The National Commission Decides

"YOU'LL never guess who's here," said "Lefty" Lucas to his bosom com panion, Sam Whelan. "Not in a thou sand years." "Oh, well," remarked Sam, with a prodigious yawn, "if that's the way it is, you tell me right off the reel and look at all the time we save! Who is the gentle stranger, anyhow?" "'Gentle stranger' is good," said Lefty. "It's old 'Four-eyed' Fowler!" "You don't believe me!" ejaculated Sam. "Why, I thought that old coot was married to his Chicago job!" "He's got a divorce, or a change of venue, or something," said Lucas. "Or maybe the squirrels got next to him, and began following him around, and he had to leave. He landed in Chris MulvihilPs old job on the Banner, and he's down here to grind out the usual spring-training bunk. As if we ain't got enough crazy people with this ball club a 'ready!" Lefty spoke with bitterness, spitting out the words one by one. "There's Cordell, and Hackett, and 'Ante' Angarola, and 'Bugs' Nieswanger —four as crazy ball players as ever got onto the same pay roll, but four ain't enough evidently, so we have to go and draw a nutty re porter to stiffen the hand and make it a cinch! They never will quit calling us the Daffydils now!" "Oh, I don't know about that," said Whelan soothingly. "I can't see where you get any license to call old Fowler crazy. These old-time baseball reporters are the best of the bunch, if you ask me. They ain't near so likely to be home fans like the younger fellows; and then, old Four-eyes writes as smooth an account of a ball game as you could wish to see." "Uh huh, and Angarola is as smooth a third baseman as you could wish to see," grunted Lefty, "but he's crazy just the same, ain't he? I never said that Fowler couldn't write up a game to the queen's taste. Dog-gone him, he ought to know how; he's been reporting base ball ever since Eobert E. Lee surrendered!" "I expect," said Sam slowly, "the old boy panned you once or twice, and you've never forgotten it!" "Never panned me in his life!" sputtered Lucas. "That crack just shows what a natural 'bone' you are, Sam! Pers'nally I ain't got a thing against him — grand old guy, and all that, but me, I draw the line at any white man who goes tearing around the country with his vest pockets full of lizards, and things like that. Sure! That's his hobby, lizards! Doc McGin-ness tells me the old boy honestly thinks he's going to write a book about 'em some day. A book on lizards! Now, Sam, you know that ain't natural; he's crazy, I tell you!" "I don't see it," argued Sam stubbornly. "People write books about everything these days. There's no reason why lizards can't have a book written about 'em." "You make me sick!" said Lefty hotly. "You're just taking Fowler's end for the sake of the argument. I tell you, Sam, it ain't safe to have a nut like him with a ball club, because you can't ever tell what he'll be springing next. Look what he did a few seasons ago when he was on the road with the Benedicts! Carried four white mice all the way from Boston to St. Looey! He said he was educating 'em to do tricks, but one night the boys had a Dutch lunch in the Pullman, and the mice smelt the cheese, and horned out of the box where Fowler kept 'em, to go looking for it. A couple of 'em wandered into Mrs. Henshaw's berth by mistake, and she like to had a conniption fit. Mace chucked the mice out into the vestibule, and the chances are they stepped off the train. Any way, they never turned up, and old Four-eyes was sore as a pig about it. Mice are bad enough, Sam, but lizards are worse, and the way the old boy is going, he's likely to switch to snakes at any time. What can you do with a fellow like that?" "Well," said Sam thoughtfully, "you can lay off of him, for one thing." "Huh!" snorted Lefty, with wrath. "You don't need to think that I'm going to bother him. I believe in letting a nut alone, every time, but if it was up to me, I'd step out now and pull the box for the padded wagon. What old Fowler needs is a nice big sunny room, with bars on the windows, and sand on the floor, where he can get in and skate around on his hands and knees with those lizards to his heart's content. He don't belong with a ball club, Sam. He ought to be out in that ward where the old men play with paper dolls and things!" "Pshaw!" said Whelan. "I wouldn't be as narrow as you for a farm! You've got no toleration, that's what ails you. If you'd lived a few hundred years ago, you'd have been out there burning people at the stake because they didn't happen to think the same as you about things. Suppose old Four-eyes is pretty strong for lizards! Chances are, that's the way he amuses himself. You carry around half a dozen old decks of cards to play that