Brennan’s eyes flashed. “Well, he didn’t,” he snapped. “Where’d you come from? What’s your record?”
“I pitched last season with the Kingsbridge team of the Northern League,” Locke said briefly.
“A twirler!” exclaimed the manager. “Well, I’ll be—” He stopped abruptly, gulped once or twice, and then asked, in an ominously quiet voice: “What did you do season before last?”
“Nothing. It was my first year in professional baseball.”
“What!” Brennan’s face turned purple, and his last shreds of self-restraint vanished. “You pitched one season, an’ got the gall to expect a job with the Hornets! You expect me to believe that Ed Toler, the best scout I’ve got, picked you up without saying a word to me about it—when we’re overrun with pitchers, at that. I don’t want you. Training was begun ten days ago, an’ I got enough men. You can hike back to the bush, where you come from. I wasn’t born yesterday, an’ you can’t put one over me like this. Get that?”
As he listened to the tirade, the color flamed into Locke’s face, and his grip on the leather glove tightened. Then, from the group of players, who had been interested spectators of the interview, came a smothered laugh, which seemed to act like a tonic. As he heard it, Locke’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened.
“You don’t want me?” he repeated, in a steady voice. “You’re willing to release me from the contract I made with Toler?”
“That’s what I said,” growled Brennan.
“Then I’m free to accept any other offer?”
Something in his tone made the manager prick up his ears, all his professional instincts aroused. It is one thing to fire a man who isn’t wanted, but quite another to let him go when another club is after him. “Offer!” he sneered, with deliberate intent. “I s’pose the Tigers an’ the Blue Stockings are fair tearing each other’s eyes out as to which’ll have you.”