“My neck!” exclaimed the pitcher incredulously. “You’ve tried to save my neck?”
“Oh, I know your old soup bone’s on the blink; you didn’t put anything over me by dodging and trimming when I questioned you about your arm. You knocked it out last year, and you’ve been spending the winter down here trying to work it back into shape. You can pitch a little against weak bush teams, but you can’t even go the whole distance against one of them. That being the case, what sort of a figure do you expect to cut back in the Big League? Up against the slugging Wolves or the hard-hitting Hornets, how long would you last? I’ve got your number, and you know it.”
“If that’s so, it seems still more remarkable that you should wish to hold me. Certainly I’d be a great addition to a pitching staff that’s smashed already!”
“Did I say anything about your strengthening the pitching staff? I offered to engage you in another capacity. Think I didn’t know why you declined to dicker with the Feds when they made you a big offer? You didn’t dare, for you know you couldn’t deliver the goods. Having that knowledge under my hat, I’ve been mighty generous with you.” Weegman descended to the top step, chuckling.
“Good night,” said Locke, longing to hasten the man’s departure.
“Think it over,” invited Charles Collier’s representative. “Now that I’m here, I’ll stick around and watch you pitch against these bushwhacking Wind Jammers to-morrow. I imagine your efforts should be amusing. Perhaps you’ll change your mind before I catch the train north at Yulee.” His chuckling became open laughter.
Lefty turned and entered the cottage, while Weegman walked away in the moonlight, the smoke of his cigar drifting over his shoulder.
Certain circumstances had led Philip Hazelton to enter professional baseball under the pseudonym of “Tom Locke,” to which, as he was a left-hander, his associates had added the nickname of “Lefty.” These names had stuck when he abruptly moved upward into the Big League. His rise having been rocketlike, the pessimistic and the envious had never wholly ceased to look for the fall of a stick. Thus far, in spite of the fact that each year of his service with the Blue Stockings saw him shouldering more and more of the pitching load, until like Jack Coombs and Ed Walsh he had become known as “the Iron Man,” they had looked in vain. And it came to pass that even the most prejudiced was forced to admit that it was Lefty who kept his team “up there” fighting for the bunting all the time.
Toward the close of the last season, however, with the jinx in close pursuit of the Blue Stockings, Locke had pushed himself beyond the limit. At one time the club had seemed to have the pennant cinched, but through the crippling of players it had begun to slip in the latter part of the season. In the desperate struggle to hold on, going against Manager Kennedy’s judgment and advice, Lefty did more pitching than any other two men on the staff, and with a little stronger team to support him his winning percentage would have been the highest of any pitcher in the league. It was not his fault that the Blue Stockings did not finish better than third.
In the cozy living room of the little furnished cottage Locke had leased for the brief winter months a remarkably pretty young woman sat reading by a shaded lamp. She looked up from the magazine and smiled at him as he came in. Then she saw the serious look upon his face, and the smile faded.