CHAPTER XIV

THE STEEL-FINGERED PITCHER

Next moment Goggles found himself experiencing one of the tragic moments of his young life. In a moment of confidence and enthusiasm he had agreed to direct his mechanical man, Irons O, while he pitched a nine inning game of baseball, and now before a crowd of three thousand or more, old Irons O, who had always been reliable in the past, had turned squarely about on the first pitch and had all but sent the second baseman to the hospital with a baseball in his heart. What was the answer?

“Someone’s been fooling with him,” Hop Horner shouted as he came running up. “Here! Give me the screw driver. That’s it. Now the wrench.”

“Time out!” a big voice roared, “Time out!” It was Big Bill Tyson. Everyone roared with delight; that is, everyone but those who were interested in the youthful inventor’s success. Good old Professor George did not laugh. Instead, he crowded forward to ask, “Anything I can do here boys? Anything at all?” As if a professor who had taught Latin all his life could do anything with a mechanical man! All the same it made Goggles feel good inside. A friend at a time like this—well that was something.

“Wires all twisted up,” Hop was grumbling. “Somebody messed ’em up.”

For fifteen minutes the two boys worked feverishly. Perspiration streamed down their faces. Their hands were black and oily, their knees trembling. “Hundreds of dollars gone,” Goggles was thinking, “hundreds gone if we fail. Hope for the baseball park gone perhaps.” Still Irons O would not swing his arms in a proper manner.

The crowd was getting out of hand. Some were swarming on the field. In one corner, led by a small dark man, a group was chanting in a maddening manner: “We want baseball! We want baseball! We want Irons O! We want Irons!”

It was in the midst of this uproar that Goggles felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find himself looking into the friendly smiling face of a man wearing an aviator’s helmet. “He’s one of those men from the big plane,” he thought to himself.

“Look!” the stranger was saying, “Isn’t that wire, the short one with a pink thread in its insulation—isn’t it out of place?”

“Sure! Sure it is!” Goggles felt his thoughts clearing. Seizing a pair of pliers, he quickly made the change. “Now,” he breathed, “Now! Let’s try it.”

They did try it and old Irons O did his work perfectly.

“O.K. boys?” the stranger asked, still smiling.

“O.K.!” Goggles breathed.

Seizing a megaphone, the man roared, “Ready to go! Clear the field!”

Once again the crowd settled into its place. A look of pleasant anticipation flashed like a gleam of sunlight from face to face.

“S-strike!” the umpire roared. The game was on. And such a game as it proved to be! A plucky, good-natured young fellow cheerfully pitted his strength and skill against a thing made of iron, copper and steel.

The first Centralia batter went down, one, two, three in a row. Goggles, with Irons O’s aid, had given him two easy curves and a straight swift one. Perhaps the batter experienced stage fright at batting against such a pitcher. However that might be, he went down swinging and the crowd roared its applause.

The second batter came to bat wearing a confident grin. Nor did his confidence go unrewarded. He made first on a line drive and received his full share of fans’ approval.

Then Irons O appeared to lose his control. He gave the third batter three balls in a row.

“He’s afraid of him! He’s walking him. Boo! Boo!” came in good-natured banter. “Boo! Boo! Boo!” shouted the crowd. Whereupon Irons O, dropping his steel arm to his side, turned his head half around and, to the umpire’s surprise, let out wildcat howls that could be heard at the farthest end of the field.

“Get that umpire!” someone shouted. “Where’s that pop bottle?” But it was all in fun. The mechanical pitcher tightened up, pitched three sizzlers in a row. A moment later, a third man went out on a pop-up.

Johnny Thompson saw all of this inning. He saw very little of those that followed. In all that throng he was interested in just one man—the little dark fellow who had led the razzing when Irons O appeared to be down and out for good. Johnny had always been interested in the things people did and their reasons for doing them. This little dark man was a complete stranger to him. He wondered, at first in a vague sort of way, why he was such an ardent heckler. When Irons O had been put into service again, he thought he detected on the fellow’s face a look of disappointment and chagrin.

“What can he care?” Johnny asked himself.

All through the game he sat close to that man and watched him. He had once seen two large dogs fighting a battle for a bone. One had dropped the bone. It lay beneath their feet as they fought. A third dog, a sort of insignificant hungry-looking pug, had hovered near all during the fight, licking his chops but never quite daring to seize the bone. Somehow, in a strange sort of way, the expression on this little man’s face resembled that on the insignificant pug’s face.

“I wonder what his interest in this game can be!” the boy whispered. “I do wonder!”

As for Goggles, during his spare moments while his team-mates were at bat, he was wondering about an entirely different matter. The men from the big airplane had caught his attention at once. When one of them, evidently a skilled mechanic, had interested himself in their problem and aided them in solving it, he had completely won Goggles’ heart. But Goggles’ interest went farther than that. “They came here to see this game. Probably came all the way from the big city, three hundred miles away,” he told himself. “I wonder why?” For the time he could form no satisfying answer.

In the meantime the game went on. Bernard caught the ball as it came back from the catcher. He caught a pop-up fly now and then and also threw bases. To the excitement of the throng, Irons O did the rest. He pitched a good game too, but no better than the smiling pitcher from Centralia. Goggles had always admired that Centralia pitcher, but never as now. Now, as he directed the pitching of Irons O, as the score went from 3 to 4, to 6-5; then from 7-8 to 8-10, his sympathies were evenly balanced between the man of iron and the man of brawn. Who was to win? Well enough he knew that in the end it was up to him to decide.

