CHAPTER VI

JOE GIVES FAIR WARNING

Although the news only confirmed what had been all along expected, it was worth a great deal to the Giants to know certainly just whom they would have to fight. Their enemy now was detached from the crowd and out in the open. They could study him carefully and arrange a clear plan of campaign.

Joe and Jim were discussing the matter earnestly, as they passed out of the Polo Grounds to go downtown.

“Don’t let’s take the elevated,” suggested Joe. “We haven’t had much exercise, and I want to stretch my legs a little.”

“I’m agreeable,” replied Jim. “There’s a cool breeze and it’s a nice night for walking. We can go part of the way on foot, anyway, and if we feel like it we’ll hoof it for the whole distance.”

They soon got below the Harlem River and before long found themselves in the vicinity of Columbus Circle. They were passing one of the fashionable cafés that abound in that quarter when the door opened and a man came out. Joe caught a good look at his face, and a grim look came into his eyes as he recognized Beckworth Fleming.

Fleming saw him at the same time, and the eyes of the two men met in a look of undisguised hostility. Then with an ugly sneer, Fleming remarked:

“Ah, Mr. Matson, I believe. Or was it Mr. Buttinski? I’m not very good at remembering names.”

“You’ll remember mine if I have to write it on you with my knuckles,” returned Joe, brought to a white heat by the insult and the remembrance of the occurrence of the day before.

“Now, my good fellow----” began Fleming, a look of alarm replacing his insolent expression.

“Don’t ‘good fellow’ me,” replied Joe. “I owe you a thrashing and I’m perfectly able to pay my debts. You’d have gotten it yesterday if we’d been alone.”

“I--I don’t understand you,” stammered Fleming, looking about him for some way of escape from the sinewy figure that confronted him.

“Well, I’m going to make myself so clear that even your limited intelligence can understand me,” said Joe, grimly. “You keep away from the Marlborough Hotel. Is that perfectly plain?”

Before the glow in Joe’s eyes, Fleming retreated a pace or two, but as he caught sight of a policeman sauntering up toward them, his courage revived.

“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” he snarled.

“You will if you value that precious skin of yours. I’ve given you fair warning, and you’ll find that I keep my word.”

By this time the officer had come up close to them, and Fleming, immensely relieved, turned to him as an ally.

“Officer, this man has been threatening me with personal violence,” he complained.

The policeman sized him up quizzically. Then he looked at Joe and his face lighted up.

“Good evening, Mr. Matson. That was a great game you pitched yesterday,” he ejaculated in warm admiration.

“I tell you he threatened me,” repeated Fleming, loudly.

The officer smiled inquiringly at Joe.

“Just a trifling personal matter,” Joe explained quietly. “He insulted me and I called him down.”

The policeman turned to Fleming.

“Beat it,” he commanded briefly. “You’re blocking up the sidewalk.”

Fleming bristled up like a turkey cock.

“I’ll have your number,” he said importantly. “I’ll----”

“G’wan,” broke in the officer, “or I’ll fan you. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

He emphasized the command by a poke in the back with his club that took away the last shred of Fleming’s dignity, and he retreated, with one last malignant look at Joe.

“I know his kind,” said the officer, complacently. “One of them rich papa’s boys with more money than brains. Sorry he bothered you, Mr. Matson. Are youse boys goin’ to lick them Bostons?”

“We’re going to make a try at it,” laughed Joe.

“You will if you can pitch all the games,” rejoined the policeman, admiringly. “It cert’nly was a sin an’ a shame the way you trimmed them Chicagos. You own New York to-day, Mr. Matson.”

The chums bade him a laughing good-night and resumed their interrupted stroll.

“Who was that fellow, anyway?” asked Jim in curiosity.

“His name is Fleming,” answered Joe. “That’s about all I know of him.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Since yesterday.”

“What was the row all about, anyway?”

“Oh, nothing much,” evaded Joe. “I guess we just don’t like the color of each other’s eyes.”

Jim laughed and did not press the question. But he had heard the warning to keep away from the Marlborough Hotel, and could hazard a vague guess as to the cause of the quarrel.

At their hotel both Joe and Jim found a letter from the owners of the New York Club waiting for them. In addition to the informal thanks conveyed to the team in general by McRae, they had taken this means of thanking each player personally. It was a gracious and earnest letter, and wound up by inviting them to a big banquet and theatre party that was to be given by the management to the players in celebration of their great feat in winning the National League championship for New York.

But Joe’s letter also contained a little slip from the Treasurer, to which a crisp, blue, oblong paper was attached. Joe unfolded it in some wonderment and ran his eyes over it hastily.

It was a check for a thousand dollars, and on the accompanying slip was written:

“In payment of bonus as per contract for winning twenty games during the season.”

Joe grabbed Jim and waltzed him about the room, much to Barclay’s bewilderment.

“What are you trying to do?” he gasped. “Is it a new tango step or what?”

“Glory, hallelujah!” ejaculated Joe. “Yesterday and to-day are sure my lucky days.”

He thrust the check before his friend’s eyes.

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Jim. “It never rains but it pours. If you fell overboard, you’d come up with a fish in your mouth.”

“It sure is like finding money,” chortled Joe. “Everything seems to be coming my way.”

“You’ll be lending money to Rockefeller if this sort of thing keeps on,” Jim grinned. “But after all it can’t be such a surprise. You must have known that you had won twenty games.”

“That’s just it,” explained Joe. “I wasn’t sure of it at all. I figured that with yesterday’s game I had nineteen. But there was that game in August, you remember, when I relieved Markwith in the sixth inning. We won the game, but there were some fine points in it which made it doubtful whether it should be credited to Markwith or me. I had a tip that the official scorers were inclined to give it to Markwith, and so I had kissed the game good-bye. But it must be that they’ve decided in my favor after all and notified the New York Club to that effect.”

“That’s bully, old man,” cried Jim, enthusiastically. “And you can’t say that they’ve lost any time in getting it to you.”

“No,” replied Joe. “Ordinarily, they’d settle with me on the regular salary day. But I suppose they feel so good over getting the pennant that they take this means of showing it.”

“They can well afford to do it,” said Jim. “Your pitching has brought it into the box office twenty times over. Still it’s nice and white of them just the same to be so prompt. That’s one thing that you have to hand to the Giant management. There isn’t a club in the league that treats its players better.”

“You’re just right,” assented Joe, warmly, “and it makes me feel as though I’d pitch my head off to win, not only for my own sake but for theirs.”

“You certainly have had a dandy year,” mused Jim. “With your regular salary of forty-five hundred and this check in addition you’ve grabbed fifty-five hundred so far. And you’ll get anywhere from two to four thousand more in the World Series.”

“I haven’t any kick coming,” agreed Joe. “It was a lucky day for me when I joined the Giants.”

“I suppose you’ll soak that away in the bank to-morrow, you bloated plutocrat,” laughed Jim.

“Not a bit of it,” Joe answered promptly. “To-morrow night that money will be on its way to Riverside as fast as the train can carry it.”