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 coming in. He might have kept him there for another precious five minutes if he had only acted as a man in his place ought to have acted. But he had missed his chance.

He crossed to his open door and paused there to listen. He knew that by this time Ganley was in his cabin, and that, unless Alicia Boynton had caught the warning signal, she had already been trapped. This gross, malevolent, red-handed enemy of whom she stood in such fear must already have confronted and caught her. The mere thought of it was too much for him.

McKinnon started back to his cabin, remembering he was unarmed, thinking of the revolver that still lay in his trunk.

But something in the quietness of the midnight ship filled him with some sudden keener sense of impending disaster. Without the loss of another second's time he turned and darted below decks.