As his hand grasped the ball, as his muscles began playing like iron bands, as the ball went speeding to cut the plate and land with a loud plop in the catcher’s mit, all else but the game was forgotten.
“We must win!” He set his lips tight.
And indeed they must. They had lost one game, could not afford to lose another.
That he was in a hard spot he knew quite well. With the score standing 6 to 5 against him, with men on second and third and only one man out, the game might be lost with a single crack of the bat. It was with a rapidly beating heart that he motioned the batter up.
Yet, even as his arm went back, two questions flashed through his mind: “Who is this ‘Prince’? What happened that after such a brilliant start he was unable to finish?
“Something queer!” he muttered for the third time as he sent the ball spinning.
“Ball!” the umpire called.
Then, like a bolt from the blue came a thought. He made a sign to the catcher. They met half way between the mound and the home plate. After a few whispered words they parted.
Fred’s second offering went very wide of the plate. He did not seem to care. Then, just as he wound up for the third pitch, someone caught on.
“He’s goin’ to walk that batter!” a big voice bellowed from the bleachers of the opposing team. “Big League stuff! Walking Billy to get at Vern!”
At once there was a mad roar that ended in hisses and boos.
Little Fred cared for that. If he wished to walk Centralia’s toughest batter to get at a weak one, it was his privilege. “And after that?” an Imp seemed to be whispering in his ear. All the same the passed batter went down to first. The bags were loaded.
“If I slip now—” he thought. “Just listen to them howl!” He gripped the ball hard.
“Wow! He’s got a rubber arm!” a big voice roared as the umpire called another ball.
There was silence as Fred slipped over a strike.
Again that roar with the second ball.
“Strike!”
“Ball!”
“There you are!” the big voice roared. “Two and three! Let’s see you get out of that!”
Fred caught his breath. Bases full. Three balls, two strikes, and—“If only the old soup-bone holds out!” he murmured.
His hand went out. It came back. He shot the ball straight from the shoulder. Then, without knowing why, he followed the ball. Lucky break! The batter connected. He sent a bouncer straight into Fred’s mitt and he half way to the plate. With a mad dash he was there to cut off the run to the plate. Next he sent the ball speeding to first.
“Double play! Double play!” the crowd roared. And so it was. The inning was over. For the moment, at least, all was well.
Inspired by his unusual success in pulling his team out of the hole, Fred pitched the remaining innings with the skill of a genius. He allowed only five hits, and left but three men on base. Hillcrest scored three runs in the seventh, to cinch the game. In the end Fred was carried from the field in triumph.
“Another big day Wednesday, and we’ll win!” exulted Doug Danby.
“Don’t get too much excited,” he warned Johnny and Meg as they came rushing up to congratulate him. “This is not the end. It is only the beginning. We must win again and again. It’s going to take a real campaign to gain our end.”
“Don’t worry!” Johnny laughed. “The way Fred pitched those last innings, there’s not a team that can stop us.”
“There’s where you’re wrong.” It was Fred who spoke. He had just come up to them.
“What do you mean?” Johnny asked in surprise.
“Well—” Fred paused to ponder. “Well, you know there are times when you do things and you say to yourself, ‘I can do this as often as I choose.’ Then there are times when you feel all sort of lifted out of yourself and you do things well without seeming to try. But when it’s all over you say, ‘That was great! But I better never try that again. If I do, I’ll fail.’ This afternoon was just like that. Johnny, I wouldn’t like to face that situation again, ever!” Fred’s tone was so serious that for a full moment no one spoke.
It was Fred himself who at last broke that silence.
“But then, there’ll not be the need.” He smiled. “Our old friend, the ‘Prince’ will lead us to sure victory next time.”
“The ‘Prince’!” Doug turned to Meggy. “Where did your uncle find him, Meggy? Who is he? Where’s he been hiding?” Meggy was Colonel Chamberlain’s favorite niece.
“I don’t know,” Meggy admitted.
“But your uncle said he’d been working down at his laboratories for more than three months!” Johnny protested.
