Chapter XXIII: The Catastrophe

Ogan turned and stared at Lefty with an air of questioning which was either real or remarkably well assumed. “Know Savage well?” he said. “What gave you that notion?”

The pitcher shrugged his shoulders. “Reckon it must have been that night a week or so ago when you came into the hotel with him about ten. You certainly acted mighty chummy then.”

“Chummy!” was the puzzled exclamation. “Why, I’ve never―― Oh――that night, you mean! I remember now.” He hesitated an instant, and glanced suddenly away with an affectation of carelessness which did not deceive his companion. “I reckon that must have been the first time I ever spoke to the man,” he went on. “I ran into him by accident, not a block away from the hotel.”

Lefty’s eyebrows went up. “And yet,” he drawled, “you’d left that poker game and hustled out over an hour before.”

“I went for a walk,” Ogan explained hastily, without looking at the southpaw. “I―― Say, what the deuce is this, anyhow――an inquisition?” The color flamed into his face, and he flung back his head to stare resentfully at Locke. “You talk as if you thought I wasn’t telling the truth. You――look that way, too.”

“Hardly that.” The pitcher’s tone continued lightly casual. “I did have an idea, though, that you weren’t telling me everything. You see, Al, it wasn’t just idle curiosity that made me ask.”

For a second or two longer Ogan’s resentful expression remained unchanged. Then his eyes softened a little; his lids drooped.

“Sort of crabby, wasn’t I?” he inquired. “Guilty conscience always does make a fellow sore. You see, I was ashamed to tell anybody about that note of Tap――”

“Tap!” put in Lefty, in astonishment. “Did Tap Palsifer send you that note?”

“Sure! Who’d you think did? Tap knew about the trouble I had last season, but he didn’t want to come right in and break up the game, so he found a boy to take in a note he’d written to――”

“You’ve got me, Al,” interrupted Lefty, with a shake of the head. “Reckon I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. I don’t understand a single word you’ve said. Don’t go ahead if it’s something you’d rather not tell me.”

“It isn’t――now I’ve made the break,” the infielder returned, after the briefest of pauses. “I’d like you to know, and then you can give me a hand in case I tumble another time. It’s cards, generally. I can’t seem to use ’em in moderation. Last year I played so much it put me to the bad on the diamond, and I had to cut it out altogether. I had no business to sit in the game the other night, but I thought it might be different this year. Tap was wiser than I, though. The old hankering was there worse than ever. I had the time of my life pulling out, but I managed to somehow; and when I got outside didn’t he give me a roasting――and then some! Well, we went for a stroll and, on the way back, ran into Savage. Tap stopped to get some cigarettes; Savage and I came on together. He wasn’t half bad that night. I didn’t know then what he was.”

Lefty drew a long breath, and smiled. It was impossible to doubt the truth of Ogan’s explanation. The man’s eyes were clear and candid; his gaze unwavering. So it was Temple, after all, that he had overheard――Temple, the seemingly open, wholly attractive youngster Locke himself had been the means of bringing into the Blue Stocking squad.

His interest in the puzzle reawakened surprisingly by this discovery, Lefty promised himself a speedy interview with the young Seaboard recruit, and made haste to apologize to Ogan for the manner in which he had bungled. Fortunately the infielder took it all in good part, and the southpaw forestalled any awkward questions by branching off into an account of the little Stillman and himself had learned of Savage’s mysterious trips across the river. By the time he had finished, the boathouse was in sight.

Pausing only long enough to see that the boat was gone, Locke led the way upstream to where Stillman’s worm-eaten old flat-bottomed scow had been hidden in the bushes.

“Though why he was so careful about it I don’t know,” Lefty commented as they hauled it out and shoved it into the water. “I can’t imagine anybody taking it as a gift, much less stealing it.”

Placing Ogan in the stern, Locke took the oars, and headed for a slight cove in the farther bank, which looked at that distance like the mouth of a small creek or inlet.

The river was wide, and from the shore it had a sluggish appearance, which Lefty soon discovered to be deceptive. He had not progressed a dozen yards before he felt the strong tug of the current, and presently it was all he could do to keep the bow from being turned downstream.

“Better let me take an oar,” Ogan suggested. “You don’t want to strain your arm.”

“Don’t worry about me,” returned the southpaw. “Keep an eye peeled for logs coming downstream. These spring freshets always flood out a lot of ’em, and they’re hard to see in this muddy water.”

The infielder nodded, and at once directed his gaze upstream.

