CHAPTER XVIII

THE FLYING BALL TEAM

At the heart of The Pines next morning, Johnny found Meg seated on a log waiting. This spot, so quiet and secluded, disturbed only by the chirp of a robin and the chatter of a squirrel, held for them many pleasant memories. Here, as small children, they had tumbled on the grass. Here, in early ’teens, together with other playmates, they had done cart wheels and wild, hilarious Indian dances. Now it was a sober-faced, eager Meggy who awaited him.

“Johnny,” she exclaimed with a little catch of breath, “what are you going to tell me?”

“That you helped me a lot last night, that I can find out anything that any person is thinking, and that at this moment I’m scared stiff.” With a heavy sigh Johnny dropped to a place beside her.

“Why, Johnny?” She gripped his arm. “Why are you frightened?”

“It’s that Chinaman, Tao Sing! There’s a tong war, and I’m in the midst of it—or at least I’m likely to be. But then—” Johnny checked this wild flow of words. “I’d better start at the beginning. It all began when that little Chinaman loaned me that thought-camera.”

“Thought-camera!” Meggy stared.

“I—I’ll tell you all about it.” So, seated there in the sun with only a robin and a squirrel, as he supposed, listening in, he told Meg the amazing story of Tao Sing’s great invention and some of its startling revelations.

“And last night,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, “last night I squinted the thought-camera first at the Federal agent, and then at that wise old owl Wung Lu up there in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Then, after I’d been chased and almost captured by some wild-eyed Chinks, I sneaked along home to develop those last think-o-graphs. And what do you suppose the thoughts of that Federal agent told me?”

“What?” Meggy’s breath came quick.

“That a Chinese tong war has started with half a hundred Chinamen carrying big blue pistols, and any one of these ready to start popping at any moment, and—”

Johnny broke off abruptly. “What was that?”

“What?” Meggy was all aquiver.

“Something back in the pines.”

Johnny sprang back into the pine boughs. He found nothing. “Perhaps it was a squirrel,” he said quietly when he returned.

“So now you see,” he whispered, “I’m between the devil and the deep blue sea. The thought-camera belongs to Tao Sing. He loaned it to me. I should return it. But where is he? A tong war is a terrible thing. It’s a fight between two Chinese secret societies. If it gets going right, several people will be killed. On the Pacific coast two Chinamen have been killed. The thing is spreading. Tao Sing is at the bottom of it all. He’s in this country without permission. These two Federal agents know he’s been here—found his finger-prints at the back of the Chinese spice shop. Perhaps someone has told them I know about Tao Sing—I’m not sure. Someone _does_ know I have the thought-camera, or at least they think I have. That’s why I was chased last night. I’m sure of it.” Johnny mopped his brow. “I—I suppose I helped Tao Sing discover secrets. Probably when I brought him Wung Lu’s think-o-graphs he read what he wanted to know.

“Meggy,” Johnny said solemnly, “there’s no good in stealing anyone else’s thoughts! This thought-camera! I’d like to give it back right now. But I can’t. Tao Sing has vanished.”

“Johnny, let me see it,” Meg whispered.

Johnny drew the thought-camera from beneath his coat. Meg looked at it, starry-eyed as she might had she seen a ghost. “Johnny, where do you keep it?”

“In my trunk.”

“In your room?”

“In my room.”

“Well,” said Meg, shaking herself as if to waken from a bad dream, “it’s the strangest thing I ever heard of. It—

“There!” Her voice dropped. “I heard something back there!”

“Come on!” Johnny shuddered. “This place is haunted today.”

Together they hurried away through the pines and were soon upon the sunlit streets of old Hillcrest.

In the meantime the “Flying Ball Team,” as someone had aptly named it, had arrived at its first destination, and things were doing.

They arrived an hour before sundown, after a thrilling ride high in air, at the little city of Cannon Ball on the wheat-growing Dakota prairies.

The moment their plane came to a standstill, they were surrounded by a crowd of boys, shouting: “Where is he? Where is he? Show him to us!”

“Where’s who?” Doug asked with a smile.