“Ye-es,” Meggy replied slowly, “and I suppose that should make him my first cousin! But it doesn’t. I never saw him before, nor heard of him either. Uncle doesn’t tell me much about the laboratories. There are always so many secret investigations going on down there, so many processes being developed—things he can’t talk about—that—well, I guess he thinks it’s best to say nothing at all about any of it. And I suppose,” she added, “this pitcher is just one more secret.”
“But why would he hide out so?” Doug Danby asked.
“He just doesn’t wish to be recognized, that’s why,” Johnny said in a tone that carried conviction.
“In a town like this?” Doug exclaimed. “It sure does seem strange!” Had he but known it, those were the very words that were passing from lip to lip all over this quiet little city. “A strange pitcher! A mysterious dark stranger! And in a town like this!” That was what they were saying. And, almost without exception, the answer was, “Just think, in a town like this!”
“Well anyway,” Fred said, “he can pitch! And that’s just what we need. We’ll just have to have him next Wednesday when we go against Fairfield. They’re the toughest battling bunch we’ll play for a long time. You can’t count on me to lick them.”
“The ‘Prince’ only lasted two and a half innings,” Doug suggested.
“Yes, but some—” Johnny did not finish. What he started to say was, “Something rather terrible happened to him.” After all, he had only guessed that; could not prove it.
“Well,” Johnny said, “I gotta be anklin’ on home. Goodbye, Meggy. Goodbye, boys.”
A half hour later he was seated on a ridge that lay above the town. Beneath him was a long, low building.
“The laboratories!” he whispered. “Place of mystery. Home of the mysterious ‘Prince.’”
His whole being was stirred. It was not that he suspected any wrong of those who worked behind heavily glazed windows in the laboratories. Far from that. Colonel Chamberlain had always been counted among Hillcrest’s foremost citizens. The laboratories belonged to him.
“I’ll have to hunt up Goggles,” Johnny told himself. “Wonder where he went? He always knows a lot. He may know more than I do about this pitcher.”
Goggles was a thinker. He was the only boy ever entrusted with Colonel Chamberlain’s secrets. He alone, of all the town’s boys, had crossed the threshold of the laboratories. Only he had seen something of that which went on inside.
“They test all sorts of things in there,” he had confided to Johnny one day, “soap and silk, dyes, and all sorts of powerful drugs. They try to find things out, to do things that have never been done before, like making rubber out of crude petroleum or paper out of sunflower stalks. They succeed sometimes, too. See!” He had pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Made from a sunflower stalk. Pretty good paper, eh?
“When they make a real discovery,” he went on, “they sell it to some great manufacturer.
“Colonel Chamberlain—” he had taken a deep breath. “He showed me a lot of things I can’t talk about. He says maybe some day I can work with him in the laboratories. Boy! Won’t that be grand!”
“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if Goggles knows something about this ‘Prince,’” Johnny said to himself now.
He broke short off to stare down at the laboratories. Someone had come walking down the gravel path. He walked slowly. “Seems to drag his feet,” Johnny whispered. Just then the newcomer looked up toward the sun. Johnny got a full view of his slim, dark face. It was the ‘Prince.’ A moment more and the long, low place of mysteries had swallowed him up.
That evening Johnny searched in vain for Goggles. Goggles’ mother did not know where he was, nor did anyone else. Johnny decided to go on a little detective cruise all by himself. Mounting his bicycle, he rode east nine miles to the Shady Valley landing field. In the office he found two men in aviators’ uniforms playing checkers.
“Say!” he said in a subdued voice, “Did any of you fly a plane over the Hillcrest ball field this afternoon?”
“Yes, I did.” The younger of the two men looked up quickly. “Why?”
“Oh nothing I guess.” Johnny dropped into a seat prepared to watch the game.
Though for a full quarter hour he said never a word, the young aviator looked at Johnny in a queer way many times.
“Well, what about it?” he said, turning to Johnny when the game was over.
“Nothing I guess,” Johnny repeated.
“That was a queer business,” the aviator chuckled, “that flying over your field. Had two passengers, sort of hard lookers, but well-dressed. Said they lived in Hillcrest. They wanted to go over the ball game. Kept telling me to circle down, down, down. Then they’d say, ‘No! Not now! Up again!’ They repeated that little trick three times.”
