, saw there was no help for it, and the next moment the battle was on. Both the brokers were big and powerful men and they put up a hard battle. But they were no match for the seasoned athletes opposed to them.

Joe and Jim smashed them at will, shaking them from head to feet with body blows and uppercuts. In a few minutes the battle was over and the discomfited scoundrels lay on the floor whimpering with pain and rage and shame.

“I guess that will do, Jim,” said Joe, as he put on his coat. “They’ve found out that the pitching arms they tried to ruin are still in pretty fair shape. Let’s go.”

They stationed a policeman at the apartment to see that Tompkinson and Harrish left without, in their anger, doing some injury to the old scientist or his wife by way of revenge, then the party drove off.

McRae and Robbie dropped off with Joe and Jim at their apartment where they found Reggie who had cashed the check, and the roars of laughter that went up from their rooms as the veteran manager and coach learned all that had happened almost scandalized the management.

Only a few days remained until the end of the playing season. The Giants had the pennant safely stowed away. They were so far ahead that if they lost every remaining game while their nearest opponents, the Pirates, won every one of theirs, the Giants still could not be headed.

Nevertheless, Joe drove his men hard, for he was now within an ace of attaining the objects that he had outlined to Jim at the beginning of the season. He led the league in home runs. He led it in his general batting average, having left the redoubtable Mornsby far in the rear. He had more stolen bases to his credit than any player in either league. He had registered more strike-outs than any other pitcher. He stood well ahead of Rance in the matter of percentage of earned runs allowed to opponents, and in the last spurt the Giants had broken the record in the matter of consecutive victories.

Six of his objects had been attained. Would he grasp the seventh, closing the season with the highest standing the Giants had ever registered in their history as a team?

On the last day but one of the season the Giants tied that record. Jim was in the box and pitched a masterly game. But the Boston pitcher, Northesk, also outdid himself, and the game was in doubt up to the very last inning.

When that inning opened the Giants had scored three runs and the Bostons two. The visitors came to bat in the ninth determined to do or die. The heaviest batters of the team were to come to the plate, and they started in with determination.

An error by Jackwell at third on a hot grounder permitted the first man to make his base. The error must have been contagious, for Renton also juggled a hit from Bailey, on which the runner reached first while Ellis easily made second.

With two on and nobody out, the Boston coachers got busy and filled the air with a stream of chatter designed to rattle the pitcher.

Joe was playing center and watching the batter and the men on bases with the eye of a hawk. Anderson, the heavy-hitting left fielder, drove out a hit almost on a line over Larry’s head at second base.

Joe sized it up and knew that he could make the catch. The men on bases thought so, too, and hugged the bases closely.

Joe ran in as though to nab the ball. Then he hesitated for a fraction of a second and set himself as though to catch the ball on the bound.

The moment that this seemed to be his intention the man on first broke for second and the man on second legged it for third.

Then Joe reached for the ball and caught it on the fly, just at his shoe tops, putting out the batter.

Warned by the roar that went up, the runners started back for the bags they had just left under the supposition that the ball was going to be caught on the bound. But they were too late.

Like a shot Joe threw the ball to Larry, who stepped on the bag, putting out Ellis. Then Larry relayed it to Burkett, catching Bailey before he could get back.

It was a triple play, all achieved by the classiest bit of headwork seen on the Polo Grounds that season. If Joe had run in and caught the ball in the ordinary way, only the batter would have been out. But his pretended hesitation had fooled the base runners and he had caught them both.

McRae looked at Robbie. Robbie looked at McRae. For once neither uttered a word. There were no words for such an occasion. But what they told Joe later was plenty.

With that game safely stowed away the record was tied. That in itself was much. But for Joe it was not enough.

In the last game, he himself was in the box. And the kind of ball he played that day made baseball history.

Yet, although he was a veritable wizard in the box and cracked out two home runs in succession, such is the uncertainty of the game that he came within a hair’s breadth of not putting it over.

For Morton, the Boston pitcher, was also determined to wind up his season’s work in a blaze of glory, and the men behind him played like demons, making almost miraculous stops and throws on what would ordinarily have been clean hits.

