“That’s all right, Ivor,” he said. “You can’t run a branch of your bank and shout at the folks you do business with. For just as long as it’s my job collecting the dust folks don’t know better than to waste their lives chasing, Beacon Glory’s a deal bigger than ‘ace high’ to me. It’s a swell city that does a mighty big credit to the folks whose enterprise set it up—and made my living possible. You’re collecting oil in the big valleys, which is liable to leave you finding a queer sort of human fog lying about our principal avenue, but I’d like to say the ‘muck-hole’ of Beacon Glory don’t hurt your prospect a cent, and you’d miss its ‘beauties’ if the foolish ones had never dumped it down.”
McLagan laughed good-naturedly, and returned his cigar to its place in the corner of his capacious mouth. They were lounging in the office of Beacon Glory’s principal hotel, this engineer of the Mountain Oil Corporation and the chief banker of the place. They were something more than business acquaintances. A pleasant friendship existed between them, inspired perhaps by mutual esteem for the other’s integrity in surroundings which each knew to be something morally deplorable.
The hotel—the Plaza by name—was an angular three-storied, wooden-frame building that had once been well and truly painted. But that was in the boom days. It had a verandah fronting on the city’s only business avenue, a long, unpaved thoroughfare that had wrecked the running gear of more vehicles in its time than any roadway the world had ever known. Over the verandah, on a level with the first floor, was a wide balcony of similar proportions. In the heyday of prosperity this had been covered by a brilliant striped awning, but that, like the outside paint, had long since yielded to the weather. But for all its dreary, derelict appearance the Plaza stood out amongst the rest of the city’s buildings, with one or two exceptions, as something rather magnificent, if only for its proportions.
McLagan and the banker had the office with its decayed furniture and spluttering wood stove to themselves. That is, they only shared it with its atmosphere of general uncleanness. It was the hour immediately before supper, a meal which Abe Cranfield’s fly-blown menu described as “dinner,” a title his boarders refused to accept. Soon contingents of humanity would foregather in anticipation of a meal to sustain stomachs which had long since learned to satisfy themselves on a diet of unsavoury monotony.
“That’s all right, Victor,” McLagan said readily. “You’re a banker, I’m not. I’m just a hard citizen the same as the rest, and don’t need to worry to keep my notions of Beacon Glory to myself. And if any feller feels like disputing, why, I can argue it out any old way he fancies. But I’m sick with this city the same as I’m sick with most things unclean. I guess it isn’t altogether the fault of folks so much as the times, and the thing life’s drifted into. Does it ever worry you thinking of modern conditions and the crazy scramble of it all? You know, I ought to’ve been born two or three centuries back before some fool guy invented the words ‘democracy’ and ‘proletariat.’ You can’t run a thing right by committees and assemblies set up by any popular vote. Think of me trying to locate oil in the hills back here with a bunch of guys sitting around telling me how I need to go about it, and where to start my drills. No, sir. It’s the same with countries and cities and Sunday schools. You need one head and one hand. And whether for good or bad you’ll get some sort of order and discipline and things’ll move quick. I’d say it’s better, seeing human nature is what it is, to let one feller graft than a government of hundreds, and it’s cheaper. This territory’s run by a government that only cares for its job and legislates thousands of miles away. What’s the result? Why—Beacon Glory, an undisciplined quagmire of human muck!”
Victor Burns lit a cigarette and grinned through the smoke. He was a small, round, sleek little man, clean-shaven and with a pleasant face that looked to be made for smiling. He was almost in ridiculous contrast to the huge frame and rugged exterior of the other.
“That’s all so, all right,” Burns nodded. “I’ve thought heaps more than that lying awake at nights wondering how far the other feller’s got me beat. But a grouch in this office isn’t going to fix things right.” He glanced alertly round the room which still remained empty. “And that’s why I’m kind of glad for that bunch of boys who got together to try and clean things up. It don’t matter to me who or what the folks of the Aurora Clan are, or the ultimate purpose lying back of their game. They started out a year ago to clean things up some and they got half the toughs of this burg scared to foolishness. There hasn’t been a hold-up in months, and only a week back these white-gowned purifiers burnt out stark that drug den of Bernard’s where Charlie O’Byrne was done to death for his wad. Say, those boys are right if they just stick right to the game they started on. The danger is, when they got Beacon where they need it and have cleaned up the tougher stuff of the place, they may be looking for payment.”
Ivor shook his head.
“You never can tell, Victor,” he said seriously. “They’re a terror to the muck of this place now, I agree. Maybe later they’ll be a terror, anyway, that’s the way of these things. So long as they act the way they are we’re all glad, we must be. Any feller with a wide mind would be crazy to feel bad about them, but,” he shook his head and flung the stump of his cigar almost viciously into the stove, “maybe it’ll just drift into the usual. With the others out of the way they’ll do the hold-up. Then the Government, thousands of miles away’ll butt in. The Aurora Clan will get cleaned right up and back we’ll fall into the muck those boys did their best to haul us out of. No, I’ve a brief for them. I surely have. But when they’ve done their work and start getting gay for themselves, I’ll be as ready as any one to start cleaning them up. It’s a hell of a place, anyway!”
McLagan remained gazing into the stove with eyes that had lost their usual twinkle. He was a man of immense resolution and capacity. A brilliant mining engineer, he yearned for wider scope in the affairs of life. So far all his energies had been directed to the earth’s remote places, seeking those treasures for his Corporation which at any cost must be acquired for the purposes of satisfying voracious shareholders. And Victor Burns, watching him, understood something of the restless, dissatisfied spirit driving him. He was a shrewd judge of men, as are most real bankers, and this burly, plain creature, all energy and capacity, more than usually interested him.