CHAPTER VIII

STRANGE PASSENGERS

Among the Hillcrest fans feeling was running high. That something strange and rather terrible had happened to their new and quite marvelous pitcher, they appeared to realize. “But what did happen?” they were asking. “Who’s to blame? Who were the men in that plane?” Two men had been seen. They were not close enough to be recognized. Had the Centralia crowd hired them to heckle the new pitcher? This they found it difficult to believe. The friendliest of relations had always existed between the two small cities, even though there was a keen rivalry. “But who? Who? Who?” they were asking on every side. The mystery of the dark-skinned pitcher from the laboratories deepened.

As for Doug Danby, on whose shoulders rested Hillcrest’s hopes of victory, he found no time for solving mysteries.

“Fred, old boy,” he said to Fred Frame, “you’ll have to go in there and win the game. And you can!” He gave him a slap on the back. “If—”

“If my arm holds out,” Fred finished.

Tall, angular, red-headed, silent and droll, Fred was a universal favorite. He had been a successful pitcher until his arm had taken to going wrong. “I’ll go in,” he said simply, “and do my best.”

A loud cheer greeted him as he walked toward the mound. Despite all this, he felt a chill run up his spine. The score stood 6 to 5 against him. This wonderful crowd had turned out to see their team win. They had banked heavily on the mysterious “Prince.” In this they had lost. Would they lose the game as well?

“Not if _I_ can help it!” Fred set his teeth hard.

“What if that plane returns?” He shuddered. “What if they do to me the thing they did to the ‘Prince,’ whatever that was! Oh well!” He set his shoulders squarely.

But now the shouts of the throng brought him back to earth. Motioning the batter to one side, he prepared to “throw a few over.”

As his hand grasped the ball, as his muscles began playing like iron bands, as the ball went speeding to cut the plate and land with a loud plop in the catcher’s mit, all else but the game was forgotten.

“We must win!” He set his lips tight.

And indeed they must. They had lost one game, could not afford to lose another.

That he was in a hard spot he knew quite well. With the score standing 6 to 5 against him, with men on second and third and only one man out, the game might be lost with a single crack of the bat. It was with a rapidly beating heart that he motioned the batter up.

Yet, even as his arm went back, two questions flashed through his mind: “Who is this ‘Prince’? What happened that after such a brilliant start he was unable to finish?

“Something queer!” he muttered for the third time as he sent the ball spinning.

“Ball!” the umpire called.

Then, like a bolt from the blue came a thought. He made a sign to the catcher. They met half way between the mound and the home plate. After a few whispered words they parted.

Fred’s second offering went very wide of the plate. He did not seem to care. Then, just as he wound up for the third pitch, someone caught on.

“He’s goin’ to walk that batter!” a big voice bellowed from the bleachers of the opposing team. “Big League stuff! Walking Billy to get at Vern!”

At once there was a mad roar that ended in hisses and boos.

Little Fred cared for that. If he wished to walk Centralia’s toughest batter to get at a weak one, it was his privilege. “And after that?” an Imp seemed to be whispering in his ear. All the same the passed batter went down to first. The bags were loaded.

“If I slip now—” he thought. “Just listen to them howl!” He gripped the ball hard.

“Wow! He’s got a rubber arm!” a big voice roared as the umpire called another ball.

There was silence as Fred slipped over a strike.

Again that roar with the second ball.

“Strike!”

“Ball!”

“There you are!” the big voice roared. “Two and three! Let’s see you get out of that!”

Fred caught his breath. Bases full. Three balls, two strikes, and—“If only the old soup-bone holds out!” he murmured.

His hand went out. It came back. He shot the ball straight from the shoulder. Then, without knowing why, he followed the ball. Lucky break! The batter connected. He sent a bouncer straight into Fred’s mitt and he half way to the plate. With a mad dash he was there to cut off the run to the plate. Next he sent the ball speeding to first.

“Double play! Double play!” the crowd roared. And so it was. The inning was over. For the moment, at least, all was well.

