CHAPTER XXIV

GETTING A CONFESSION

“It cuts me to the heart, Jim,” said Joe, with deep feeling, laying his hand affectionately on his chum’s arm. “I can’t tell you how sick I feel about the whole thing. Nothing that affects you can fail to affect me. You know that, don’t you, Jim?”

“Of course I do, Joe. You’ve been a brother to me ever since I joined the Giants. Whatever success I’ve had in my work has been due to your kindness, your teaching, your encouragement. Don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I shouldn’t have burst out the way I did, but you can’t know the misery I’ve endured in the last few weeks. It was bad enough when I only had a vague suspicion that things weren’t right. Now it seems more than I can stand. It’s hard, Joe, to see your house of cards come tumbling to the ground.”

“I know it is, Jim,” replied Joe, with warm sympathy. “But take it from me, Jim, your house hasn’t fallen yet. I’m sure that Clara is true blue at heart, and that no matter how things look, there must be some explanation that will clear up everything.”

“I hope so,” said Jim, though there was not much hopefulness in his tone. “I’ve got to know soon or I’ll go crazy. You see how this thing has knocked me out of my stride. I’m not pitching up to my usual form, and you know it.”

“I’ve noticed it, of course,” said Joe. “And I’ve guessed the reason. You’ve got all the old stuff, all the strength and cunning, but you haven’t been able to use it because of the burden on your mind. Even at that, though, you’ve been turning in more victories than the other fellows.”

“Which isn’t saying much, the way the team is running now.”

“All the more reason for taking a big brace, old boy!” exclaimed Joe, giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder. “Try to throw off your troubles and work your head off for the success of the team.”

“I’ll do it,” promised Jim, as he shook his chum’s hand to bind the bargain.

“Good,” said Joe, heartily. “And promise me one thing, Jim. Don’t hint at anything of this in your letters to Clara. Nothing can really be explained in a letter. Nothing in the world has caused so much estrangement, so much heartache, as trying to arrange a misunderstanding by letter. You can’t say just what you want, and what you do say is never understood just in the way you want it to be. Wait until you can see Clara face to face, and I’ll bet the whole thing will be cleared up in five minutes.”

“But that will be at the end of the season!” exclaimed Jim, in dismay.

“Not so long as that, I guess,” said Joe. “I’m going to see if I can’t by some means get Clara to make a flying visit to New York.” He paused a moment, and his brow clouded with anxiety. Then he resumed: “Of course she can’t do it right now because my mother is in too critical a condition. But if the operation turns out all right and she has a good recovery, it might be managed. If not, I have something else in mind that I’ll talk to you about later.”

To Joe’s already overburdened mind was added another worry in the game with the Bostons the next afternoon.

Jackwell and Bowen, while they had been affected by the general slump of the team, had given no evidence of a return of the peculiar nervousness that had marked their actions earlier in the season. But Joe noticed on that afternoon, the frequent looks at the stand and the pulling of their caps over their faces for which he had before taken them to task.

Merton was pitching, and Joe was playing in left. In the fourth inning, an easy fly came out to Bowen and he made a miserable muff. Jackwell also made a couple of errors at third. In each case the blunders were costly, as they let in runs.

“What made you drop that fly, Bowen?” Joe asked, as the Giants came in from the field.

“I lost it in the sun,” replied Bowen. “At this time in the year the sun comes over the grandstand in such a way that it’s right in my eyes.”

“Haven’t heard you complain of it before,” remarked Joe, dryly. “For the rest of this game I’ll play center, and you shift over to left.”

The change was made accordingly. In the eighth inning another fly came to Bowen and again he dropped it while the crowd booed. The error let in what proved to be the winning run for the Bostons.

“I want to see you fellows after the game,” said Joe, curtly, to the two men. “Wait around the clubhouse after the others have gone.”

When the clubhouse was finally deserted by all but the three, Joe turned to them sternly.

“I’m fed up with this mystery stuff,” he said. “It’s got to end right here. It lost the game for us this afternoon, but it isn’t going to lose another. Come across now and make a clean breast of it.”

The two men looked at each other uncertainly.

“You heard me,” said Joe. “Out with it now, or I’ll see that you’re fired off the team.”

“All right, Mr. Matson,” Jackwell spoke up with sudden resolution. “I’ll tell you just what the trouble is. Ben and I are afraid that detectives are after us.”

“Detectives!” ejaculated Joe, with a start. “What are they after you for? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing wrong,” declared Jackwell, earnestly, and Bowen echoed him.

“Why should they be after you, then?” asked Joe, with a faint tinge of skepticism in his tone.

“We got mixed up in a shady business,” explained Jackwell, with a look of misery on his face. “But we didn’t know there was anything wrong about it till it went up with a bang. You see, Mr. Matson, this is the way it came about. Last winter, Ben and I were rather up against it--short of ready money. You know what poor salaries they pay in the league we came from. We were down in Dallas, Texas, and the oil boom was on. We saw an ad for men to sell oil stocks, and we answered it. The fellow at the head of it--Bromley was his name--was a smooth sort of chap and could talk any one into anything. From his description, we thought his oil well was an honest-to-goodness well, and we sold a lot of stock for him. Then came the blow-up, and it turned out that his well was just a dry hole in the ground. He got out from under just before the crash came, and I heard he went to Mexico. The federal officers got after him and all connected with it. We heard that warrants were out for us, and we skipped North. But until the company broke we thought they were straight as a string. We wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if we had thought it was crooked. We were just roped into it. That’s as true as that we’re sitting here this moment. All that either of us got out of it was part of our salaries and part of the commissions that were promised.”