“Exactly,” frowned Connelly. “With him out of the way it would be a walk-over for the Sox.”
“You’d go into mourning if he broke a leg or anything like that,” grinned Bixby.
“No such luck,” grunted Connelly. “Nothing ever happens to that bird. He must carry a horseshoe around with him. I came all the way from Chicago to see Brennan’s team win, only to see Matson smear a defeat on them. But it isn’t that I’m sore about especially.”
“Some little personal feeling, eh?” ventured Fleming, tentatively.
“He turned me down on a little deal once,” Connelly spat out viciously, “and I’ve vowed to get even with him some time.”
He refrained from explaining that the “deal” referred to had been a crooked bit of work that he had dared to suggest to Joe at the time the latter was with St. Louis and the club was struggling to get to the head of the second division. Not only had Joe rejected the proposition hard and instantly, but Connelly had only saved his face from disfigurement by beating a hasty and undignified retreat. From that moment he had cherished a bitter grudge against the man who had humiliated him, and this was intensified at the present by the young pitcher’s popularity.
“Yes, sir-ee,” he grunted vindictively, “I’d give ten thousand dollars to have Matson put on the shelf.”
“You could have him put out of the way for a good deal less than that,” suggested one of his companions, an evil-faced man named Moriarity. “There are fellows in New York or Boston who would do it for a thousand.”
“Nix on that stuff,” growled Connelly. “You could get away with a good many things, but you couldn’t get away with that. You might as well try to do away with the President. Any one who puts the extinguisher on Matson would go to the electric chair sure, and nothing could save him. Even if he got off, the public would tear him to pieces. Forget it.”
Moriarity was squelched and shrank back before the big man’s disapproval.