“You stay here,” directed Joe, who had thought out a way of smuggling his team-mate into the hotel, “while I go on and fix things up.”
He slipped in and found the head porter to whom he passed a bill, at the same time telling him what he wanted. The porter suggested that they go through the servant’s quarters in the rear of the hotel and upstairs by a freight elevator that he arranged to have in readiness. Joe went back to where he had left the others, and by dint of strenuous efforts he and Jim finally got Hartley up to his room without detection. There they surrendered him to the tender mercy of his room-mate, who helped him to get undressed and put him to bed.
Joe and Jim adjourned to their own room. They were flustered and distressed. They felt bitterly indignant at Hartley who, by his recklessness, was threatening to wreck the chances of the team. Yet they felt that they could not have acted differently from what they had.
“He’s a peach, isn’t he?” said Jim, indignantly.
“That’s what he is,” returned Joe. “And it’s his regular turn to go in the box tomorrow. He’ll be in fine condition to pitch. They’ll knock him all over the lot.”
“Just when the team was moving along so smoothly,” groaned Jim. “It’s like throwing a monkey wrench into a ship’s engines. Before you know it, the whole thing’s ready for the scrap heap.”
“It’s too bad,” assented Joe. “But all we can do is to hope that it won’t happen again. Perhaps when he comes to his senses, he’ll realize what a close call he’s had and cut out the liquor for good.”
As Joe had predicted, the Cardinals made merry with Hartley’s curves the next day and won the game with ease. Joe put the second game on the right side of the ledger, and Hughson accounted for the third. Markwith had a bad day, however, in the concluding game, and the team had to be satisfied with an even break, where they had fondly hoped for three out of four or possibly a clean sweep.
They were a trifle luckier in Chicago, where they won two out of three, rain preventing the last game. Cincinnati yielded three straight, though the Queen Cityites took the fourth, and in Pittsburgh, where they wound up their first Western invasion, they broke even.
“Not so bad for a road trip, nine out of fifteen,” said Larry Barrett, as he was talking it over with Joe. “As a matter of fact it’s better than we did at home. But the Giants always have been a good road team. But now you’ve had a chance to size up every team in the league. You’ve seen their weak points and their strong ones. Tell me straight, who do you think will win the pennant?”