“I know,” Johnny breathed.
“You know?” the young aviator stared.
“Of course I do. Go on.”
“Well—” the aviator cleared his throat. “The third time we went down closer than I like to. Then we flew away. Sort of queer, I’d say!” He shot Johnny an enquiring look.
“Did they carrying anything?” Johnny asked.
“Nothing that I saw.”
“No gun or anything like that?”
“Of course not. What do you think? Think we operate a bombing plane or something?”
“No, not quite that.” Johnny lapsed into silence.
“Queer business!” The aviator stared at him hard. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing much I guess.” Johnny’s tone did not change. “Only thought I might.”
“But look!” the aviator exclaimed. “If you think that’s queer, listen to this one. A short while back I took a long trip, thousand miles or more. Flew it at night. Passenger told me where to go and where to land.
“Place we landed was all light when we were coming down. It went dark the minute we landed.
“Two men in uniform came rushing up. One said, ‘Say! Where do you think you are?’
“‘Don’t know,’ I said.
“‘Well, you’d better,’ one of them yelled. ‘This is a Federal prison. Move out of here quick!’
“‘Guess we’d better leave right away.’ That’s what my fare said to me.”
The aviator paused for breath. Johnny was staring.
“Wait! That’s not all!” The aviator waved a hand. “The lights came on, bright as day, just long enough for me to taxi across the enclosure and rise; then all went dark.
“And listen!” He paused once more. “When my fare left the plane, there was a man with him, a slim, dark-faced man. He came from that prison. I’d swear to it! Can you beat that?”
“Looks like a jail delivery.” Johnny spoke low. “Should think you’d be afraid!”
“I would,” the aviator settled back in his chair, “only the man who went with me that night, my passenger, was one of the best known and most highly respected citizens in this part of the country. I was hired by him.”
“Slim, dark-faced man,” Johnny murmured to himself, recalling the aviator’s words as he rode home a short time later.
Next morning Johnny wandered over to the Sentinel office. He wanted to thank the editor for the fine publicity he had given the game. More than this he always had enjoyed a half hour in the box-like office of C. K. Lovell, or “old C. K.” as the people of the city had come to call him.
C. K. was something of a character. More than six feet tall, a broad-shouldered, slouching figure of a man, with masses of gray hair and bushy eyebrows, slumped down in his office chair, he resembled a shaggy St. Bernard dog basking in the sun.
“H’llo Johnny!” he greeted. “Fine game yesterday. Sort of queer, though. Rather unusual about that pitcher! And did you notice that airplane? What did you make of that?”
“Haven’t got it made yet.” Johnny dropped into a chair. “Tough about that pitcher though. It must not happen again.
“But say!” he enthused. “Wasn’t that a grand crowd! Boys owe you a lot.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” the editor laughed good-naturedly. “Boys deserved it. Fine lot of boys. Be a bigger crowd than ever next week. What about that electric umpire? Think it will work?”
“Sure will.”
“Call strikes and balls, and all that?”
“Sure will, C. K.”
“Dodge pop bottles too?” C. K. laughed.
“No. Pop bottles would be bad for his eyes. Got forty eyes, that umpire has.” Johnny laughed. “Guess the crowd will go easy on that, though.
“You see,” Johnny went on as the editor showed his interest by hitching up in his chair, “an electric eye is like a radio tube. When a beam of light is sent to it from across a space it stays just so until the light is shut off by some object, say a baseball. Then it sets up a howl. If you connect it with a phonograph attachment, you can make it call out ‘Foul ball!’”
“Interesting if true,” C.K. drawled. “Sure ought to draw a crowd.
“Say Johnny!” The editor leaned forward to speak in a tone little more than a whisper. “Heard anything about Federal agents being around town?”
“Federal agents!” Johnny stared. “No. What for?”
“I’ve heard they’re looking for a Chinaman, a little fellow—name’s Tao Sing, I believe.”
“Tao Sing!” Johnny started. A mental picture of Tao Sing in the small room at the back of the Chinese spice shop flashed into his mind.
“Thought I knew them all,” said C.K. “This must be a new one.”
“Why should Federal agents want a Chinaman? Who’s afraid of a Chinaman?” This last slipped from Johnny’s lips unbidden.