Canfield solitaire with, and probably, if you asked Fowler what he thought about it, he'd say Canfield was a crazy game. Every fellow to his own taste, Lefty. I can't say that I'm stuck on lizards myself. I let 'em have all the room they seem to need, and always did, but my not liking 'em doesn't make me sane any more than having 'em around him makes Fowler crazy." "That's right," sneered Lucas; "keep on kidding yourself, Sam. I'm saying that I can see trouble ahead — t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Just you stick around here until Angarola, and Nieswanger, and the rest of those lunatics get a slant at Fowler, and watch the doings around this joint. You know what the same bunch did last year around here, and you know that this spring-training stuff seems to bring out all the deviltry in that outfit. It's a cinch they'll pick Four-eyes. He's new to the club, he's kind of different from an ordinary newspaper man, and Angarola '11 just about figure that Fowler was sent down here to keep him amused. I wouldn't be that old boy, not for a thousand bones — and that's more money than I ever saw, except through a wire netting. Cheese it! Here he comes!" Lucas and Whelan, members of the pitching staff of a big-league ball club lately christened the Daffydils, were sitting on the front steps of a winter-tourist hotel in that portion of America oftenest referred to as "the great South west," arguing while they waited the welcome bang of the dinner gong. The figure which silenced their discussion advanced upon the pitchers, and surely there was nothing in the appearance of J. Horace Fowler in the flesh to give weight to the Lucas theory of dangerous irresponsibility. On the contrary, most people, giving J. Horace a cursory inspection, would vote him quite harmless and entirely responsible. There were only three things about Fowler which might have attracted attention — first, his neckwear; second, his eyeglasses, and third, his wrinkles. No one ever knew why old Four-eyes affected the black choker stock of 1830 — see portraits of Andrew Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, et al. — and, perhaps, it might even be argued that a man's neckwear is his own business. Next in point of importance were the glasses —round in shape, rather larger than a silver dollar, and rimmed with thick circles of tortoiseshell. With his glasses on, J. Horace might have posed as the original of Mr. F. Opper's "Common People." Now we come to the wrinkles. "Y* see," said one of Fowler's baseball friends, in attempting to explain the old gentleman's shrivelled appearance, ''Four-eyes was born with the skin of a big man, under stand? But he didn't make good, and his hide just nachelly had to shrink to fit him. There's only one thing in the world more wrinkled than he is — and that's an elephant's hind leg." If you cannot visualise J. Horace, advancing behind his eyeglasses, one more fashion note may help you. There are men who wear soft gaiters with elastic anklets. Horace was one of them. Twenty-five years ago he had been pitch forked into the newspaper game, mostly by accident, with a dash of contributory negligence thrown in for good measure. Neither the round peg nor the square hole has a vote in the scheme of things, so, perhaps, it could not have been helped. A city editor, who was of the man-eating type, did not know what to do with young Fow ler. This was at the beginning of baseball's popularity in the country; the game was forcing itself upon the press. "You're a college man, eh?" demanded the man-eater. "Know anything about baseball?" "N-n-no, sir," stammered Horace; "that is to say, very little, indeed." "Good!" shouted the city editor. "You can never learn any younger. See what you can do with baseball!" J. Horace accepted this assignment as he would have accepted any other newspaper task. It was clear to his methodical and somewhat academic mind that in order to write under-standingly about this game, he must make it a study. When it came to making a study of a thing, J. Horace was right at home with all the lights lit and blinds up to the limit. While other newspapers contented them-with alleged humorous accounts of the game written by men who recognised no need for special knowledge upon the subject, patient, plodding Horace set about to acquire expert in formation, and before many days his prim, precise, and rather stiff accounts of the league battles of that distant period attracted wido attention in the city. Street sales jumped wonderfully; a few hundred enthusiasts took their pens in hand to congratulate the editor upon the acquisition of a real baseball expert, rather than a reporter who merely thought himself funny without the least notion