Abe concurred promptly, if grudgingly.
“She’s a real dandy an’ a good spender,” he admitted, “and she’s got the whole fancy of Beacon as well as its luck——”
“Luck?” Victor Burns drained the remains of his highball to wash the dust of the automobile from his throat. “She’s made a pile that would set some of the Wall Street guys screaming. Say!” He laughed. Then he became serious. “And talking of gold and things,” he went on, “there’s colour coming in just now from outside. A boy bought himself a credit at my place this afternoon for eighty thousand odd, and it was the sort of dust they used to collect on ‘Eighty-Mile’ years back.”
The banker watched the almost electrical effect of his words on a company to whom gold was the beginning and end of everything. Discussion of the Speedway and its morals, and even of its beautiful patron saint, was forgotten. Every man at once sat agog. And even Jubilee Hurst, who was mainly a sheer gambler, who had been gazing down the avenue after the now-vanished automobile, eagerly sought information.
“Where did it come from?” he asked, without hesitation or scruple.
Burns shook his head.
“Search me,” he said with a laugh.
“Who’s the guy?” demanded Burt.
“Guess I’m a banker.”
“Can’t you hand us a thing?” inquired Abe.