Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/184

 "Then it is true?" A note of involuntary bitterness rang through McKinnon's sharp query.

"Yes," she answered.

"But you have just said you had no husband!"

"He was dragged from the carriage half an hour after the ceremony."

"What ceremony?"

"After our marriage. I have not seen him since that day. Seven weeks later he died of yellow fever."

"And tell why he was dragged from that carriage," prompted Ganley, with his guttural and mirthless laugh, as he saw the woman's wide eyes watching him closely, almost challengingly.

"He had shot the wife of a government official named Gurmanito, in Bogota," she answered in her listless monotone. "That was only one of other things."

"Other things which made him almost worthy of the family he'd married into," interpolated the scoffing Ganley, in luxurious appreciation of her misery.

McKinnon could see that she was shaking, that her whole body was quivering. When she spoke again, hurriedly, her voice was higher, in pitch, as though the strain upon her was