He hastened to the door, and stepped out into the hall. “I should say your goose was cooked nice and brown,” he muttered, with venomous satisfaction. “I wouldn’t give a whole lot for your chances with the Hornets after this little performance.”
Happily for Lefty’s peace of mind, he guessed nothing of all this. As it was, he had worries enough to keep him company during that maddeningly slow trip back to Ashland. Time and again he went over the situation from the beginning, trying his best to see it from Jim Brennan’s point of view, and always he ended by a despairing grasp on that one frail straw: the manager might forgive the desertion as long as the absent man had done his best to let him know about it beforehand.
Stepping off the train shortly after seven, the southpaw went at once to the hotel. The first man he ran into in the lobby was Buck Fargo. The expression on his chum’s face made Lefty’s heart sink into his boots.
“Where the deuce have you been?” the backstop inquired directly, and with force. “How’d you happen to duck?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Buck,” the young pitcher appealed fervently, “don’t tell me you didn’t get my note?”
“If it explained what in thunder made you do such a fool trick as this, I most certainly didn’t,” Fargo returned.
Locke groaned aloud. “I left it on the table. I told you just what had happened and why I had to rush off. I asked you to explain to the old man—”
Catching a sudden warning in Fargo’s eyes, Lefty stopped abruptly and turned slowly around. Brennan stood just behind him, his hands on his hips, an expression on his square, heavy-jowled face which even the big backstop had rarely seen there before.
“Well?” he questioned in an ominous voice, his sharp, deep-set eyes boring into Lefty’s brown ones. “Did I hear you say anything about an explanation? Strikes me it’s about time something of the sort was dished up.”