“Where did this Jones originally hail from?”
“Ask me! I don’t know. Nobody I ever met knew anything about him, and what he knows about himself he won’t tell. He’s mysterious, you understand; but his beautiful work on the slab has caused my classic countenance to break into ripples and undulations and convolutions of mirth.”
“Where is he? I’d like to give him the once over.”
“I think he’s out somewhere prowling around the town and sizing up the citizens. That’s one of his little vagaries; he has a combustable curiosity about strangers. Every place we go he wanders around for hours lamping the denizens of the burg. Outside baseball, strange people seem to interest him more than anything in the world; but once he has taken a good square look at a person, henceforth and for aye that individual ceases to attract him; if he ever gives anybody a second look, it is one of absolute indifference. Oh, I assure you with the utmost voracity that Jones is an odd one.”
“He must be,” agreed Lefty.
“Ay tank, cap’n,” said Oleson, the Swede outfielder, “that Yones now bane comin’ up the street.”
Wiley turned and gazed at an approaching figure. “Yes,” he said, “that’s him. Turn your binnacle lights on him, Lefty; behold the greatest pitcher adrift in the uncharted regions of baseball.”
CHAPTER VI
PECULIAR BEHAVIOR
Jones was rather tall and almost slender, although he had a fine pair of shoulders. His arm was as long as Walter Johnson’s. His face was as grave as that of the Sphinx, and held more than a touch of the same somber sadness. His eyes were dark and keen and penetrating; with a single glance they seemed to pierce one through and through. And they were ever on the move, like little ferrets, searching, searching, searching. As he approached the hotel, he met a man going in the opposite direction, and he half paused to give the man a sharp, lance-like stare. Involuntarily the man drew aside a trifle and, walking on, turning to look back with an expression of mingled questioning and resentment. But Jones had resumed his habitual pace, his appearance that of a person who, already overburdened, had received one more disappointment.