CHAPTER XLI

THE MAN WHO KNEW

“Calls himself Stranger, does he?” muttered Jack Stillman, as he watched the work of Locke from amid the crowd, having taken pains to keep away from the bench of the Deers. “Pretends he’s forgotten his right name or something like that, hey? The whole business is queer. But he can pitch――he can pitch as well as he ever could. If the Blue Stockings had him, with old Jack handling the team, they’d have the championship nailed already.”

Besides Stillman, another man was an intensely interested spectator of Lefty Locke’s work on the mound. It was Doctor Wallace Hetner, of Hatfield, who, according to his promise to Kennedy, had come over with the team. As far as possible during the last few days, Hetner had spent time in meditating upon Locke’s singular behavior, and now he watched the man for some sign, some indication which would denote that he was actually the victim of a mental disorder.

“He doesn’t look like a sick man,” decided the doctor. “He doesn’t show it. But there’s something decidedly wrong, or he’d not be calling himself Stranger. I wonder if Kennedy has succeeded in leading him into a give-away?”

He found the old manager, and called him from the bench. With the game running all in favor of the Deers, Kennedy did not hesitate to answer Doctor Hetner’s call.

“Oh, he’s Lefty Locke, all right,” he said. “Ain’t no question about that. No, couldn’t make him admit a thing, but I know what I’m talking about. Say, there’s another man here in town who knows him well――a reporter by the name of Stillman. You two ought to get together and talk it over. I’ll find Stillman, and introduce you after the game.”

“Thanks,” said the doctor.

Despite Bristol’s threat, the Buccaneers could do nothing with Lefty Locke; but in turn one of Bristol’s regular pitchers succeeded in holding the locals down to three hard-earned runs.

Hetner, Stillman, Kennedy, and McLaughlin held a consultation in a private room of the Central House after the game was over.

“I haven’t said a word to Lefty yet,” said the reporter. “I’ve kept away from him. Whatever his reason for ducking off the map, he’s certainly keeping himself in A-one pitching trim. I told Collier I’d find him.”

“You told Collier so!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Didn’t he know where Locke was?”

“No. How would he know?”

“I wired Carson three days ago that I could tell him where to find his missing southpaw. He answered that he didn’t want to find him. I supposed he told Collier about my message.”

“Don’t believe he chirped a word of it,” said the reporter. “Carson’s making a mess of the management. The team misses you, Jack――it certainly does.”

“No bouquets,” protested Kennedy.

“I’m not throwing any; I’m giving it to you straight. They miss you and Lefty Locke. I’ve been thinking of something odd. There was a man killed in that train wreck who passed sometimes under the name of Bob Stranger. He was a crook and general confidence man――Pink Kelly――who had just been released from the pen. For some time nobody recognized him, so his name was not given in the first newspaper reports of the identified. I was the one who finally recognized that gink. Bob Stranger! Locke calls himself that?”

“That’s what he does,” replied Kennedy.

The reporter struck the fist of his right hand into his open left palm.

“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” he cried, “that Locke and that crook were talking together before the smash came. That smash must have knocked everything out of Locke’s head. He’d been going a bit wrong for some time before that, and that might be the very thing to put him all to the bad. Why, do you know, some of the fellows even thought he’d taken to drinking. I’ve an idea I really know what’s at the bottom of the whole trouble.”

“Then you’ll be mighty valuable in straightening this mess out,” said Kennedy. “What was at the bottom of it?”

Stillman then told them of Lefty’s deep interest in Janet Harting, and explained how the misunderstanding between them had been caused by Locke’s innocent attentions to the daughter of the new owner of the Blue Stockings.

“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Doctor Hetner excitedly. “I think I can see a method of straightening the man out and bringing back his memory. If I had a picture of that girl――the one he’s really struck on――”

“I’ve got it,” laughed the reporter. “Say, I scented a corking old news story in this affair, and so I just took care to get Miss Janet Harting’s photograph, as well as one of Miss Virginia Collier. By the way, there’s a fourth party mixed up in the business――a young man by the name of Franklin Parlmee. It seems that he had a case on Collier’s daughter, and they quarreled. It didn’t seem to shake her much, but he was raw as a flea-bitten pup, and he didn’t lose an opportunity to soak Locke to old man Collier.”

“Something of a romance, I declare!” said Doctor Hetner. “You say you have Miss Harting’s photograph? Have you brought it with you?”

“Sure!”

“Will you let me have it?”

“You bet, if you’ll return it. I wouldn’t lose it for anything. If I write the story――”

“It’s an interesting story,” said the doctor, “and I suppose you’ll write it, anyhow, being a reporter.”