“Who’s afraid of a Chinaman!” C.K. sat up straight quite suddenly. “Plenty of people afraid of a Chinaman, Johnny. Plenty!
“A Chinaman looks dull and sleepy enough,” he went on. “So does a big old tom cat. But let a dog come around the corner and see what the cat does to him. A Chinaman’s like that. He’ll go up like a rocket most any time.
“I worked down near Frisco’s old Chinatown, Johnny, years ago,” he went on. “Got to be sort of an amateur guide. Went with the police when they raided Chinese gambling joints and opium dens. Say! I can hear the steel door bang yet when the first Chink gave the warning. Bang! Bang! Bang! And sometimes it wasn’t a door that banged either.” His voice dropped. “Johnny, things happened there I wouldn’t dare tell about—not even now. And that was a long time ago, a long time ago.” C.K. settled back in his chair.
“Well, I—” Johnny got to his feet a trifle unsteadily. “Guess I better get going.”
“Don’t hurry, Johnny.”
“Got to go.”
Johnny did hurry. He was afraid he might tell what he knew about Tao Sing. He was not ready to do that—not just yet.
“But boy, oh boy!” he whispered. “Would what I know about that little Chink make front page stuff! First column in every city!” He could see it now: “CHINAMAN INVENTS THOUGHT-RECORDING CAMERA. NO MAN’S THOUGHTS HIS OWN.”
He was sorely tempted to release the story at once. On sober thought, however, he decided he was not ready to do that—not yet!
“So they’re looking for Tao Sing, those Federal agents,” he thought. “Wonder why? Wonder if the think-o-graphs and the thought-camera have anything to do with that?” He recalled his visit to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, of the pictures he had taken of Wung Lu’s thoughts and how he had delivered them to Tao Sing. The thought was disturbing. “Ought not to have been snooping round gathering up another fellow’s thoughts, then peddling them to someone else,” he grumbled. “And yet—” ah yes, and yet—if he had not done that he could not have had the thought-camera for his own use.
“I’ll use it a lot more,” he assured himself. “Find out all sorts of queer things for C.K. He’ll run them in his paper and make a scoop.”
But would he return to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce? Well, not right away. He recalled what C.K. had said of things that had happened in old Frisco’s Chinatown, and a chill ran up his spine.
“Fellow’d think—”
No matter what he’d think. Here was Goggles.
“Look here, Johnny!” Goggles exclaimed. “I heard you found out about that airplane that was over the ball field yesterday.”
“Didn’t find out much—just that a pilot from over at the flying field took two men up.”
“Who were they?”
“Wish I knew. The pilot said they were from Hillcrest.”
“If they were it should be easy to find them. Not many new people in Hillcrest. Only about half a dozen stop at the hotel. Rest live in houses. I’ll get ’em. Give me time.” Goggles’ big eyes gleamed behind his thick glasses. “I’m an amateur detective, Johnny.”
“Done a little of that myself,” Johnny said with a grin. “Not in a small city, though. Guess I’ll leave that to you.”
“I’ll find ’em, Johnny.” Goggles was away.
Johnny smiled as he watched him hurry down the street. Goggles sure was an interesting boy. He dug into everything just as a gopher digs into the earth. Chemistry, electricity, detective work, it was all the same to him.
“Little cities are surely interesting,” was Johnny’s mental comment. “In big cities everyone tries to be just like everyone else. People think alike, walk alike, dress the same, everything. In a little city everyone is different.”
Then he brought himself up with a jerk. There was the thought-camera. Somehow, since talking to C.K. about the Chinese, he found himself all but overcome with a desire to hide the thought-camera in some very dark and secret spot. In the end, after hurrying home, he buried it deep among the clothes in his trunk, locked the trunk, then hid the key.
“So they’re after Tao Sing!” he murmured low. “Wonder if they’ll find him. And if they do, I wonder—” he did not finish that last wonder.
