MAX LEPENDE, for all Jubilee Hurst’s estimate of him, was a creature of unusual mentality. His ability was quite beyond question; his morals were something of a less buoyant nature; while his poses were wholly Latin in their extravagance, and contrived to set up an impenetrable armour against those who sought to discover the real man underneath.

The Speedway was the reality of his own dream. Its inspiration was a product of memories and experiences of early life in a land of beauty and an atmosphere of bygone glories. And as such it was a sufficient anachronism in its present setting to grip the imagination of the crude minds which made up the clientele he hoped to pillage in the outland territory he had chosen for his hunting ground.

He boasted the refinements of his designing, and was mercilessly jealous of the Speedway’s fame. The attitude of other minds was less benevolent towards it. The citizens of Beacon Glory were prone at all times to downrightness, and, consequently, they set no halo about the place. But they delighted in the licence it afforded them for indulgence in pleasant surroundings.

The fronting colonnade of five gaudily decorated pillars meant nothing to the citizens of Beacon Glory. Yet they sometimes marvelled at the costliness and the extent of the white paint that looked so drab in the sunlight. Some never even paused to consider the rich carpetings they trod underfoot in the gaming rooms, or the wonderful block-flooring over which their heavy boots glided in the great dance hall. But there were few enough who failed to appreciate the raised private boxes which lined the walls of the latter, furnished as they were with drinking tables, and deeply upholstered chairs and divans, and hung with curtains to be drawn at will. Then there was the glitter of innumerable mirrors, and the broad staircase with its carved balustrades leading to the rooms above, where every game from “crap dice” to “baccarat” could be indulged in.

The general run of the men and women of Beacon Glory demanded a good time. And the Speedway, under Max’s consummate guidance and absolute control, provided for their every need in this direction. Oh, yes, Max saw to that. For underneath his patient, smiling veneer, and his pose of polished respectability, he possessed a hard, unyielding, astute commercial soul, greedy for the last cent of profit he could extract from his customers.

Hardened trail men, no less than educated men from the cities of culture in the outer world, yielded to the seductions of the Speedway. So did the women, who regarded it as a part of their daily lives. The charm of subdued lights in the gaming rooms; the dazzle and glitter at the gilded bars, and in the dance hall; the subtle, rather sickly perfume of the place, the value of which Max so perfectly understood; these things all contributed to make it a veritable temple for the spiritual debasement of its devotees.

On the night of its birthday the Speedway was swept and garnished to the last degree. Fashion and custom were no less strong in Beacon than in the more enlightened dwelling-places of humanity. Every visitor to the place would be clad for the occasion. No woman would dare to appear for the festival without some sort of a new gown. And as for the men, knee-boots would be taboo, and heavy working shoes were under the ban. Every man who was accustomed to resort there would be raiding the shoe store the day before, and, failing evening suits as part of their wardrobes, certainly only the best they possessed could be tolerated.

It was truly a splendid function and possessed all the outward display with which humanity loves to hide up the wealth of moral blemish to which it is unfortunately and unfailingly heir. The place was super-heated and the air was heavy-laden, and Max, as he welcomed his customers and guests, radiated smile, and perfume, and punctilio without discrimination.

Jubilee Hurst, observing him after enduring his own portion of the formalities at the foot of the great staircase in the central hall, realised to the full the delicious mockery of it all. He whispered his comment to Ivor McLagan, who stood beside him, clad in the well-cut evening suit that was anathema to his downright soul.

“You know, Mac, there’s a heap to Max of the feline species. He’s a mitt on him that ’ud shame velvet, and a tongue to match, and I feel plumb sick in the pit of the stomach, and like handling a newly hooked eel, when I get near enough to listen to his fancy dope, and feel the tips of his polished fingers in my hand. Get a line on him bowing around to folks whose bank roll he’s made his life’s study. See his Dago antics. You’d guess he loves us all to death, while all the time he’s out for plunder like any ‘hold-up’ that ever flagged a western express. And we’re all grinning back at him to schedule. And we’re all saying a piece we’ve sort of learnt by heart from years of repetition. Can you beat it? No. I’ll eat his darn feed an’ likely get full up to the back teeth with the liquor he’s going to hand out. But to me it’s simply the change out of the dollars he’s collected out of my wad over a long period of darn foolishness. It isn’t a thing else, unless it’s to say I’m just one of the mutts of life mired at the wrong end of things, an’ can’t afford to act diff’rent.”

