A little frown of perplexity came into her forehead.
“Father?” she repeated. “Why, he’s all right. The springs are doing him no end of good. He’s taking his nap just now. Did you—”
“You didn’t send me a telegram this morning, then?” Locke interrupted in a strange voice.
“No, of course not. Why should I? I wrote you last night, but it was only— Lefty! What is it? For goodness sake, tell me what has happened.”
The skin over his jaws was hard as marble. The blood had rushed into his face, turning it a dull crimson under the brown, and bringing out a throbbing vein in his temple in bold relief. His lips were pressed tightly together, and the eyes fixed on the girl were not his eyes. They were wide open and almost black, full of cold, consuming wrath. They frightened Janet Harting, and made her step back involuntarily.
“Lefty!” she cried again. “What is it? What makes you look so?”
For an instant he did not answer. He had realized the bitter truth. The telegram was a forgery, sent for the sole and only purpose of getting him out of the way at the very time of all others during his baseball career that he should have been on the job. In a flash an illumination which comes too seldom to a man told him that Brennan’s reason for putting him on the slab to-day was in the nature of a final test of his ability. The other game had shown the manager nothing. This would have been the ultimate proof of his fitness to be retained as a member of the squad—and he would not be there to take advantage of the chance.
Swiftly he glanced at his watch, the girl staring anxiously at him the while. He took out a crumpled time-table. The first train left at two-twenty. As he thrust the time-table back into his pocket, his face relaxed a little and a faint smile twisted the corners of his mouth.
“There’s been an unfortunate—mistake, Janet,” he said quietly. “I’ll come up and tell you about it.”