And then Moose Wilson, a professional, lived up to Bob Manning's description of him. Moose, though he stared long, did not fire his glove at the ground or kick out in a spike dance. He walked up to H.M., and extended his hand.
"Shake, lord," he said simply. "I don't know how the sweet Christ you done it at your age. But I've never been hit like that since I made the minors." The Maralarch Terrors were drifting in. Everybody realized that, in the spiritual sense at least, this day was over, A hint of darkness tinged the soft air; eastward it was already shadowy. Most people—led by Bob (still dazed), Jean (exultant), and Davis (tolerantly smiling)—were flocking round H.M.
"Not the House of Lords?" said Moose Wilson, inside that babble.
"No, son, no! Years ago, y’see, the treacherous hounds tried to blackjack me and stick me in the House of Lords. But I fooled 'em. If you've got to gimme a title, I'm a baronet."
"He's a so-and-so," croaked Stuffy, moaning. "Hank here was the greatest natural hitter that ever poled the old tomato. He trained with us three seasons, in the days when the A's was the A's. And do you know why he wouldn't sign up with us? Because he wouldn't take any money."
"He wouldn't... what?"
"It's something, in England, to do with amateur status," Stuffy said despondently. "I didn't get it then. I don't get it now. But if you ain't a amateur, you're a louse."
Cy Norton moved away.
Just over by the edge of the wood, also away from the crowd, he saw Crystal standing and watching him.
"Bob Manning"—Stuffy's voice again clove through the babble—"you send them outfielders back, you go with 'em, and get that ball Hank just hit into the old graveyard! There's a door in the fence, or you can walk around it! But we don't buy another ball until Saturday!"
"All right, Stuffy! All right!"
Cy pulled his mask back over his head, and dropped it on the grass. The obliging Terrors' catcher helped him off with his chest protector and pads. Cy felt cool and tired. He went straight to Crystal, who had backed into the woods, so that they stood in a deeper green twilight.
"You know," said Cy, "for a while there I completely lost my head."
"How very terrible!" said Crystal with a trace of bitterness. "Completely to lose your head, kick out your heels, and be a human being for once!"
Cy laughed, and seemed to sense an angry trembling from her.
"I didn't mean that," Cy told her. "But I liked Bob's Maralarch Terrors. They were as nice as pie to the poor duffer before he started making monkeys of them. Then they were frantic to get back at him. So the old sinner deliberately allowed two strikes and then lammed the third one over the fence. It was only a game, but how frantic those lads were to win!"
"But you've got to win! In anything in life! How else can you succeed?"
Cy, lost in memory, chuckled.
"When I was about fourteen," he said, "they sent me to a fashionable preparatory school where your business was to be a gentleman and pass the College Board exams. I'm still very fond of that school. But one thing always puzzled me."
"Oh?" Crystal was suspicious. "What?"
"Every time there was a sport event, some maniacs called cheer leaders always tried to puff up a fake frenzy, as though it mattered two hoots whether we beat Hotchkiss or Lawrenceville in a football game. Somebody had written songs full of the word 'honour.' We must win, we sang heroically, for 'the honour of the school.'"
"And what's wrong with that?" cried Crystal, who had been brought up on this philosophy herself.
"Everythings wrong with it, my dear. Unless somebody intends to poison the quarterback or bribe the referee—which I doubt—where does honour come into it?"
In that fragrant greenish dimness of woodland, where he stood so close to Crystal, he wondered why he was babbling these platitudes. But he had really angered her.
"Cy Norton, you're impossible! I don't see why I..." Her voice trailed off and grew small. "I've been throwing myself at your head in a way that's positively scandalous! Don't you care for me at all?"
"If you ask me whether I want to sleep with you," returned Cy, with a directness which made her gasp, "the answer is yes. If you ask me whether I like your company, the answer is yes. But—being in love! What is it? I don't know. When Anne was alive I was sure I knew. But..."
No woman, under the circumstances, could have refrained from Crystal's remark. "Shall I tell you about my three husbands?" she asked.
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because," retorted Cy, "I'm so damned jealous of each one that I want to find him and murder him with a Florentine dagger."
And he put his arms round Crystal, and kissed her for a long time. But both were by way of being amatory experts; both realized the danger of their surroundings at such a time, and both moved back."
"It's f-funny," breathed Crystal, with a gasping laugh. "My ideas about being in love have always been the same as yours."
Cy at the moment couldn't speak at all, so he refrained from comments.
"But," said Crystal, "the real thing does exist. It must, whether we believe in it or not. As Jean will tell you so often, my father and mother..."
Again his arms closed round her. He touched her cheek and her neck, so smooth that the fingers scarcely seemed to brush. Then there was another violent minute or two, before Crystal put her head against his shoulder.
"How—how well do you remember your mother?" Cy managed to ask.
"Only dimly. I was six when she died. She was very kind, but for her there was nobody in the world but Dad; and we knew it Her hobby was painting. Dad..."
"Listen!" Cy said abruptly, and raised his head.
At first it was only a babble of voices, where the crowd still gathered round H.M. and fired questions beyond the edge of the wood.
"I was an amazin' fielder," H.M. said modestly.
"He couldn't field a flock of barns!" croaked Stuffy Tyler. "He was a ice wagon on the bases. But put him into bat, I'm telling you—they just backed the outfield into the next county, and ..."
"It's far past dinnertime!" said Crystal. "The cook will be..."
Cy seized her wrist and impelled her towards the edge of the wood.
And now he heard it
It was somebody's voice, crying far off and yet approaching out of the twilight The baseball field still held its colour and outline as far as the pitcher's box, where the soft dusk began to blur.
But that voice, crying indistinguishable words, had a note of anguish or terror. A white-uniformed figure was running towards them from the direction of the outfield fence. Cy's eyesight could dimly make out what looked like an open door in the high fence.
The white figure stumbled over second base, and fell in the dust Then it struggled up, wabbling, and came on. The first distinguishable word they all heard was the word dead.
It was as though a storm had struck that crowd round H.M. They struggled out, spreading into a line. Cy, still gripping Crystal's wrist, hurried to the front of the group.
The young man he saw running—slowly now, with panting breath—was one whose name or face Cy did not know. But he was one of the outfielders who had been sent to get a lost ball. He was now gasping out words like, "flashlight" and "doctor." He stumbled up to them, his eyes scared under the peaked cap.
"What is it, son?" H.M.'s big voice demanded.
"Out in that graveyard," the young man said between breaths, "the graveyard they don't use any more... on one of the tombstones..."
"Well?"
"Bill and I," the young man said, "found someone's body."
12
Only H.M., Cy, and Davis approached that outfield fence. All others—even Bob Manning, who had not gone out to look for a lost ball—were sternly kept near the dugout