Chapter XX: The Trap

Stillman was keenly interested. “By Jove!” he exclaimed when all the details had been told. “What dope for a story! A fellow’d have to make it humorous, though; it’d never go as a serious yarn.”

“Do you suppose I was――hypnotized?” Lefty asked, in a disgusted tone.

“He’s got a mighty queer look about the eyes――just the expression I’ve seen in people who were abnormal mentally,” said the reporter, somewhat evasively it seemed. “Remember whether you looked him square in the eyes when you were up at the plate?”

“Don’t remember especially, but it’s likely I did.”

“What we want to do is to make sure how he works this trick,” suggested Stillman promptly. “It may be hypnotic influence, or accident, or just plain bluff. It’s up to us to get him to repeat it, and find out.”

“How are you going to do that?” Dalton inquired. “He’s liable to be suspicious and foxy.”

“Very likely, but we’ll have to work it just the same. Now, my suggestion is this: Keep the whole business under your hats, both of you. Pretend you haven’t noticed anything queer at all. Some time to-night Lefty can get in conversation with Larry, and talk about what a stick he was, letting such a bum pitcher hand him a strike-out. He should do this when Savage can hear him, and he must pretend not to know the man is listening. Larry can say that everybody’s rotten sometimes. Keep up that sort of thing to-morrow. Work it every chance you have to do it naturally, and I’ll bet by the time batting practice is called you’ll have him hooked and ready for the landing net.”

“And then, when he’s good and mad, you think he’ll try that strike-out stunt again?” said Locke.

Stillman nodded. “Isn’t it natural?” he queried. “If you work it right, and don’t overdo it, he’ll be in a state of temper that doesn’t stop to reason. If I can only get old Jack to make him pitch for batting practice we’ve as good as got him. There’s just one thing you want to remember: If you do get up against him, don’t keep staring at his eyes. Look at anything else about him you want to, but don’t give him a chance to work his little trick again, if that’s how he does it.”

Locke and Dalton proceeded to carry out the reporter’s suggestion to the best of their ability. They maneuvered so well that by breakfast time Savage had been reduced to a state of cold fury without in the least realizing how completely he was falling into the trap.

Stillman attached himself to the person of the manager immediately on leaving the hotel that morning. The newspaper man had a way of inducing old Jack to do things, whenever he wished them done, by throwing out hints; and he now proceeded to throw in his best and most effective form.

That his efforts were not wasted was proven when Kennedy ordered Savage to the mound to pitch for batting practice some fifteen minutes after the field was reached.

“Every man run out his hit, and no loafing,” said the Chief.

Watching Savage, the reporter saw him pass behind Locke and Dalton on his way to the mound, pause for a second irresolutely, with an angry snarl of the lips and swift clenching of his fists, and then move on again. A moment later Kennedy touched the scribe on the arm.

“Step out here with me, Stillman,” the manager said. “I want to give you the chance you were anxious for to watch Savage work at short range.”

“I’ll be there like a passenger train.” The newspaper man’s tone was enthusiastic. “Just one second till I get my camera. I left it over on the bench.”

Sprinting over, he snatched up the camera and turned back. Halfway he encountered Locke, and slowed down.

“Get in as soon as you can,” he whispered. “Don’t forget about his eyes; string him along a little.”

Without waiting for a reply, he loped out upon the diamond, and took his place beside Kennedy, who was acting as umpire. It did not take Stillman long to discover that Savage had lost some of the cool, insolent indifference of the day before. It was evident that he strove to affect the pose, but every now and then, in movements or gestures, there escaped a hint of the real nature beneath the shell of make-believe――a hot intolerance, made worse by the rasping his temper had undergone at the hands of Locke and Dalton.

The reporter studied him with an interest quite unfeigned, hoping the while that Lefty would not too long delay his appearance at the plate. If signs meant anything, the busher was ripe for the experiment. It needed little or nothing to send him off. Seeing Lefty standing ready to succeed Hyland at the rubber, Stillman suddenly resolved to give a last effective push.

