“Let up!” he panted. “What do you think you’re doing, Jones? Are you nutty?”
The outfielder gasped and grunted with surprise. An instant later he had rolled over so that the cub pitcher’s face was plainly visible, and his eyes fairly popped out.
“By thunder!” he groaned. “I thought you was Fargo.”
A roar of delight issued from the open doorway. As Lefty sprang up, he saw that it was crowded with members of the Hornet squad, several of them in next to nature’s garb, and all convulsed with mirth. Behind them rose vagrant eddies of what looked like smoke, but had the hot, suffocating tang of steam.
“Come and see our Turkish bath, Kid,” invited Cy Russell when he had recovered his power of speech. “Buck invented it, but something kind of went wrong, and he beat it.”
“Went wrong!” snapped Jones, stung afresh by a sense of his injuries. “The pirate did it on purpose! Just wait till I get my hands on him. I’ll make him smart!”
He looked so ridiculous as he stood there, scowling fiercely and trying to gather the inadequate folds of the scanty blanket around him, that another burst of laughter commenced. It was cut short, however, by the whirring of the elevator.
“Come inside, you loon!” ejaculated Russell, grabbing the outfielder by the arm and hustling him into the room. “You ain’t decent. What if a woman should come along!”
At the suggestion the men all scuttled out of sight. Lefty followed them. The interruption had given Miller ample time to make himself scarce, and, besides, Locke was curious to learn more of the trick which had been played on Jones.
It proved to be simple to a degree. The improvised Turkish bath had been an unqualified success, as Lefty realized the instant he entered the superheated bathroom, where the atmosphere made him fairly gasp for breath. The water still boiled from the tap, sending up clouds of steam. In one corner was the fateful radiator that had aided Fargo in the perpetration of the prank which justly aroused the wrath of Jones.