“In cases like this—” Goggles’ eyes bulged behind his thick glasses. His beak-like nose appeared to wrinkle and wriggle as a rabbit’s. “In a case like this,” he repeated, “one may learn a great deal from dust. Take a vacuum cleaner now. It’s queer. I’ve helped clean dozens of furnished houses and apartments after the tenants were gone. Some of them would scrub the place till it shone like a new dollar. But the vacuum cleaner! What do you think?” He paused. “Always half full of dust!
“And yes!” he exclaimed. “Same here. A good big lot of dust. I’m prepared. See!” He drew a stout paper sack from his pocket. Unfastening the cloth dust-bag from the vacuum cleaner, he proceeded to empty its contents into the paper sack.
“Dust?” said Johnny, “What can you do with dust?”
“You wait,” said Goggles, “You’ll see.”
“Well, you can have your dust,” Johnny grumbled. “Can’t see how that can help any.”
Since his visit to the landing field, Johnny had been more convinced than ever that the presence of that airplane above Hillcrest baseball grounds on that day when the mysterious “Prince” had somehow been forced from the mound, had meant something very strange.
“Up to something, that’s what they were!” he had told himself. “And I’m going to find out what.”
Recalling Goggles’ suggestion regarding the manner in which these men might be found, he hunted him up on the following day.
“Found out anything?” he asked.
“No, but I’m going to,” Goggles replied. “It should not be hard. They live here. They’re strangers in town. They’d rent furnished rooms. All we have to do is to check up on rentals.”
They had checked up and they had, they believed, found the very place they were looking for. The description of the two men who had rented a small furnished bungalow tallied with that of the men they sought.
There was only one hitch—the men had checked out of the bungalow.
“That’s too bad!” Johnny had mourned. “I hoped to catch up with them. It’s not so much what they’ve done as what they may do. It’s my theory that they have a grudge of some sort against the ‘Prince.’ He’s got to pitch some more games for us if we are to win. Those men will do something more, perhaps something a great deal worse.”
“What will we do if we find them?” Goggles had asked. “You can’t prove anything.”
“Proof is what we want.”
“You can find clues in an empty house,” Goggles had declared. “Plenty of them. It doesn’t matter that they’re gone. Left all sorts of clues behind. Take dust, for instance. You get the keys and we’ll go right over there.”
So here they were in the recently deserted bungalow. Here was Goggles industriously collecting dust while Johnny tiptoed softly from room to room, pulling out drawers without a sound and, after peering within, softly closing them again.
“Dust!” he mumbled, “What good is a lot of dust? You’d think—”
He broke off short to stare. In the drawer just before him his eyes took in two objects. One was a small dry battery of an unusual shape. On the end of this was a threaded attachment that apparently just fitted into the small end of the other object. This second object was a funnel-shaped tube a foot long. It was an inch across at one end and three inches at the other. The inside of this tube shone with an unusual brilliancy.
“Queer business!” Johnny murmured. These objects were quickly transferred to the inner pocket of his coat. The drawer was softly closed.
It would seem that he was not a second too soon, for from below came the sound of an opening door, then a gruff voice:
“Well son, you’re cleanin’ the place up a bit.”
The voice sent a chill coursing up Johnny’s spine. It was the voice of a stranger. He was talking to Goggles.
“Yes, I—” Goggles’ answering voice sounded unsteady and weak. “I do this sort of thing quite—quite a lot. Sort of—of dust up a bit.”
“Well now that’s fine!” (It did not sound fine to Johnny.) “But me and my pardners here moved out of this place a short while back. We came here to get a few things we forgot, didn’t we Joe?”
“Yep, that’s right,” a second gruff voice replied.
“Them shoes now,” the first voice went on. “We left ’em. See you got ’em all cleaned up for us.” Goggles had found a pair of shoes and had scraped the mud from them in search of clues.
“Yes, I—” Goggles’ voice faded out.
“Well that’s O.K., buddy,” said the first voice again. “We’ll just get on into the little bedroom and look for a thing or two.”
“The little bedroom.” That was where Johnny found himself at that instant. Like a rabbit that has sighted a dog, he was up and silently away. In truth he went out of the side door to vanish into the shadows of a broad old pine tree.
Well enough that he did too, for a moment later he heard one of the strangers say to Goggles in a tone not so friendly:
“Boy! We left something in a dresser drawer in that little bedroom. You cleaned in there yet?”
