CHAPTER XIII

SECRET OF THE PINES

Next day, in keeping with his promise to Goggles, Johnny found himself seated beneath the broad-spreading boughs of a pine tree. All about him were other pines. He was not in a forest, but a grove—a twenty acre grove of pines. Old Colonel Pinchot had planted them there a half century ago. Now they were known simply as The Pines. The heart of The Pines was a marvelous place to think, and Johnny was thinking hard. When he went into anything he went in heart and soul, did Johnny. He had gone in for the Hillcrest baseball team for all he was worth.

“And now,” he sighed, “looks as if it were all off just because—well, because somebody wants what he wants and appears to have the power to take it. Four thousand dollars!” He gave vent to a low grunt. “How’s a fellow to raise that much in times like these, for a baseball team,—and in sixty days! It can’t—”

He broke short off to listen. A curious sound, for such a place, had struck his ear. It seemed to be the low rattle and chuck-chuck of a two wheel cart.

“Who can that be carting things about way out here?” he asked himself. The question soon ceased to interest him. His mind turned once more to strange happenings in old Hillcrest. The little Chinaman with his thought-camera and think-o-graphs, lurking Federal agents, the mysterious pitcher, and Big Bill Tyson—all came in for their share of his thoughts. He lingered longer on the question of Big Bill and the four thousand dollars than all the rest, but was no nearer a solution than before, when to his vast surprise he saw Goggles break through the pine boughs, dragging a heavy cart behind him.

“Whew!” the young inventor exclaimed, mopping his brow. “That thing pulls like a ton of bricks.”

“Then why pull it?” Johnny grinned. “Where’s your friend the pitcher?”

“Right in behind.” Goggles grinned broadly as he nodded at something covered with canvas.

“You don’t mean—”

“Give me a hand,” Goggles grumbled. “It—it—I mean he’s pretty heavy.”

The astonished Johnny saw him throw back the canvas to disclose several sections of a mechanical contraption that might have been just anything at all.

His astonishment was not very much abated when, some fifteen minutes later, he saw standing before him on an improvised pitcher’s mound a six-foot figure that to some degree resembled a man.

“Meet Irons O.” Goggles beamed. “He doesn’t walk very well. He’s quite stiff-legged. He’s quite deaf, so there’s no use talking to him. But he can bawl out the umpire something fierce. His eyesight is very bad, so someone has to catch the ball for him and throw bases. But boy! How he can pitch! With just a little training he could fan out Babe Ruth nine times out of ten.

“Here!” he said, handing Johnny a big baseball mit, “You just get down there about where the catcher would stand, and I’ll have him throw a few over to you.”

After placing a ball between four steel fingers and a cast iron thumb, Goggles touched a button and the thing began a low puff-puff-puff that resembled low, heavy breathing. Johnny was mystified and amused beyond belief.

“Watch this curve!” Goggles shouted a moment later. He touched a button. A steel arm rose in air, wound up for all the world like a professional pitcher, then let fly. The ball shot forward, took a sudden broad curve, then went thud against Johnny’s big mit. A second ball, then a third followed and all took that same sharp curve.

“You set the fingers,” Goggles explained in a matter-of-fact voice. “Look at this straight, fast one.” Once again the steel arm went through its motion. This time the ball, shooting straight ahead like a cannon ball, cut the plate squarely in the middle.

“That,” said Johnny solemnly, “is the strangest thing I ever saw. A mechanical pitcher!”

“Nothing less!” Goggles agreed.

“Whe—where’d you get him?”

“Hop Horner and I have been working on him down at the electric shop for months. You see there’s a little motor inside that generates electricity. Electricity runs him. All a fellow has to do is to set his fingers and operate the controls. As I said before, he can even rave at the umpire. Watch!” He punched two buttons and old Irons O began bobbing his outlandish head. His steel teeth cracked together again and again, while from his metal throat there came sounds resembling the complaints of a wildcat chased up a tree. “He—he’s almost perfect!” Goggles admitted proudly.

“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “but what good is he? You can’t expect another ball team to let you substitute a—a machine for a real flesh-and-blood pitcher.”

“No, you can’t do that,” Goggles agreed, “but you can do this—it came to me just last night. You can announce an exhibition game. Get Centralia to come over and play us just for fun—fun and profit. We’d have a complete sell-out. Can’t you see it? Big headlines: ‘Come and See Irons O, the Mechanical Pitcher, Perform!’ Why even Big Bill would have to come and see that game! That game would bring in the first hundred dollars or so toward that four thousand.” Goggles went hopping about in his excitement.

“Sounds good to me,” Johnny agreed.

And indeed it sounded good to everyone interested in the Hillcrest baseball team. The date of the game was set for the following Saturday. As Goggles had predicted, the thing became a headline story. Reporters were admitted to the evergreen grove for a demonstration. Everyone else was barred. Then Irons O went into seclusion; a seclusion however that was to prove not quite adequate for the occasion.

When the time came for calling the game every bleacher seat and all available standing space was packed. The fame of the mechanical pitcher was spread far and wide.

“It’s in the bag,” Johnny grinned broadly as he saw old Professor George tucking the day’s receipts, a fat wad of bills, into his pocket.

“Not yet,” Goggles warned. “Remember, we promised a perfect performance. ‘Nine full innings pitched by Irons O, or your money back.’ That’s the way the handbills were printed.”

For all this the young inventor wore a jaunty air as he marched out to the pitcher’s mound where his mechanical man awaited him.

Touching a button here, another there, he caused Irons O to bob his head from side to side, then let out a cry of defiance at the shouting throng. The crowd roared back its glee.

When this roar had subsided another reached Johnny’s ear. A huge bi-motored plane was circling to the landing field a half mile away. A shudder ran over him. He had not forgotten those “Mystery wings,” nor the two strangers who had done something terrible to the “Prince” on that other day. “Have trouble doing it to a mechanical pitcher.” He laughed in spite of himself.

Ten minutes later, as the players took their place on the field, Johnny saw three men in aviation caps crowding toward the front.

“Wonder who they are and what they want?” he thought to himself. Something seemed to tell him that their arrival was important. Why? He could not tell.

The great moment came at last, and “Irons O pitching!” the megaphone announced at the end of the line-up.

Goggles’ fingers trembled as he threw on an electric switch, then pressed the button. And well they might tremble for Irons O, instead of facing the batter and doing his plain duty, let out a defiant squeal, turned half about, wound up and let fly at the astonished second baseman who, taken off his guard, was struck squarely on the chest and knocked over like a policeman with a bullet through his heart. Instantly pandemonium broke loose. Goggles could not hear himself think for the wild tumultuous noise.