Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/252

 until he had made quite sure that she was below-stairs.

Then he locked himself in again, and made a mad and desperate dash into his clothes. Then he unlimbered his revolver, looked over its chambers, brought out his box of cartridges, and saw that every cartridge was in place. He had, by this time, more or less made up his mind as to his line of procedure.

He had his natural rights, and they were going to be respected. There would be no more free-and-easy invasion of his station, no more buccaneer's airy threats of force. He had been made a football of for too long: he had been mauled and bullied and browbeaten like a street-curb panhandler. He was an official, with official duties to perform. The full sense of his responsibility came home to him, as he took thought of the vast and ponderous machinery behind him, of the reserved and gigantic forces of which he was a mere out-runner. The time had come to act, and he was going to act. And at the first movement of aggression or interference from Ganley, he would shoot—and he had long since learned to pride himself on the fact that when he shot he seldom wasted powder.

As he waited for the engine-room's response to his dynamo he busied himself in barricading