CHAPTER XVIII

THE PLOT

“There are lots of people in Boston hoping the same thing,” replied Bixby. “But I think they’re due to be disappointed. It isn’t often they send that boy back to the shower.”

“He can be beaten like any one else,” snarled Fleming, his gorge rising as he heard Joe praised.

“Sure,” conceded Bixby. “The best of them have an off day at times. But they say he’s in splendid shape just now. That arm of his is certainly a dandy.”

Fleming could have told him better than any one else just how good that stalwart arm was. Not four hours had passed since he had tested its strength. And he knew that it was good for something besides baseball.

But not for the world would he have had that beating come to light. It would make him the laughing stock of the clubs. He was sure that Joe himself would not tell of it nor would Reggie, because of their desire to prevent Mabel’s name being dragged into the affair. So that his secret was safe, unless he himself should reveal it while he was in his cups.

“He’s a false alarm,” he growled. “Lots of these fellows start out as though they were going to set the league afire, but after a year or two you find them back again in the minors. They go up like a rocket and come down like the stick.”

“Well, if he’s a false alarm, he’s deceived a good many people,” answered Bixby with a diminished respect for his friend’s judgment. “All the dope is that he’s going to be another Hughson.”

They drained their glasses and ordered more liquor. While they were waiting for it to come, Bixby glanced around the café. His eye rested on a table in the further corner of the room where three men were sitting.

“Do you see that big fellow over there with the other two?” he asked Fleming.

“I see him,” replied Fleming, shortly.

“Well, that’s Big Connelly the notorious Chicago sporting man,” returned Bixby.

“Well, what if it is?” said Fleming, indifferently.

“Oh, nothing special, except that he seems to feel a good deal the same way about Matson that you do. I was sitting near him just before I came over here to join you and he was grouching to beat the band.”

“Is that so!” ejaculated Fleming with a quickening of interest. “What does he seem to have against him?”

“Oh, that’s more than I know,” was the reply. “But he seems to have a bitter grudge from the way he talks.”

“Do you know Connelly personally?” demanded Fleming.

“In a way I do,” replied Bixby. “I met him at a prize fight once in Chicago and was introduced to him. I don’t know whether he’d remember me or not. But why do you ask?”

“I’d like to meet him if you don’t mind,” answered Fleming.

Bixby was somewhat surprised but did not object, and the two wended their way among the tables till they came to the one in question.

“How are you, Mr. Connelly?” said Bixby. “I don’t know whether you recall me, but I met you at that Welsh-Leonard bout in Chicago last year. Bixby is my name.”

It was Connelly’s business to recollect faces, or to pretend to even if he did not.

“Sure, I remember you,” he replied with the real or assumed heartiness of his class. “Glad to see you again, Mr. Bixby.”

“This is my friend, Mr. Fleming,” introduced Bixby.

Connelly’s shrewd eyes appraised Fleming as one of the “idle rich,” the plucking of whom had often feathered his nest, and his greeting was cordial.

“Won’t you sit down and have something with us?” he inquired, introducing the two men who were with him and making room at the table.

“We’d be glad to if we’re not intruding,” replied Bixby.

“Not at all,” said Connelly, and to seal the acquaintance he ordered a bottle of champagne.

It was not long before they were talking freely, and it goes without saying that in the one engrossing thought that prevailed everywhere they fell to discussing the World Series.

Connelly--“Big” Connelly, to give him the name by which he was usually referred to--was, as his name implied, a ponderous man with a hard, smooth-shaven face and cold, calculating eyes. He was a hardened “sport” and a shrewd politician, with strings out everywhere in the underworld that he could pull when he felt so inclined. He was wholly unscrupulous and stopped at nothing to achieve his ends.

“I hear you’re expecting Boston to win the Series, Mr. Connelly,” remarked Bixby.

“I’ve picked ’em to win,” agreed Connelly, “and I think they would to a dead certainty if it weren’t for one thing, or perhaps I ought to say one man.”

“And that one man is Matson, I suppose?” put in Fleming.

“Exactly,” frowned Connelly. “With him out of the way it would be a walk-over for the Sox.”

“You’d go into mourning if he broke a leg or anything like that,” grinned Bixby.

“No such luck,” grunted Connelly. “Nothing ever happens to that bird. He must carry a horseshoe around with him. I came all the way from Chicago to see Brennan’s team win, only to see Matson smear a defeat on them. But it isn’t that I’m sore about especially.”

“Some little personal feeling, eh?” ventured Fleming, tentatively.

“He turned me down on a little deal once,” Connelly spat out viciously, “and I’ve vowed to get even with him some time.”

He refrained from explaining that the “deal” referred to had been a crooked bit of work that he had dared to suggest to Joe at the time the latter was with St. Louis and the club was struggling to get to the head of the second division. Not only had Joe rejected the proposition hard and instantly, but Connelly had only saved his face from disfigurement by beating a hasty and undignified retreat. From that moment he had cherished a bitter grudge against the man who had humiliated him, and this was intensified at the present by the young pitcher’s popularity.

“Yes, sir-ee,” he grunted vindictively, “I’d give ten thousand dollars to have Matson put on the shelf.”

“You could have him put out of the way for a good deal less than that,” suggested one of his companions, an evil-faced man named Moriarity. “There are fellows in New York or Boston who would do it for a thousand.”

“Nix on that stuff,” growled Connelly. “You could get away with a good many things, but you couldn’t get away with that. You might as well try to do away with the President. Any one who puts the extinguisher on Matson would go to the electric chair sure, and nothing could save him. Even if he got off, the public would tear him to pieces. Forget it.”

Moriarity was squelched and shrank back before the big man’s disapproval.

“Just the same,” ruminated Connelly, “I wish I could think of something that didn’t have any come-back.”

A thought suddenly came into Fleming’s mind, but he hesitated to express it in the presence of Bixby, who was an ardent partisan of the New Yorks. He sat toying with his glass and turning the idea over in his mind.

It was a relief to him when Bixby rose a few minutes later and left them on the ground of an engagement. Fleming hitched his chair a little closer to Connelly’s.

“I’ve just thought of something that may help you out a little, Mr. Connelly,” he began.

Connelly looked at him in curiosity.

“Let’s hear it,” he said eagerly.