"When? Where?"

"As we were leaving the theater. The lobby was crowded, and we were in the back of the jam. Suddenly I saw her over the heads of the people. She was just getting into an auto that was occupied by a handsome woman with snow-white hair. I wasn't mistaken; it was Virginia. I couldn't get to her. I tried to call to her, but she didn't hear me. I'll never say you were mistaken again, Lefty. Somehow you seem always to be right."

Locke scarcely heard these final words. He was thinking rapidly. A sudden ray of hope had struck upon him. Confound it! Where was Stillman? He sprang to the telephone and called the _Blade_ office again.

"Jack is the one best bet in this emergency," he said, as he waited for the connections to be made.

He got the reporter on the wire, and Stillman stated that he had not been in the office ten minutes, and was about to call Lefty. Could he come up to the Great Eastern right away? Sure.

The feeling of depression and helplessness that had threatened to crush Locke began to fall away. The door he had sought, the one door by which there seemed any chance of pa.s.sing on to success, appeared to be almost within reach of his hand. In her excitement at the theater, Janet had not possessed the presence of mind to call the attention of her friends to the snowy-haired woman, but he knew that she could describe her with some minuteness.

"Stillman knows everybody," Lefty said. "It may be clew enough for him."

There was a rap on the door. A messenger boy appeared with a telegram.

Locke ripped it open and read:

Jones sick. Team busted. I'm busted. Signal of distress. How about that five hundred? I knead the dough. Don't shoot! Wire cash. WILEY.

"Trouble in another quarter," muttered Lefty, handing the message over to Janet. "How am I going to send him that money? I can't force Weegman to do it. Wiley has a right to demand it. If I don't come across, he'll have a right to call the deal off."

"But Jones is sick," said Janet.

"Still it was a square bargain, and I mean to stand by it. Jones is sick. He was sick that day in Vienna; that was what ailed him. He showed flashes of form when he braced up, but he was too ill to brace up long.

I've wondered what was the explanation, now I have it. Get him on his feet again, and he'll be all right. I've got to hold my grip on Jones somehow."

Kennedy and Stillman appeared at the Great Eastern together. First, Lefty showed them the message from Cap'n Wiley. Over it the former manager screwed up his face, casting a sharp look at his successor.

"If you can trust this Wiley," he said, "send him two hundred, and tell him to bring Jones north as soon as Jones can travel. Don't worry.

Wiley's outfit didn't come under the national agreement, and Jones'

name on a Stockings contract ties him up."

"But without drawing money from the club I haven't the two hundred to spare now. I can't draw."

"I'll fix that. I've got two hundred or more that you can borrow.

After the training season opens, you'll pretty soon find out whether or not you've picked a dill pickle in your dummy pitcher."

Janet told Stillman about seeing Virginia Collier, and gave him a fairly minute description of the woman Virginia was with. The reporter smoked a cigarette, and considered.

"I think I can find that lady with the snow-white hair," he said, after a time. "Leave it to me. You'll hear from me just as soon as I have something to tell."

With a promising air of confidence, he took his departure, leaving Kennedy and Locke to attend to the matter of Wiley and Mysterious Jones.

Of course, the southpaw told the old manager all about Skullen's attempt at revenge, but he did not do so within the hearing of Janet, whom he did not care to alarm. The veteran chuckled over the result of the encounter in the back room of Mike's saloon.

"Right from the first," he said, "you was picked for something soft and easy. I knew you was a fighter, son, but Weegman and his gang didn't know it. Mebbe they'll begin to guess the fact pretty soon."

A few minutes after eight that evening, Stillman returned to the hotel and found Locke waiting with what patience he could command. The reporter wore a smile, but he declined to answer questions.

"Mrs. James A. Vanderpool's private car is waiting for us at the door," he said. "Bring Mrs. Hazelton, Lefty. We're going to make a call."

"Mrs. Vanderpool? The widow of the traction magnate? Why, what--"

"Now don't waste time! Somebody else can gratify your curiosity a great deal better than I. In fact, I know so little about the facts at the bottom of this queer business that any explanations I'd make would be likely to ball things up."

The magnificent residence of the late James Vanderpool was on upper Fifth Avenue. They were ushered into a splendid reception room. In a few minutes an aristocratic-looking woman with white hair entered, her appearance bringing an involuntary exclamation to Janet's lips.

"It's the very one!" she breathed excitedly, her fingers gripping Lefty's arm. Stillman introduced them to Mrs. Vanderpool, who met them graciously.

"Virginia will be down in a minute or two," said the lady. "For reasons, she has been staying with me since she returned from abroad.

