CHAPTER XXIII

TAKING THE LEAD

Baseball Joe wasted little time in reaching the end of the pier. He hailed a cab at the first thoroughfare he came to and was soon once more at the hotel.

He found his party ready to start and wondering where he had gone.

“Where on earth have you been, Joe?” asked Mabel. “We were beginning to get worried about you.”

“Oh, I was just called away by a telephone message,” Joe parried.

He had no desire to let the women of the little group know that he was being made the victim of any hostile machinations. They would have magnified the danger and worried without ceasing.

“Well, it’s all right as long as you are here now,” Mabel said brightly, flashing Joe one of the dazzling smiles that always made his heart beat more quickly.

There had been a tenderer note in her voice ever since he had rescued her from the reckless ride on which Fleming had taken her. She blushed when she remembered how she had taken refuge in his arms in her first paroxysms of relief. It had been instinctive, and she had fled to them as naturally as she would have gone to those of her brother in similar circumstances. How strongly those arms had held her and how absolutely safe they had made her feel!

Barclay had been looking curiously at Joe ever since the latter had returned. He had been more alarmed than he would have cared to confess by his unexplained absence. Knowing his chum so well, he could see that even now he was laboring under repressed excitement. But his chance for an explanation did not come until some time later. It was only after they had bestowed their charges in their Pullman car and had said good-night and had gone forward to the car in which the Giants were quartered, that Jim was able to relieve his impatience.

“Come on now, old man, and tell me all about it,” he demanded.

“All about what?”

“You know well enough. Quit your stalling and come across with the story. Where did you go? Who called you up? Get it off your chest.”

Joe readily complied. There was very little he ever kept from Jim, and just now he felt especially the need of a confidant.

Jim listened with growing excitement and indignation.

“The hounds!” he exclaimed hotly.

“That doesn’t begin to express it,” said Joe. “It was about as dirty a piece of business as I ever heard of. It’s worthy of a reptile like Fleming.”

“I’d like to have him here this minute,” cried Jim. “I’d repeat the dose you gave him yesterday.”

“What puzzles me is as to who was in cahoots with him,” mused Joe. “He couldn’t have put a thing like that through alone. Think of the wires that had to be pulled to carry out the plan.”

“I suppose the big fellow that Anderson heard talking with Fleming was at the bottom of that,” conjectured Jim. “It surely was smooth work.”

“Oh, it was all prearranged carefully enough,” agreed Joe. “There wasn’t anything left to chance.”

“It was pretty slick, using McRae’s name to get you there, too,” commented Jim. “They knew you’d do anything he asked that was reasonable. What beats me is how they could counterfeit his voice so that you were taken in by it.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Joe replied. “When any one at the telephone gives you his name you take it for granted. It sounded a little strange, but it was a pretty good imitation at that. Probably they’ve rung in some actor who’s accustomed to mimic voices. He could easily have hung around the hotel and listened to Mac talking, till he got a pretty good line on his voice. Where I blame myself is that I hadn’t kept Anderson’s warning in mind. But I was thinking of other things----”

“Yes,” interrupted Jim dryly. “You’d just been walking with a charming young lady. I understand.”

He grinned quizzically, and Joe made a friendly thrust toward him which he adroitly ducked.

“Well, ‘all’s well that ends well,’” Joe quoted.

“If it _is_ ended,” said Jim seriously. “They may cook up something else, now that this has failed.”

“I guess they’ve shot their bolt,” replied Joe lightly. “This will probably discourage them, and they’ll give it up. But it gives me the cold shivers to think how nearly they put this scheme of theirs across.”

“It was just touch and go,” agreed Jim. “You did some mighty quick thinking, old man,” he added admiringly.

“It was a case of must,” answered Joe. “I just had to think quickly, or it would have been all up.”

“By the way, are you going to say anything to McRae about this?”

“What’s the use?” returned Joe. “There’s nothing he could do. It would only worry him and make him hopping mad, and he’s got enough on his mind as it is. Besides, I couldn’t tell him the whole story without bringing Mabel’s name into it, and I’d rather cut off my hand than do that.”

Just at that moment McRae came through the car. He was in high spirits, and greeted them cordially as he sat down by them.

“Wouldn’t you boys better have your berths made up?” he inquired. “It’s getting pretty late and I want you to be in good shape for to-morrow. We’ll want that game badly, too. It isn’t enough to have evened up. We want to jump right out into the lead.”

“I suppose you’re going to pitch Markwith to-morrow,” said Joe, after having signaled the porter and told him to prepare the berths.

“I’m not sure yet,” answered McRae thoughtfully. “He certainly pitched pretty good ball in those last three innings to-day, and I’ll see how he warms up to-morrow before the game. But just at this present moment I’m inclined to pitch Barclay.”

Jim’s heart began to thump. He had not expected to figure in the Series, except perhaps as a relief pitcher. It was his first year in the big league and though he had shown some “crackerjack stuff,” he was not supposed to be seasoned enough to work a full game at such a critical time.

To tell the truth, he would not have had a chance of taking part if it had not been for the accident to Hughson. McRae was famous for the way he stuck to his veterans, and though he believed in “young blood,” he always took a long time in developing his new pitchers before he would trust them in a game on which a great deal depended. Sometimes he kept them on the bench for a year or two, absorbing “inside stuff” and watching the older players before he considered them ripe for “a killing.”

