“You ain’t sure of it if you don’t behave,” I says.
“Well,” says he, very serious, “I guess I’ll behave.” And he did—till we made our first Eastern trip.
VI
We went to Boston first, and that crazy bunch goes out and piles up a three-run lead on us in seven innin’s the first day. It was the pitcher’s turn to lead off in the eighth, so up goes Elliott to bat for him. He kisses the first thing they hands him for three bases; and we says, on the bench: “Now we’ll get ’em!”—because, you know, a three-run lead wasn’t nothin’ in Boston.
“Stay right on that bag!” John hollers to Elliott.
Mebbe if John hadn’t said nothin’ to him everythin’ would of been all right; but when Perdue starts to pitch the first ball to Tommy, Elliott starts to steal home. He’s out as far as from here to Seattle.
If I’d been carryin’ a gun I’d of shot him right through the heart. As it was, I thought John’d kill him with a bat, because he was standin’ there with a couple of ’em, waitin’ for his turn; but I guess John was too stunned to move. He didn’t even seem to see Elliott when he went to the bench. After I’d cooled off a little I says:
“Beat it and get into your clothes before John comes in. Then go to the hotel and keep out o’ sight.”
When I got up in the room afterward, there was Elliott, lookin’ as innocent and happy as though he’d won fifty bucks with a pair o’ treys.
“I thought you might of killed yourself,” I says.
“What for?” he says.
“For that swell play you made,” says I.
“What was the matter with the play?” ast Elliott, surprised. “It was all right when I done it in St. Louis.”
“Yes,” I says; “but they was two out in St. Louis and we wasn’t no three runs behind.”
“Well,” he says, “if it was all right in St. Louis I don’t see why it was wrong here.”
“It’s a diff’rent climate here,” I says, too disgusted to argue with him.
“I wonder if they’d let me sing in this climate?” says Elliott.
“No,” I says. “Don’t sing in this hotel, because we don’t want to get fired out o’ here—the eats is too good.”
“All right,” he says. “I won’t sing.” But when I starts down to supper he says: “I’m li’ble to do somethin’ worse’n sing.”
He didn’t show up in the dinin’ room and John went to the boxin’ show after supper; so it looked like him and Elliott wouldn’t run into each other till the murder had left John’s heart. I was glad o’ that—because a Mass’chusetts jury might not consider it justifiable hommercide if one guy croaked another for givin’ the Boston club a game.
I went down to the corner and had a couple o’ beers; and then I come straight back, intendin’ to hit the hay. The elevator boy had went for a drink or somethin’, and they was two old ladies already waitin’ in the car when I stepped in. Right along after me comes Elliott.
“Where’s the boy that’s supposed to run this car?” he says. I told him the boy’d be right back; but he says: “I can’t wait. I’m much too sleepy.”
And before I could stop him he’d slammed the door and him and I and the poor old ladies was shootin’ up.
“Let us off at the third floor, please!” says one o’ the ladies, her voice kind o’ shakin’.
“Sorry, madam,” says the bug; “but this is a express and we don’t stop at no third floor.”
I grabbed his arm and tried to get him away from the machinery; but he was as strong as a ox and he throwed me agin the side o’ the car like I was a baby. We went to the top faster’n I ever rode in an elevator before. And then we shot down to the bottom, hittin’ the bumper down there so hard I thought we’d be smashed to splinters.
The ladies was too scared to make a sound durin’ the first trip; but while we was goin’ up and down the second time—even faster’n the first—they begun to scream. I was hollerin’ my head off at him to quit and he was makin’ more noise than the three of us—pretendin’ he was the locomotive and the whole crew o’ the train.
Don’t never ask me how many times we went up and down! The women fainted on the third trip and I guess I was about as near it as I’ll ever get. The elevator boy and the bellhops and the waiters and the night clerk and everybody was jumpin’ round the lobby screamin’; but no one seemed to know how to stop us.
Finally—on about the tenth trip, I guess—he slowed down and stopped at the fifth floor, where we was roomin’. He opened the door and beat it for the room, while I, though I was tremblin’ like a leaf, run the car down to the bottom.
The night clerk knowed me pretty well and knowed I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that; so him and I didn’t argue, but just got to work together to bring the old women to. While we was doin’ that Elliott must of run down the stairs and slipped out o’ the hotel, because when they sent the officers up to the room after him he’d blowed.
They was goin’ to fire the club out; but Charlie had a good stand-in with Amos, the proprietor, and he fixed it up to let us stay—providin’ Elliott kep’ away. The bug didn’t show up at the ball park next day and we didn’t see no more of him till we got on the rattler for New York. Charlie and John both bawled him, but they give him a berth—an upper—and we pulled into the Grand Central Station without him havin’ made no effort to wreck the train.
VII
I’d studied the thing pretty careful, but hadn’t
