CHAPTER VII

MYSTERY SHIP

“I can’t get over the way that pitcher came to us,” Goggles Short murmured low to Johnny Thompson. They were seated in the bleachers. The Saturday game was about to begin. The new pitcher from the laboratories, cap drawn low, eyes gleaming, was putting over a few to the catcher.

“It _is_ strange,” Johnny said. “Prince of India!” he exclaimed. “I gave him that name and I’m proud of it.” In his publicity produced by the thought-camera Johnny had played up the name “Prince of India.” He liked the sound of it. “He looks the part too! Look at that slim nose of his,” he went on, “those thin lips, that high forehead. You’d take him for a Frenchman, or perhaps an Englishman, if it weren’t for that dark skin of his. If he’s not a Prince of India, he should be. Watch him pitch!” The slender man on the mound, moving with the smooth agility of a cat, seemed to fairly slide the ball over the plate.

“Listen to the crowd!” Goggles cried. “And is it a crowd! That publicity stuff of yours was great! We’ll get nearly half the money we need for that first payment today. And Wednesday! It’s in the bag.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Johnny warned.

“Listen to that crowd!” Goggles exclaimed once more.

Led by Meggy Strawn, a streak of gold and blue that danced across the grass, the crowd was chanting:

_A Prince! A Prince! A Prince!_ _No quince! No quince! No quince!_ _A Peach! A Peach! A Peach!_ _We win! Yea! Yea!_

As for the “Prince,” he seemed totally unconscious of his surroundings as he slid one more stinger over the plate.

“It _is_ strange,” Johnny said to Goggles, “strange about that pitcher, I mean. Colonel Chamberlain has had him working in his laboratories for more than three months. The pay-roll proves that. But who knew it? The pay-master and Colonel Chamberlain, that’s all. Queer, isn’t it? And now, when everything seems lost for old Hillcrest, he walks right into the picture. He takes the ball, and whang! How it pops into that old mit! Not a man will get to first. See! There goes one of ’em. Three strikes and out. Great, I’d say! Suppose he can keep it up?”

He did not wait for an answer. Instead, he allowed his eyes to seek a spot in the sky. Something up there interested him.

“Nope!” he murmured. “It’s not coming down.”

“What’s not coming down?” Goggles asked quickly.

“That airplane. It’s been circling way up high there for a long time.”

“I should hope it wouldn’t come down,” Goggles laughed good-naturedly. “What d’ye think? Think they’d come right on down and land square in the middle of the ball field?” He laughed again.

Johnny did not reply. Truth was, he did not know what he had expected. It was strange about that airplane. He had been watching it off and on for twenty minutes. All that time it had been circling above the ball field. At first it had seemed little more than a speck against the dull gray of a leaden sky. Moment by moment it had circled lower.

“Saw an eagle do that once,” he had told himself as a little thrill ran up his spine. “Old eagle soared and soared and soared until he was maybe a hundred feet from the ground. Then he folded his wings and dropped. And such a drop! Straight down! When he came up he held a half-grown rabbit in his talons. He’d had his eye on that rabbit all the time.”

Strangely enough, as he watched the airplane circle above the ball field where two fine teams were contending for high honors, fantastic as it might seem, he had gained the impression that this plane, circling as the eagle had circled, would in the end make one straight drop to the ball field.

“What nonsense!” he whispered to himself. “Why should they do that? Crack up! Everyone in the plane would be killed. Eagle’s a different sort of bird. He could recover balance and rise again. That plane—”

All the same, the impression remained a haunting suggestion until, with the end of the first half, a shut-out for the opposing team, the Centralia boys went trotting off the field. Only then did the airplane go skimming away into the hazy distance.

“It is as if the eagle had been watching the rabbit only to see the rabbit scurry into his hole,” he told himself.

“But the rabbit will come out again? Another inning?” a voice seemed to whisper in his ear.

With that, for a time at least, he forgot the strange airplane and gave his attention to the ball game.

“Hello Meggy,” he said a moment later as she slid into the place beside him. “We’re going to win, Meg!” he cried.

Meg’s voice was low. “Yes, we must, Johnny!”

Suddenly Meggy pinched Johnny’s arm. “Look! He—he’s up to bat! Isn’t he mysterious! The—the ‘Prince of India’—that’s what they call him.”

Once again Johnny’s eye was on the ball. The opposing pitcher shot it through to the Prince, but it went high and wide. The dark-faced one never moved a muscle.

“Believe he can bat,” was Johnny’s mental comment. His practiced eye swept over the diamond. Arthur Lowe was on first, Fred Frame on second. There were two men out. No score on either side.

“Now,” he whispered hoarsely, “just one good swat! That’s all we need! Get a grand lead! We—”

He did not finish. Came the crack of a bat and the ball went soaring high and far.

“Yea! Yea! Yea!” The crowd sprang to its feet and howled madly. “Yea! Yea! Yea! Prince! Prince! Prince!”

When the crowd settled back to its seats the new pitcher was on third base. Two men had come romping home.

“Two to nothing!” Meg exulted. “Watch us climb!”

