Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/168

 and ran to the second door farther down the passageway. This door, he remembered, led into the cabin of Alicia Boynton, and for just a second or two he hesitated about entering it.

Then a great sense of gratitude welled up through him, for as he stood with his hand still on the knob the sound of the girl's voice came out to him. He had no time to resent the tumult and poignancy of this newer feeling, for it was the woman's words, and not her voice, that coerced him into sudden attention. "How dare you!" cried the voice beyond the closed door.

"How dare you come into this cabin!" she was crying. McKinnon could hear her gasp of what might have been either indignation or increasing fright.

"This is a little dose of your own medicine, young woman!"

It was Ganley who had spoken. His voice was still low and unhurried. It seemed almost casual in its studied deliberateness. Yet it held a tremolo of restrained passion that made the deliberating McKinnon wait there for a minute or two with his hand still on the door-knob. It was Alicia Boynton's voice that sounded out of the quietness.

"How dare you!" she gasped again.

"Cut out that play-acting and stand back