The dancers were many and various in their methods and appearance. There were dress suits in evidence among the men, and the women’s garments ranged from prodigal scantiness to redundancy. There were burly men and fat. There were lean creatures who looked to spend their days on short rations and hard work. While the women appeared, as they ever do to the casual onlooker, a rainbow spectacle of femininity pleasing enough to the masculine eye careless of the details of their variegated costumes.
Doc Finch was among the stouter dancers and his partner was only little less ample. They looked comfortably hot and in no danger of foot entanglement. Jubilee was striding vigorously with a good-looking woman whose beauty owed much to her gown and the careful application of facial make-up. Bad Booker was smiling over the shoulder of a young thing who was frankly absorbed in the joys of the dance without regard for the company she was keeping. While Jake Forner, his chief clerk, was straining every nerve to keep pace with a woman whose efforts suggested gymnasium training rather than terpsichorean. He was perspiring freely, and a far-off look of troubled concentration gazed out of his student’s eyes, leaving it a matter for speculation as to when the breaking point would be reached.
It was a scene of real and comparatively decent human revelry. Outwardly, at least, its decorum was complete. The night was still young enough for the human nature gathered there to retain possession of the cloak of seeming which the occasion imposed. It was a bal masque without its phantasy of costume.
Claire Carver and Ivor McLagan were in possession of one of the boxes. The waiter had just deposited a tray of refreshments on the table between them. True to her fixed rule the girl had ordered coffee and a savoury sandwich. But the oil man had no such scruples. His refreshment was a Rye highball.
Claire had abandoned her game immediately after the discomfiture of the stranger gold man. The thing had startled her out of her usual equanimity. Trouble of one sort or another was by no means new to her. But in her eight months of the life of the Speedway it had been the first time she, herself, had been subjected to downright insult. She had always understood the risk she ran. Her mother and friends were always behind her ready to remind her if in her more generous moments of happy optimism she should chance to forget. But for all that the shock had been no less, and for once she had been glad enough to accept the company of the man who had so promptly defended her, and turn her back on the shrine of the temple at which she worshipped.
McLagan read through the mask of levity she was endeavouring to impose upon herself. Out of his love and great sympathy his pity had promptly leapt. It stirred him to her further aid. And so he had gladly availed himself of the mood that had made her laughingly appeal to him for the dance she had refused to the man who had so grossly enriched her.
They were talking now as they rested, watching the antics of the buoyant crowd moving rhythmically to the brazen efforts of the band.
“You know, Ivor,” Claire said smiling but reflectively, “those white fixed folk get me scared to death. It’s the first time I’ve seen them close up. Once before I saw them, or thought I did. I was out in the automobile, and I kind of thought I saw a bunch of them move off the trail ahead of me in the dusk and hide up in the bush. I wasn’t sure, but I was scared enough then. It’s queer. How—how did they know to-night? How did they come along right on time? was it Max on the ’phone? I didn’t see Max around at all. Say, does he run them? Are they sort of his police? They scare me. I was glad enough to see them get around. You see, that feller didn’t put his hands up to you when you had him covered. But I sort of feel we don’t just know where we are with such a gang operating.”
The girl was gazing down on the moving crowd while she voiced her apprehensions, and the man was left free to feast his eyes on the picture she made in her beautiful gown and the hat that was so perfect a crown to the wealth of vivid hair beneath it. He was smiling happily in the reward her presence bestowed upon him for his efforts in her defence.
“It’s kind of queer, Claire,” he said, and there was that curious harshness of tone which he rarely seemed able to avoid. “But some way I don’t feel it’s for you to be scared a thing. If this gang is what it’s reputed I’d say it’s only the folks with unclean minds and ways that need to be scared. But there certainly are things calculated to set folks worrying the way the Clan learns and acts when things are wrong. I don’t reckon Max has a thing to do with ’em. Though you never can tell. I was talking to Max when we came down. I allow he’s quite an actor. But—well, if he was acting it was mighty clever. He was raising hell to learn how those folks got in on his precious Speedway.”