“Let’s see it,” said the other.
Tom pitched and made rather a mess of it. “I’m not very good at it,” he murmured deprecatingly.
“What you want is something to pitch across,” said the detective. “Wait a minute.” He set off to the back-yard and was soon back with the galvanised iron lid of an ash barrel. He set it on the grass some six feet from the fence. “That’s rather a big plate, isn’t it?” he asked with a smile. “Now let her go.”
Tom, who had picked up his ball again, obeyed, and Mr. George nodded. “That’s not bad for a ‘roundhouse curve,’ son. What you want to do, though, is to make ’em break sharper.”
Tom viewed him in surprise and interest. “Can you show me how?” he asked eagerly.
“I guess I might,” was the reply. Mr. George leisurely divested himself of his coat, laid it, carefully folded, on the grass and took the ball. “It’s some time since I tried this,” he explained, fingering the ball knowingly. [“Now you watch, son. Better get behind me so’s you can see.”]
[“Now you watch, son. Better get behind me so’s you can see”]
Mr. George drew his arm back, brought his left foot off the ground and swung it around his right leg, and pitched. Down came arm and leg together and off went the ball. Tom watched it. He had just begun to tell himself that, after all, Mr. George had pitched only the straightest sort of a straight ball, when the flying sphere “broke” abruptly to the left and downward and slammed against the fence so forcibly that it rolled half-way back again.