Lon knew the town like a book. He knew the playgrounds and the favorite lounging places. Moreover, he had ready excuse for visiting them. There were half a dozen errands to be done; he took the car and sallied forth on his round.
A few small boys were playing on the high school grounds, but he didn’t halt to observe them; they were younger than the club and not likely to be involved in its affairs. At street corners he noticed two or three groups of high school pupils, and marked that they were talking earnestly. Then he came to the field where the baseball diamond was laid out, and where a scrub game was in progress. There was a fringe of spectators about the field, and half a dozen cars and wagons were lined at the curb. Lon drew up behind a truck, whose driver was killing a spare quarter of an hour. The man on the truck nodded.
“H’lo, Lon! How be?”
“Fair to middlin’,” said Lon. “Guess if the weather man was diagnosin’ my troubles he’d be sayin’ something about a faintly developed trough o’ depression, but not flyin’ no storm signals. And how’s the rest o’ the Grand Lodge o’ the Sons of Rest?”
“Holdin’ protracted session, I guess,” quoth the truckman cheerfully. “Business ain’t what it used to be,” he added with a sudden change of note.
“Kinder lucky thing for business, at that,” Lon countered. “Got to keep up with the times, you know—same as we do.... Say! Who’s at bat?”
“Dunno. Guess he ain’t one of the reg’lars.”
“Don’t hold himself like one,” Lon agreed. He ran his eye over the players and spectators. There was something half-hearted about the game, and the boys about the diamond were not displaying keen interest in its progress. None of the club was in sight, but he recognized a number of Sam’s classmates, among them Ed Zorn.
Lon kept closely enough in touch with the affairs of his young friends to be aware that Zorn and the Safety First boys were not on terms of intimacy. It was a logical thing, therefore, for him to watch Ed keenly, his theory being that Sam was involved in some difficulty with his schoolmates. Zorn, in other words, was as likely as anybody else to be concerned in the dispute. So Lon studied the suspect. More, he made a discovery or two.
Zorn, for one thing, was paying no attention to the game. He was sauntering back and forth along the line behind first base, going from one group to the next. Lon noted that almost invariably he became the center of a little cluster of boys, to whom he appeared to talk very earnestly for a moment or two. The performance was repeated so often that Lon made up his mind there was method in it.