CHAPTER XXXV

FOR WANT OF A LIE

Locke would scarcely have been so self-contained had he known what had taken place at the hotel about the time he was feverishly pacing the platform at Flat Rock Junction.

Through some pretext, Bert Elgin managed to leave the ground a few minutes ahead of the others. He had concealed his nervousness all morning, taking hope from the nonappearance of Lefty on the field, and reveling in Brennan’s openly expressed anger at the puzzling occurrence. But now he felt that he must find out something definite.

Arriving at the hotel, he hastened up to the corridor above his own, taking care to use the stairs for the last flight, and made his way to a certain door, which he pushed open without ceremony.

For an instant he stood staring curiously around the disordered room. Then a triumphant smile curved his lips, and his eyes danced maliciously.

“Looks like the kid worked it, all right,” he said, in a low tone. “I was afraid he might slip up on something. What’s this?”

Striding over to the table, he picked up the note addressed to Buck Fargo, opening it without hesitation. Having read it hastily through, he smiled again and thrust it into his pocket.

“‘Tell Brennan all about it,’” he quoted, in a jeering voice, “‘and make him understand how I had to go.’ I guess we won’t tell anybody; it’ll be lots more fun to keep ’em guessing till you come back.”

He hastened to the door, and stepped out into the hall. “I should say your goose was cooked nice and brown,” he muttered, with venomous satisfaction. “I wouldn’t give a whole lot for your chances with the Hornets after this little performance.”

Happily for Lefty’s peace of mind, he guessed nothing of all this. As it was, he had worries enough to keep him company during that maddeningly slow trip back to Ashland. Time and again he went over the situation from the beginning, trying his best to see it from Jim Brennan’s point of view, and always he ended by a despairing grasp on that one frail straw: the manager might forgive the desertion as long as the absent man had done his best to let him know about it beforehand.

Stepping off the train shortly after seven, the southpaw went at once to the hotel. The first man he ran into in the lobby was Buck Fargo. The expression on his chum’s face made Lefty’s heart sink into his boots.

“Where the deuce have you been?” the backstop inquired directly, and with force. “How’d you happen to duck?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Buck,” the young pitcher appealed fervently, “don’t tell me you didn’t get my note?”

“If it explained what in thunder made you do such a fool trick as this, I most certainly didn’t,” Fargo returned.

Locke groaned aloud. “I left it on the table. I told you just what had happened and why I had to rush off. I asked you to explain to the old man――”

Catching a sudden warning in Fargo’s eyes, Lefty stopped abruptly and turned slowly around. Brennan stood just behind him, his hands on his hips, an expression on his square, heavy-jowled face which even the big backstop had rarely seen there before.

“Well?” he questioned in an ominous voice, his sharp, deep-set eyes boring into Lefty’s brown ones. “Did I hear you say anything about an explanation? Strikes me it’s about time something of the sort was dished up.”

His voice, cold, hard, and unrelenting, sent a flicker up and down Locke’s spine. If the man had only flared out at him, roared, bellowed, it would have been better than this. But that harsh, flinty, absolutely pitiless tone struck a chill to the youngster’s heart, and quenched the last spark of hope in him.

“I had――a telegram――this morning,” he explained unevenly. “It came just as I was leaving for the field. It was from――a close friend of mine who is at Billings, with her father. She said that her father was dying, and asked me to come at once. She was all alone in a strange place. They knew no one. They had been in the South only a few weeks. I _had_ to go.”

He hesitated an instant, glancing desperately at Brennan’s face. Something in it――the flicker of an eyelash, perhaps, or the faintest possible relaxing of that steely, set expression,――made a tiny spark of hope revive in Lefty’s breast.

“Well, go on,” growled Brennan.

“There wasn’t time to send you word,” Locke continued. “I had to make the nine-five train. So I wrote a note to Fargo explaining things, and asked him to tell you about it. I left it on the table in our room. You must have missed it, Buck, or didn’t you go to the room?”

He turned eagerly to his friend, but the latter shook his head.

“There wasn’t any note,” he said slowly. “I was up there at noon and again to-night. There ain’t nothing on the table but a couple of magazines and a lamp. Mebbe it got blown off.”

“Perhaps that was it,” Lefty agreed. “I wrote it and stuck it up where you’d see it the first thing.”