of what he was funny about. The managing editor read all these letters carefully, for he was a wise man, who believed in counting the public pulse. The communications from the fans settled Fowler's fate. "See here," said the managing editor to sev eral of the "straw bosses," "we've been mak ing a mistake about this baseball fad. We've been making fun of the game when what these fellows want is a serious account, handled by an expert the same as we handle billiards or racing. Fowler has caught on big. Take him off everything else, and tell him to cut loose with as much of this baseball stuff as he can write. There's circulation in it!" "By golly!" said the city editor, reaching for his slice of the credit, "I guess I knew a good man when I saw him, eh? I had an idea his serious stuff would make a hit!" Thus J. Horace Fowler fell a victim to his own lust for exact information and accuracy of detail. He had no love for baseball, or any other form of out-door exercise. His tastes were bookish in the extreme. He found him self in the position of the actor who, having made a pronounced success in a detested part, must continue to play the despised role to the end of his career. The young man saw his horizon narrowing, and not without misgivings. Unfortunately for his ambition, there was in him the traitorous patience which usually goes with a treadmill job — patience and the timidity which keeps some human animals forever circling an un ending path, their souls longing for green pastures outside the dusty ring, but their coward feet dreading the break with an ordered existence. When his paper began to advertise him as "the well-known baseball expert and authority," Fowler plucked up courage to enter a faint protest. "Oh, I say!" he complained to the city edi tor. "You mustn't do that. Really, you mustn't! I'm not an authority. Honestly, I'm not!" "Sure you're not!" said the man-eater cheerily. "And I'm not a city editor, either, but I've got people conned into thinking I am, and that's what counts. You'll be an expert if we keep on bragging about you for a few weeks, so cheer up!" Years afterward J. Horace looked back to that precise point of his development and recognised that at that instant he should have asserted himself, instead of which he clucked a few times, and backed away from the city edi tor's desk — elected for life. In fact, it might almost be said that J. Horace clucked himself into a quarter of a century of mental bond age, and was never able to cluck himself out of it. In time baseball became a habit with Fowler, binding him closer with each succeeding sea son. Youthful ambition faded, and Fowler accepted the inevitable, though there were periods when he cast wistful eyes upon the green meadows and wondered what he might have been had he not become a baseball expert. Players came up, held the limelight for a space, and vanished; managers were made and broken; the whole personnel of the league changed several times, but old Four-eyes remained in the beaten track, kicking up the same old dust; quiet, unobtrusive, sometimes a bit prosy in his reminiscent vein, but recognised as a distinct cog in the machine, and, in spite of his early protest, an "expert" of national standing and distinction. Twelve months a year he ground out his baseball column. Nothing excited him, nothing aroused his enthusiasm. He never tried to drive a ball player out of the league; he seldom "boosted" one, and he never railed at the umpires. He was one of the odd characters developed by the growth of the national pastime, and as such he had his niche and his peculiar value. Is it any wonder that such an one, after twenty-five years on the treadmill should have taken up an alien subject for relief from the deadly monotony1? Is it any wonder that he turned to a study of the lower forms of life — the Lacertilia, for instance? The new addition to the Daffydil menage smiled at the two pitchers as he approached. There was always something human about the old man's smile — a hint of warm blood behind the wrinkles. "Well!" said Whelan cordially. "You're with us now, are you? I hope you'll teach some of these young reporters how to write about a ball game without panning everybody, from the manager to the bat boy." "Yes," said Fowler, "I've made a change. It doesn't make so much difference where a man lives, does it?" "That's what you think now!" said Lefty abruptly. "You might change your mind. You've stepped into a continuous vaudeville show with this bunch. A fine lot of lunatics we've got now." With which rather ambiguous greeting, Lefty arose and went indoors. Whelan loyally covered his retreat. "Pay no attention to Lucas," said the good-hearted Sam. "Lefty's arm is sore this