There was a pause in midstream to let a water-soaked, low-floating log shoot past, while two minutes later the oarsman had to pull furiously to escape being struck amidships by another. There was a lot more, both of hard work and excitement, in the little jaunt than he had anticipated. It would be aggravating if nothing came of it.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of strenuous labor, the strength of that midstream current began to lessen. Locke bent to his oars, sending the boat through the water at comparatively good speed. It seemed to him that not more than a few seconds could have passed before he saw Ogan raise himself suddenly in the stern.

“Hard on your right――quick!” he shouted. “There’s a snag――”

The words died on his lips as he dropped back on the seat, clutching instinctively at the sides. The southpaw put forth every ounce of strength he possessed in a strenuous attempt to pull the boat around. Before the clumsy scow had even begun to respond to his efforts, there was a thud, a crash; the boat rose up as on the crest of a wave, quivered, then dipped sidewise, coming to rest at a weird angle. And there it hung precariously, its strained, rotting frame shaking and trembling continuously with the force of the strong current rushing against the exposed bottom.

With the sudden shock of collision Lefty had lost an oar. Now, bracing himself with one foot against the lower side of the boat, and stretching a helping hand to his companion, he carelessly relinquished the other, which was carried away by the water.

Ogan lost not an instant in pulling himself up beside Locke. He was drenched to the waist, for the stern seat had been thrust under water when a knotty spur of the snag tore a hole in the rotten planking just back of the bow. For a minute they clung to the frail, shaking timber in silence, staring across the hundred feet or so of troubled, muddy water between them and the shore. Then the southpaw suddenly burst into a laugh.

“Jove!” he cried. “If Savage could see us now, he’d say the joke was on us.”

The infielder’s responsive chuckle was prompt, but seemed somewhat lacking in spontaneity.

“I’m glad he isn’t around!” he returned. “Say, old man, how the mischief are we going to get out of this? The old tub’s likely to break up any minute.”

“That’s no lie!” Locke had relinquished his hold on the seat, and was tugging at the laces of his dripping shoes. “There’s nothing else but to lighten cargo a bit and swim for it.”

“That’s the bad part of it.” Ogan spoke slowly, in the tone of one who is striving hard to suppress every hint of emotion. “I――can’t swim.”

The southpaw’s nimble fingers abruptly ceased picking at the sodden laces; his head came up with a jerk. His gaze rested for a second lightly on his friend’s face, then flashed past the baseman’s broad shoulder to linger appraisingly on the sweep of smoothly sliding brown water that had suddenly widened so miraculously. In his expression there was no hint of the momentary contraction of the throat muscles, or the brief anxious chill which lingered for a second on his spine as he realized the meaning of that terse announcement. When he spoke, his voice was level and untroubled.

“That so?” he queried coolly, breaking one of the laces with a snap, and dragging off a shoe. “I’ll have to swim for two, then, won’t I? Don’t lose any time shedding your coat and shoes, old fellow. They’re a nuisance in the water.”

Ogan proceeded to obey instructions as quickly as he could. His face was, perhaps, a shade less brown, but his lips were firm, and there was not even a tremor in the fingers that did their work without fumbling. His own feelings gave Lefty a good idea of what must lie beneath that mask of nonchalance. The fellow was grit clear through, he thought admiringly, as he slipped out of his coat and let the garment drop carelessly into the stream.

“Grab hold of me to steady yourself,” he advised quietly when Ogan began to wriggle out of coat and vest. “Loosen up your shirt, too. I reckon that’s about all you’ll have time to do.”

The southpaw’s own thin silk shirt was open at the throat. Under his stockinged feet he felt the planks bend and quiver like that absurd moving floor in one of Coney Island’s side shows. The wreck could scarcely hold together many minutes longer, yet he waited with cool patience until the infielder was quite ready.

“There!” he said at last as the striped vest was whirled out of sight by the current. “Now, listen. We’ll slide over this side together, and do it as easy as we can. When we’re in the water you don’t want to worry. Lie perfectly still, with one hand on my shoulder, and let me do the rest. You can catch hold of my shirt, but don’t lose your head and grab me around the neck. Get me?”

“Sure!” Ogan’s lips were pressed tightly together, a straight gray line. His eyes were wide, almost purple, but unwavering. “But if I should be a fool, you――hand me one.”

Locke smiled briefly, reassuringly. “You’re not going to be a fool. Come ahead now. Take it easy. We don’t want the old tub to split up―― Hold up a second! I’ll be hanged――”

With a splintering crash, the great bulk of a submerged log, swept down by the rushing current, struck the wrecked boat squarely. Flung violently against the one remaining oarlock, Lefty caught a momentary glimpse of Ogan’s body hurled past him into the brown torrent. The planks under his feet seemed to melt away like ice in boiling oil. In another instant the muddy water met over his head, blotting out everything.