After all, a king was
greater than a pitcher, if you came down to it--in some ways, certainly.
He stared until the group left the table. He could actually have touched
the Pitcher as he passed. Would wonders never cease?
Two men in uniform helped him into the big red car again, tenderly, as
if he were fragile. He had meant to return to the garage, but now he saw
the more dignified way was to stop at his own house. Further, Paul
should take him to the office in the morning and call for him at
four-thirty again. He wouldn't be afraid to ride in the red car even in
daylight now. Sitting there not twenty feet from that Pitcher!
"Eight o'clock in the morning," he said curtly to Paul as he descended.
And Paul touched his leather cap respectfully as the car moved off.
Cassidy lounged near in shirt sleeves.
"I see three was kilt-up in wan yistaday in th' Bur-ronx," said Cassidy
interestedly.
"Good thing for the tired business man, though," said Bean, yawning in a
bored way. "And that fellow of mine is careful."
Then his seeming boredom vanished.
"Say, you can't guess who I saw just now. Close to him as I am to you
this minute--"
* * * * *
Solitary in the big red car, descending the crowded lanes of the city
the next morning, Bean's sensations were conceivably those that had been
Ram-tah's at the zenith of his power. There was the fragrant and
cherished memory of the Greatest Pitcher, and a car to ride solitary in
that simply blared the common herd from before it.
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