As he opened the door and stepped into the hall, he saw the figure of a man walking briskly away down the corridor. For a moment he paid no attention to the unknown. Presently something about the set of the fellow’s shoulders struck him as vaguely familiar, but even then he would probably have thought nothing of it had not the other swiftly turned his head, and as swiftly jerked his face around again. It was George Miller, the discharged waiter who had served Locke that fatal glass of doped beer two nights before. Without delay, Lefty started to run. The waiter took to his heels, also, whirled round a corner toward the servants’ staircase at top speed, and disappeared. Sprinting after him, Locke reached the corner just in time to see his man halfway down the long stretch of carpeted hall. The next instant a wild yell of pain and rage from somewhere close at hand broke the stillness with startling abruptness. A door at Lefty’s right was flung open. Buck Fargo, his face contorted with mirth, rushed out, flung himself against the door of the next room, and slammed it behind him, all in the twinkling of an eye. Lefty, bewildered, had no time even to wonder what had happened. Close upon the heels of the flying catcher came a strange figure, clad in blankets and nothing else, and giving vent to a continuous bellow of rage. He did not halt or pause. The whole impact of his big body struck Locke squarely, and they landed together on the floor with a crash which seemed to shake the building. CHAPTER XIX NOT 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 vagrant eddies 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!”