THE little burst of applause which greeted Claire’s entrance had died out. Like the stage light that had descended upon her it had left her with a slight feeling of embarrassment. But she understood that the men, at least, if not the women, were in the mood to applaud anything and everything, for it was a night of festival. It was the first of its kind she had attended. She had known by tradition what was expected, and had seen to it that she played her part. So her gown was the most expensive she could import from Seattle and the largish beaded handbag she was carrying was packed with a roll of money of unusually large proportions.
In the brief eight months since Claire had plunged into the vortex of the Speedway’s gaming life she had become a victim of the fever of it all. Her original purpose had been the simple betterment of her fortunes and those of her mother. She had desired nothing more. For, in her heart, she had no sympathy with the reputation of the place. The whole idea had been cold business. But by degrees her viewpoint had changed, and the rich youth in her had gained ascendency. The place, the life, the game, swiftly took possession of her, and all of the dead father latent in her young soul had stirred to an irresistible passion. The lure of that centre table she had made hers, the rattle of the chips, the feel of the delicate pasteboards in her nimble fingers, were all things she had come to live for. She had learned to love it all with a real passion.
In the process of time there had been scarcely a moment of disillusion. Her beauty had gained her a deep place in the hearts of the men. And the women, whatever their real feelings, bowed before a creature whom the other sex had set on so exalted a pedestal. Then her skill; her spirit. At the realisation of these things even the women stood by in frank admiration, while her amazing good fortune filled them with superlative envy.
Claire had been staunch and true to herself and her purpose. Never once had there fallen a lapse. She eschewed the vices she witnessed in others of her sex who haunted the place, while she gave full run to her capacity for sheer enjoyment. Never once in the thirsty, heated atmosphere of the place had she permitted any beverage more harmful than a mineral water to pass her pretty lips. She revelled in the scent of the tobacco with which men and women filled the atmosphere. But she had not the slightest inclination to essay the mildest of cigarettes herself. Then, too, she had swiftly discovered herself to be possessed of an unerring instinct in defence against the ardent and often crude advances she was constantly encountering amongst the wild youth with which she found herself surrounded.
She had been dubbed “The Saint” from the earliest days of her career at the Speedway. And it was a natural enough appellation. Her given name had suggested, and her methods had inspired. It was the jealous minds of her own sex which had coined the designation. And the manhood of the city had taken it up in real affection.
Before passing to her table Claire came over to the seat where McLagan’s great figure was lounging. And her greeting of him had in it no lessening of their old friendliness.
“Why, Ivor,” she cried, “I didn’t guess you’d be along in town. This is real fine on a party night. And—and”—her lighting eyes surveyed his evening suit—“say, don’t you look swell? You see, I always sort of expect you in your tough old pea-jacket.”
The man’s plain face was alight with undisguised pleasure. He shook his head, and his small eyes twinkled.
“Don’t just say a thing, Claire,” he said quietly. “If you knew the way I feel I guess you’d hand me all the pity you know. I am hating myself under a boiled shirt, but I had to be around to-night anyway. And I’m glad. I’d have missed that dandy gown of yours else, and the picture you’re looking. You’ve got Beacon plumb dazzled and me well-nigh blinded.”
The girl flushed and laughed, but she left his compliment unanswered.
“Are you going to sit in at my table?” she asked. Then with real sincerity, “I’d be glad.”
But again McLagan shook his head.
“No, Claire,” he said reflectively. “I got other notions being here to-night. Besides,” he added with a smile, “my bank roll isn’t equal to better than table-stakes,’ and that’s no sort of use when you get busy. I’ll just sit around awhile. There’s Jubilee yearning to lighten your wad. He sat right in on the jump when you came along, and I don’t fancy he’ll squeal when you’re through with him. No, I’m waiting on Victor Burns, and one or two boys. I can do business here, and—I’ve pleased Max coming.”
Claire glanced round at her table and her eyes were no longer smiling. Her table had filled with the men with whom she was accustomed to play, and they were waiting on her pleasure.
“Why must you please Max?” she asked a little sharply. “Why is it all of you men reckon to please Max?” Suddenly she lowered her voice and inclined towards him. “He’s gone off to the dance hall so I don’t mind. I’m getting to hate him like I used to hate Booker months back. That play of his just now with his light. It sickened me. It surely did, Ivor. And he’s getting like a tame cat. And I hate cats. Give me a dog all the time, and a good, rough, fighting trail husky at that.”
McLagan nodded. His eyes were smiling inscrutably.
“Don’t worry with him,” he said. “Don’t worry with any feller. Max has his uses, which don’t need to concern you. But your boys are looking gun-play my way.”
