and locked the door.
Here is what he had to say:
On the night before that last game in Chi, a gal called him up and it was nobody but our old friend Evelyn Corey. She asked him to come out to a certain hotel on the North Side and have supper with her. He went because he felt kind of sorry for her. But when he seen her, he lost his head and was just as nuts about her as he’d been at Fort Gregg. She encouraged him and strung him along till he forgot all about poor Minnie. Evelyn told him she knew he could have his pick of a hundred gals and she was brokenhearted because they was no chance for her. He asked her what made her think that, and she put her handkerchief to her eyes and pretended she was crying and that drove him wild and he said he wouldn’t marry nobody but her.
Then she told him they had better forget it, that she was broke now, but had been used to luxury, and he promised he would work hard and save up till he had three or four thousand dollars and that would be enough for a start.
“Four thousand dollars!” she says. “Why, that wouldn’t buy the runs in my stockings! I wouldn’t think of marrying a man who had less than twenty thousand. I would want a honeymoon in Europe and we’d buy a car over there and tour the whole continent, and then come home and settle down in some nice suburb of New York. And so,” she says, “I am going to get up and leave you right now because I see that my dream won’t never come true.”
She left him sitting in the restaurant and he was the only person there outside of the waiters. But after he’d sat a little while—he was waiting till the first shock of his disappointment had wore off—a black-haired bird with a waxed mustache came up to him and asked if he wasn’t Hurry Kane, the great pitcher. Then he said: “I suppose you’ll pitch again tomorrow,” and Kane said yes.
“I haven’t nothing against you,” says the stranger, “but I hope you lose. It will cost me a lot of money if you win.”
“How much?” said Kane.
“So much,” says the stranger, “that I will give you twenty thousand dollars if you get beat.”
“I can’t throw my pals,” said Kane.
“Well,” said the stranger, “two of your pals has already agreed to throw you.”
Kane asked him who he referred to, but he wouldn’t tell. Kane don’t know yet, but I do. It was Dignan and Stout, our shortstopper and first baseman, and you’ll notice they ain’t with our club no more.
Hurry held out as long as he could, but he thought of Evelyn and that honeymoon in Europe broke him down. He took five thousand dollars’ advance and was to come to the same place and get the balance right after the game.
He said that after Johnny Abbott had give him that talk at the breakfast table, he went out and rode around in a taxi so he could cry without being seen.
Well, I’ve told you about that terrible first innings. And I’ve told you about young Topping talking to him before he went down to the bull pen to deliver Dave’s message to Carney and Olds. Topping asked him what he was staring at and Hurry pointed Evelyn out to him and said she was his gal.
“Your gal’s grandmother!” said Topping. “That’s Evelyn Corey and she belongs to Sam Morris, the bookie. If I was you, I’d lay off. You needn’t tell Dave, but I was in Ike Bloom’s at one o’clock this morning, and Sam and she were there, too. And one of the waiters told me that Sam had bet twenty thousand dollars on the White Sox way last spring and had got six to one for his money.”
Hurry quit talking and I started to bawl him out. But I couldn’t stay mad at him, especially when I realized that they was a fifty-three-hundred-dollar check in my pocket which I’d never have had only for him. Besides, they ain’t nothing crooked about him. He’s just a boneheaded sap.
“I won’t tell Dave on you,” I said, and I got up to go.
“Wait a minute,” says Kane. “I confessed so I could ask you a question. I’ve still got that five thousand which Morris paid me in advance. With that dough and the fifty-three hundred from the series, I and Min could buy ourself a nice little home in Yuma. But do you think I should ought to give it back to that crook?”
“No,” said I. “What you ought to do is split it with young Topping. He was your good luck!”
I run acrost Topping right here in town not long ago. And the first thing he said was, “What do you think of that goofy Kane? I had a letter from him and a check. He said the check was what he owed me.”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars?” I says.
“Two hundred,” said Topping, “and if I ever lent him two hundred or two cents, I’ll roll a hoop from here to Yuma.”
Now and Then
Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 3.
Dearest Esther:
Bob is asleep and I will snatch these few minutes to write you a letter, but it may not be very long because he is liable to wake up any moment and insist that I stop writing and “pay some attention” to him. He is honestly jealous of you and I being friends or of me caring for anybody besides him enough to write to them. Isn’t that too silly for words and yet it thrills me to have him be that way and shows that I am really everything in his life. He is a regular child where I am concerned and can’t bear to have me even mention my old friends or things that happened before I met him.
Esther,
