Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/238

 sigh, followed by the stir of a body moving impatiently on a mattress, and then the quick pad of bare feet crossing the cabin floor.

It was McKinnon, startled out of his sleep of utter weariness by the momentary sound of the moving shutter.

He turned on the single-globed, green-shaded electric that swung low over his operating-table. He stood there in his crumpled madras pajamas, looking dazedly and a little sleepily about the narrow room.

Then, automatically, from sheer force of habit, he adjusted his "set" over his head, swung a sleepy hand out to his tuner-levers, pressed the phones close over his ears, and listened.

He grew tired of standing there, half-leaning against the sharp table-edge, as he listened, for the responder had given no sign of life. So he dropped into the chair before his instrument, and sat there, yawning sleepily, with ludicrously wandering eyes, his elbows spread wide and resting on the edge of the unpainted pine board.

The man at the shuttered window could see his face, half in the strong light of the shaded electric globe. He could see the bony hand move back and forth to the tuner and shift and reshift the buttons in the slotted box-top columned