Inspired by his unusual success in pulling his team out of the hole, Fred pitched the remaining innings with the skill of a genius. He allowed only five hits, and left but three men on base. Hillcrest scored three runs in the seventh, to cinch the game. In the end Fred was carried from the field in triumph.

“Another big day Wednesday, and we’ll win!” exulted Doug Danby.

“Don’t get too much excited,” he warned Johnny and Meg as they came rushing up to congratulate him. “This is not the end. It is only the beginning. We must win again and again. It’s going to take a real campaign to gain our end.”

“Don’t worry!” Johnny laughed. “The way Fred pitched those last innings, there’s not a team that can stop us.”

“There’s where you’re wrong.” It was Fred who spoke. He had just come up to them.

“What do you mean?” Johnny asked in surprise.

“Well—” Fred paused to ponder. “Well, you know there are times when you do things and you say to yourself, ‘I can do this as often as I choose.’ Then there are times when you feel all sort of lifted out of yourself and you do things well without seeming to try. But when it’s all over you say, ‘That was great! But I better never try that again. If I do, I’ll fail.’ This afternoon was just like that. Johnny, I wouldn’t like to face that situation again, ever!” Fred’s tone was so serious that for a full moment no one spoke.

It was Fred himself who at last broke that silence.

“But then, there’ll not be the need.” He smiled. “Our old friend, the ‘Prince’ will lead us to sure victory next time.”

“The ‘Prince’!” Doug turned to Meggy. “Where did your uncle find him, Meggy? Who is he? Where’s he been hiding?” Meggy was Colonel Chamberlain’s favorite niece.

“I don’t know,” Meggy admitted.

“But your uncle said he’d been working down at his laboratories for more than three months!” Johnny protested.

“Ye-es,” Meggy replied slowly, “and I suppose that should make him my first cousin! But it doesn’t. I never saw him before, nor heard of him either. Uncle doesn’t tell me much about the laboratories. There are always so many secret investigations going on down there, so many processes being developed—things he can’t talk about—that—well, I guess he thinks it’s best to say nothing at all about any of it. And I suppose,” she added, “this pitcher is just one more secret.”

“But why would he hide out so?” Doug Danby asked.

“He just doesn’t wish to be recognized, that’s why,” Johnny said in a tone that carried conviction.

“In a town like this?” Doug exclaimed. “It sure does seem strange!” Had he but known it, those were the very words that were passing from lip to lip all over this quiet little city. “A strange pitcher! A mysterious dark stranger! And in a town like this!” That was what they were saying. And, almost without exception, the answer was, “Just think, in a town like this!”

“Well anyway,” Fred said, “he _can_ pitch! And that’s just what we need. We’ll just have to have him next Wednesday when we go against Fairfield. They’re the toughest battling bunch we’ll play for a long time. You can’t count on me to lick them.”

“The ‘Prince’ only lasted two and a half innings,” Doug suggested.

“Yes, but some—” Johnny did not finish. What he started to say was, “Something rather terrible happened to him.” After all, he had only guessed that; could not prove it.

“Well,” Johnny said, “I gotta be anklin’ on home. Goodbye, Meggy. Goodbye, boys.”

A half hour later he was seated on a ridge that lay above the town. Beneath him was a long, low building.

“The laboratories!” he whispered. “Place of mystery. Home of the mysterious ‘Prince.’”

His whole being was stirred. It was not that he suspected any wrong of those who worked behind heavily glazed windows in the laboratories. Far from that. Colonel Chamberlain had always been counted among Hillcrest’s foremost citizens. The laboratories belonged to him.

“I’ll have to hunt up Goggles,” Johnny told himself. “Wonder where he went? He always knows a lot. He may know more than I do about this pitcher.”

Goggles was a thinker. He was the only boy ever entrusted with Colonel Chamberlain’s secrets. He alone, of all the town’s boys, had crossed the threshold of the laboratories. Only he had seen something of that which went on inside.