And so it turned out to be. At the end of the first half of the ninth inning the score stood 10-9 in the iron man’s favor. At the beginning of the game they had tossed up to see who came first to bat. Centralia had lost, so now in the last half of the ninth they were up to bat.

“It’s up to Irons O,” Goggles breathed to Johnny as he went out on the field.

“Which means it’s up to you!” Johnny smiled. He had read the story of struggle written on the other boy’s face. He wanted his team and his iron man to win the game; yet, down deep in his heart he had a feeling that to set Irons O for a shut-out would be taking an unfair advantage of that smiling pitcher.

“I—I’ve got to give them a break,” he murmured as he took his place behind the man of iron. He set Irons O’s fingers for an easy curve, then pressed the button.

“St-trike! Ball! St-trike! Ball! Ball.” The audience was on its toes. “Ball three! Strike two!” Irons twisted his head about and screamed at the umpire. Once again the audience went into near-hysterics.

Goggles set the fingers for a swift fast one. The man went down swinging.

Second batter up. Two curves went wild. A swift fast one would have cut the plate in halves had not a stout hickory bat sent it shooting away into centerfield for a two bagger.

“The tying run on second and only one out!” Goggles was thinking hard. “They can’t have it, not yet!” he decided. He raised the speed of the iron pitcher’s arm a couple of notches, then set his fingers for a very wide curve. A ball and three strikes. The third batter went down swinging.

“Pitcher’s up next. They’ll put in a pinch-hitter,” Goggles thought. But no, here came that smiling pitcher. He was swinging three bats and smiling broader than ever.

“It’s a sure thing,” the young inventor groaned. “But how can I?”

Mechanically he set the controls, gave the ball into the iron pitcher’s fingers, then whispered, “Now!”

And “now” was right. The ball, a slow straight one, was met squarely by the strongly swung bat. It rose high to go sailing away over the bleachers and out of the park.

“Home run, and the game’s over!” a thousand voices shouted. A wild roar of approval greeted the end of the game. Only the little dark man, who had occupied so much of Johnny’s attention, did not cheer. He sat in moody silence. “I wonder why?” Johnny murmured. Then he joined the throng that pressed on toward the spot where the mechanical pitcher stood.

A double rope barrier had been thrown about Goggles, Hop Horner and their strange invention. As for Irons O, he now bowed to the grown-ups who cheered him, and then screamed at the boys who shouted at him. Take it all in all, it had been a day of complete triumph for the Hillcrest boys and their iron pitcher. And the day was not over—far from it.

The crowd had thinned to a mere handful of over-curious boys, and Goggles was reaching for a wrench and pliers for unhooking and unscrewing his good iron friend when, as once before that day, a friendly hand touched his shoulder and smiling eyes met his.

“I’m back,” the stranger said simply. It was the man of the airplane. With him were his two companions. “You see,” he began to explain, “we didn’t just _happen_ to come here. We were sent.”

“I—I guessed that.” Goggles’ heart leaped, though he scarcely knew why.

“You did?” The other seemed surprised. “Well,” he went on, “this is the story. Mr. Montgomery here, who is vice-president of the Northern Airways, read of this—this mechanical man of yours. He wanted to see it perform.”

“I wonder why?” Goggles repeated.

“This is it.” Montgomery, who appeared a quick nervous type of man, stepped forward. “We are anxious to advertise air travel in every way we can. We feel it to be safe and we know it’s a fast and clean way to travel. I said to the boys: ‘If that iron pitcher really works, we’ll pick him up with his whole ball team and carry him across the country in one of our big bi-motors, putting on exhibition games.’ This—this man of yours—what is it you call him?”

“Irons O.”

“Well, he put on a good show—a very fine show. What do you say?”

“I—I—” Goggles’ head was whirling. “I’ll tell you in two hours, if—if I can.”

“All right. Meet us at the airport.”

“We sure will!”

“Here, Hop!” Goggles threw his tools on the ground as the man walked away. “You take old Irons O and put him to bed. I’ve got business, plenty of it.”

“I’ll say you have,” Hop agreed.

“Across the continent!” Goggles thought as he dashed wildly away. “Across the continent in an airplane. Ball games perhaps in Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Seattle! Boy! Oh boy! And a bag of gold from every port for our ball field.”

But could they do it? His spirits dropped. “Can we? It—it seems almost impossible. And yet, somehow, we must. We just must!”

“Goggles,” Johnny said to him later that evening when everything had been settled that they were to start on that marvelous airplane cruise. “I don’t like the actions of that little dark man.”

“What little dark man?” Goggles asked in surprise.

“Didn’t you notice him? But of course you wouldn’t have.” Johnny went on to tell of the little man’s part in that day’s game.

“It is strange that old Irons O should have gotten all mixed up inside.” Goggles said this as if it were part of the story Johnny had just finished. “Oh well,” he concluded, “if that little dark man wants to make us trouble on our trip, he’ll have to hire a plane.”

“He’ll never do that,” Johnny replied. To his own surprise he found himself wondering, “What _will_ he do?” Had he known the answer, he would have experienced an even greater feeling of surprise.