"He wished himself onto me," grinned Clancy. "He told me he could play ball and I believed him."
A swarm of reporters descended upon the headquarters of the visiting team, striving to discover something of the history of the slender, red-haired youngster whose coming had revived the waning pennant hopes of the Bears. McCarthy was not to be found. He had slipped away after dinner without telling anyone his plans. The reporters descended upon Manager Clancy, demanding information concerning his find.
"It's a secret, boys," responded Clancy to their insistent questions. "He is nom de plume and habeas corpus. The only place I ever heard of him playing ball was in Cognito."
"Suppress the comedy and ease us the legit," pleaded Riley, who wrote theatricals when he was not inventing English in the interest of baseball. "I can't find any record that will fit him."
"Boys," said the veteran manager, growing serious, "I don't know a thing more about him than you do. I don't know where he ever played; it never was in organized ball, or I would know where he comes from and who he is. He strolled in here last night, told me he could play ball and wanted a chance to show me that he could."
"That was considerable demonstration to-day," commented Rice. "How do you know he's square?"
"By looking at him," replied Clancy steadily. "If I needed any more evidence, he was offered $500 to sign a Panther contract after to-day's game and told them he'd stick to me—and we haven't even talked about salary."
"What'll we call him?" asked one reporter.
"Say," replied Clancy, enthusiastically, "I dreamed last night that I had found a pot of gold wrapped up in a million-dollar bill, with a diamond as big as my hand on top of it. Call him Kohinoor."
So Kohinoor McCarthy sprang into fame in a day as the mystery of the league.