Without a word Elgin took one arm solicitously. The girl sprang to the other side of her father, and in silence they helped him up the steps of the veranda. A big, broad-shouldered man of middle age answered the ring, and, amid the bustle of greeting which followed, Elgin tactfully departed. At the gate he paused, glancing back at the closed door, the remembrance of a pair of wonderful violet eyes and a perfect mouth curved in a rather absent smile still vividly in his mind. “A queen!” he said aloud. “Molly Wendell can’t touch her for a minute.” Slowly he moved on a few steps; then he chuckled: “That was a cute trick, all right, and pulled off to perfection. I ought to hand that old bag of bones a square feed for giving me the chance. Will I call to-morrow night and let the old geezer thank me? Will I? Ask me!” CHAPTER XV THE REASON WHY Out on the field next morning Lefty Locke threw himself heart and soul into his work. He was conscious that Manager Brennan was watching his efforts with the eyes of a lynx, and though that made him slightly nervous at first, it presently came to have the opposite effect, stimulating him to greater endeavor. “Kid ain’t doing bad to-day,” drawled Buck Fargo critically to Jack Stillman, sitting beside him on the bench. “He certainly was rotten in the game, though. I wonder what ailed him? Don’t seem like one glass of beer would knock a fellow out like that.” “Depends on what’s in it besides the beer,” the newspaper man replied impulsively. The big backstop straightened up and flashed a keen glance at him. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded shortly. Stillman hesitated an instant, his face slightly flushed, “I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything about it,” he returned slowly. “Lefty didn’t want it to get out, but I can’t see any harm.” And forthwith he proceeded to enlighten Fargo concerning the trick which had been put over on Lefty the night Brennan was in Fort Worth. When he had finished, the catcher made some vividly picturesque comments. Then he relapsed into a thoughtful silence. Finally he turned curiously to his companion. “What’s the trouble between Elgin and Locke?” he asked briefly. “Don’t tell me if it’s a secret, but it sure looks to me as if that was at the bottom of the whole muss.” “There isn’t a doubt of it in my mind,” Stillman answered. “Elgin hates Lefty like poison, and has every reason in the world to do him dirt. It happened when we were all at Princeton. Elgin was pitching on the varsity――pitching mighty good ball, too. He and Lefty had always been rivals, but Lefty couldn’t go out that year because of the back work he had to make up on account of an attack of typhoid. Just the same, Elgin seemed to have it in for him, and he never lost any chance to sneer about him to other men, and make things generally disagreeable.