spring, and any time the old soup-bone bothers him, he's a crab for fair. He just wanted to tip it off to you that this is a pretty lively outfit." "Um-m-m! So I've heard. Practical jokers, I suppose?" "Well, not so very practical," qualified Sam. "They're more along the line of rough kidders, if you ask me. Some of the stuff they put over is pretty raw." "Like the crowd 'Pop' Anson used to have in the old days. Their hearts were all right, but dear, dear! The things they used to do! Well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, you know." 1 ' Correct-o! "said Whelan. "But how about all play and no work? Oh, things will never be dull around here. See here, Fowler, you did me a good turn once when I was just breaking into the league, and I'm going to give you a friendly tip. Lock the door of your room when you go out anywhere, and carry the key with you. Do you get me?" "I think so," said Fowler, after a short pause. "The official rough-housers are likely to call on me, are they?" "Only when you're out," said Sam significantly. "Fixing up a man's room for him is the best thing they do. You ought to seen what they did to Lefty the first night he got here." "Thank you, Sam," said old Four-eyes. "A word to the wise, eh? I won't forget. There might be some things in my room that I — well, things that I wouldn't like to have disturbed." Then Fowler switched the subject to base ball, and shop talk lasted until the gong ham mered out the invitation to dine. Joe Pepper drew a plump salary as manager of the Daffydils, and was beginning to doubt that he was worth it. It was his second season with the club, and lie was being made to understand that the man ager who tries to be too much of a "good fellow" makes a fatal mistake. A Sunday-schoolteacher may sometimes be "one of the boys," and his class take no harm from it, but the plan will not work in baseball. On every team there are certain men who will take advantage of a slack rein, and Joe had introduced himself to the club by taking off the bridle altogether. "I'm not going to wet-nurse you fellows," Pepper had remarked to the veterans of the team. "I'm not going to sit up nights to see what time you come in. You're grown men, and old enough to use your own judgment. All I ask is that you keep in shape to play ball dur ing the season, and as for the rest, I trust you." The theory was all right — many of Joe's theories were all right — but it fell down hard when tested. The Daffydils were particularly rich in mischievous, rattle-brained young men who had very little judgment of their own on which to depend, and Pepper's first season as a big-league manager dusted the hair over his ears and planted new wrinkles between his eyes. The boys played ball for him, seldom allowing pleasure to interfere with business, but they might have played better ball with a few hours' more sleep each night. As is common with theorists, Joe decided to go to the other extreme. "I gave 'em a chance," he thought, "and they abused it. From now on, I'm a slave driver for fair." Pepper arrived at this decision a couple of weeks after the opening of the spring-training season, aided thereto by the knowledge that several of the club's stars were not rounding into playing form as rapidly as they might have done. Angarola, Nieswanger, Cordell, Hackett, Mc-Lanahan, and Sherwin were among the laggards. All-night poker parties with unlimited liquid refreshments were gumming the wheels of progress, and while Joe suspected the cause, he had never been able to catch the miscreants full-handed, as it were. Draw poker is a fine game, but very few men can train on it. This was the situation when Fowler joined the team. The first time the old reporter walked into the dining-room, Angarola, ring leader in all the deviltry afoot, and self-constituted chairman of the room committee, cocked an inquiring eye at "Tiny "Hackett, the short stop. "Look who's here!" said Nieswanger, an other of the fiery and untamed spirits. "We'll have to slip him some of that 'welcome-to-our-city' stuff, won't we?" "No hurry," said Charlie Cordell. "Give the old guy a chance to unpack his things and settle down. Maybe he's got some of his pets with him. Let him 'light and run along a while." There is nothing new in the practical-joke line, particularly among ball players. Away back in the early days of the game, a practical humourist conceived the idea of letting himself into a friend's room and "stacking the furniture." Ever since then this form of humour has been highly esteemed among ball players. The Daffydils had a room committee second to none in any league, and when Angarola and company were through with a man's belongings nothing was left to the imagination. It was the