“What do you mean?” asked Tompkinson, as pale as death.
“I mean,” said Joe, “that you both are going to get the licking of your lives. I could send you both to prison, but I don’t care to raise a scandal in the baseball world. Jim, you take Tompkinson. I licked him once. And now, Harrish, throw off your coat.”
The men, desperate as cornered rats, saw there was no help for it, and the next moment the battle was on. Both the brokers were big and powerful men and they put up a hard battle. But they were no match for the seasoned athletes opposed to them.
Joe and Jim smashed them at will, shaking them from head to feet with body blows and uppercuts. In a few minutes the battle was over and the discomfited scoundrels lay on the floor whimpering with pain and rage and shame.
“I guess that will do, Jim,” said Joe, as he put on his coat. “They’ve found out that the pitching arms they tried to ruin are still in pretty fair shape. Let’s go.”
They stationed a policeman at the apartment to see that Tompkinson and Harrish left without, in their anger, doing some injury to the old scientist or his wife by way of revenge, then the party drove off.
McRae and Robbie dropped off with Joe and Jim at their apartment where they found Reggie who had cashed the check, and the roars of laughter that went up from their rooms as the veteran manager and coach learned all that had happened almost scandalized the management.
Only a few days remained until the end of the playing season. The Giants had the pennant safely stowed away. They were so far ahead that if they lost every remaining game while their nearest opponents, the Pirates, won every one of theirs, the Giants still could not be headed.
Nevertheless, Joe drove his men hard, for he was now within an ace of attaining the objects that he had outlined to Jim at the beginning of the season. He led the league in home runs. He led it in his general batting average, having left the redoubtable Mornsby far in the rear. He had more stolen bases to his credit than any player in either league. He had registered more strike-outs than any other pitcher. He stood well ahead of Rance in the matter of percentage of earned runs allowed to opponents, and in the last spurt the Giants had broken the record in the matter of consecutive victories.