The owner of the Wind Jammers looked startled. "Tell me not in mournful numbers that your star is already on the decline!" he exclaimed, looking at Locke with regret. "That's what the Big Leagues do to a good man; they burn him out like a pitch-pine knot. I've felt all along that the Blue Stockings were working you too much, Lefty. Without you on their roster ready to work three or four times a week in the pinches, they never could have kept in the running." "You're more than complimentary," said Locke, after giving Weegman a look. "But I think I'll be able to shake something out of my sleeve this season, the same as ever." "Then don't let them finish you, don't let them grind you to a frazzle," advised Wiley. "For the first time in recent history you have a chance for your white alley; the Federals are giving you that. If you're not already enmeshed in the folds of a contract, the Feds will grab you and hand you a square deal." Weegman rose, chuckling and snapping his fingers. "All this talk about what the Feds can do is gas!" he declared. "They're getting nothing but the soreheads and deadwood of organized baseball, which will be vastly better off without the deserters. Cripples and has-beens may make a good thing out of the Feds for a short time. Perhaps Locke would find it profitable to jump." His meaning was all too plain. Lefty felt like taking the insinuating fellow by the neck and shaking him until his teeth rattled, but outwardly he was not at all ruffled or disturbed. "Mr. Weegman," he said, "is showing pique because I have not seen fit to sign up as manager of the Blue Stockings. He professes to have authority from Charles Collier to sign the manager, Collier having gone abroad for his health." "If anybody doubts my authority," shouted Weegman, plunging his hand into an inner pocket of his coat, "I can show the documents that will--" The southpaw had turned his back on him. "I understand you have a clever pitcher in the man known as Mysterious Jones, Wiley," he said. "A pippin!" was the enthusiastic answer. "I'll give you a chance to see him sagaciate to-day." "He is a deaf-mute?" "He couldn't hear a cannon if you fired it right under the lobe of his ear, and he does his talking with his prehensile digits. Leon Ames in his best days never had anything on Jones." "Strange I never even heard of him. Our scouts have scoured the bushes from one end of the country to the other." "I never collided with any baseball scouts in Alaska," said Wiley. "Oh! You found Jones in Alaska?" "Pitching for a team in Nome." "But baseball up there! I didn't know--" "Oh, no; nobody ever thinks of baseball up there, but in the all too short summer season there's something doing in that line. Why, even modern dances have begun to run wild in Alaska, so you see they're right up to the present jiffy." "Where did this Jones originally hail from?"