“He’s done that for four innings.” Meggy’s tone was low, mysterious. Johnny missed that tone. He was too much absorbed by what was going on to notice it. “When his team comes up to bat,” Meg went on, “he goes back to the bench. Then when we are at bat again, he hops up, strolls slowly to the post and stands there until the inning is over. Johnny, I—”
“There!” It was Doug who interrupted her. “Steve struck out. I’m up. Watch me fan! All I got to do is stand right still, and that tin umpire will call ‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ and I’m out! You just watch!”
“Doug!” Meggy gripped his arm tight. “You—you’re being almost yellow. Buck up! Get in there and win in spite of odds. There’s something crooked about it. We all know that. But we can’t help it. At least not now. Listen! Uncle Rob told me once he’d seen a lot of crooked things tried in all sorts of games, but he’d found out this—if the straight player stood up to it and did his level best he’d win; but that a fellow who is crooked can never do his best—his conscience won’t let him. So you just get in there and swat that ball! Strike at every one. Boot it over the fence! And next time, when you’re up, I’m going to—”
She did not finish. Doug was gone.
With Meggy’s words ringing in his ears, Doug marched up to the plate. Ten seconds later he saw the ball coming. Figuring it would be “wide a mile,” he gave a quick side-wise lurch, swung the bat, struck the ball low and hard, then dashed for first base.
“Go! Go! Go! Go on!” came in a deafening roar. Nor did that call subside until he had crossed the home plate. He had boosted the ball clear out of the lot, a home run just like that.
“But even that won’t win,” he told Johnny gloomily. “The score is still 5 to 3 in their favor. And that tin umpire is set dead against us.”
This conclusion seemed fair enough, for when Tim Tyler, the best batter on their team, came up next he went down “One, two, three.” After that the Hillcrest players wandered gloomily to their places on the diamond.
Doug played right field. Since the men on the opposing team almost to a man batted right handed, he now had plenty of time to think. And those were long, long thoughts, you may be sure. “How could that electrical umpire be crooked?” he asked himself over and over. “It worked perfectly every time yesterday. If it wasn’t for the pledge that both teams made to see the thing through, I’d demand a new umpire. But thunder! We’d look fine throwing out our own umpire!”
Yes, they had tried the umpire out the day before. Goggles had secured the necessary equipment from the electrical shop which was really a laboratory for research work, and with the assistance of the head electrician had set the electrical umpire in place on the ball grounds.