“Hurray!” Johnny sprang to his feet. “Hurray! That beats ’em!”
This, considering the “Prince” had just walked a man, filling the bases, seemed sheer madness.
“They’ll think I’m out of my head,” was Johnny’s second thought as he sank back into his place.
That Johnny was right was soon enough demonstrated. Seeming to find fresh power flowing through his veins, the mysterious pitcher stiffened his pace. The two men who came up next got three pitches each. They fanned the air. The inning was over.
“We arranged to put up a smoke screen,” Johnny whispered to Meggy. “Set a lot of old tar paper on fire. That checkmated those fellows in the airplane. They couldn’t see through it, nor—nor do anything else!”
“But Johnny! Who’s in that plane?”
“You’ll know tonight, per—perhaps,” was Johnny’s reply.
Three times the airplane circled. Three times a pillar of smoke rose to meet it.
“That airplane is from River Forest,” Big Bill Tyson said to Colonel Chamberlain. “Hate to take you away from the game; but if we’re to be there when they land, we’d better be travelin’.”
Three minutes later a long gray car shot away to the east. In it rode Big Bill and Colonel Chamberlain. Big Bill was at last truly interested in the boys of his city.