“No, I—I’ve not been out of this room.” Goggles stammered a little, but had spoken the simple truth.
After looking him over from head to foot, the speaker turned on his heel and left the house. He was followed by his pardner.
“Whew!” Goggles breathed five minutes later, “What do you think of that?”
“I think,” said Johnny, “think—. Come on! Let’s get out of here! I got ’em in my pocket.”
“Got what?”
“The things they came back after.”
“Let’s see!” Goggles held out a hand.
“Not now. I say, let’s go!”
“All right,” Goggles agreed reluctantly. “Guess I’ve got all the dust I need.”
After locking the door, they hurried away to Goggles’ basement where he had rigged up a sort of laboratory and workshop.
“Now,” Goggles breathed, snapping on the light, “we’ll have a look at that stuff from the sweeper.” He emptied the contents of the paper sack into a sheet of wrapping paper.
“Now.” With a needle set into the end of an old pen-holder, he began dragging the stuff about, at the same time naming his findings: “Hairs, dark ones, three or four of them. Their hair is dark. That don’t matter; but here’s some coarse sand they tracked in. Say! What color is the stuff they have out on the landing field?”
“Red sand,” Johnny replied. “Brought it in trucks.”
“And here it is, some of it!” Goggles was getting excited. “Let’s have a look at this other bag.” He dumped coarse dirt on a second paper. “Came from the bottom of those shoes,” he explained. “Yes, there it is—red sand, some oil mixed in—just what you’d find on a landing field. They’re the men all right.”
“Well, that’s something,” Johnny replied quietly.
“What are we going to do about it?” Goggles asked.
“Nothing just now. You can’t keep people from flying over your head.”
“But you’d think—Say!” Goggles’ tone changed. “There’s some sort of chemical in this dust from the sweeper. Two kinds. One’s coarse and gray. Other’s a fine white powder.
“Yes.” He examined the contents of a small envelope. “Some of the white powder is in the dust I took from the pocket of an old coat they left. Must have rubbed it off his hands into his pocket. People do that without thinking.”
“Goggles—” Johnny found it hard to control his voice, “could you make a bright light by touching off two powders?”
“I’ll say you could! All kinds of light.”
“Goggles—” Johnny’s tone was deeply serious, “you separate those chemicals from the rest of the dust as well as you can, then keep them—both kinds. It—it may be important.”
“I’ll do more than that,” Goggles agreed. “I’ll take them down to the laboratories. I’ll ask someone to test ’em out and tell me what they are. Maybe I’ll ask the ‘Prince.’”
“You know the ‘Prince’?” Johnny was surprised.
“Talked to him twice. He isn’t half bad,” admitted Goggles modestly.
“Who said he was? I think he’s great!” Johnny put his cap on. “All right. Got to get going. See you later.”
Back in his own room, Johnny drew two objects from his pocket and examined them.
Then he closed his eyes. “The eagle soared and dropped,” he murmured. “So did the airplane. The eagle got a rabbit. The airplane got a man. It was no accident that the ‘Prince’ had to give up pitching. I know why he did—and—and I can almost prove it.
“Those two men,” he said slowly, “have it in for the ‘Prince.’ I wonder why? They’ll do something more. I wonder what?
“One thing’s sure,” he said stoutly, “I’m for the ‘Prince’ a hundred percent!”
That evening Johnny sat on his grandfather’s porch staring at the moon and allowing the events of the past few days to glide across his memory as a panorama glides across a picture screen.
It was strange! Here he was in the quiet little city of his grandfather. He’d been here many times before. Nothing unusual had happened; but now there was the little Chinaman who apparently had been seen by no one but himself and who was now being sought by detectives. And there was the thought-camera. He wondered whether the little man was still in town, but had no desire to visit the spice shop to find out for sure—at least not in the dark. He recalled C. K.’s words, and shuddered afresh.
“And there’s the ‘Prince,’” he thought. “Queer sort of fellow. How did he come here?” He seemed to see an airplane landing within prison walls. Had the Colonel rescued him in that strange manner from a prison? “Of course not!” he whispered. “Perfectly absurd!” And yet, there was that air pilot’s story. “Mystery wings!” he whispered low. How many mysterious things might be carried on high in the air—kidnaping, smuggling, daring robbers escaping from the scene of their crime. What had happened that day as the airplane soared over their baseball diamond? He had a rather definite notion. But was that idea correct? He meant to find out.
