They left him there, shaking with rage. He heard them laugh outside the door when it had closed behind them, and he lifted and shook both his fists in their direction.
“Ye shan’t have him!” he snarled. “I’ll never give the boy up! It’s one o’ Bancroft’s mean tricks. They’ll do anything to get ahead of Kingsbridge. It’s a measly shame they’ve tumbled to who the youngster is. I’d give somethin’ to find out how that happened.”
He stopped suddenly, a hand lifted, his head thrown back, his mouth open.
“I know!” he breathed. “That must be th’ way it was. Bent King come to me and asked a heap of questions ’bout Lefty—where was he from, how did I find him, was he a college man?—and all that. I didn’t tell him nothin’, but all the time I had an oneasy feelin’ that he knowed more’n was a good thing f’r him to know. If Bent’s been and blowed he oughter be shot!”
Henry Cope did not sleep well that night, and he rose in the morning at an unusually early hour, even for him. When he appeared at the Central Hotel and inquired for Locke, he was told that Tom was not yet up, and did not often get to breakfast before eight o’clock.
“I’ve got t’ see him right away,” said Cope. “I’ll go up to his room. It’ll be all right.”
“I wonder what’s the matter with him?” said the clerk to a bell hop, when Cope had hurried away up the stairs. “He looks all broke up this morning.”
“Mebbe the groc’ry business and baseball is too much for him,” grinned the boy. “He’s fussin’ over the team all the time. What did they hire a manager for? Why don’t he let Hutchinson run the ball team?”
Cope knocked twice at the door of a room. After the second knock, a sleepy voice asked who was there.
“It’s me,” answered the man outside. “It’s Mr. Cope. Somethin’ important. Got to see ye right away.”
In a few moments the door was opened, and Locke stood there, in pajamas, yawning.
“It must be important to bring you around this hour, Mr. Cope,” he said, with a sleepy laugh. “Come in.”
When the door was closed, the grocer faced the young pitcher. “Hazelton,” he said, “why didn’t y’u tell me you had been negotiatin’ with Riley?”
Much of Locke’s sleepy appearance vanished.
“What’s that?” he asked sharply. “Negotiating with Riley? What are you talking about? I haven’t been negotiating with him. What do you take me for, Mr. Cope? Do you think I would do a thing like that after entering into an agreement with you?”
“I don’t mean that you’ve been dickerin’ with him since then, but before. You never told me that Riley had made any proposition to ye to pitch f’r Bancroft this season.”
“Who says he did?”
“He says so. He came here last night and stated that he had fust claim on ye, ’cordin’ to the rules of the league, which bars any manager from tryin’ to git a man another manager is negotiatin’ with.”
Tom Locke was very wide awake now.
“How could he make any such claim. It is preposterous, Mr. Cope, as you ought to know. I hope you haven’t let that man bluff you. Why, he doesn’t know who I am!”
“Oh, but he does—that’s the thing of it. He came to my store, ’long with Fancy Dyke, and told me just who you was—called you by your right name.”
The younger man sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed, a startled expression on his face. For some moments he stared at the caller, as if at a loss for words.
“I don’t understand how he got wise,” he finally said slowly. “Called me by my right name, did he?”
“Yep; said he knowed you was Paul Hazelton, of Princeton, and that he was negotiatin’ with ye last December. Now, what I want to know is if there’s any truth in that statement. If there is, we’re in a hole. Did you git a letter from him? Did you write him an answer?”
To the increasing surprise and alarm of Cope, the pitcher seemed to hesitate about replying.
“Did ye? Did ye?” cried the older man impatiently. “Why don’t ye answer? You know whether you got such a letter or not, don’t ye? You know if ye answered it? What’s the matter? Answer! If you done that, we’re in a hole. They’ve got it on us. And to think of that, just when we was holdin’ the best hand over them! Speak up, boy!”
“I am trying to think,” said Locke.
“Tryin’ to think! Look here, you told me you’d never done anything like this before—you’d never played baseball f’r money. Now anybody’d s’pose you’d had so many offers you couldn’t remember ’bout ’em. You was mighty partic’lar to have it ’ranged so nobody’d be likely to find out who you was.”
Lefty smiled a bit ruefully.
“Apparently all that precaution was wasted,” he said. “I give you my word, Mr. Cope, that I have no recollection of ever receiving a letter from Mike Riley, and I am doubly certain that he holds no communication from me. You know I did not send you a written answer to your proposition. A college pitcher who wrote such letters, and signed them with his own name, would prove himself a fool. He’d never know when the letter might bob up to confound him. It would be evidence enough to get him dropped from his college team in double-quick time. No, I am positive I never wrote to Riley.”
Cope breathed somewhat easier, although he was still very much disturbed.
“Then, even if he writ to you, there wasn’t no negotiations, for it takes two parties, at least, to enter inter negotiations. He’ll find he can’t bluff me on that tack.”
“Give me time—all I ask is a few days—and I can answer positively whether or not he ever wrote to me.”
“That don’t make no diff’runce, if you didn’t answer it. He’ll find he’s barkin’ up the wrong tree when he tries to bluff me outer a pitcher that fashion.”
“I presume there will be more or less publicity over this contention, and that’ll be unfortunate—for me.”
“Yes, I’m worried over that. Riley’ll be sure to let ev’rybody know that you’re Hazelton, of Princeton, though mebbe it won’t git outside the Northern League to bother ye when you go back to college.”
“Maybe not, but the chances are that it will, if Riley makes much of a roar over it.”
“But you won’t quit?” cried Cope, in sudden panic. “If he tries to frighten ye out by threatenin’ to blow the matter broadcast, you won’t let him drive ye that way? Great Scott! That would fix us! It would be almost as bad as havin’ to give ye up to them.”
“I am not much of a quitter,” answered the other man, with a smile. “It will be a mighty bad thing to have the facts made public; but, once I’ve set my hand to anything, I seldom turn back. I don’t think you need to worry about losing me, Mr. Cope.”
The storekeeper rushed forward and seized the young pitcher’s hand.
“Good f’r you!” he spluttered. “That’s the stuff! We’ll hold Bancroft’s nose right to the grindstone; we’ll put the wood to ’em this year. But I’m mighty sorry, on your ’count, boy; it’ll be tough if you’re really chucked off your college team.”
“Well, we won’t worry about that,” laughed Locke, rising and returning the hearty handshake. “We’ll have to take things as they come. It’ll give me additional satisfaction now to down Bancroft. I have a personal feeling about it.”