Claire laughed. The man was dismissing her. This big, burly, plain creature who had persistently asked her to marry him. Just for a moment a sense of pique disturbed her, but it passed immediately, lost in her laugh. There was no other man in that room would have done the same. She nodded at him and took her dismissal.
“Swell clothes hide up all sorts of things, I guess,” she cried, as she moved away, “but it’s queer how the rough in a man can leak through. I guess those boys at the table won’t be in such a hurry to lose me.”
She was gone. And with her going a sense of loneliness at once stole in on McLagan. He desired her for himself. He desired Claire Carver above all things in the world. He could cheerfully have driven the crowd about her table headlong. But that was the feeling that was his at all times at the sight of the men who gathered about her. However, he had come there with a resolve from which he would not deviate, and, in accordance with that which lay at the back of his mind, he had dismissed her to the game which he knew was her passionate delight.
Victor Burns had just passed the curtained archway, and hard on his heels was a newcomer who at once claimed all McLagan’s interest. For a moment he observed the man while the banker strolled leisurely over towards him. He was a broad, powerful creature in dark clothes, with a pea-jacket tightly buttoned over his chest. His face was clean-shaven and dark, but his eyes were of the palest hue of blue, and as expressionless as those of a dead codfish. It was his eyes that interested McLagan most, and Burns came up almost before he was aware of it.
Burns laughed.
“Hello, Mac, where are the boys? Busy? You seem to be having all sorts of a time to yourself. I’ll hail a flunkey an’ collect a cocktail.”
McLagan edged round towards the empty chair which the banker took possession of.
“Nothing for me, Victor,” he said brusquely. “Jubilee’s in the game there, and the Doc’s oozed off to get a look at the dames in the dance room. Abe’s passed back to his own booth, and young Burt Riddell’s sitting in where his game can’t butt in on his partner’s.” He laughed. “We’re outside it all, eh?”
“I surely am,” the banker admitted promptly as he surveyed the crowd. “You can’t run a bank and play big money at the Speedway. Say——”
He broke off as he caught sight of the man with the pale blue eyes thrusting his way unceremoniously through the crowd about Claire’s table. McLagan followed the direction of his gaze.
“Who’s that tough-looking guy?” he asked quickly.
“Cy Liskard,” the banker said. “He’s a client of mine. And he’s full to the back teeth with dollars and dust. And,” he added slowly, “looks like he is with liquor, too. Guess he’s out for a time. He’ll get it if he sits into the Saint’s game. She’ll skin him to death.”
The stranger’s movements were rough and forceful. He made no pretence. The crowd where he joined it about Claire’s table was at least three deep. It was composed of men in every fashion of clothing, and women whose faces were sufficiently disguised under paint to hide up the worst traces of aging and dissipation. He shouldered his way through and came to a halt immediately behind one of the players. McLagan wondered at the ease, the impunity, with which his purpose was accomplished.
“He’s a roll of ten thousand in his hip pocket, and I can’t say how much more. I wonder the kind of game he’s got lying back of those dead eyes of his.”
Burns spoke reflectively, but his companion made no answer. McLagan had bestirred himself out of his seat. He had perched himself up on its arm, the better to view the scene. His gaze was on the stranger and was swiftly reading the thing that must have been obvious to any onlooker sufficiently interested. The man was clearly under the influence of drink, but by no means drunk, and his “dead eyes,” as Burns had called them, were fixed in a devouring stare upon the girl at the far end of the table. It was not the game that claimed the man. No, it was the girl, who remained utterly unconscious of his regard, lost in the absorbing interest of the hand she was playing.
“You know, Mac,” Burns went on, after a moment’s contemplation of the man, “there’s faces with features that mark a man down in a feller’s reckoning, and leave him with an opinion that he’s no right to on the face of things. But his feeling generally proves right in the end. That boy’s eyes leave me cold in the spine,” he laughed. “To me they’re the eyes of a dead soul. To me, they’re the eyes of a feller who’d better have been smothered at birth. I’d hate——”
He broke off. Above the murmur of voices with which the room was filled the tones of a voice jarred harshly. It was Cy Liskard, and he was speaking to the man behind whose chair he was standing.
“I want to cut in right away,” he was saying. “Ther’s fi’ hundred dollars for your chair, Mister. Does it go?”
McLagan had straightened up from his lounging attitude. Burns, too, was on his feet, and both had moved nearer to the table. Five hundred dollars offered for a “cut-in.” It was sufficiently extravagant. And every eye of those standing around was on the stranger who made the offer.
