The Kingsbridge pitcher continued:
“As the given name of both my brother and myself begins with P, the mistake of the photographer who handed out one of my pictures when Mr. King’s obliging friend called for a photograph of Paul Hazelton is readily understood. In order to settle this controversy for all time, I thought best to wire my brother to come on, and it was to meet him here in Bancroft that I left Kingsbridge this morning. Gentlemen, let me introduce Paul Hazelton.”
The youthful stranger who had arrived in company with the bell boy bowed and smiled.
“I’m it,” he said. “But, to judge by his record in this league, when it comes to pitching, I’m an ‘also ran’ compared with Phil.”
“It should be plain to you now, Mr. Riley,” said Philip Hazelton grimly, “that you made a very bad break when you produced a letter, seemingly in my handwriting, dated at Princeton, and signed with the name of Paul Hazelton. Mr. Hutchinson, also, has blundered in— Oh, by the way where is he? He seems to be missing.”
“He’s sneaked,” cried Sammy Bryant. “He got out when nobody was lookin’.”
“He’d better sneak,” declared Henry Cope. “I don’t blame him a bit for skedaddlin’ outer here. He’d better git outer Kingsbridge in a hurry, too.”
The following evening found Philip Hazelton meditating over a daintily perfumed note that had been brought him by a boy. A dozen times he read it; as many times he started up, as if with a purpose, only to falter.
At last, however, he literally tore the blue-serge suit off the hangers in the wardrobe, and lost no time in donning it, save that wasted through the fumbling produced by his almost frantic haste.