He glanced again at Brennan and met the man’s searching gaze unflinchingly. For an instant there was silence as the manager scowled deeply to hide his annoyance.

“You’d ought to have sent word,” he snapped. “You knew you was to pitch this afternoon. Why didn’t you leave a letter with the clerk, addressed to me?”

“I never thought of that,” Lefty apologized. “I was so shaken up and worried and rushed that I couldn’t seem to think of anything but making that train.”

The spark of hope had been fanned into a little blaze. Brennan was certainly relenting. Everything about him pointed to that. He stared at the cub pitcher from under his bushy eyebrows for a moment or two as if vainly searching for something more to find fault with.

“You seem to have got back mighty sudden,” he said presently, in a tart voice. “Must have taken the first train. Didn’t your friend’s father die?”

It had come, the question which Lefty had been dreading from the beginning and trying to get away from! For an instant he was tempted――desperately tempted. The manager was plainly influenced in his favor. If he lied and told some plausible story of Mr. Harting’s sudden recovery, all would be well, and the matter would probably be dropped. If he told the truth and admitted that no message had ever been sent――

In that second of hesitation, many things flashed through his mind. He was already morally certain that he had Bert Elgin to thank for the trick. He told himself that a lie which would result in foiling the plotter would be no lie at all. The very words of a glib falsehood were on his lips when suddenly he brought his teeth together and threw back his head. He would tell the truth at any cost.

“He was never sick at all,” he said swiftly, his face rather pale.

Brennan stared. “Never sick!” he repeated sharply. “Then what in time did she send the telegram for, I’d like to know?”

Lefty thrust both hands behind his back, gripping the fingers tightly together. His eyes met Brennan’s squarely.

“She didn’t. She knew nothing about it. It was sent by some one else.”

“What for?”

The words came from Brennan’s lips like bullets. Suspicion, incredulity, anger, showed in his piercing eyes.

“I don’t know,” Lefty answered. “It looks as if some one wanted to get me away from the game.”

Brennan’s laugh was harsh and mirthless. “That’s likely, ain’t it? That’s a clever idea, that is! Where’s the telegram? Show it to me.”

With leaden heart, Locke remembered what he had done with it. “I haven’t――got it,” he stammered. “I wrote a message on the back――and gave it to the boy to send.”

“Is that so?” sneered the manager. “Did it get to the girl? Did it come while you were there?”

“N-o.”

“I thought so. It never went. Just so the other never came.”

“But it did come,” protested Lefty, though he had a feeling that further words were futile. “The boy handed it to me on the steps. I opened it, and wrote an answer right there. That’s the truth.”

“Is it?” retorted the manager incredulously. “Just you wait a minute and I’ll find out if it is or not.”

Turning abruptly, he hurried over to a telephone booth and shut himself in. The instant the manager’s back was turned Buck Fargo groaned.

“What the devil did you tell him for?” he said sadly. “I’m afraid you’ve gone and done for yourself, kid. I have never seen the old man in such a temper since Billy Smith sold a game to the Pinks last spring.”

“I wanted to lie,” the youngster confessed, “but I simply couldn’t, Buck.”

“You’re awful particular! Who do you s’pose done it, that cur Elgin?”

“I can’t think of any one else equal to it,” Lefty answered. “It wouldn’t be the first miserable trick he’s worked.”

He broke off as a door slammed and Brennan came striding toward them, his eyes savage and his face the color of a beet.

“I knew it!” he said. “No such message went through the office.”

He paused a second, his legs spread wide apart, regarding Lefty with a cold, contemptuous scrutiny.

“I’m through with you!” he burst out, at length. “I can put up with a lot, but I haven’t any use for a quitter. I thought you was one when I first saw you, but now I know. You skipped out to-day because you were afraid――nothing else. You pretty near pulled me with that tale of yours――but not quite. You fooled me with that dirty spiking trick, too, but I’m wise now. I’m done with you! Go back to the bushes or the hot place, whichever you prefer!”

He wheeled round and took a few steps across the lobby. Suddenly he turned back.

“Mebbe you’re thinking of that fine offer you say was made by the Blue Stockings?” he sneered. “I wouldn’t give much for your chances with Jack Kennedy.”

Lefty’s eyes were blazing. His lips parted for a hot retort, but he seemed to change his mind and choke it down. For an instant he stood absolutely still. Then, slowly, he turned and looked at Fargo.

Neither man spoke.