CHAPTER XIXNOT QUITE PROVEN
“Blue blazes!” roared Splinter Jones, his hands clutching Lefty’s windpipe. “You bonehead! You mutt! I’ll teach you to pull them towels from under me! I’m scalded—parboiled—burned to a crisp! Wough!”
Lefty grabbed the other’s wrists and, with a twist and a wriggle, freed his throat from the choking grasp.
“Let up!” he panted. “What do you think you’re doing, Jones? Are you nutty?”
The outfielder gasped and grunted with surprise. An instant later he had rolled over so that the cub pitcher’s face was plainly visible, and his eyes fairly popped out.
“By thunder!” he groaned. “I thought you was Fargo.”
A roar of delight issued from the open doorway. As Lefty sprang up, he saw that it was crowded with members of the Hornet squad, several of them in next to nature’s garb, and all convulsed with mirth. Behind them rose vagranteddies of what looked like smoke, but had the hot, suffocating tang of steam.
“Come and see our Turkish bath, Kid,” invited Cy Russell when he had recovered his power of speech. “Buck invented it, but something kind of went wrong, and he beat it.”
“Went wrong!” snapped Jones, stung afresh by a sense of his injuries. “The pirate did it on purpose! Just wait till I get my hands on him. I’ll make him smart!”
He looked so ridiculous as he stood there, scowling fiercely and trying to gather the inadequate folds of the scanty blanket around him, that another burst of laughter commenced. It was cut short, however, by the whirring of the elevator.
“Come inside, you loon!” ejaculated Russell, grabbing the outfielder by the arm and hustling him into the room. “You ain’t decent. What if a woman should come along!”
At the suggestion the men all scuttled out of sight. Lefty followed them. The interruption had given Miller ample time to make himself scarce, and, besides, Locke was curious to learn more of the trick which had been played on Jones.
It proved to be simple to a degree. The improvised Turkish bath had been an unqualified success, as Lefty realized the instant he enteredthe superheated bathroom, where the atmosphere made him fairly gasp for breath. The water still boiled from the tap, sending up clouds of steam. In one corner was the fateful radiator that had aided Fargo in the perpetration of the prank which justly aroused the wrath of Jones.
Until Buck Fargo’s unfortunate propensity for joking had got the better of him, everything had gone smoothly. Jones and several other players who thought they could stand a little less weight stripped, swathed themselves in blankets, and took turns sitting on the sizzling radiator, well protected by several thicknesses of bath toweling. Perspiration streamed from every pore as superfluous tissue oozed away.
After each man had indulged in several rounds of the sweating process, it was observed that Jones was monopolizing the newly discovered boon. Protests were unavailing. He simply sat on the radiator until he could stand the heat no longer, regardless of the clamorous waiting list, and Russell was on the point of using force when he received an unmistakably insignificant wink from Buck Fargo, which made him refrain from butting in.
When the outfielder’s turn came again, he carefully adjusted the blankets about him and approachedthe radiator. The others were all gathered around, uttering various joshing comments. The big backstop leaned carelessly against the wall close to the heated coils. The room was hazy with steam pouring out of the faucet of the bathtub.
Cautiously Jones parted the blankets, and let himself down slowly, quite oblivious to the fact that Fargo had removed the towels with a dexterous twitch. The next instant a fearful yell rent the air, and the outfielder shot up as if galvanized, caught sight of the catcher slipping out of the door, and flung himself after in hot pursuit, with the resultant upsetting of Lefty Locke’s plans.
The latter was not quite so entertained by the joke as he might have been had it not caused him to lose the waiter. He was swiftly becoming more and more convinced that, if he could only once get hold of the fellow and bring a little pressure to bear upon him, Miller might tell him a lot.
What was the man doing back in the hotel, anyway? Lefty wondered as he took the elevator downstairs. The mere fact of his presence in that corridor after he had been fired looked suspicious.
“It’s a shame I didn’t come out of my room a minute sooner,” the cub pitcher grumbled to himself as he entered the lobby. “I’d have nailedhim. By Jove, Jack! You’re just the chap I want to see.” He caught Stillman by the arm, and propelled him toward a couple of empty chairs near by. “Who do you think I saw up in our corridor about fifteen minutes ago?”
“That waiter who was fired yesterday morning,” the newspaper man returned without an instant’s hesitation.
Lefty gasped. “What! Did you see him too?”
“No; but I heard him talking to Elgin. Our rooms adjoin, you know, and there’s a connecting door which is locked. I was up there, doping out some stuff to send to the paper, when I began to hear scraps of talk coming through the door. Didn’t pay much attention at first, for I wanted to get my story off in the five-thirty mail, but I made out that somebody was trying to get money out of our friend. That made me sit up and take a little more notice. The chap wanted fifteen dollars to take him to Dallas. Elgin balked, of course, and then the waiter said it would be the last touch he’d make, and, anyhow, it was little enough, considering all he’d done for Elgin. They scrapped back and forth for a bit, and then I reckon Elgin shelled out, for I didn’t hear anything more.
“The fool part of it was that I never wised upto who he was till afterward. I was thinking about my news dope, I suppose. Anyhow, it wasn’t till after I’d got that out of the way that I began to wonder whether the strange guy might not have been this man we want to get hold of. It certainly looked a bit like it, his bleeding Elgin that way.”
“Didn’t he say anything about what he’d done for Elgin?” Lefty asked eagerly.
“No, or I’d have woke up in a jiffy. It was only that he’d done something which put him personally to the bad. I haven’t a doubt now as to what that something was, but I’m afraid there isn’t anything you could call real proof.”
Locke shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he agreed slowly.
More than ever he regretted that he had missed the rascal in the corridor by a hair’s breadth. Truly, luck seemed to be with Bert Elgin in everything he undertook.