For reply one boy held up a crumpled handbill on which had been pictured a grotesque mechanical man with sparks shooting from his finger tips and flames of fire pouring from his nostrils. Beneath were the words:

IRONS O, THE STEEL-FINGERED PITCHER WHO LIVES ON FIRE. SEE HIM PERFORM AT THE BALL FIELD TOMORROW!

At sight of this, Doug felt his knees sag. “Somebody,” he grumbled, “has been over-playing the thing. And now if we fail! Man! Oh man!”

“Where is he? Where is he?” the boys were still shouting. “Show him to us.”

“He goes to bed an hour before sundown.” Doug chuckled in spite of himself. “He’s asleep in one of the plane’s wings now. You can’t see him until tomorrow.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” came in a disappointed chorus.

“It’s a good place to leave him,” Sheeley the pilot whispered to Doug. “Nothing like a little secrecy to make people keen for a thing.”

“But will he be safe there?” Doug’s brow wrinkled.

“Sure! Oh sure!” Sheeley assured him. “In a place like this, I roll up in my blankets and sleep on the cabin floor.”

So Doug and Goggles wandered away from the town to have a look at the glorious rolling prairies. Lit up as they were by the slanting rays of the setting sun, they offered the boys a view that time would never erase from their memories.

“Think of it!” said Doug, “tomorrow the wheat country; the next day the cattle country; then the gold-mining city. After that Spokane, and then the Pacific coast!”

“Don’t be too sure.” Goggles’ tone was a bit gloomy. “If we fail tomorrow, this place is our only destination.”

“You’re tired,” Doug said reassuringly. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.” He did; but not for long.

The fame of the mechanical pitcher who, with his steel fingers, could pitch a curve like a flesh and blood man, had spread afar in this land of golden grain. This was a slack period for wheat farmers. They began pouring in before noon.

“You have such a crowd as that there ball ground never saw before!” a tall, lanky lad in a ten gallon hat assured Goggles. You might believe this would stir up in the boy’s mind a feeling of joy. Instead, it made him feel shivery all over.

“We’ve got to be careful,” he said to Hop Horner. “Every crowd’s a mob. You can never tell what it’s going to do when things go sort of queer.”

“Everything’s going to be O.K.,” Hop said coolly.

The appointed hour arrived at last. Never had the boys from the quiet little city of Hillcrest seen such a crowd, and never had they looked upon such a sea of sun-tanned faces.

Irons O had been carried secretly to the grounds in a covered truck. Assembled within the shelter of the truck, he was then assisted with much ceremony and shouting to his place in the pitcher’s box. Solemnly the Hillcrest boys took their places in the field.

“The zero hour has arrived,” Goggles muttered to Hop. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“Game! Game!” shouted a group of high school boys in a corner. “We want baseball! We want baseball!”

“Hey, Mister!” a small boy in the front row squeaked. “Make him spit fire, will ye?” Everyone laughed.

Only one person sat staring in silence. That was Doug Danby. Sitting alone in the bleachers, he had caught sight of a vaguely familiar face. At this moment he was staring at the person in open-mouthed astonishment. “How did he get there? How could he?” he was asking himself.

“But perhaps I’m wrong,” he hopefully reassured himself. Something told him he was not. A voice seemed to whisper in his ear, “You’re in for it, all right. That is really the same little dark man who caused you so much trouble at home—”

As for the little dark man himself, he sat staring at Irons O, and on his face was a look hard to describe. It was a look in which was mingled hate, contempt and triumph.

“Play ball!” the umpire roared. He was a western man of the old school. “Play ball!”

Goggles threw a switch. He pressed a button. With a circular sweep of his ludicrous head and a broad grin, Irons O lifted his good right arm; then, to Goggles’ utter dismay, swung it around three times instead of once, to at last discharge the ball in the manner of a cannon. The batter and the catcher both saw the action and dodged, each in good time. Quite unembarrassed by the wire screen behind the catcher, the ball went right on through to lose itself on the boundless prairies of the Dakotas. The crowd let out a terrible roar. But Goggles murmured weakly, “Something’s gone wrong again at the very start.”