Daffydil method of initiation, signifying no ill will, but rather a rough sort of a welcome. Of course, the committee honoured Fowler with a call. One evening the old gentleman stepped around the corner to the telegraph office, and when he returned, having been absent but a scant quarter of an hour, he dis covered evidences of the good feeling of the Daffydils. Old Four-eyes was wise, and he was also patient. After a long search in the dark he located the missing electric-lightbulbs, and be held the extent of the damage. Four hours' hard work returned some sort of order out of chaos. It is astonishing how much four or five young men can accomplish in a short space of time; and a Saratoga trunk, emptied after the fashion of a terrier digging at a rat hole, creates a vast amount of confusion in a small room. It was a very fine job, but the members of the wrecking crew, by this time playing poker in CordelPs room, with a blanket over the transom, and paper stuffed into the cracks of the door, were disappointed. "I wonder," said Nieswanger, cautiously "skinning" his hand for openers, "if that was all the bunk about his having lizards and things. He got two crates of something by express the other day, but if there was any lizards or things in that room, I don't know where they were hid ing. Hey?" 1 * Maybe he doesn't keep 'em in his room," suggested Angarola. "I'll bet he's got 'em somewhere at that." "We'll have to keep tab on him and find out," said Hackett. "Come on, Charlie; what are you doing?" "I'll crack it," said Cordell, shoving two blues to the centre. "It'll cost you burglars a dollar to draw against my little pair." The next morning at breakfast old Four-eyes favoured the assembled athletes with his usual bland smile, and the members of the room committee, watching him narrowly out of eyes red der than they should have been, discovered no trace of annoyance in his manner. "Takes it like a sport," whispered Hackett to Nieswanger. "Suppose he knows who did it?" "Of course he does!" said the left fielder. "He's got sense enough to know that it won't do him any good to make a holler. Gee, but I've got an awful headache!" That morning Joe Pepper, surveying his warriors, noted the red eyes and the extreme lassitude which marked the morning practice of the wrecking crew. To these miscreants he announced his change of policy. "I've stood a lot of fooling," said the man ager, "but from now on, you fellows have got to cut it out. You're not taking care of your- selves; you're not giving the club your best services. After this, the very first fellow that I catch out of bed at eleven o'clock is going to be fined enough to make it interesting. I gave you boys a chance, and you played me for a boob. Remember now, no more booze and no more poker. If you think this is a joke, you let me catch you and it'll cost you a month's pay all around. Understand?" For a few days this terrible threat held the disorderly element in check. Joe Pepper, hav ing changed from Jekyll to Hyde, openly patrolled the corridors of the hotel at un seasonable hours, listening at keyholes for sounds of revelry by night, and an immediate improvement in the condition of several members of the team was noticeable. Their natural outlet closed, the wreckers turned to other fields of entertainment, with one important result. On a Friday night Angarola and Nieswanger were playing pool in the billiard room at the hotel when Hackett burst in upon them, breathless. "I've got 'em located!" he panted. "Got who located?" demanded Angarola, elaborately chalking his cue. "Got what located?" "The lizards!" said Hackett. "About a thousand of 'em!" "You don't say so!" cried Nieswanger. "Then he had 'em here all the time?" "Sure!" said Hackett. "He's got 'em up in a vacant room on the top floor, the whole flock of 'em. Some of 'em are incages and boxes, and some of 'em are running around loose." "You saw 'em?" asked Angarola. "Of course I did! I spotted the old boy coming down from the top floor this noon, and I went nosing around up there while he was writing his stuff. He must have framed up some deal with the hotel folks on the strict Q. T. I picked the lock of the door with a hair pin and looked 'em over — horned toads, long-tail lizards, short-tail lizards, bobtail lizards, and one great big fellow with a blue tongue! Oh, he's got 'em all here, you bet!" Angarola grinned reflectively as he dropped the eighth ball in the side pocket. "It seems a kind of a shame," sagd he, "that the old man should keep all those poor things penned up indoors. A lizard was meant to have some pers'nal liberty. I guess" — and here Angarola paused to beam upon his lieutenants in crime — "I guess we'll have to look into this