CHAPTER XX

THE PACKAGE OF MYSTERY

“A living thing!” exclaimed Jim, in wonderment.

“Yes,” replied Joe, whose quick mind had already reached a conclusion. “And I can make a guess at what it is. It’s a rattlesnake!”

“What?” cried Jim, aghast. “Oh, no, Joe, you must be dreaming. No one would send you a thing like that.”

“Well, I’ll bet that somebody has,” said Joe, grimly. “That would explain the buzz we heard just now. It was the whirr of the snake’s rattles. We disturbed him when we lifted the box, and he’s given us warning that he’s on the job. Lucky we didn’t open the box while it was on the floor. See here.”

He lifted the box and let it fall with a sharp jolt on the table. This time there was no mistaking the angry rattle that issued from the box. They had heard it more than once when they had occasionally come across one of the deadly reptiles while out hunting. It was one of the sounds that once clearly heard could never be mistaken for anything else. Even now, with the box closed, it sent a thrill of horror through them.

Their faces were pale as they looked at each other and realized what might have been the fate of one or both of them but for that ominous warning.

“You see the dope?” questioned Joe, with an angry note in his voice. “I would be curious to see what had been sent to me, and would open the box probably with my face close above it. Then something would strike me like a bolt of lightning, and it would be good-night. I would have been out of the game with neatness and dispatch.”

“The scoundrel!” ejaculated Jim, fiercely. “Oh, if I only had my hands on whoever did it!”

“I’d like to have a hand in settling that little matter, too,” said Joe, with a blaze in his eyes that boded ill for the miscreant if he should ever be discovered. “But that can wait. The first thing to do is to put this rattler beyond the power of doing mischief.”

Jim’s eyes searched the room for some weapon.

“No,” said Joe, “there’s a safer way than that. That ugly head must never be thrust alive out of that box. Just turn on the water in the bathtub.”

They had a private bath adjoining their room, and Jim turned on the tap. When the tub was half full, Joe brought in the box and put it in the tub, placing sufficient weight upon it to keep it beneath the surface of the water.

“Those air holes will do the business, I think,” said Joe. “In a few minutes the box will be full of water. We’ll leave it there a little while, and then we’ll open the box and see if we guessed right.”

At the expiration of twenty minutes, they drained the water out of the tub. Then Joe got the chisel, and with considerable effort forced open the cover of the box.

“You see,” he said.

Jim saw and shuddered.

Lying in the water that was still seeping out through the air holes was a rattlesnake all of four feet long.

They viewed the creature with a feeling of loathing. But still deeper was the feeling they had against the scoundrels who had chosen that cowardly way of attempting to injure Joe. The snake, after all, was just the instrument. Infinitely worse were the rascals who had employed it as their weapon.

“We’ve had some pretty narrow escapes,” said Joe. “And this is one of them. If you hadn’t happened to hear that buzz, I might be a dead man this minute.”

“It’s too horrible for words!” exclaimed Jim, “It seems incredible that any one could plan such a thing for their worst enemy. Who do you think did it?”

“One guess is as good as another,” replied Joe. “But if you ask me, I should say that the man or men who did it sat in the grandstand on the first day we played in this city.”

“Lemblow, Hupft and McCarney,” said Jim. “One or perhaps all of them. Well, why not? Lemblow tried deliberately to harm us both last year when he pushed that pile of lumber over from the scaffold above us. We came within an ace of being killed. If he were ready to harm us then, why shouldn’t he be again, especially as he hates us worse now than he did before?”

“The box was certainly sent from somewhere in this city,” said Joe, examining the cover carefully. “There’s nothing to indicate that it came by railroad. And there are plenty of rattlesnakes in this part of Pennsylvania. Some of the stores exhibit them as curiosities.”

“It’s up to us to put the police on the trail right away,” suggested Jim.

“I don’t know about giving this thing publicity,” mused Joe thoughtfully. “In the first place, it would create a sensation. It would be featured on the first page of every newspaper in the country. And you can see in a minute how it might react against baseball. The public would begin to figure that gamblers were trying to put the Giants out of the race. They haven’t forgotten the Black Sox scandal that came near to ruining the game. We’ve got to think of the game first of all. You remember what hard work we had to save the League last year, and how we had to forego punishing the scoundrels in order to keep every inkling of the gamblers’ scheme from the public. Baseball has to be above suspicion.”

“Then do you mean to say that whoever did this is to get away scot free?” demanded Jim, hotly.

“No,” said Joe, grimly, “I don’t mean that. When the season closes, I’m going to make a quiet investigation of my own. And if I find the villains I’ll thrash them within an inch of their lives and make them wish they had never been born. But they won’t tell why I did it, and I certainly won’t. At any cost, this thing must be kept from the public. The good of the game comes before everything else.”