CHAPTER XXIX
MERSFELD IN THE BOX
Therewas a wild search in and about the gymnasium on the part of Bill, his brothers and his chums, but of course the missing glasses were not found.
“Are you sure you dropped them here?” asked Cap, as he went over again the room which his brother had used as a dressing department before and after the shower bath.
“Well, I’m not sure, of course,” answered Bill, “but they’re gone, and I must have dropped them somewhere.”
They went over the place inch by inch, looked in odd nooks and corners and inquired of the janitors and helpers, but the spectacles were not found.
“Say,” cried Whistle-Breeches with sudden illumination, “I’ll bet you dropped them that time we were all fooling on the campus!”
“By Jinks! I believe I did!” cried Bill, and he made a mad dash for the place. The others followed and soon the lads were scanning the grass, going about on their hands and knees. From a vantage point Mersfeld and North watched.
“He’s missed ’em all right,” exulted the deposed pitcher.
“Sure, and he’ll look a good while for ’em, too.”
“Think he’ll suspect us?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied North. He started toward the group of searching lads.
“Here! Where are you going?” cried his companion in alarm.
“Going over to help ’em hunt.”
“Come back! Do you want to give the whole thing away, just when I’ve got a last chance to get back on the nine?”
“Give it away, you chump! Why the best way to throw ’em off the track, and make ’em feel sure that we had nothing to do with it is to help Bill look for his glasses. Come on. It’ll be a joke, but they can’t appreciate it.”
Somewhat dubious of the plan, Mersfeld followed North, who strolled up to Bill. The Varsity pitcher’s face wore a worried look.
“Lose something?” asked North innocently.
“Yes, my glasses. They must have dropped out of my pocket when we were skylarking here.”
“That’s too bad!” and North winked at Mersfeld. “We’ll help you look.”
“Sure,” agreed the deposed pitcher, and the two hypocrites went carefully over the ground, laughing to themselves as they thought of the glasses in the muzzle of the cannon.
Darkness came and the search had to be given up. Puzzled as to what could have happened to his glasses, uselessly and mechanically feeling in pocket after pocket, Bill accompanied his brothers back to his room. Mersfeld and North went off together.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Pete, as he looked at the pitcher.
“I don’t know what to do,” and Bill’s tone was despondent.
“Maybe you can get along without them now, for the few remaining games,” suggested Cap.
“No,” and Bill shook his head. “I’ll need them, for I tried to pitch without them to-day, and my curves were away off. And as for the remaining games—they’re the most important of the season. We’ve justgotto win them to make good and keep the pennant. I don’t see what could have happened to the glasses.”
“You might have lost them anywhere between the diamond and here,” said Whistle-Breeches. “We’ll look again in the morning.”
“Say!” cried Pete. “Can’t you get some oculist in town to fix you up a pair that will do? It can’t be that they were such peculiar glasses that they can’t be duplicated.”
“Maybe not,” half-agreed Bill, “but the old rain-maker-astronomer said the lenses had to be ground in a certain way, and I don’t know where he had them made.”
“We’ll try some one in town,” went on Cap. “I believe they can fix you up,” and they spent some time talking of that possibility.
Bill was worried, and with good reason. He wanted to maintain his position as pitcher, and he knew he could not do so if he did not “deliver the goods.” That he could pitch without the glasses he did not believe, but he was anxious for morning to come that he might test himself again.
Bright and early he and Cap went out to the diamond, not only to look for the glasses but to do some work with the horsehide. It is needless to say that the glasses were not recovered, and to Bill’s despair he found that he was throwing wild.
“It won’t do,” spoke Cap despondently, as he tossed back the ball which he had had to reach away outside of the plate to gather in.
“No, I guess not,” agreed his brother. “It’s either a new pair of specs for me, or—some one else in the box.”
“We’ll try to get a new pair of glasses first,” suggested Cap, as cheerfully as he could.
An oculist whom they consulted, but not the one to whom they had first gone after the accident, looked grave when he had tested Bill’s eyes, and heard the story of the blow.
“Of course I can fit you with glasses,” he said, “but it may take some time to get them just right.”
“How long?” asked the pitcher anxiously.
“A week—perhaps two.”
“It won’t do!” declared Bill. “Why the last Sandrim game comes off in three days, and a week later the final with the Tuckerton nine. I’ve got to pitch in both.”
The oculist shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “The lenses will have to be specially ground. If I knew where the others were made I could get them from there.”
But the astronomer had failed to say where he had had Bill’s glasses made, and there was nothing for it but to try some other lens-making place. Meanwhile the oculist said he would temporarily fit Bill with a pair of glasses.
But when the pitcher tried to use them, his curves were worse off than before, and with despair in his heart he laid aside the spectacles.
“I’ll have to wait for the others,” he said.
“But what about the game with Sandrim?” asked Captain Graydon. “Can you pitch for us?”
Bill shook his head, and said nothing. The captain and coach looked at each other.
“We’ll have to put Mersfeld back in the box,” decided Mr. Windam dubiously.
“Yes, and he’ll have to practice hard every spare minute, and even then—” The captain did not finish, but they knew what he meant.
It was with wild and ill-concealed exultation in his heart that Mersfeld received orders to take his old place.
“Now it’s up to you to make good!” said North to him.
“And I’ll do it, too!” was the fierce response. “Bill Smith shan’t get his hands on the ball again.”
Mersfeld began hard and steady practice, and, whether it was that the rest had done him good, or whether he had improved did not develop, but there was a more hopeful look on the faces of the captain and coach.
“We may do Sandrim yet,” said Graydon, “and if Bill can get his glasses in time for the Tuckerton game we may pull out ahead.”
“I hope so, but it’s going to be a hard row to hoe.”
Bill and his brothers and friends made strenuous efforts in the little while that remained to get the glasses in time, but there was a delay, the lenses were not ready, and when the day of the final game with Sandrim arrived Mersfeld was in the box.
Bill sat on the bench, bitterness in his heart, his fingers fairly aching to get hold of the ball. But he knew that his eyes were practically useless.
It was a hard game, and Westfield won it only by the hardest kind of work, and the narrow margin of one run. It was due more to the support Mersfeld got than to hispitching that he pulled the contest out of the fire, and at one time, when Sandrim had three men on bases, and none out it looked like a walk-over for them.
But Cap, who was behind the bat, and Pete, at short, were towers of strength, and once more the Smith boys, even though the trio was broken, demonstrated their worth.
“Now, if we can take Tuckerton’s scalp we’ll be all right,” remarked the coach to the captain, as they strolled off the diamond after the game.
“Yes, but we need Bill. Oh, if his eyes would only get right again!”
“Yes, or if he can only get his glasses in time.”
It was three days later before the oculist had the special lenses, and Bill tried them hopefully. At first they seemed to be all right, but after he had pitched a few balls Cap called to him:
“Get ’em over a little better, Bill. That last one was quite a ways out.”
“What’s the matter? Why it went right over the plate!”
Pete who was behind Cap, watching his brother’s curves started, and the oldest Smith lad shook his head. Then Bill knew that the glasses were not the same.
“I guess it’s all up,” he said despondently. “I’m out of it.”
“No!” cried Cap. “We’ll help you!”
“What can you do?” Bill wanted to know. “There’s no use having this oculist try it again.”
“No, but we’ll find Professor Clatter and Tithonus Somnus and get him to make a right pair of glasses. That’s our last chance!”
“And a mighty slim one, too!” murmured Bill, “with the final game only a few days off!”