The train was swinging along through open, rolling country when Locke, now being left severely to himself on account of his churlishness by his resentful teammates, tired of gazing dully at the flying landscape, rose and passed down the aisle of the special car. Scarcely anyone seemed to observe him, and he noticed no one. When he had disappeared, however, Billy Orth shook his head and turned to Larry Dalton.
“Thundering shame, Larry,” he said in a low tone. “Do you know, I think I’ve solved the trouble.”
“Then you’re wiser than the rest of us.”
“It’s the girl business, to begin with.”
“Oh, we’ve all guessed that much, but being thrown down by a girl isn’t enough to put an ordinary well-balanced chap, same as Lefty seemed to be, all to the punk. Of course, it might affect a fellow, but it wouldn’t turn him from a fine, jolly soul into a sour, nasty-tempered, unreasoning grump. You’ve got to go farther, Billy.”
“I have been,” asserted the other with assurance.
“What way?”
“He’s taken to hitting the booze.”
“No!” breathed Laughing Larry incredulously. “Why, he never drank. He’d take a glass of beer now and then, to be sure, but you couldn’t drive a drink of hard stuff into him. You’re wrong, Orth.”
“When a man gets double crossed in love he’s liable to do any freakish thing, and lots of ’em affiliate with the jag juice.”
“But Locke hasn’t been full. No one has seen him under the influence.”
“Perhaps he’s under the influence right now. Perhaps he’s keeping about so much redeye in his skin all the time. Maybe that’s why he herds by himself so much. He sure has had plenty of chance to drink by his lonesome lately.”
“Yes, but— Oh, say, you’ve got to have something better than mere supposition to base this on.”
“I have.”
“What?”
“Saw him coming out of a saloon last night. Couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but it was Lefty, sure. You know firewater works in peculiar ways with some men. Occasionally it turns a jolly good fellow into an ugly dog. Lefty hasn’t hit it up enough to stagger or show the usual signs, but in his effort to drown his sorrow he’s taken just enough to change him completely. Something ought to be done. But when a fellow is absolutely unapproachable, what can you do?”
“What can you?” echoed Larry.
In the meantime, passing through the train, Lefty had entered the ordinary smoker, which chanced to be so well filled that nearly every seat was taken. Through a blue haze of smoke he peered in search of a seat as he walked along the aisle. Suddenly a young man took a brierwood pipe from his mouth, stared hard at the pitcher, and rose to his feet.
“By Jove! Phil Hazelton!” he exclaimed. “Why, how are you, old man?”
Lefty stared, unsmiling, at the speaker, apparently failing to notice the extended hand.
“Pardon me,” he said; “I don’t remember you.”
“Don’t remember me?” cried the other incredulously. “Great Scott! Have I changed so much? I know I’m threatened with premature baldness, but still it can’t be that in such a short time you’ve forgotten Walt Hetner.”
“Hetner?” said Locke, frowning and shaking his head in a puzzled way. “I don’t have the slightest recollection of you.”
“Cæsar’s ghost! I knew you at Princeton. We were college mates.”
“Princeton?” said Lefty. “Yes, I was at Princeton, I believe.”
“You pitched for the varsity nine. Your old man didn’t like it, and was pretty sore. I’ve heard lately that you’ve gone into professional baseball. Don’t get a chance to see many games myself nowadays, but the report is that you’re some pitcher for the Blue Stockings.”
“I have been pitching for them,” admitted Locke slowly. “Sorry I don’t remember you.”
His pride hurt, Hetner sank back into his seat, and Lefty passed on. The rebuffed man turned to his companion, who was an old acquaintance he had met on the train.
“Well, wouldn’t that frost you some, Wilson?” he exclaimed, his face flushed. “Why, I knew that fellow at college as well as I know you, and he’s the last man I’d expect to hand out anything of that sort.”
“Do you think he didn’t recognize you, Doctor?”
“Recognize me? Of course he did. That’s what makes me hot. I don’t know why he should play the cad. It’s beyond me. Perhaps he’s ashamed of the fact that he’s playing professional baseball under a fake name.”
