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Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars

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<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2> <h3>JOE FOILS THE PLOTTERS</h3> There was a carriage waiting just outside the ball grounds, a carriage drawn by one horse. A man whom Joe had never seen before, so far as he knew, held the reins. “There’s the man who wants you,” explained the lad who had acted as messenger. “Who is he?” asked the young pitcher quickly. “I don’t know him. Where did he come from? Where did you meet him?” “I guess he’ll tell you all you want to know,” said the lad. “All I know is that I was standing outside the ball grounds after the game, and he give me that note to bring in to you. I didn’t come with him.” “Oh, I see,” replied Joe, but he was wondering who the man was, and how the fellow came to know that he was in Fayetteville. “Hope I didn’t take you away from the game,” began the man with what he evidently meant for a pleasant smile. Yet, somehow Joe did not like[198] that smile. The man seemed to have a shifty glance and Joe mistrusted him. “Oh, the game is over,” answered the young pitcher. “I didn’t play in the last part. But what is the matter? Is my mother or father ill?” “It’s nothing serious,” spoke the man. “No one is ill. I came to get you about your father’s patents.” “Oh!” exclaimed Joe. He felt a sensation of relief until he realized the danger that threatened his father’s inventions. Then he asked: “What’s wrong? Is Mr.——” Then he stopped for he did not know whether or not to mention names to this stranger. “I can’t give you any particulars,” said the man with another smile. “All I can say is that they engaged me to come and get you to save time.” “Who engaged you?” asked Joe. “Your father,” replied the man. “He sent me off in a hurry and said I’d find you at this game. I sent you in the note by the lad. Your father had no time to write one, but you are to go to him at once. He wants you to help him about the patent models I think. We’d better hurry.” Joe’s suspicions vanished at once. He knew his father was preparing to send on some models to Washington and now probably some need of haste[199] had arisen necessitating his aid. He climbed up into the carriage, and though he noted at the time that the rig did not seem to be from the local livery stable, which had only a few, he thought nothing of it then. The man flicked the horse with the whip and the animal started off on the jump. Just outside the ball grounds there was a private road leading into the main one. On reaching the chief thoroughfare the man turned north whereas, to reach Riverside, he should have gone south. “Hold on!” cried Joe, “you’re going the wrong way.” “Be easy. It’s all right,” answered the man with a smile. “Your father has taken all his things to a little shop in Denville. He had to have some changes made in the models I believe, and he wanted to be in a machine shop where he could work quietly. He told me to bring you there.” Joe remembered that on one or two occasions Mr. Matson had had some work done in Denville, and once more the suspicions that had arisen were lulled. Joe sank back on the cushions and began thinking of the game just played. His arm was getting quite stiff. “I’ll have to attend to it as soon as I get home,” he mused. “It won’t do to have it go[200] back on me just when things are in such good shape. If they keep on I may become the regular pitcher. Sam certainly did poorly in his part of the game, and I’m not getting a swelled head, either, when I say that.” Joe knew he had done good work, considering his sore arm, and he made up his mind to do still better. The man drove along rapidly, and in about an hour had reached the outskirts of Denville. He turned down a road that was evidently little used, to judge by the grass growing in it, and halted the horse in front of a small building. It did not look like a place where inventors’ models would be made. In fact the shack had a forlorn and forsaken air about it, and Joe looked curiously at it. His suspicions were coming back. “Where is my father?” he demanded. “I don’t see him.” “It’s all right now—it’s all right,” said the man quickly. “Hello in there!” he called. The next instant Joe saw a face at the window. Then it disappeared, but that momentary glance had showed him it was the face of Mr. Isaac Benjamin. In a second it was all clear to him. He had been trapped. He attempted to spring from the carriage seat. [201] “I’m on to your game!” he exclaimed to the man. “Oh, are you? Well, you’re not going to get away!” and with that the man grabbed Joe around the waist, pinning his arms to his sides. Then from the little building came running Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Holdney. “Did you get him all right?” asked the manager of the harvester works eagerly. “I certainly did,” panted the other man, for Joe was struggling to get loose. “Didn’t give me any trouble either, until just now.” “Well, I’ll make lots of trouble for you, if you don’t let me go!” cried Joe. “Now, young man, take it easy,” advised Mr. Benjamin. “We don’t intend to do you a bit of harm, and we only brought you to this place to have a quiet talk with you. It’s in your father’s interest and I hope you’ll overlook the unconventional way we took to get you here. Bring him in,” he added to the man in the carriage and, despite Joe’s struggles he was lifted out and carried into the little building. The door was shut and locked, and he was alone with his three captors. “What do you want of me?” hotly demanded the lad. [202] “Now don’t get excited and we’ll tell you,” said Mr. Benjamin. “It’s about your father’s patents.” “Yes,” broke in Mr. Holdney, “we want to know where they are. He had no right to take the papers and models away from the harvester works. Those inventions are the property of the company and aren’t your father’s at all. We want——” “Better let me talk to him,” advised Mr. Benjamin. “Now Joe, you can’t understand all the ins and outs of this business, for it’s very complicated. You know that your father is working on certain patents about a corn reaper and binder; don’t you?” “Yes,” admitted Joe cautiously, “but I’m not going to tell you