But he was hard put to it now to handle his crippled staff to the best advantage. He did not dare to use Joe too often for fear of hurting his effectiveness by overwork. Markwith was brilliant but unreliable. Sometimes he would pitch superbly for the better part of a game. Then all too often there would be a fatal inning when he would lose his “stuff” entirely, and before he could be replaced the game would have gone to pieces.

“I may pitch Jim to-morrow,” McRae went on reflectively. “If he wins, we will have the edge on the Sox, and I can take a chance on Red for Friday’s game. Then I’ll have you, Joe, to put the kibosh on them in the final game on Saturday.

“But if Jim loses to-morrow the Sox will have three games tucked away and only need one more. In that case, Joe, I’m going to pitch you Friday to even up and Saturday to win. Think you can stand two games in succession and win out?”

“I’d work my head off to do it,” replied Joe earnestly.

“It’ll put a big strain on your head and arm too,” said the manager, “but you’ll have all winter to rest up in afterwards, and we may have to chance it.”

He chatted with them a minute or two longer, and then, as the berth had been made up, he left them.

“Gee whiz, Joe!” ejaculated Jim, as he crept into the upper berth, his teeth chattering in his excitement. “To think of me pitching a game in the World Series before that whale of a crowd at the Polo Grounds!”

“It’s the chance of your life, Jim,” responded Joe. “You’re made as a pitcher if you win. And you will win, too. I’m sure of it. You had those fellows right on your staff in that inning or two you pitched at Boston.”

“Well, here’s hoping,” murmured Jim, getting in between the sheets. “If I don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.”

It was, indeed, a “whale of a crowd” that greeted the Giants on their victorious return. All New York was jubilant, and comments were rife everywhere on the gameness of their pets in the fight they were making against accident and hard luck.

The team was cheered singly and collectively as they came on the field and scattered for preliminary practice. McRae and Robson paid especial attention to the warming up of the pitchers, for up to the last minute the manager was undecided as to whom he should play.

Both Jim and Markwith seemed to have plenty of “smoke” as they sent their slants and benders over. But the older pitcher was inclined to be wild, while Jim’s control was all that could be asked. So with many inner quakings McRae finally decided that Jim should do the twirling.

The crowd was somewhat startled when they saw the young “second string” pitcher going on the mound. They were well aware of McRae’s predilection for his old players, and they wondered at his willingness to-day to take a chance.

But whatever may have been their misgivings, there was nothing but the heartiest applause for the youngster. If generous rooting and backing would help him to win, he should have them.

There was a host of Princeton men there, too, and they gave the old college yell that Jim had heard so often when as an undergraduate he had twirled for the Orange and Black.

But, perhaps, if the truth were told, Jim’s greatest incentive came from the fact that Clara was watching him from a box in the upper stand, her pretty face flushed and her bright eyes sparkling. It was astonishing how much that young woman’s approbation had come to mean to Jim in the short time he had known her.

He was a little nervous at the start, and Cooper, the first man up, drew a base on balls. He was nipped a moment later, however, in an attempt to steal, and with the bases again empty Jim fanned Berry and made Loomis chop a grounder to Larry that resulted in an easy out at first.

“Bully for you, old man!” cried Joe, encouragingly. “You got through that inning finely. The first is usually the hardest because you’re finding your bearings. Besides, you’ve got rid of the head of their batting order.”

Fraser was in the box for the Red Sox, and it looked at the start as though he were going to prove fully as good as in the first game. For four innings he turned back the New Yorks, who seemed to have lost all the hitting ability they had shown the day before.

“What’s the matter with the boys?” growled McRae, uneasily. “It would help Barclay a lot if they handed him something to go on.”

The New Yorks gave him that lead in the fifth. Denton and Willis singled, and Denton scored when Cooper, the right fielder, lost Becker’s fly in the sun and it went for a double. Becker was forced at third on Iredell’s bouncer to Girdner, and both Willis and Iredell scored when Berry made a wild throw of a sharp hit by Curry.

This ended the scoring for the inning, but those three runs, in the words of Robson, looked very “juicy.”

The lead, of course, was very gratifying to Jim. It seemed to put him on “easy street.” But at the same time it was dangerous, because it was calculated to give him, perhaps, too much confidence. And over-confidence was a perilous thing to indulge in when the Bostons happened to be one’s opponents.

Jim waked up to this fact in the very next inning, when Walters straightened out one of his incurves with a mighty wallop to the fence on which he easily circled the bases. Two more hits sandwiched in with a pass yielded one more run, and McRae began to look uneasy. A rattling double play got Jim out of what had begun to look like a bad hole, and the rally was choked off then and there.

It had been a bad inning for him, but Jim was a thoroughbred, and he braced.

In the next three innings they only garnered four more hits, and of these only two were “Simon pure.” Loomis got a hit past Denton when the latter was running to cover the base. Then Stock chopped one to the box that took a puzzling bound and went for a single. Girdner lined out a scorcher to center in the eighth and Walters sent one to the same place in the final frame. But this was the sum total of their endeavors and the Giants had no need of playing out their half of the ninth.

It was a very creditable victory for the “kid” pitcher of the Giants. Once more the New Yorks had the upper hand in the desperate fight for the Series. Jim had won his spurs and could count hereafter on taking his regular turn in the box.

The roars of the crowd were like music in Jim’s ears. Still more grateful were the praise and congratulations from his comrades on the team. But, perhaps, he treasured more than all the shy tribute that came that evening from the lips of a remarkably pretty girl.

“You were just splendid to-day, Mr. Barclay,” said Clara, her eyes shining brightly. “Just splendid!”