Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/120

 "Listen," she went on after another moment of thought. "Anything may happen before we reach Puerto Locombia. If the Junta have carried out Ganley's plans, everything will be ready for his coup d'état."

Her words, for some reason, did not impress him as much as she had expected. She felt that perhaps she was not being specific enough, that she was not making the case sufficiently clear.

"This movement against Guariqui will not be easy," she hurried on to explain, "unless the field-guns have already been landed. The palace is of stone; it could stand to the last—it was built for such purposes. It could hold out for weeks, with only the president's body-guard, until help came."

"From where?" asked McKinnon.

"That is what I must explain. When Duran installed the electric-light plant at Puerto Locombia he put up a wireless station, one at the coast, and another on the palace at Guariqui. Unless the guns have been landed, there is to be no assault on the capital until Ganley has been heard from. Puerto Locombia, of course, will be in the hands of the revolutionists. They will destroy the wireless station at the coast. There are few or no ships there now, on account of the yellow fever. It's not the fever, of course, but the quarantine—the weeks and weeks of