He thought of the coming ball game. The “Prince” would be there. He had promised to come. Meggy had brought word of this.
“Good old Meg!” he thought. “How I’d like to tell her about the thought-camera!” He was burning to tell someone. And yet, had he the right? Meg would keep the secret. Threats of death would not wring it from her. Good old Meg! And yet—. He wouldn’t tell, not just now.
How was the ball game to come out? And Goggles’ forty-eyed umpire? Would it work? They would get a crowd, he was sure of that. But would they be able to satisfy that crowd?
He stole a glance at his grandfather. As usual, he sat in his big chair dreaming of the past. Slipping up the stairs, Johnny returned with the thought-camera under his coat. He recorded one more chapter of the grand old man’s life. Then he crept back upstairs again.
“Wonder how that thing works,” he murmured as he once more hid the camera in the bottom of his trunk. “I’d give a lot to know.” He had read of things scientists were doing with what they called the spectrum, how they divided it into different rays, red, violet, indigo blue, and how some rays were life-giving and some deadly. It might be something like that. If he knew the secrets of that camera he could become the richest person in the world. Perhaps some day he would know.
“But now,” he laughed low, “the next thing is a ball game.”
He was late to the Wednesday game. His grandfather had a hurry-up call into the country. Johnny drove the car. Twenty miles from town they got a flat tire. The bolts stuck. He was a full hour getting it changed. When he finally reached the ball grounds the game had been in progress for some time and, to his great surprise and consternation, this is what he heard:
“Oh! What an eye! Kill that umpire! Git a pop bottle! Git twenty pop bottles! Wreck him! Wreck him!” The cries were loud and persistent from every corner of the grandstand.
“Trouble is,” Doug Danby groaned as Johnny came racing up, “they are liable to break loose any minute and do just that—‘wreck the umpire.’ And that umpire cost hundreds of dollars. How could we ever pay it back?”
Doug was, he believed, at that moment the most miserable person in the world. They were losing, losing the game they by all odds should be winning. And it was all his fault, or at least he accepted the blame. He, as captain of the team, had stood up for Goggles’ mechanical umpire. “And now look!” He gave Johnny an appealing glance.
Johnny didn’t want to look. Everyone else was looking; that is, everyone on the Hillcrest bleachers, and everyone was yelling: “Wide a mile!” or “Way below his knees!” “Take out that umpire! Wreck him!” “Strike! Strike! Strike!” They began chanting this as a refrain, and clapping their hands in a rhythmic accompaniment.
“Johnny, something’s gone terribly wrong!” Meggy Strawn screamed this into Johnny’s ear above the din.
“You’re telling us!” Doug shouted back. “Terribly wrong! I’d say! Bill’s out on strikes and all three were balls. Dave’s got two strikes now, and there—no—that tin umpire called it a ball!”
“There!” Meggy jumped up and down. “Dave swatted it. It’s a two bagger! Rah for Dave!”
Doug did not shout. He was glad Dave had made second. But he was sure he’d never see home.
“You can’t beat a crooked umpire,” he groaned. That the umpire was crooked he could not by this time doubt. Yet, how could it be? A mechanical umpire with an eye a thousand times faster than the human eye, set to call balls and strikes impartially, all the balls to be outside the plate, above the shoulder or below the knee, a mere thing of electrical tubes and cells, of wires and steel mechanisms, how could that kind of an umpire be crooked? Doug could find no answer. Nor could Johnny. He could only stand and stare.
“Johnny,” Meggy whispered, “why does that Fairfield sub always stand leaning against that post while our team is up to bat?”
The post she spoke of stood before the bench used by the visiting team. It held one end of the wire cable that kept the crowd off the field.
“Probably leans because he’s the leaning sort,” Johnny chuckled.
