It was a moment not easily to be forgotten. She still shrank from contemplating her own display of weakness, but it robbed her of not one moment’s delight in the memory of the quiet nerve and calm resolution with which Ivor McLagan had reassured and comforted her. Then she remembered the time when he had deliberately picked her up in his arms and helped her over the vessel’s side. He had done it without a second thought, and as though he had been dealing with some terrified child. And then she remembered his plain face as it had smiled back into hers over the side of the vessel as returning courage had once more restored her confidence.
He was quite plain and generally unsmiling for all a certain humour she sometimes saw lying behind his eyes. Then he was so harshly rough—at times. It was not always so. And it was mostly manner. Oh, she knew that, and she smiled softly to herself as she thought of the fashion in which he had sought to drive her from the deck of that vessel. She sighed. She liked him. She liked and trusted him. Nobody could help liking him, she told herself. He was so transparently honest and—and simple. Then she smiled again, almost tenderly, as she reviewed those scenes in which he and she had been the only actors. How many were they? How many times had he asked her to——?
Her eyes sobered and her thought passed swiftly to another man. It was the dark Italian face of Max Lepende that shut out her vision of the other. The thing she feared, the thing she had even discussed with Ivor, was impending. Her woman’s instinct was deeply perturbed as she thought of a little scene that had occurred just as she was leaving the Speedway the night before. Max had approached her as her game broke up. She had had an especial run of good luck. He came to her smiling, elaborate, and impressive in his manner. He had asked her permission to ride with her in her automobile to her home. There was a bunch of “toughs” around, he told her. He had had word of a possible hold-up. She must bank with him for the night and he begged her to accept his escort. Then had come the demonstration of the man’s purpose. In the automobile he had produced a jewelled pendant of great value. He had craved her acceptance of it with all the display which his extravagant manner made so sickening to her. He had almost forced it upon her. But she had refused, definitely, even coldly, and she had witnessed the instant effect of her refusal upon him.
The girl was more of a psychologist than perhaps she knew. She had certainly learned to know something of the man who ruled over the destinies of the Speedway. She had watched Max as he returned the pendant to its case. Driving the automobile, with her eyes on the disreputable road, she had still been aware of the sudden cold, hard light that had replaced the smile in the man’s dark eyes, and noted the almost vicious snap with which he closed the case over the glittering jewels he had offered her. And in that moment she had remembered her talk with Ivor on the subject of this man, and was glad of it. It was good to think of Ivor McLagan, with his plain strong face, at such a moment. And the more so when the car had stopped at her home, and Max had alighted and was taking his leave of her. What were his parting words? Oh, she remembered them. They were not easily forgotten, and as much for their tone as their text. He had spoken with the same old smile she knew by heart, and which she knew to be as meaningless as all the rest of his artificialities.
“I guess the hold-up didn’t mature,” he had said. “I sort of felt it wouldn’t, Claire, with me around. You see, the folks of this city mostly have more sense than to get across me. The toughest of them wouldn’t take a chance that way. And they’re surely wise. I’m feeling sore, my dear, you couldn’t feel like handling that toy I was hoping to pass you. Think it over. Don’t leave it the way it is. Get a sleep on it and maybe, like that hold-up, you’ll think better of it.”
It was a threat and the girl knew it. It was that moment which she had long since contemplated when she must choose between this smooth, unscrupulous creature who had built his fortune upon the human weakness of those about him, and abandoning the precincts of the place which had represented salvation to her in her darkest moments. Ivor was right. “You’re going to get it if you keep on——” She remembered his words. They were right. She had known it at the time he had uttered them. And, somehow she was glad and it comforted her, that it was he who had uttered them, and begged her to quit the game at the Speedway. Well——
She turned her head sharply. She heard voices talking beyond the parlour doorway. They were her mother’s and another which she recognised instantly. It was the voice of the man of whom she was thinking. In a moment she had bundled the silken garment in her lap out of sight.
There was no sign to indicate Claire’s mood of the moment before. She was smiling up into McLagan’s face, and the man was telling her without subterfuge the object of his visit.
“You see, Claire,” he said, “I had to come along for two reasons. One is, I’m going right up into the hills for a month or so and won’t be along back in Beacon till summer’s nigh through and so I won’t see you in quite awhile. And the other is——” He laughed in his short, unmirthful fashion, “why—something else.”