“They test all sorts of things in there,” he had confided to Johnny one day, “soap and silk, dyes, and all sorts of powerful drugs. They try to find things out, to do things that have never been done before, like making rubber out of crude petroleum or paper out of sunflower stalks. They succeed sometimes, too. See!” He had pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Made from a sunflower stalk. Pretty good paper, eh?

“When they make a real discovery,” he went on, “they sell it to some great manufacturer.

“Colonel Chamberlain—” he had taken a deep breath. “He showed me a lot of things I can’t talk about. He says maybe some day I can work with him in the laboratories. Boy! Won’t that be grand!”

“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if Goggles knows something about this ‘Prince,’” Johnny said to himself now.

He broke short off to stare down at the laboratories. Someone had come walking down the gravel path. He walked slowly. “Seems to drag his feet,” Johnny whispered. Just then the newcomer looked up toward the sun. Johnny got a full view of his slim, dark face. It was the ‘Prince.’ A moment more and the long, low place of mysteries had swallowed him up.

That evening Johnny searched in vain for Goggles. Goggles’ mother did not know where he was, nor did anyone else. Johnny decided to go on a little detective cruise all by himself. Mounting his bicycle, he rode east nine miles to the Shady Valley landing field. In the office he found two men in aviators’ uniforms playing checkers.

“Say!” he said in a subdued voice, “Did any of you fly a plane over the Hillcrest ball field this afternoon?”

“Yes, I did.” The younger of the two men looked up quickly. “Why?”

“Oh nothing I guess.” Johnny dropped into a seat prepared to watch the game.

Though for a full quarter hour he said never a word, the young aviator looked at Johnny in a queer way many times.

“Well, what about it?” he said, turning to Johnny when the game was over.

“Nothing I guess,” Johnny repeated.

“That _was_ a queer business,” the aviator chuckled, “that flying over your field. Had two passengers, sort of hard lookers, but well-dressed. Said they lived in Hillcrest. They wanted to go over the ball game. Kept telling me to circle down, down, down. Then they’d say, ‘No! Not now! Up again!’ They repeated that little trick three times.”

“I know,” Johnny breathed.

“You know?” the young aviator stared.

“Of course I do. Go on.”

“Well—” the aviator cleared his throat. “The third time we went down closer than I like to. Then we flew away. Sort of queer, I’d say!” He shot Johnny an enquiring look.

“Did they carrying anything?” Johnny asked.

“Nothing that I saw.”

“No gun or anything like that?”

“Of course not. What do you think? Think we operate a bombing plane or something?”

“No, not quite that.” Johnny lapsed into silence.

“Queer business!” The aviator stared at him hard. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing much I guess.” Johnny’s tone did not change. “Only thought I might.”

“But look!” the aviator exclaimed. “If you think that’s queer, listen to this one. A short while back I took a long trip, thousand miles or more. Flew it at night. Passenger told me where to go and where to land.

“Place we landed was all light when we were coming down. It went dark the minute we landed.

“Two men in uniform came rushing up. One said, ‘Say! Where do you think you are?’

“‘Don’t know,’ I said.

“‘Well, you’d better,’ one of them yelled. ‘This is a Federal prison. Move out of here quick!’

“‘Guess we’d better leave right away.’ That’s what my fare said to me.”

The aviator paused for breath. Johnny was staring.

“Wait! That’s not all!” The aviator waved a hand. “The lights came on, bright as day, just long enough for me to taxi across the enclosure and rise; then all went dark.

“And listen!” He paused once more. “When my fare left the plane, there was a man with him, a slim, dark-faced man. He came from that prison. I’d swear to it! Can you beat that?”

“Looks like a jail delivery.” Johnny spoke low. “Should think you’d be afraid!”

“I would,” the aviator settled back in his chair, “only the man who went with me that night, my passenger, was one of the best known and most highly respected citizens in this part of the country. I was hired by him.”

“Slim, dark-faced man,” Johnny murmured to himself, recalling the aviator’s words as he rode home a short time later.