Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/180

 "Not until you show me a reason why we should split." He jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the staring woman. "And I don't call that a reason!"

"The whole thing's too tangled up for me," equivocated the operator.

"There's no tangle when it's pared down to the truth."

"But we can't argue about that all night, and I've got my key to attend to," complained the watchful McKinnon.

A new look of anxiety flashed across the other man's face at the mention of the key. It was a flash, and nothing more.

"Then you believe what she says?" asked Ganley more soberly, looking from the paper-littered floor to the woman still standing motionless against the cabin wall.

"You haven't disproved it," said the operator with a gesture of simulated bewilderment.

"I'm proving and disproving nothing," was Ganley's reply. "I haven't been doing the talking. I'm not the talking kind. But I've come into touch with this kind o' woman before. I know her, and she and her whole gang can't hoodwink me!"

"Well?" said McKinnon a little impatiently.

"Oh, I've known her ever since she hitched