thing!" They did look into it, and the next morning, old Pour-eyes, ascending soft-footedly to the top floor, found the door of room thirty-seven unlocked, and, with a cold premonition chilling his spine, stepped over the threshold. No rustle and scramble along the sanded floor greeted him; the first glance was enough to tell the story. Gone were the friendly horned toads, representing seven species, three years of correspondence, and no small amount of money. Gone were the little grey swifts, the blue-bellied mountain lizards of the Pacific coast, and the black racers of the South — all gone. A wire cage, upsidedown in the middle of the floor, was a melancholy reminder of the gem of the collection, the blue-tongued Australian skink, worth twice his weight in gold. It had taken Fowler four years to make his collection, and it had been dispersed over night. Forty-seven seconds afterward, Joe Pepper, attacking his grapefruit at the breakfast table, was violently shaken by a wild-eyed little old man, who cried: "A joke is a joke, but where are my lizards? "Where are they?" Lefty Lucas, sitting with Sam Whelan, said: "What did I tell you? He ain't crazy or anything! Just look at him!" Whelan shook his head. An old man in a black stock and round eyeglasses, who dances, and sputters, and howls, may easily be mistaken for a lunatic. Joe Pepper listened with his mouth open, while Angarola, Nieswanger, and Hackett exhibited lively interest and curiosity. "Lizards?" said Joe Pepper. "What lizards!" "Come and see! Come and see!" cried Fowler. Pepper accompanied him to the top floor, where he gazed upon the ruin wrought by the unknown miscreants. "Almost my entire collection!" chattered Fowler. "One hundred and fifteen specimens; fifty-eight species! It took me four years to get them together; last night they were here, and now they're gone! Your rowdy ball play ers have stolen them! I was warned they'd do it! I can sue your club, sir! I can recover heavy damages!" "But what did you want the things for?" demanded the sometimes practical Pepper, peering into the late habitation of the blue-tongued Australian skink. "My book!" screamed the old man. "'Lacertilia of the Western Hemisphere! ' I am writing a book! I'll sue It took two hours to explain to Mr. Fowler that he could not bring suit without definite proof, and just as he was beginning to listen to reason, a bell boy brought word that the back yard of the hotel was full of lizards. It was, but most of them were dead. A few of the horned toads survived the fall from the top floor, being hardy vertebrates, but the Australian skink, the swifts, the blue-bellied moun tain lizards, and the black racers had passed from captivity into the freedom of the great beyond. Fowler's language surprised even the ball players, some of whom assisted in gather ing up the defunct reptiles. Joe Pepper made an investigation, and old Four-eyes cross-questioned every one in the hotel, but nobody seemed to know a thing about the affair. Angarola was particularly loud in denouncing it as an outrage. Hackett and Nieswanger stood pat on an alibi, and Charlie Cordell, out of it for once, depended upon the plain truth. Fowler fumed, and raved, and threatened for the better part of a week before he made up his mind that no redress was possible. In his heart he felt certain of the identity of the culprits, but lack of definite proof rendered him helpless. At the end of the week his mind began to work in another channel, and he sent a long telegram to a curio dealer in Chicago, beginning with these words: Ship me express the three specimens Heloderma suspectum left in your care. "What's that?" asked the night operator. "A cipher?" "Well," said old Fowler, "it amounts to the same thing." The storm blew over, and the wrecking crew went back to draw poker in Hackett's room — with a blanket over the transom and paper chips, which do not rattle. Sam Whelan and Lefty Lucas occupied the room next to Hackett's, with a common bathroom between. Fow ler took to dropping in on Whelan late in the evening, much to Lucas' disgust. There were times when the riffling of cards could be distinctly heard by Whelan's guest, but he said nothing until the express agent notified him of the arrival of a strong wire crate. "Come on up to my room a minute," said Fowler to Whelan. "I've got something I want to show you." "Whelan followed, wondering. Old Four-eyes slipped out the top slide of the crate and bade Sam look inside. Sprawling in the sand were three vicious-looking reptiles, thickset and stumpy in outline, covered from their flat, broad heads to their heavy tails with beadlike nodules in regular patterns of black, brown, yellow and pink. 1 ' Holy cats! "gasped the ball