I'll let her tell you about it." She regarded Locke with frank interest, yet in a manner that was not at all embarra.s.sing, for it plainly contained a great deal of friendliness. "Virginia has told me much about you," she stated. "It has never before been my good fortune to meet a professional baseball player. My niece is very fond of Mrs. Hazelton."

"Your niece!" exclaimed Lefty.

"Virginia is my niece, although I have scarcely seen her since she was a very small child. Here she is now."

Virginia ran, laughing, to meet Janet. After the manner of girl friends, they hugged and kissed each other.

"Really," said Virginia, "I should give you a good shaking for not answering all my letters!"

"Your letters!" cried Janet. "I've received only two letters from you in goodness knows how long! I answered them; and wrote you a dozen to which I got not a word of reply."

They gazed at each other in blank uncertainty for a minute or two, and every trace of laughter died from Miss Collier's face. Her blue eyes began to flash.

"Then," she said, "our letters were intercepted. I can't remember whether I posted any of mine or not, but I was so worried over father that it is doubtful if I did. I let my maid attend to that. She nearly always brought the mail to me, too. When I obtained positive proof that she was dishonest, I discharged her. Even now it's hard to believe she was so treacherous."

"But why should she intercept our letters? I don't understand, Virginia."

"There has been a dreadful plot to ruin my father. You'll hardly believe it when I tell you. I find it difficult to believe, even now."

She shivered, some of the color leaving her face. "It was necessary to cut us off from any true information of what was happening to his business interests. Letters from you might have given me an inkling, Janet, and so they were secured and destroyed before they ever reached my hands. Other letters met the same fate. Mr. Weegman declared he wrote several which I know my father never got."

"Weegman!" exclaimed Locke incredulously. "Why, he--"

"Doctor Dalmers warned Mr. Weegman that father must not be disturbed or excited in the least over business matters. He said such a thing might have a fatal effect on his heart. Still Weegman says he wrote guardedly several times, mildly hinting that things were not going right."

"The liar!" whispered Lefty to himself.

A bit in the background, Jack Stillman was listening with keen interest, thinking what a sensational special article the truth regarding this affair would make.

"We were surrounded by wretches who had no compunction," declared Virginia Collier. "It was I who first suspected them. My father was too ill, and the doctor kept him under opiates almost all the time, so that his mind was dulled. After I discharged Annette I became suspicious of the nurse. I spoke to Doctor Dalmers about her, but he insisted that she was all right. He insisted too earnestly. I began to watch him without letting him realize I was doing so. Once or twice I found a chance to change father's medicine for harmless powders and clear water, and it seemed to me that he was better than when he took the medicine. He was very weak and ill, but his mind seemed clearer. I kept the medicine away from him for two days in succession, and got an opportunity to talk to him alone. I succeeded in convincing him that the change of climate, the baths, and the stuff the doctor had given him were doing him no good at all. In London there was a physician whom he knew and in whom he had confidence, Doctor Robert Fitzgerald. I urged him to go to Doctor Fitzgerald, but not to tell Doctor Dalmers of his intention, and I begged him to refuse to take any more of Doctor Dalmers' medicine.

We were in Luchon, and all the way to London I had to watch like a hawk to keep that medicine from father, but I succeeded, although I became extremely unpopular with Doctor Dalmers. The minute we reached London, I went to Doctor Fitzgerald and told him all that I suspected.

Although he could not believe such a thing possible, he accompanied me at once to our hotel. Doctor Dalmers was taken by surprise, for he had not antic.i.p.ated this move. When I discharged both him and the nurse, he gave me a terrible look. Of course, I could not have carried this through, had not Doctor Fitzgerald been a close friend of my father.

Dalmers called Fitzgerald's action unprofessional, and made threats, but we got rid of him."

Despite the fact that she was such a mere slip of a girl, it was evident that she possessed brains and the courage and resourcefulness to use them. Mrs. Vanderpool seemed very proud of her. Lefty expressed his admiration.

"I knew," Virginia continued, "that there must be something behind such a plot. I did not believe Dalmers had put it through merely to bleed my father while keeping him ill. I was worried over the fact that we knew so very little concerning how father's affairs were going over here. What information we could get by cable or otherwise might be unsatisfactory. So I determined to come home and investigate for myself.

I got father's consent, and I left him in Doctor Fitzgerald's care. I intended to sail by the _Victoria_, but there was a misunderstanding about accommodations, and I was forced to take a later ship. I find father's affairs involved, and I've sent a statement of conditions as they appear to be.

"Of course," she concluded, smiling a little, "I was greatly relieved to learn from Mr. Weegman that he felt sure he had blocked the contemptible efforts to smash the Blue Stockings. He felt highly elated over signing Lefty Locke as manager."