A few moments passed. The hand came to an end, the pot passing to the man whom the stranger had sought to buy out. Then there came movement, and the player’s voice made itself heard.
“Hand us the dough,” he said sharply. “You can cut right in. If you’ve the nerve to bid five hundred for a chair, I guess you’re more entitled to it than me.”
He rose from his place and Cy Liskard dropped into it. Then he made his way through the smiling crowd.
“Fifteen hundred dollars for six hands leaves me at peace with the world,” he said, as he approached McLagan and the banker. “Ain’t that so, Mac?” he asked, with a wink.
He stood for a moment looking back at the table, and his smile of self-satisfaction suddenly faded out of his eyes.
“I’m kind of sorry I fell for it, though,” he said, lowering his voice. “That guy’s haf soused, and I’ve let him into her table.”
“Maybe it’s just as well you did, Soo.”
Soo Tybert stared at McLagan wonderingly. He was a burly youngster, partner in a dry goods store, and hailed from his father’s wholesale house in Seattle.
“How so?” he asked.
McLagan shrugged.
“He meant cutting in, anyway.”
Burns smiled.
“I guess the Saint’s going to have a swell night,” he said. “Mister Cy’ll be along in the morning to replenish his dollar reserves. Can you beat these boys who come easy by the stuff lying around the creeks? Haf a highball under their belts and the good air of the hills blown out of their vitals, and they’re as ready to pass on their stuff as an elderly, new-made widow-woman.”
But McLagan and the dry goods boy were paying no heed to the banker’s reflections. They were talking earnestly in a low tone, and when they had finished, Soo made a somewhat hurried departure.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Burns, when McLagan returned to his side.
“To hunt up Max.”
“Why?” The banker’s keen eyes had sobered, and a sharp look of doubt accompanied his interrogation.
McLagan indicated the table at which Claire presided.
“What d’you know of Cy Liskard?” he asked, curtly.
“Not a thing. He’s a customer at the bank, that’s all. He’s on pay dirt and hit it good.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know.”
Burns shrugged. But the look in his friend’s eyes interested him.
“There’ll be trouble before the night’s out. I’m going to stop around.”
McLagan’s words came sharply, but in a tone only meant for the banker’s ears. There was a curious hard set to his plain face, and his small eyes were coldly bright. Victor Burns held him in deep regard, and his understanding of him was the understanding of years of intimate association. He had long since probed McLagan’s interest in Claire Carver, and made his estimate of it. And now, as he observed the man’s hard-set look, he realised something of the depths to which he was stirred.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said quietly. “There’s no man around here to-night crazy enough to play tough—not to-night.”
McLagan’s reply came with cold conviction.
“Ordinarily, I’d say you’re right, Victor. But ther’s mischief back of that feller’s eyes. He paid five hundred to cut in. Why? For a hand at poker? Not on your life. I’m going to get in and watch the game.”
McLagan was far too familiar with the poker games played at the Speedway to concern himself with the bigness of the game he was looking on at. It mattered little enough to him the relative value of the heavy red, white and blue chips. Their value might be twenty-five, fifty and one hundred calculated in cents or dollars. It made no impression whatsoever upon his imagination, but the skill of the players was a never-failing source of interest. The human psychology in the game was fascinating beyond words.
To him the young girl, who seemed literally to have given up her life to the lure of the game, was the epitome of all that was demanded of human nature in the play. Her beautiful face smiled or remained serious as mood inclined her. But no change in it was wrought or influenced by the progress of the game. Her mood seemed at all times buoyant, and her flashes of inspiration came and passed without a moment of apparent effort or hesitation. In three hands she had her opponent’s measure with an instinct and observation that were unerring, while she played her own hand with the baffling inconsequence which only a beautiful woman could achieve. The values of every hand, estimated through her understanding of her opponent’s methods, were instinctive knowledge to her, and she played on the instant at all times, while her skill in the draw proclaimed her utter and complete mistress of the game.
A hand had been dealt since Cy Liskard had sat in and the ante had remained unchallenged. Now a jack-pot was being dealt for. Claire’s smile was good to watch, and a light of deep absorption was shining behind her beautiful eyes. She dealt the hand, and sat waiting for the opening or passing of the jack-pot.
Jubilee shook his head and closed his cards up. The next man refused. Cy Liskard picked up some chips and counted them.
“I’m opening for ‘fifty,’” he said, while his curious eyes levelled themselves at the dealer. “Guess that calls a hundred.”
The hush was profound. The onlookers foresaw a big gamble if all the table came in. Then again, it might be a crude bluff on the part of this man who was almost a stranger to them.
