Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/158

 distances of the sending ship. Then the pencil once more flew over the form-pad. He did not look up until he heard the steward's repeated knock on his door-frame.

"Tell the passenger in stateroom eleven to come to the wireless-room," he requested. "Get him here quick, for it's important."

Even before the sleepy-eyed steward had turned away the operator had his phones once more over his ears. Then his eyes travelled to the watch lying on the table before him, and an increasing spirit of uneasiness both concealed and revealed itself in the studied and deliberate slowness of his movements as the minutes dragged away.

It was not until he caught the sound of approaching steps that he reached languidly out and swung down his switch-lever. He stood, then, in an attitude of studied preoccupation, waiting to send the "splash" of his blue-flamed spark out into the night. Yet the one sound that came to his anxious ears was that of slippered feet shuffling nearer and nearer to him along the deck. It was not a hurrying sound. There was no touch of anxiety or eagerness in the heavy and methodic tread, even as it entered his very cabin. Yet McKinnon knew, before he so much as looked up at the intruder, that it was Ganley who had come in answer to