McCarthy heard the cheers, but he was cold with suppressed anger as he walked to where Williams was standing, and said:
The Bears were going home holding grimly to their claim upon first place in the league race. With but seven games remaining to be played all were against clubs already beaten, and five of the seven were against clubs considerably weaker in every department. Two games were to be played off the home grounds.
The statisticians were busy calculating that the Bears had a decided advantage in the race, yet they were not happy in the homecoming. The ride home was only a few hours long, and they had caught the train immediately after the sensational finish of the final game with the Travelers in order to reach home and get settled by midnight.
Swanson and McCarthy sat together as the train pulled out, talking in low tones.
"I think Clancy is onto him," said Swanson. "Just sit tight. It isn't our move yet. The Boss acted queerly on the bench to-day and has been watching Williams all the time, while pretending not to. I'm going to mingle and see if any of the other fellows are wise to him."
Hardly had Swanson left the seat than McCarthy was surprised by "Technicalities" Feehan, who sat down in the seat vacated by the shortstop.
Feehan was one of the odd characters developed by the national game, a reporter who had traveled with the Bear teams for so many years the players regarded him as a sort of venerable pest who hadn't seen a ball player since Williamson's day, and never such a catcher as Mike Kelly, a first baseman like Comisky or a fielder like Tip O'Neil. He sometimes was called "Four Eyes," from the fact that he wore large, steel-rimmed glasses of great thickness, and his other name was "Technicalities."
He was not at all interested in baseball, excepting as a business. His chief interest was in the Children's Crusades, and he had spent eight years of his spare time in libraries all over America digging out data for his history of those remarkable pilgrimages which he had written and rewritten half a dozen times. Not being a baseball fan he was eminently fair and unprejudiced, and the players thought more of the quiet, studious fellow than they did of the excitable and the partisan reporters who joined their sports and their woes.