“How did he happen to be Johnny on the spot, I wonder,” mused Joe. “Do you suppose he’s been following us this morning?”
“Hardly likely,” conjectured Jim. “What is more probable is that he knew that we were in the habit of practicing in this particular spot. It hasn’t been any secret, and more than once in the clubhouse I’ve mentioned what a dandy place we had for morning pitching practice. That probably led the plotters to reconnoiter about this neighborhood and get the lay of the land. The scaffold and the pile of lumber carried their own suggestion. Work on the building has stopped, and there’s nothing to prevent anybody lurking in the place ready to take advantage of any chance that might offer itself. Perhaps that fellow has been hiding in there every day for a week, figuring that some time in the natural order of things you’d be standing near that scaffold. And that he didn’t calculate wrongly is shown by what happened this morning.”
“It was an infernal scheme all right,” said Joe. “A cunning one, too. If that stuff had really landed on me, it would have been put down as an accident, and no one would ever have been the wiser.”
“Well,” remarked Jim, “a miss is as good as a mile and some good Providence must have been watching over you this morning. But it gives you a desperate feeling to realize that enemies are working against you in the dark and that you have no way of forcing them into the open.”
“They’ll overreach themselves yet,” declared Joe confidently. “There never yet was a crook that didn’t give himself away at some time or other. In one way I’m glad this happened. It makes a certainty of what before had been only a probability. Now we know that somebody is trying to down me, and it will put us doubly on our guard. But of course I needn’t tell you, Jim, that Mabel and Clara must never hear a word of this. It would simply drive them crazy with worry.”
“Trust me,” replied Jim. “We’ll keep this up our sleeves and tell them nothing about it until we’ve squelched the rascals who have been trying to get your number. And even then I guess we’d better keep mum. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“Righto,” assented Joe. “But now I guess we’d better have our lunch and get ready for the game. We won’t have any more time than we need to reach the grounds.”
“I’m just as glad that it isn’t the turn of either of us to pitch to-day,” commented Jim. “I guess we’re both a bit too shaken up to be in our best form. But if my arm is idle to-day my eyes won’t be, and you can bet that from this time on I’ll watch Hupft and McCarney like a hawk.”
“Same here,” responded Joe grimly. “And if I get the goods on them, may heaven have mercy on them—for I won’t!”