McLagan was observing the man with almost cat-like watchfulness. Victor Burns was smiling interestedly, wondering the while how long his customer would last in the hands of these skilled and merciless gamblers. To him there was, there could be, no doubt as to the end. This man would stand no chance. He would stand no more chance than a lamb in the midst of a wolf pack.
Of the six players at the table Jubilee alone refused to come in. He threw his cards in and sat back while Claire began to deal for the draw. The betting started at fifty dollars, and the spectators’ interest deepened, for, after the draw, all but Claire and the man who had opened the pot threw in their hands.
Claire’s instant response to the stranger was a raise to five hundred dollars.
It was the sort of thing expected of her, and interest deepened. Cy Liskard had drawn two cards, and the smiling dealer had matched his draw. There could be no indication as to what either of the players held beyond the fact that the man had opened the pot.
Cy’s response was slower in coming. He glanced at his cards and closed them instantly. Then, in a moment, he raised the girl’s bet by one hundred dollars.
McLagan never for an instant withdrew his gaze from the man, for it was the man who interested him. It seemed to him the dead eyes had somehow come to life under the purpose driving him, and he was endeavouring to read and grasp that purpose. To McLagan it was a face masking completely every sign of emotion, but he felt that emotion was burning deeply behind the lustreless eyes, and somehow the conviction of lurking evil was irresistible.
Victor Burns, like all the rest around the table, had eyes only for the beautiful woman, with her graceful figure a-shimmer with the twinkling beads of her gown, and with her wealth of vivid hair under her modish hat framing a face which he was never tired of gazing upon.
Claire smiled her prompt reply, her lips parting and revealing a row of perfect teeth as she “saw” the bet and raised it another five hundred. The challenge was thrilling and on the instant every eye focussed on the man at the end of the table.
He raised his strange eyes and gazed hardly into those of the girl, and as he passed his chips into the centre of the table, McLagan drew a deep breath.
“Curse it, ther’s your fi’ hundred, an’ another on top of it. Will you see it?”
“Surely. And raise it.” Claire’s retort came in tones of smiling, unruffled calm. “It’ll cost you a thousand more.”
The man laughed. But the laugh was harsh and unconvincing in its lack of mirth.
“I like it in thousands,” he cried, as the girl’s chips were slid into place to swell the pot. “There’s your thousand and another. Well?”
There was a shuffling of feet amongst the spectators and several coughed. It was an expression of the wave of excitement surging.
“Perfectly well.”
The girl matched his bet and raised it another hundred. And the man laughed again with a further challenge.
“It’ll cost you another thousand!” he cried, and his tone was exulting.
Victor Burns found himself holding his breath while he waited for the girl’s move. Just for one instant her eyes flashed out of their usual calm. There was real excitement in them now. And he wondered if at last she had been caught out of her depth.
“And more,” she said. And her voice was perfectly steady. “One thousand more.”
Her chips had become exhausted and she thrust forward a roll of bills. Then she sat waiting for the man to come again.
It was the supreme moment when the test of nerve was at its highest pitch. The onlookers understood. Big game as they were used to witnessing at this centre table, it was the first time they had looked on with stakes rising by a thousand dollars at a bet. The question in every mind was the same. The man was obviously a gold man with a pouch full of dust. What was its limit? How far would he go under the influence of the surroundings and the liquor he had obviously consumed?
Cy Liskard clutched his cards and laughed harshly.
“Come again,” he shouted. “There’s your thousand an’ another.”
He literally flung the bills on the table, for he, too, had exhausted his chips. “Ther’s nigh fifteen thousand in the pot. Can you see it an’ raise it? Raise it—if you’ve the grit.”
“Sure, I will,” Claire replied with just a suspicion of sharpness in her tone for all her smile. “Come again, Mister man. Let’s see your colour. You haven’t the stuff in you to raise that. It’ll cost you fifteen hundred.”
The girl’s breath came quickly for all her self-control. There was challenge in her tone, a woman’s taunting. But to McLagan, who knew her every mood, there was more. In his mind he questioned her nerve if the man came back at her, and he edged his way nearer, and his instinct was to support and strengthen her in the weakness he fancied she was beginning to betray.
He reached her side, and her opponent was forgotten. Just for one instant her pretty eyes flashed a smiling upward glance into his plain face, and a wave of relief surged through his anxious mind. Her eyes were full of the confident courage he had feared for.
“It’s good enough!”
Cy Liskard threw his cards on the table face downward.
“It’s yours, my lady. I’m done.”
