Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/176

 wheeled about to the Columbinelike figure in the black raincoat and the Chinese silk pajamas.

"You are Richard Duffy, acting with the Consolidated Fruit Concern and the authorities at Washington for the capture of a man named Ganley, are you not?"

"I am," answered the man in the raincoat, doggedly facing the young woman. McKinnon could see her lip pucker up with its little curl of unspeakable scorn.

"The man lies!" said the girl in her calm and deliberate tones. "This man is Ganley, 'King-maker Ganley,' himself!"

The man in the raincoat once more laughed his sullenly derisive laugh. His contemptuous defiance seemed to nettle and anger the woman into more coherent thought. When she spoke next she uttered her words more incisively, more quickly.

"This man," and her scorn was infinite, "is the buzzard of the tropics, the creature who waits and watches over sick republics, who prowls about after dying governments to pick their bones!"

"You're crazy!" scoffed the man she was accusing.

"He's called 'Kaiser Ganley,' the gun-runner, 'Pasha Ganley,' the agent of every Central American patriot," she continued. "He's the