Williams, a
little flushed, swaggered across the lobby, and, lifting his hat,
advanced toward the group. The girl smiled pleasantly in response to
his greeting, but as he spoke again she stiffened indignantly and
retired a step involuntarily, as she saw he had been drinking.

"So you prefer that red-headed prison bird to me?" he asked in sneering
tones.

Betty Tabor flushed, then turned pale and facing the handsome, half
drunken fellow, she gazed at him steadily until, in spite of his
swaggering attitude, he grew uneasy and dropped his eyes. Then she
spoke. She spoke just one word, vibrant with all the scorn and anger
in her being.

"Yes."

Without a glance at him she turned and stepped into the waiting car,
leaving Williams staring blankly in the elevator well. The cold scorn
of the girl's single word had stung him more deeply than a volume of
rebuke would have done. Half maddened by jealousy and drink he turned
to cross the lobby, forgetting to replace his hat, and Clancy, whose
attention had been attracted by the pitcher's pursuit of the girl,
grasped him by the shoulder and said sternly:

"Williams, if you take another drink to-night it will cost you a
month's pay."

The manager turned to rejoin his wife, and Williams, seething with what
he considered a double dose of injustice, walked unsteadily across the
lobby. He sat down and meditated over his wrongs. He thought of
Edwards and his offer and rising quickly he walked to the telegraph
office and wrote a message, for which he paid as he handed it to the
night operator. Clancy, who had been talking with friends, was waiting
for an elevator and saw his pitcher writing the message. His forehead
knitted into a worried frown as he turned and slowly walked toward the
elevator again, whistling, as was his habit when he was seriously
disturbed. Clancy determined to watch his left-hander. He did not
speak of the matter to anyone, having decided to await developments.
He watched Williams closely during the remaining games against the
Pilgrims, which the Bears won easily, and during the trip to the city
of the Maroons, where Williams was to pitch the opening game of the
series.

The Bears and Panthers were fighting upon an unchanged basis, only a
fraction of a game separating them in the league standing. With but
eighteen more games remaining on the schedule for the Bears, and
nineteen for the Panthers, the race was becoming more desperate each
day and