A gasp of astonishment came from the onlookers. The man’s defeat, his weakness, left them amazed. Then, as Claire reached out and collected the pool, short and sharp came Jubilee’s challenge.
“Your ‘openers,’ Mister!”
Cy Liskard turned his unsmiling eyes on the man. His gaze was cold for all the harshness of his response.
“What the hell!” he cried.
Then he reached towards his cards and sought to turn them. In doing so he displayed all five. Perhaps it was intentional—perhaps, in a fury of resentment at the challenge in his defeat, the thing was inadvertent. Whatever it was, the revelation was complete and a gasp of amazement greeted his action.
He had thrown in four aces!
A chorus of derision followed. There was laughter. There were epithets of undisguised contempt for the play that could yield four aces so tamely. Even Claire smiled her contempt at her late opponent while she thrust her own cards deeply into the remainder of the pack. There was only the straight flush to have beaten that hand, and the man had parted with something like eight thousand dollars.
The comments of the onlookers remained unheeded. The man’s dead eyes were on the woman opposite him. He seemed oblivious to all but the smiling contempt in her eyes.
“Say, ain’t you satisfied?” he demanded, a curious note underlying the harshness of his tone.
Claire laughed derisively.
“Sure I am,” she cried. “I’m always satisfied with easy money. Guess I’m ready to take all that’s coming, even from a feller who’s fool enough to throw in four aces. The deal’s with you, Jubilee.”
She turned to her grinning neighbour, who was shuffling the cards, but the man at the end of the table was not yet done with.
“Say,” he cried again, and his tone matched the frigidity of his soulless eyes. “Ain’t ther’ no change comin’? I handed you better than eight thousand dollars. Guess you didn’t win that pool. I passed it you. You didn’t bluff me a thing. Eight thousand couldn’t scare a feller with my wad. No, sir. You’re queen of this layout, and I don’t seem to yearn for any lesser dame. You got eight thousand a present. An’ ther’s fi’ thousand more fer a dance. Guess that’s what you’re here for, ain’t it? Here’s the stuff. I’m out to buy. It’s right up to you. Well?”
The coldness of it was icy. The brutal purpose consummate. The man was in liquor, but it was no drunken proposal. It was considered and confident.
A hot flush swept over the girl’s beautiful cheeks. It dyed her fine brows right up to the roots of her no less vivid hair. Then she smiled, and her eyes glittered. She shook her head.
“You’re drunk or crazy,” she said. “I don’t know where you come from. I don’t even know your name. But I guess you best get back to the dirt you scratch your gold out of. It’s the only place for men like you.”
Claire spoke quietly, but there was that in her words and tone that was indescribable in its utter contempt. Cy Liskard withdrew the bunch of money he was grasping with a jerk. He stood up. And his cold gaze passed swiftly over the crowd of faces watching the scene. Then his eyes came to rest again on the beautiful creature he so obviously coveted, and dull fury looked out of them.
“You b——!”
But the filthy epithet was smothered. A man’s great fist crashed it back into the foul throat that had inspired it. Cy Liskard reeled. He fell backwards against the chair from which he had arisen. And when he recovered himself he was looking into the muzzle of a heavy automatic pistol with the fierce, narrow eyes of Ivor McLagan behind the weapon.
“You swine! Beat it! Beat it right out of here or I’ll send you plumb to the hell you belong to! Push up your hands, darn you! Push ’em up, an’ beat it!”
But the man made no attempt to obey. His pale eyes stared back into the fury burning in the engineer’s. His hands remained by his sides.
Those looking on realised the thing about to happen. There was movement and scurrying as those in other parts of the room scrambled out of the line of fire. This stranger man was looking on death, calmly and without yielding. Another moment and——
But in that moment an amazing thing happened. It almost seemed as if by magic the room had become peopled by a small army of ghostly, white-robed figures. They came in a sort of wave through the curtained archway through which Claire, earlier in the evening, had made her triumphal entry. And they swept down upon the gold man from behind in the voiceless fashion of avenging spectres.
It was all over in a moment. Cy Liskard was engulfed in the white wave that rushed upon him. There was a moment of confused, voiceless struggle. Then the white-hooded spectres had vanished as they had come and McLagan returned his heavy weapon to the hip-pocket of the evening clothes he so cordially detested.
Cy Liskard had been spirited away by the white-clad Aurora men, and almost on the instant the momentarily interrupted game was resumed amidst a chorus of laughter and eager comment. Nothing would be allowed to interfere with the Speedway’s routine. Even matters of life and death were of no real concern comparable with the success of Max’s annual festival.