player. "What are they?" "A species of lizard from the Great American Desert," said Fowler. "That one over in the corner is the biggest one I have ever seen. Aren't they beauties?" "They are if you say so," said the diplomatic Sam. "What do you call 'em?" "Gila monsters," said Fowler. "'Heloderma suspectum' is the scientific name." "I'll take your word for it," said Whelan. "I'd suspect 'em on sight. Will they bite?" "If you give 'em a chance," said Fowler. "They're supposed to be poisonous, but they are so slow on their feet that very few people have ever been bitten by them." "They'd have to do a hundred yards in nine seconds flat to catch me!" announced Sam. "Golly, what ugly-looking brutes!" "They aren't handsome for a fact," said old Four-eyes, beaming behind his glasses. "Just for fun, I call 'em the ' National Commission.'" "Got 'em named, have you?" asked Whelan, backing away from the crate. "Oh, yes," said Fowler. "I call the big one Ban Johnson, because he's the boss. The one in the middle is Garry Herrmann, and this one here is Lynch." Whelan roared at this odd conceit. "What's the idea of bringing them down here?" he asked. "This ain't no healthy place for lizards. Some one might turn these babies loose, and you'd lose 'em." "No," said Fowler. "Nobody will bother these fellows. Nobody would dare get that close to them. I brought them here for a certain purpose. You know what happened to my other specimens. That little joke cost me about five hundred dollars — to say nothing of my time, and the book I intended to write. I tried to get satisfaction from Pepper, and there was nothing doing. Sam, what does a fellow do when the manager of the club won't listen to his complaint and the league won't help him?" "I dunno," said Sam blankly. "Puts it up to the National Commission, I guess." Fowler chuckled and tickled "Ban John son" with the end of a pencil. The creature made an odd, hissing sound, and moved ponderously across the cage. "You've said it, Sam!" said Fowler. "That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to put my case before the National Com mission — this commission!" Whelan sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Fowler with unblinking eyes. "He is crazy, after all!" thought the pitcher. "Angarola and his bunch did it," said Fow ler. "I feel sure enough of it to take an oath, but I couldn't prove it. Now, then, Sam, I owe those fellows something, and if I can't get square with them one way, maybe I can in another." "That sounds reasonable," said Whelan, "but how can you get hunk?" "Easy. They play poker in Hackett's room, don't they, next door to you with the bath room in between? Pepper has gone on record that he would fine the next man he caught breaking training rules a month's salary. Sup pose he should catch that bunch— "Nix!" said Whelan. "You wouldn't tip 'em off to Joe, would you? That wouldn't be playing the game, and besides, they'd make your life a hell on earth." "You misunderstand me," said Fowler. "Suppose something should happen that would make them tip themselves off? Suppose— And here old Four-eyes departed into the realm, of conjecture, while Sam rolled about on the bed and laughed until the tears came. "A grand idea!" he gurgled. "Oh, you National Commish!" The hour was very late, or very early, just as you prefer. Hackett was entertaining, as usual, and four members of the wrecking crew were seated about a small table upon which was spread a thick woollen blanket, serving as a silencer. The men talked in guarded whispers. "If I'd caught that spade I was looking for," complained Nieswanger huskily, "I'd have made you put those three K-cards back in the deck!" "There you go again!" said Angarola. "I came near owning a railroad once. Asked the man if he'd give it to me, an' he — hie! — he says' No! ' If he'd said ' Yes '— "Oh, shut up and deal the cards!" grumbled the genial host who was losing. "I'd just as soon play poker with a lot of ole women as with you guys! Any rye left in that bottle, Charlie?" Cordell lifted a quart' bottle and shook it, listening to the thin tinkle. "Mighty little. Guess you'd better switch to bourbon. It's back of your chair." Angarola riffled the cards and dealt swiftly. The game proceeded. Losers sought consolation in the form of raw liquor, and winners drank to continued prosperity. "S'pose ole Joe come hornin' in now, what?" suggested Angarola at four in the morning. "Month's sala'y gone jus' like that!" He snapped his fingers in the air. "Forget it!" commanded Hackett. "Whose 'do' is it?" At five o'clock it was decided to play one round of two-dollar jacks and break up the entertainment. Hackett protested feebly and clamoured for the removal of the limit. "Jus"s you