A momentary case of rattles among the Giants in the seventh let two runs across for the Bostons, and as Joe’s two homers were the only tallies for his side, the teams came to the ninth with the score tied.

The Bostons were promptly disposed of, and the Giants came to the bat. Renton went out on a long fly to center and Burkett sent up a fly that the catcher grabbed.

With two men out, it looked like a case of extra innings when Joe came to the bat.

Morton, with the memory of those two homers still rankling in his mind, promptly passed him to first amid the jeers of the fans who had been hoping for another circuit clout.

Joe took as long a lead as possible. Ralston lined out a single to left.

At the crack of the bat Joe was off for second. Most players would have been satisfied to make the bag, especially on a single to left, where the throw to third was short and easy.

But Joe rounded second and set out for third. Benton, the Boston third baseman, knowing Joe’s daring on the bases had half expected this. He crouched to take the throw from left, ready to jam the ball down on Joe as he slid in to the bag.

But Joe double-crossed him by failing to slide. He saw from Renton’s attitude what he expected to do. So, instead of sliding, he flew by, standing up, just touching the tip of the bag, and started for home.

Plunk! came the ball into Renton’s hands. As he had to face toward left, he could not see what Joe was doing and had no time to look. He had to depend on the sense of touch.

Down went the ball on where Joe’s body ought to have been. But it was not there. Joe was halfway down the stretch toward home, going like the wind.

Dazedly, Renton swept the path about him. Then realizing what had happened he straightened up and threw for home. But Joe had already dented the rubber for the winning run.

He had scored from first on a single! It was a magnificent play, a fitting wind-up to the most glorious season that the Giants had ever had.

And above all it rounded out the task that Joe had set himself. By unflagging work, by matchless pitching and hitting ability, by the finest kind of headwork he had reached his goal.

And it was a happy Joe who, after the tumult and the shouting had died away, after McRae, Robbie and his comrades had nearly wrung his hands off and pounded him black and blue, sat with Jim and with Mabel, who had arrived in time to see his crowning victory, and talked over the events of the day.

“And you put it over, old boy!” exulted Jim. “Hung up a record in the seven things you said you would.”

“You might have known he would,” said Mabel proudly.

“Didn’t I tell you that seven was a lucky number?” said Joe, with a grin.

THE END

THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES

By Lester Chadwick

12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $.65, postpaid

BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS
or The Rivals of Riverside

BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE
or Pitching for the Blue Banner

BASEBALL JOE AT YALE
or Pitching for the College Championship

BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE
or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher

BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE
or A Young Pitcher’s Hardest Struggles

BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS
or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis

BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES
or Pitching for the Championship

BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD
or Pitching on a Grand Tour

BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING
or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on Record

BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE
or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy

BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM
or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond

BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE
or The Record that was Worth While

BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER
or Putting the Home Town on the Map

BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD
or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond

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THE BOY RANCHERS SERIES

By WILLARD F. BAKER

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

Stories of the great west, with cattle ranches as a setting, related in such a style as to captivate the hearts of all boys.

THE BOY RANCHERS
or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X

Two eastern boys visit their cousin. They become involved in an exciting mystery.

THE BOY RANCHERS IN CAMP
or The Water Fight at Diamond X

Returning for a visit, the two eastern lads learn, with delight, that they are to become boy ranchers.

THE BOY RANCHERS ON THE TRAIL
or The Diamond X After Cattle Rustlers

Our boy heroes take the trail after Del Pinzo and his outlaws.

THE BOY RANCHERS AMONG THE INDIANS
or Trailing the Yaquis

Rosemary and Floyd are captured by the Yaqui Indians.

THE BOY RANCHERS AT SPUR CREEK
or Fighting the Sheep Herders

Dangerous struggle against desperadoes for land rights.

THE BOY RANCHERS IN THE DESERT
or Diamond X and the Lost Mine

One night a strange old miner almost dead from hunger and hardship arrived at the bunk house. The boys cared for him and he told them of the lost desert mine.

THE BOY RANCHERS ON ROARING RIVER
or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers

The boy ranchers help capture Delton’s gang who were engaged in smuggling Chinese across the border.

THE BOY RANCHERS IN DEATH VALLEY
or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery

The boy ranchers track mysterious Death into his cave.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.

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