Hutchinson looked at him expectantly.
“By thunder!” repeated Mike. “Perhaps it ain’t!”
“Isn’t what?”
“Perhaps it isn’t Hazelton. I have private information that, being cornered fair and square, he has denied it flat.”
For a fleeting moment Hutchinson seemed startled out of his usual cold indifference, but he quickly recovered.
“Preposterous,” he said. “The fellow must be Hazelton.”
“I dunno. I reckoned so myself, but—”
“Look here, Mike, if he isn’t, why should he let this controversy over him go on? Then, there’s Cope, who thinks—”
“Nobody in the Northern League knows Hazelton. Even Cope may be fooled.”
“How? He signed Hazelton to pitch.”