McLagan smiled.

“Don’t worry a thing, boy,” he said easily. “It’s just the game of things we’ve all of us got to play more or less as we beat it along the trail to the crematorium. I’d certainly say Max don’t need showing a thing. I want to laff.”

But for all the bitterness of spirit the Italian’s antics might have inspired in those who saw through the mockery of it all, the whole comedy looked to be playing out as the master-mind had designed. It was ordained that the gathering at the Speedway, on this one night in the year, should be a vivid landmark impressed upon the minds of the city’s people, from the banquet to the invited guests, to the ball, and the great gamble that would later take place at the tables. There would be impressive decorum for just as long as decorum could be maintained. And after that, circumstances and the proprietor’s tact, and, failing that, his powers of other persuasion, would deal with every contingency that arose. There would be nothing allowed to occur on that occasion calculated to besmirch the record of the place. That was Max’s purpose. A purpose from which he had no intention of departing.

The banquet was over and the company had dispersed in such directions as individual inclination prompted. Max had thrown his annual shower of verbal bouquets, and had drunk in the responsive adulation and laudatory expressions which custom demanded from his guests. The courses had been disposed of by healthy appetites which refused to be disguised, and an excellent brand of champagne had flowed in no niggard measure to lubricate faculties that were easily enough set in motion for full appreciation of the night’s riot. The ballroom was already thronged with dancers of every grade of ability, and the lure of the tables had claimed their devotees. While not a few were sufficiently attracted by the magnetic glitter of the bars where the white-clad bartenders were under orders to dispense of their best mixtures without charge.

Ivor McLagan and some of his friends had passed over the attractions of everything else for the shaded lights of the poker hall. It was a spacious apartment with panelled walls of dark green to match the colour of the baize-covered tables. It was carpeted thickly with oriental reds and blues, and such woodwork as there was was gleaming white. The tables were spaced evenly round the walls, with one only somewhat larger than the rest, occupying the centre of the room. The place was entered from a landing just beyond a wide, decorated archway hung with curtains, and this, in turn, gave on to the head of the great staircase.

It was a room with which little enough fault could be found. For, apart from the charm of its shaded rose lighting, it was governed by a number of unwritten laws so that its company could pursue its devotions without let or hindrance, or any disturbing element. The chip bureau was presided over by a seemingly voiceless autocrat, while velvet-footed waiters ministered to the thirst of everybody in the efficient manner of well-drilled club servants. It was all admirably calculated to yield the best possible profit out of a mixed company which consisted of men and women of substance and undeniable beauty, down to the rough-clad trail men who sold their “dust” for chips, and a gambling fraternity of every shade of colour and almost every race.

Outwardly it was a sheer delight for those who were sufficiently young and reckless. It was a place to grip the imagination. Inwardly, or underneath its surface of pleasant seeming, there was perhaps a different aspect. There was not one of the immaculate waiters who was not a trained athlete in his ability to deal with the toughest human violence, and each man was fully armed with an automatic pistol or some other lethal weapon. Then the voiceless president at the chip bureau was a dead shot, and had under his fingers a system of switches which could summon any aid he needed and close every exit of the establishment, at an instant’s notice.

McLagan had made no attempt to cut into any of the games that had already started. For the moment he and the rotund Dr. Finch and Jubilee Hurst were onlookers. Jubilee was sitting on an unoccupied table, while the two others were smoking Max’s cigars, watching the game in progress at the next table.

The doctor and Jubilee seemed more deeply interested than was the oil man. A poker game was irresistible to Jubilee at all times. Doc Finch had partaken of a sufficiently good dinner to find interest in anything, provided it was witnessed from a comfortable chair. But McLagan’s attention undisguisedly wandered to the curtained entrance every time the hangings were drawn aside to admit a newcomer.

He was a keen poker player, but only as a pastime. And he rarely drifted into any of the really big games that were played at the Speedway. Just now he had no desire at all to participate in any of them. He was by no means a part of the Speedway’s human freight. But for months, now, he had never failed to spend his evenings in its scented atmosphere when business demanded his presence in the city.

Jubilee shook his carefully oiled head in response to McLagan’s challenge.

“No, I’m not cutting in yet,” he said. Then he added with a grin, indicating the table in front of them, “Guess I couldn’t make a one-night hotel bill out of a bunch like that. See that guy open a fi’ dollar jack pot, an’ throw in at the first bet? They’re a close bunch, without the nerve to buck four aces right. I’ll wait for the Saint.”