“Well, Locke’s up,” he remarked, in a low tone, as Hyland clouted the ball and began to lumber heavily around the base lines.

“He wasn’t very strong with the willow yesterday,” reminded Kennedy.

The reporter laughed. “That was an accident. There isn’t one of the old guard, let alone a cub, who can keep Lefty Locke from hitting the ball somewhere into the diamond when he wants to.”

He spoke just loud enough for Savage to hear, and was rewarded by a stiffening of the busher’s whole frame. From that moment Stillman was oblivious to everything about him save the drama which had for its limited stage the narrow stretch between the pitcher’s mound and the plate.

He saw that the southpaw was following his injunction not to look at Savage’s eyes. He guessed, too, from the latter’s attitude, no less than from the sudden slackening of his movements, that the pitcher was trying to force Lefty into doing the thing he had been warned against.

To Stillman the affair had suddenly become infinitely more absorbing than he had expected. It seemed to have developed all at once into a tremendous struggle between two wills. His glance flashed from Lefty’s face to the back of the fellow in front of him. The thick, muscular neck, the very pose of the head, sunk low upon those powerful shoulders, and inclined slightly forward, combined inexplicably to give the reporter a strange feeling that perhaps in Savage dwelt an evil spirit which grew stronger with every victory, as vampires are said to increase in power and malignity with each new victim.

Common sense told him that it was absurd. This was the twentieth century, with evil spirits and magicians relegated to the dim and distant past. But, though he tried his best to thrust the silly notion from his mind, he found himself wishing for the power to throw his influence on Lefty’s side of the balance.

Savage’s first delivery was wide; it seemed to Stillman as if the fellow had purposely made it so. The second was also a ball. When the third missed a corner of the pan by at least six inches the reporter decided that the man on the mound was following a regular system which he held to on such occasions as this. He noticed also that the pitcher’s movements became slower and slower with each delivery. As far as Stillman could tell, his eyes never left the batter’s face.

When at last Savage completed his tedious wind-up, and pitched, the newspaper man fairly held his breath, though in reality he was quite sure what Lefty would do. The ball was a fair drop, with considerable speed. Locke missed it by several inches.

“A bluff, of course,” Stillman muttered to himself. “He’s playing his part of the game to force Savage to the limit.”

And yet, as he waited for that interminable wind-up to end, the reporter was not quite so confident. What if Lefty should forget instructions and let the busher get in his fine work, after all? It would be more than humiliating――it would be disastrous. A man who could break up such a cool character as Lefty Locke would be dangerous even on his own team――a menace on any other.

Glancing anxiously at the southpaw, Stillman was just in time to see his friend’s eyes shift in a sudden peculiar manner. The movement had in it every appearance of intense effort, and was accompanied by a queer, dazed shaking of the head. Before he could recover himself, apparently, the ball whizzed over the center of the pan.

“Strike!” called Kennedy; and, in a lower tone, to Stillman: “Anybody who can fan Lefty Locke twice running is going to bother the rest of the crowd, believe me!”

“Wait!” retorted Stillman. “He hasn’t fanned――yet.”

It was far from easy to assume that air of confidence. Lefty had evidently, through carelessness or bravado, disobeyed orders. His eyes were fixed, and there was something decidedly mechanical in the way he swung his bat gently back and forth.

Stillman frowned. That odd sense of an evil influence radiating from the man before him returned with added strength and conviction. He found himself at one moment mentally raging at the fellow’s slowness; at another he feared Savage would pitch too soon. His eyes never left the southpaw’s face, and the longer he stared the more certain he became that his friend was again under Savage’s control.

Suddenly the busher’s arm shot forward. Stillman caught his breath in a sharp intake. The progress of the ball seemed as slow and dragging as a defective motion-picture reel running at quarter speed. Apparently Lefty had not moved a muscle. He stood with that same staring, vacant expression on his face, as if utterly oblivious for the moment to everything that was happening about him. Stillman groaned aloud; then――

There was a ringing crack as Lefty swung at precisely the right moment to meet the sphere when it floated over the center of the pan. Out into the field to the right of deep center soared the horsehide.