Chapter XIV: On the Trail

The pitcher’s intuition proved accurate save in one particular. From necessity, not choice, he fully expected to do his detective work alone. Neither Temple nor Ogan was to be trusted. He did not mean to trouble Kennedy until something definite had been discovered. And there was no one else.

Returning from morning practice, however, Lefty had scarcely set foot in the hotel lobby when he was staggered by the full weight of one hundred and fifty pounds of solid bone and muscle landing violently against him. His first impulse was to return the assault with interest. Then, recognizing in time the freckled face and snapping brown eyes of his classmate, Jack Stillman, he contented himself with a blow on the latter’s shoulders which brought an involuntary grunt from the reporter.

“Still the same impulsive young thing,” said Locke. “Does a chap good to pipe that freckled phiz of yours after watching a field of uninteresting bushers all the morning.”

“They can’t all be like you, kid,” chuckled Stillman as they gripped each other’s hands firmly. “Well, how’s tricks? What sort of a bunch has Jack pulled in from the tall timbers this year? Any ginger in ’em?”

“Oh, fair. It’s a wonder, though, you wouldn’t get on the job with the rest of the ink slingers. What’s the _Star_ doing without those yarns of yours that tell so little with such a flow of language?”

Stillman grinned. “It doesn’t have to do without them,” he said, with an airy wave of his hand. “They’re showing up in their proper column every day. You see, I had to chase out and cover the Dawson City fight, and that delayed me three days. The boss was for sending down an understudy, but I wouldn’t listen to that. Told him to leave it to me, and he’d have his stuff right on the dot. I had to dope out the copy before I left.”

“Before you left?” repeated Lefty amusedly.

“Sure! Nothing ever happens in a training camp the first few days, except getting stiff and sore, and limbering up. Kennedy gave me a few tips just before he left home, and so the faking was dead easy. I headed one column with a nice little poem written especially for the occasion, trimmed the whiskers off a lot of prehistoric dope, and there you are.”

Lefty laughed. Stillman could usually be counted on for doing the unexpected, and there were few dull moments in training camp after his arrival.

“I hope the poetry was guaranteed strictly original and――fresh,” the southpaw remarked as they moved toward the stairs.

“You bet!” returned the reporter. “Some of it was so fresh that old Deering said it was raw.”

He paused before the desk, and, striking an attitude, solemnly declaimed:

“It seems most humiliating,
When you’ve made a perfect slide,
To be blamed for stealing, just because
The base was occupied.”

“How’s that?” he inquired, without the shadow of a smile. “Got Rudyard Kip and Damon Runyon fanning, hey? Don’t like it? Hump! No accounting for tastes. Maybe this’ll suit you better. I tossed it off with a couple of dozen other little quatrains and rondeaus and sonnets on the train right after breakfast:

“His fielding average may be low;
It really doesn’t matter,
If he hits ’em on the nose
Whene’er they nick the platter.”

“Help!” gasped Lefty, laying violent hands on the poetic one. “That’s enough. They’re worse than the soup ads in the street cars.”

He swept the newspaper man irresistibly out of the lobby and up the uncarpeted stairs.

“You certainly are one faker!” he chuckled as they reached the second floor. “Cut out that stuff for a bit, though, and listen to me.” His face grew suddenly serious. “There’s something doing here that’s about got my goat, Jack. Suppose you focus the light of your keen old brain on the mystery, and see if you can’t do the Sherlock Holmes act.”

Stillman shed his light and airy manner, and was instantly all attention and interest. There was no keener mind on the staff of the big metropolitan daily, and more than once he had earned the praise of the city editor by a neat bit of detective work. Locke did not find it possible now to go into the matter in any great detail, for Ogan was already back from his shower when they reached the room. Before lunch time, however, he managed to give his friend the essential particulars, and on the way to the field they discussed every phase of the situation.

“You’re right in not bothering with Temple or Ogan,” decided Stillman. “One of ’em knew this Savage before, of course; but that’s not important. The main thing is to find where he gets his ardent. If he cuts away again to-night we’ll be ready for him.”

Stillman devoted the better part of the afternoon to an exhaustive study of the sagebrush twirler. The opinion he formed of the man was far from flattering.

“Gee, that dill pickle must hate himself!” he remarked to Lefty as they were returning to the hotel. “Of course, the stiff may turn out to be a little baby wonder on wheels, but as it looks now I’d call him a dead loss. He’s the kind that would have a whole club fighting in two shakes, and――honest, old man――the best thing we can do is to give him all the rope he wants, and let him hang himself.”

This had been Lefty’s real opinion for some time, but his promise to Kennedy, and a sort of ethical determination to do the best he could for a rival, made him reluctant to act upon it. The two friends were still discussing the matter when old Jack caught up with them.

“Look here, son,” he began briefly, taking Locke’s arm, “McLean tells me Savage had half a jag on last night. Is that straight?”

The southpaw hesitated an instant. “I’d hardly call it that,” he answered. “He’d been hitting the bottle a bit, but he wasn’t exactly loaded.”

“By mighty!” exploded the manager. “You knew, an’ never put me wise! I thought you was going to help me out! I can’t see everything that goes on. Why in――”

“Take it easy,” said Lefty. “I wasn’t holding back on you. I just didn’t want to get you all riled up before I had something to tell. It was this way.”

Briefly he narrated the scanty details he had gleaned the night before, ending with the suggestion that the best way of straightening out the affair would be to send Savage back to the bushes.

“Not yet,” returned the manager, his jaw squaring obstinately. “I told you once before that I was going to make something out of him. I’ve handled others as bad――or worse. I want to find out where he gets the stuff, and it’s up to you to help out. You ain’t got nothing to do, and if he cuts away to-night you and Jack can follow him as well as not.”

Of course Locke gave in. He felt that he owed Jack Kennedy a great deal, and he was ready to go to much more trouble for him than the loss of a single evening would involve. As soon as dinner was over Stillman and Lefty strolled out into the lobby, where, while apparently occupied in light conversation, they kept a close watch on the movements of Nelson Savage.

They had only a short time to wait. The object of their attention did not even sit down. After inquiring fruitlessly for mail, he lounged against the desk for a minute or two; then, moving toward the door with exaggerated carelessness, he disappeared into the street.

Within thirty seconds Locke and the reporter were standing by the steps, watching the square-shouldered figure swing along Main Street in the direction of the moving-picture houses――also the river road.

“Same way he came back last night,” Lefty commented, in a whisper.

Stillman nodded, leading the way across the street. They moved swiftly forward, keeping well in the shadows. When Savage had passed the bright lights of the Tulane Opera House and vanished into the dusky stretches beyond, the pursuers hurriedly decreased the intervening distance until they could distinguish the sound of the man’s feet as he strode briskly along the graveled walk.

Now and then the sound ceased, as if the busher were listening for possible indications of pursuit. Each time the pair behind him stopped also, though they had been walking with the utmost care in the soft dust of the country road.

At length Savage seemed satisfied that he had aroused no suspicion, and thereafter there were no more halts or backward glances. Briskly he strode on past fences and trim hedges, past twinkling lights, past black, deserted stretches, or tall white columns gleaming vague and ghostlike in the starlight.

More than once the two friends wondered silently where he could be leading them. Each one was game and meant to stick it out as long as his companion; so they tramped on, out along the lonely river road, until suddenly the sound of Savage’s footfalls ceased abruptly.

They did not grow gradually less and less, finally to die away. There was no noticeable pause or lagging in the step before the last. At one instant they heard the brisk, regular sound of the man’s feet in the dusty road; at the next――nothing.