Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/211

 a city sparrow at a fountain-rim. It even disturbed Ganley a little to behold him so causelessly and so mysteriously happy.

But what more seriously disturbed the guardedly watching man was the trivial discovery that McKinnon took a key from his pocket as he approached his station door, that he inserted it in the lock and turned it before he gained admittance to his narrow operating quarters. It obviously meant that, for some reason or other, the wireless-room was thereafter to be kept under lock and key.

McKinnon himself knew there were more reasons than one for that early morning mood of his. It was not the mere thought that he could now claim a definite and dependable ally which brought his lightheartedness back to him. It was more the consciousness of that new camaraderie which must exist between him and Alicia Boynton, the promise of close and subtle companionship with a young and lovely woman whose interests were to be his interests. It was the realisation that at last duty and desire had been made one.

He found something wordlessly consoling in the fact that as the long tropical morning wore away he could look up from his tuner and phones and rest his eye on the white-clad figure of the girl, not a stone's throw away from him.