“He’s done that for four innings.” Meggy’s tone was low, mysterious. Johnny missed that tone. He was too much absorbed by what was going on to notice it. “When his team comes up to bat,” Meg went on, “he goes back to the bench. Then when we are at bat again, he hops up, strolls slowly to the post and stands there until the inning is over. Johnny, I—”
“There!” It was Doug who interrupted her. “Steve struck out. I’m up. Watch me fan! All I got to do is stand right still, and that tin umpire will call ‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ and I’m out! You just watch!”
“Doug!” Meggy gripped his arm tight. “You—you’re being almost yellow. Buck up! Get in there and win in spite of odds. There’s something crooked about it. We all know that. But we can’t help it. At least not now. Listen! Uncle Rob told me once he’d seen a lot of crooked things tried in all sorts of games, but he’d found out this—if the straight player stood up to it and did his level best he’d win; but that a fellow who is crooked can never do his best—his conscience won’t let him. So you just get in there and swat that ball! Strike at every one. Boot it over the fence! And next time, when you’re up, I’m going to—”
She did not finish. Doug was gone.
With Meggy’s words ringing in his ears, Doug marched up to the plate. Ten seconds later he saw the ball coming. Figuring it would be “wide a mile,” he gave a quick side-wise lurch, swung the bat, struck the ball low and hard, then dashed for first base.
“Go! Go! Go! Go on!” came in a deafening roar. Nor did that call subside until he had crossed the home plate. He had boosted the ball clear out of the lot, a home run just like that.
“But even that won’t win,” he told Johnny gloomily. “The score is still 5 to 3 in their favor. And that tin umpire is set dead against us.”
This conclusion seemed fair enough, for when Tim Tyler, the best batter on their team, came up next he went down “One, two, three.” After that the Hillcrest players wandered gloomily to their places on the diamond.
Doug played right field. Since the men on the opposing team almost to a man batted right handed, he now had plenty of time to think. And those were long, long thoughts, you may be sure. “How could that electrical umpire be crooked?” he asked himself over and over. “It worked perfectly every time yesterday. If it wasn’t for the pledge that both teams made to see the thing through, I’d demand a new umpire. But thunder! We’d look fine throwing out our own umpire!”
Yes, they had tried the umpire out the day before. Goggles had secured the necessary equipment from the electrical shop which was really a laboratory for research work, and with the assistance of the head electrician had set the electrical umpire in place on the ball grounds.
“You see,” he had explained before they started to test it out, “there’s a battery of ten lights shining out at the side beyond the plates. There are ten above the batter’s shoulder, and ten below the knee. These lights shine on electric eyes. The moment one of these lights is shut off, even for an instant, a red light will flash and a phonograph shout, ‘Foul.’ Two other batteries of lights watch for strikes. Another phonograph calls ’em. Now you fellows try it.”
They did try it. Tried it many times and not once had the mechanical umpire failed.
“It did not slip once yesterday,” Doug groaned to himself out there on the field watching for any chance fly that might come his way. “And now, today, when the Fairfield batters are up, it works perfectly, but when we are up it just squints its forty eyes and gives the pitcher all the breaks.
“Crowds,” the boy grumbled, “are queer. One minute they are with you, next they are against you.” It had been so with the crowd from his own town in regard to the mechanical umpire. When they had heard it call “Strike!” “Foul!” then “Strike!” once more, they had gone wild over it. “But now,” he groaned, “they’re all against it. May swarm onto the field any minute and smash it up. Worst is,” he grumbled on, “we agreed to abide by the decision of that brainless mechanical man—even put it in writing. Both teams signed it—so—”
He broke short off. There had come a wild shout from the enemy’s bleachers. A high fly came sailing his way. Judging it correctly, he turned his back and ran; then, whirling about just in time, put up a single hand to nab the ball. It was a beautiful catch. Even the rivals applauded.
“Fine! Great! Wonderful!” His teammates patted him on the back as they raced in for their turn at bat.
“Lot of good that will be,” Doug grumbled. “We’re beat right now; beaten by our own little tin umpire. What an eye! is right.”
Then Meggy’s words came back to him: “Go in and beat them anyway. Fellows that are crooked seldom win. Their conscience won’t let them.”
“We’ll win!” He set his teeth tight. “Win in spite of it all. We—”