anything about it.” “Perhaps you will after you hear all I have to say,” went on Mr. Benjamin. “Now, it’s like this: Your father is unduly alarmed about the safety of his rights in the patents, and I will admit that he has some rights. For some reason he saw fit to take his models and papers away from the shop at the harvester works where he was engaged on them.” Joe smiled—well he knew why his father had removed the valuable models and papers. [203] “What we want,” said Mr. Benjamin, “is to get access to those models. We want to see them for a short time, and also look over the papers. Now you can fix that for us if you will.” “Why don’t you ask my father?” inquired Joe. “We have, but——” began Mr. Holdney. “He won’t listen to reason,” put in Mr. Benjamin. “He thinks we would deprive him of his rights.” Joe thought so too, but he said nothing. “Now if you can quietly get those models and papers and let us have a look at them they will be returned to you without fail,” said the manager. “Your father’s rights will be fully protected. It may seem strange to you for us to make this proposition in this way, and bring you here as we have done, but it was necessary.” “Suppose I refuse?” asked Joe. “Then we’ll——” began Mr. Holdney, in blustering tones. “Now, now, easy,” cautioned Mr. Benjamin. “The consequences may be disastrous for your father,” he said quietly. “I am doing this for his own good. He will not hear of showing the models, but if you can get them for us it will save much trouble and annoyance for—well, for all of us. If you don’t, your father may lose all he possesses and be without a position. I know what inventors[204] are. They can only see one thing at a time. It is a simple thing that we ask of you. Will you do it? Now, you needn’t answer at once. Take a little time to think it over. Go in that room there and wait. We’ll give you half an hour. If by that time you don’t decide to help us we’ll——” “We’ll make you!” exclaimed Mr. Holdney. “I’ve got too much money tied up in this to see it lost by the obstinacy of a boy.” “Well, if you refuse, we will have to take other measures,” said Mr. Benjamin, with a shrug of his shoulders. Joe’s heart was beating fast. He did not know what to do. Being practically kidnapped after he had worked so hard in the game, his fears for his father aroused, it is no wonder that he could not think clearly. He welcomed the chance to go off quietly by himself, but never for a moment did he think of betraying his father. Only for an instant did he place any confidence in what the wily manager had said. Then he knew there must be a trick in it all. “But if I let them trap me it’s my own fault,” thought Joe. “I’ve got to think up some way of escape.” “Well?” asked the manager as Joe hesitated. [205] “I—I’ll think it over,” answered the young pitcher. “All right. You can go in that room,” and Mr. Benjamin opened the door of an apartment leading out of the main one. Joe cast a quick glance about it as the door closed behind him. He noted that it was not locked, but that with three men in the outer room the boy knew he could not escape that way. “And I’m going to escape if I can,” he told himself. “I don’t need any more time to think over what I’m going to do. They shan’t have a glance at dad’s models and papers.” A rapid survey of the room showed him that it had but one window and that was heavily barred. He raised the sash softly and tried the bars. They were rusty but held firmly in the wood. “No use trying that way,” murmured Joe. He heard the hum of voices in the outer room and listened at the keyhole. “Don’t you think he can get away?” he heard the man who had brought him to the place ask the others. “I don’t believe he’ll try,” was the answer from Mr. Benjamin. “After all, we couldn’t hope to keep him a prisoner long. There would be too much hue and cry over it. All I expect is that[206] he’ll be so worried and frightened that he’ll tell us what we want to know.” “Oh, you’ve got another think coming,” whispered Joe. He walked back to the window once more and, as he crossed the room he saw what looked like a trap door in the floor. Kneeling down he applied his nose to the crack. There came up the damp, musty smell of a cellar. “That’s it!” cried Joe. “If I can get that door up I can drop into the cellar even if there aren’t any stairs, and I guess I can get out of the cellar. But can I get that door up?” There was no ring to lift it by, and no handle, but Joe was a resourceful lad and in an instant his knife was out. With the big blade inserted in the crack he managed to raised the door a trifle. He endeavored to hold the advantage he had gained until he could take out the knife blade and insert it again farther down, but the door slipped through his fingers. “I’ve got to get some way of holding it up after each time I pry,” he thought. A hurried search through his pockets brought to light part of a broken toe plate. He had had a new one put on for the Academy game, and had thrust the broken piece in the pocket of his trousers. [207] “This ought to do it,” he reasoned, and it did, for with the aid of that Joe was able to hold up and raise the trap door. The damp, musty smell was stronger now, and Joe was glad to see, in the dim darkness of the cellar, a flight of steps. “They’re pretty rotten, but I guess they’ll hold me,” he murmured. The next instant he was going down them, and he let the trap door fall softly into place over his head. It was so dark in the cellar now that he could see nothing, but when his eyes became accustomed to the blackness he saw the dim light of an outer window. It was the work of but a moment to scramble through it, and a few seconds later Joe was running away from the place of his brief captivity. “I guess I won’t give you an answer to-day,” he murmured as he looked back. He heard a shout and saw Mr. Benjamin rush out. Then our hero caught sight of the horse and carriage and like a flash he made for it. Jumping in he called to the animal and was soon galloping down the road while the shouts behind him became fainter and fainter. “This is the time I fooled you!” cried Joe exultantly, as he urged on the horse. <hr class="cb" /> [208] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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