Little Artie Snow was up next. He swung wildly and fanned. The inning was over.

“Well!” Johnny stretched himself. “Looks as if we’d lick ’em all right.”

All Meggy said was, “Isn’t he mysterious?” She was thinking of the “Prince.”

Then, as her mood changed, Meggy seized her megaphone and, grasping Johnny by the arm, screamed, “Come on! Cart wheels!”

Johnny had done cart wheels with Meggy on many another occasion, but always in private. But now! Oh well, Meg was Meg. Her word was law. Cart wheels it was, an even dozen, then a rousing cheer led by Meg:

_Yea! Hillcrest! Yea! Hillcrest!_ _Beat ’em! Beat ’em! Beat ’em!_

Scarcely had Johnny got his breath than he discovered that the “Prince” was once more on the mound, the second inning about to begin. Quite automatically his eyes swept the sky. They came to a focus.

“The airplane!” he whispered excitedly. “Like the eagle, it is circling back.”

It was strange the excitement this stirred up within his being. Why was it? It seemed absurd, yet in his soul there was a feeling that the dark pitcher must hurry, that the men who came up to bat must go down as they had before, one, two, three, or else the eagle would drop. “What nonsense!” he muttered once more.

For all that, the airplane did circle lower and lower. There was too in the mysterious pitcher’s action a suggestion of tense nervousness that was hard to explain.

A bat cracked. A ball popped into the air. The pitcher had it. One man down.

A second man came up. Ball! Strike! Ball! Crack! Up went the ball again. Down it came, right into that pitching wizard’s mit. Two out.

The plane circled lower. In the damp, cloudy air it seemed nearer than it really was.

Third man to bat. Strike! Strike! Strike! You’re out!

“Just like that!” Johnny exulted. He did not so much as glance at the plane. He knew that once again it had gone skimming away.

“It’s strange,” he murmured.

“What’s strange?” Meggy asked.

“Oh—everything,” he evaded, “everything’s strange today.” How could he tell Meggy of this fantastic daydream?

Again the opposing team took their places in the field. Once more Hillcrest came to bat. And how they did bat! Inspired by rosy dreams of victory, they sent the ball spinning, right, left and center. By the time Centralia had them stopped, the score stood 5 to 0 in favor of Hillcrest, and the crowd had gone mad.

“We’ll win!” Meggy screamed.

“We’ll win!” Goggles roared.

As for Johnny, he merely murmured, “Wait!”

The wait was destined to be longer than he dreamed it might be. Four wild balls put the lead-off man of Centralia on first with no one out.

It was then that Johnny once more began noticing that haunting airplane. It had returned. Once again it was circling downward.

The mysterious pitcher was slipping, there could be no doubting this. A hard-hit liner put the second batter on base.

Then the pitcher seemed to tighten up. He fanned the third man.

“But that plane!” Johnny was truly startled now. The plane did actually seem to be in a nose-dive. Down, down, down it came, straight at that lone figure, the pitcher, on the mound.

“They—they—” In his excitement Johnny stood up. He crushed his cap within his tight clenched hands. “No! No! Thank—” He did not finish. With a burst of speed, a thunder of motors, the airplane righted itself, then shot upward. But what was that? Did Johnny’s eyes deceive him? Did he catch a gleam of fire—or was it only a brilliant flash of light? Half unconsciously he waited the report of a shot fired. It did not come.

“It’s the strangest thing!” he murmured as he settled back in his place. Already the airplane was a long way off.

So filled was the boy’s mind with wild speculations that he failed to follow the game. Perhaps this was just as well. Dame Fortune appeared to have deserted the mysterious pitcher. He walked another man. The bases were full.

“But look at him,” Meggy whispered in Johnny’s ear. “Look at him wind up! You’d think he was doing it in his sleep!”

Indeed, as Johnny focussed his attention upon this mysterious stranger, he appeared to waver, as if he might fall.

“Something awfully queer about that,” Johnny murmured.

With what appeared to be tremendous effort the pitcher hurled the ball. It would have cut the plate squarely in the middle had not a stout bat met it to send it high and far.

When the commotion was over, the score stood 5 to 6 in favor of Centralia. There were men on second and third. What was more, the “Prince” was walking unsteadily toward the bench.

“Listen!” Meggy exclaimed. “They’re calling for Fred Frame.”

“Something queer about that!” Johnny repeated as he turned to watch the “Prince” walk away toward the showers. “The eagle swooped downward, and now—” he did not finish.

“He walks as if he were half blind. Poor ‘Prince!’” Meg sympathized. “What could have happened?”

Johnny would have given much to know the answer. For some time to come it was to remain a veiled secret.

“The mystery ship,” Johnny thought as he watched that airplane glide away toward the clouds. Then he murmured low, “Mystery wings.”

“‘Mystery wings!’ What makes you say that?” Meg whispered.

“Because that’s the way I think of a plane,” he replied soberly. “You can’t say the planes of an airplane. Don’t sound right. Why not wings of a plane? And, for my part, every plane that passes over my head has wings of mystery.”

“You’re queer,” was Meg’s only reply.