“Still,” said Wilson, “he might be decent, at least.”
Lefty came to a seat in which a slender, pallid, sad-eyed young man sat alone.
“I beg your pardon, stranger,” he said; “is this seat taken?”
The young man started a bit, glanced up, and smiled faintly.
“No, it isn’t taken, pal,” he answered. “But how the dickens did you happen to know my name?”
“Your name?” said Lefty, sinking down, a puzzled frown plowing a deep furrow between his eyes.
“Yes. You called me Stranger. That’s my monacker—Robert Stranger; Bob for short.”
“Oh, I get you,” said Lefty, failing to return the young man’s engaging smile. “It was just by chance that I called you that.”
“Well, for a moment I thought you knew me. It’s mighty lonesome taking this jaunt without anybody to chin to, and I’m glad you came along. Traveling alone yourself?”
“In a way I am,” answered Lefty, betraying a willingness to talk to this chance acquaintance which would have surprised his antagonized friends in the special car. “I’m a ball player, but I ducked to get away from the rest of the bunch. They’re on this train.”
“Oh, a ball player!” murmured Mr. Stranger. “Professional? Big League?”
“The Blue Stockings.”
“They’re some,” beamed the man by the car window. “Of course I hear plenty of baseball talk. Can’t help it. But I never did take to the game much. It may sound like bunk to you, but I never saw a real game in my life.”
“Really?” said Lefty, in an expressionless way. “That is rather odd.”
“S’pose I’m a crank,” laughed the other; “but all the guff I hear and see in the newspapers about baseball makes me weary; it sure does. Seems like ninety per cent. of the population has gone dippy about the game. Once on a time I was mistook for a pitcher I happened to look like. A gent blew up and called me by that ball tosser’s name and asked me how I was coming on at it. He didn’t believe me when I told him I’d never pitched a ball in my life. Why, I don’t know a curve from a wedge of restaurant pie.”
“You’re a rare bird,” said Lefty.
“I am, pal, and I’m rather proud of it.”
“What’s your business, if it’s not too personal?”
The young man hesitated and coughed behind his hand.
“I’m a—a diamond cutter,” he answered. “That is, I have been, but I’ve had to give it up on account of my health. Too confining, you know. I’m not much on being confined,” he continued oddly. “You can see it has rather taken hold of me. My health isn’t just what it should be.”
“I noticed you were unusually pale.”
“That comes from confinement. A pill slinger told me it would be a good thing for me to get out into the country and find a job somewhere in the open air. I’m looking for work on a farm. The rural life for mine, far from the lure of high-cut swinging doors. Between us, pal, I’ve hit it up a bit too hard in my day. I always was a wild one,” he went on garrulously. “Even when I was a boy I touched too many of the high spots. I’ve been a mark, too. Ever play poker? Well, I’ve been the easiest dub you ever saw at that game. But I like it. Can’t seem to keep away from it. Every time I get a roll on hand I go searching for a game and someone to pass the velvet over to. Even now I’ve got a little wad of long green that’s burning in my pocket. Before you came along I was thinking I’d like to find three or four good sports and get up a little game.”
“I don’t play poker—for blood,” said Lefty. “A bunch on the team are at it every chance they get; though, of course, they only play a little game.”
“Oh, that would suit me. I don’t want to really gamble, you know. I’m a minister’s son.”
Lefty refrained from saying that he was another.
“Brought up in a straight-laced family,” Stranger went on. “My old man thought cards the tools of Satan. And my mother”—a cloud seemed to come to his face and his smile faded—“it broke her heart when she found out I was playing penny ante with a bunch of game lads. Mebbe that’s what finished her. The old gent didn’t last long after she was put away under the daisies.”
“Then your father and mother are both dead?”
“Both gone. But come, what’s the use to talk of things like that? Let’s see if we can’t find a couple of lonesome travelers looking for amusement. Let’s start something. A little game of poker to pass away—”
The sentence never was finished. At this moment there came a sudden jarring, grinding, crashing sound. A broken rail had given way on a curve, and it shot half the train from the track to strew it into a splintered mass of wreckage along the foot of the embankment.