A Graveyard to Let

11

Well, thought Cy, here we go.

His view through the mask, behind the waggling bat, swept the field before it returned to Moose Wilson oh the mound. Crystal and Bob, standing by the dugout, had been joined by Huntington Davis and Jean, who were gleefully talking.

"Go on!" yelled Bob. "Get started!"

Moose Wilson, on the mound, woke up. He had seen mean-looking batters before. But never such a face as this big fat Lord Merrivale's, which glared at him with the murderousness of an African witch doctor. But the joyousness of his infield made him forget it.

"Toodle-oo, old thing!" the shortstop called happily.

"Pip-pip and all that," carolled the third baseman, trying not to be audible.

Moose grinned. He'd give the old boy an easy one, dead across the pan, but with just a little steam on it to show Moose Wilson took his work seriously and didn't kid much. Moose shifted his weight to his right foot, flexed his arms, and cradled the ball against his stomach.

Then down came the pitch.

Now here, it is to be feared, the subtle harmonies of Robert Browning would be out of place. Description must be more earthy. The ensuing noise, as H.M.'s bat lashed round, can be described only by the comic-strip word BAM.

It is of course not true, as legend now has it, that H.M belted that ball for a quarter of a mile. But it is true that the outfielders stood motionless, their back turned, and watched the ball as it flashed over fence and trees, whence it dwindled to nothingness against a darkening eastern sky.

"Not so bad, Hank," remarked Stuffy Tyler.

The heart and soul of Cy Norton danced a hornpipe.

Crystal, Jean, and Bob were all applauding.

Sir Henry Merrivale, now leaning negligently on his bat, addressed Moose Wilson.

"Come on, son!" he yelled, in a bored and expostulating voice. "Why don't you start pitchin'?’

Though the infielders called congratulations, they still grinned at this lucky fluke. On the face of the Moose there was now a curious look. Stuffy handed out another ball, which Cy threw back to the pitcher for some flat-hand shuffling with dirt

Moose, who might have written his name on every pitch, was now going through an elaborate wind-up. Cy knew what it was. It was the old roundhouse, a slow and wide-breaking out curve which made novices look foolish when they tried to hit it.

"So?" muttered Sir Henry Merrivale.

He shifted his feet, leaned across the plate, and pasted a screamer just inside first base. A simultaneous yell, going up from many throats, showed that mere practice had snapped into the tension of a ball game.

The first basemen, playing well off the bag, lunged left to spear it with his gloved hand, and fell flat on his face. The right fielder, his legs going like a white wheel against green, raced after the ball—until it curved outside the foul line. It thudded into grass, hopped high in the air, hopped again, and disappeared down the shaft of an abandoned well.

For a moment, dead silence.

"Whatfs the matter, son?" H.M. yelled at Stuffy behind him. "Haven't you got any pitchers in this neighbourhood?"

Crystal Manning uttered her low, rich gurgle of laughter.

Again it is not true, as legend has it, that puffs of smoke issued from Moose Wilson's ears. The Moose remained controlled. But the infield showed restlessness. This was sport no longer; it was going to be murder.

"Here's the last ball," shouted Stuffy in his cracked voice, and handed it to Cy. "You threw that ripped one away, so watch out for this!"

"I’ll watch it, Stuffy," the pitcher called back grimly.

Cy Norton, hot and sweating in his mask and pads, knew what they felt It was the sniff of baseball dust as heady as cocaine. The in-fielders, white figures against brown earth, were strung up, on their toes, eyes flickering towards every base at once.

Moose Wilson snaked his fingers out of his glove. He scrabbled in the dirt with both hands, snaked his fingers into the glove, and stood up with the ball.

A very unorthodox umpire spoke behind Cy.

"He's gonna give you the works, Hank," whispered Stuffy. "This is his fast one."

Moose, standing sideways to the batter, stretched out his arms and again cradled the ball to his stomach. Poising himself, he glanced towards an imaginary runner on first, then his arm lashed over.

The ball, a streak of unwinding white yarn, whacked into Cy’s mitt three inches below H.M.'s bat, which had not moved at all. Cy's right hand didn't come near the ball; the ball stuck in his glove.

"Strike—one!" yelped Stuffy, flinging up his right hand.

Cy, feeling the wires and cramps in his legs, stood up from the crouch and threw back to Moose. Moose Wilson grinned round at the infield, who grinned back and felt differently.

Yes, it was a fast one. Cy, crouching again with the front of his mitt automatically moving back and forth towards Moose, was as wild as the team had felt a moment ago.

(Let him belt just one more, Cy was praying. They mean well, but take the grins off their faces! Take...)

Look out!

Down came the pitch again, low and inside, but flicking a corner of the plate before it thudded into the glove. Cy, off-balance, almost fumbled it H.M., though his bat waggled, did not swing.

"Strike—two!" intoned Stuffy.

Cy's throw back to the pitcher was so high that Moose had to jump for it

Sir Henry Merrivale, his face wooden and with an expression of lofty unconcern, moved out of the batter's box. Shifting the bat from one hand to the other, he wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers.

Though ethics forbade them to laugh aloud, from the whole team of the Maralarch Terrors (except their absent catcher) rose a silent wave of amusement and derision. They liked the old boy again; they could pity him.

H.M. stepped back into the box again, resuming his murderous glare.

Moose Wilson, a man of one-track mind, was going to use his fast one again for the strikeout, and with every ounce of speed behind it. His spiked shoe pawed the dirt of the mound.

"Are you ready, lord?" he called with mock sympathy.

"I'm all right son," H.M. yelled back. "You just attend to your pitchin'."

The centre fielder, though he could not have heard this, was lying on his back in helpless mirth, waving his legs in the air. The second baseman sat down on the sack.

Again Moose grinned at his infield. He poised himself, his arm whipped over, and...

"Goddelmighty!" said Stuffy Tyler.

Hardly had the ball seemed to leave Moose's hand when there was that electrifying crack whose very cleanness sings of a line drive deep into the outfield. The ball, vivid white against brown and green, whistled over short with a slow rise between centre and left The centre fielder, caught flat on his back, rolled over and went crazy. The left fielder, calling on two names out of three in the Holy Trinity, tore towards the fence. Roused and stung, the centre fielder passed him.

But they hadn't a chance. Both, unwatchful, smacked headlong into the fence as the ball cleared it by several inches; it slashed and slapped through tree branches, and then rolled along bumpy ground beyond.

"No pitchers," said Sir Henry Merrivale.

"Not like our day," Stuffy agreed sadly.

"Nope."

"Which of 'em do you like best now, Hank? Matty? Old Pete? Walter Johnson? Bob Shaw-key?"

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."