shay!" remarked Nieswanger. "Bet 'em to the ceiling!" He dealt clumsily, and Angarola, scrutinising his cards with drunken gravity, pushed a stack of blues to the centre. "Cost you twenty bucks t"sociate," he mumbled. "Anybody goin' stay!" Hackett examined his hand with many grunts and groans, and then, taking out his wallet, extracted therefrom a yellow-backed bill which he tossed into the pot. "Make it fifty altogether!" he said thickly. "Too strong for my little pair," said Cordell, and Nieswanger also passed. Angarola grinned at Hackett across the table. "01' boy's tryin' throw scare into me!" he said. "Out on a limb. Goin' try to steal my stack — hie! — blue chips. Anybody but you, Hack, — an' I might — 'ic — might let'm get 'way with it! Le's look see." Then Angarola counted his checks and discovered that he was "still pretty fat," as he expressed it. "No, Hack!" he said, at length. "Can't steal nothin' from li'l Angie!" He pushed more blue chips to the centre of the table. Just then the bathroom door creaked slightly, but the players did not hear it. They were wrapped up in the one big pot of the evening. "How many?" said Nieswanger, picking up the deck. "Me?" said Angarola. "Oh, I guess — 'ic! — I'll jush play these!" "If you had a pat hand," muttered Hackett shrewdly, "you'd have given me a back raise. That being the case, I won't take any cards myself. Now bet your head off!" "Whew!" whistled Nieswanger. There was a long silence. Angarola was be ginning to wish that he had drawn to his three tens. He scratched his chin and looked thoughtfully about the room as if he expected the furniture to give him some hint. His wandering eyes fell upon the bathroom door. It was slowly opening. Angarola studied this phenomenon gravely. As he watched the widening crack, a blunt pink nose appeared, followed by a flat, venomous head, covered with spotted warts. What ever it was, the thing seemed to be moving. Two pudgy forelegs next came into view, and then a thick barrel of a body, elaborately beaded in black and yellow. Angarola's eyes were glassy, and his lips worked soundlessly. "Come on there!" urged the nervous Hackett. "Your bet, Angie! Don't go into a trance." "Say!" whispered Angarola hoarsely. "Am I drunk, or is that thing — alive?" The terror in his voice caused the players to whirl in their chairs just as the first mem ber of the "National Commission" heaved its ugly shape over the threshold. Close behind the slowly swaying tail came two more pink- and-black horrors, and in the instant of para lysed silence which ensued was heard a scratch ing, scraping sound, as the blunt claws bit into the carpet. Scientists disagree as to the deadly nature of the bite of the Heloderma suspectum, probably because no man with the use of his legs ever allowed one to get close enough to make a fair test. Cordell has always claimed that if Hackett had kept his mouth shut the most painful features of the incident might have been eliminated. Sam Whelan and old Four-eyes, crouching in the bathroom, gave testimony that four men yelled simultaneously — four blood curdling, ear-piercing yells, followed immediately by a sound of smashing furniture. That was Nieswanger, trying to jump over the table on his way to the door. Joe Pepper, always a light sleeper, leaped out of bed at the first outcry, and sprang into the hall in time to see four of his hired men dash wildly out of Hackett's room, yelling as if their lives depended upon the amount of noise they could make. The manager, first amazed at the spectacle, and then curious as to the cause of the scream ing exodus, hurried to Hackett's room. He saw the overturned table and the poker chips upon the floor. He saw the empty bottles, and he smelled of them. He saw the blanket hung over the transom, and he smiled a hard smile. ''Caught with the goods!" said Joe Pepper. "With the goods!" But of the "National Commission" the man ager saw not so much as a single claw or tail. Fowler had moved swiftly, and the recall of the Commission had been extremely sudden. "You heard what I said," remarked Pepper to the victims that morning. "A month's salary — and it goes. I'm as liberal as anybody. I don't object to a little draw poker once in a while, but I draw the line at delirium tre-mens!" "But, Joe," pleaded Hackett, "we all saw 'em, I tell you! They were right there in the room! One of 'em tried to bite me!" "Something bit you all right," said Pepper unfeelingly, "but what did came out of a bottle. What's the use of your lying about it?" Old Four-eyes is still working upon his book. Between times he travels with the Daffydils. He could leave the door of his room wide open, day or night; no ball player would think of disturbing his possessions.