McLagan’s quick eyes shot a sharp look into a grinning face.

“She plays a great game,” he observed quietly.

“Game? It’s a gift.” Jubilee chuckled. “If she’d take me as partner,” he went on with meaning, “we’d clean up half the world.”

McLagan removed his cigar and dropped its ash into the fixed tray provided on the table on which Jubilee was sitting.

“Have you put it to her?” he asked smilingly.

The other shook his head.

“Not on your life, Mac,” he said seriously. “I’m sure like every other guy around the way I feel but I’ve a sight too big a respect for a good woman to want to tie her up to the kind of life I live. Maybe sometime I’ll make the pile I mostly dream about, and I’ll be able to quit the game I’ve always run. Well, when that time comes, and I’ve learnt Sunday School ways, I’ll be feeling and acting pious. Maybe it ’ud be different then. Say, Doc’s doping off his feed.”

“You’re wrong, boy.” The Doctor bestirred himself. “But likely enough I was dreaming. I thought I heard you talking of acting—pious. I——”

He broke off. The curtains had been abruptly drawn aside from the great archway. Two of the waiters were holding them back. Suddenly there was a curious hissing sound somewhere up in the shadows about the domed ceiling. The next moment a fierce light flashed out, filling the archway with the white-circle of its beam. It was a “spot lime,” and it fell on the tall, slim figure of a beautifully gowned girl as she appeared from the landing beyond. It was Max’s greeting, on the night of celebration, to the beautiful Saint of his beloved Speedway.

Just for an instant Claire Carver stood dazzled by the glare of the unexpected light. Every eye in the room was turned in her direction to discover the meaning of the terrific blaze. And in that moment Ivor McLagan feasted himself upon the vision he had been awaiting.

The girl was clad in an expensive sort of semi-evening gown of soft, black material, aglitter with the shining surfaces of a myriad of black beads. At her waist was a large, sprawling artificial flower that matched the ruddy tone of her vivid hair. She was without gloves, and her rounded arms of alabaster whiteness were bare to the shoulder, and her gown below the knees revealed sheeny silk stockings which terminated in high-arched insteps and exquisite shoes. But her glory was the hat adorned with flowing Paradise plumes, and the wealth of her hair framing a face whose beauty set the pulses of the gazing man hammering.

Never in his life had McLagan seen Claire a creature so exquisite. And there flashed through his mind a memory of the girl of the headland, tortured by the threat of Bad Booker’s usurious terms. The change, the complete transformation, was amazing. There had been change before. He had seen it and delighted in it. But there had been nothing like this. This was the girl’s party gown. He understood that. She was——

“God o’ my fathers!”

Jubilee breathed his astonished admiration into McLagan’s ears, and was promptly silenced by a look.

Somewhat embarrassed Claire came down the room with heightened colour, and eyes that smiled almost shyly. It was the same sweet face which McLagan had always known. Only it lacked something of that natural freshness which the wind and the sun of the coast had bestowed upon it in her days on Lively Creek. The downy bloom of those days had been replaced by a suggestion of powder. Even her pretty lips seemed to have gained added ripeness from the careful touch of cosmetic. But the wide blue eyes, the even brows, and the rounded, perfectly moulded cheeks were the same, and, to the man’s thinking, even more beautiful.

But some of the delight McLagan felt as the girl came quickly towards him passed at once as he beheld the figure of Max close behind her. Many a night he had looked on at the centre table where Claire always played, and had even found amusement in observing the crowd of men of all conditions who never failed to gather like moths about a candle flame. He had watched them in their frantic efforts to win her ready smile, and it had filled him only with added pleasure in her beauty and simple charm.

But the sight of Max at that moment, with his sleek, dark head, and his carefully cut close beard, his immaculate clothes, and his good-looking foreign face, inspired a feeling he had never before experienced. He remembered the method of this girl’s entrance. The elaborate staginess of it. And he realised that Max had not designed an entrance for the most popular gambler in Beacon Glory. No. It was for the woman herself. And Max was rich and powerful, and without scruple. And, furthermore, with immense resources for achieving any purpose upon which he set his mind.

Anger rose behind the man’s keen eyes, and their usual easy humour was changed to a glitter that had nothing mild or yielding in it.