Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/145



was the next morning that McKinnon came unexpectedly face to face with Alicia Boynton in one of the Laminian's narrow companionways. He was hurrying up to his operating- room after a brief mockery of a breakfast in the ship's musty-odoured dining-saloon, and would have passed on with nothing more than an unbetraying nod. But the anxious-eyed young woman, with a barely perceptible gesture, signalled for him to turn back.

He followed her at a discreet distance as she stepped into a damp-carpeted side corridor flanked by white-leaded cabin doors. She quietly opened one of these, with a half-obliterated "7" on its lintel, and motioned him inside.

He surmised at a glance that it was her state-room. He next noticed that she had closed the door and locked it. Something in the quick decisiveness and directness of her movements touched him to a fleeting moment of admiration.