Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/253

 the cabin-window with a shelf-board wrenched from his closet, and in drawing out his trunk and standing it on end, to be shoved against the locked door as a further re-enforcement against attack from outside. The wall-plates themselves, he knew, could never be penetrated by a bullet. It was the wooden-shuttered window and the door alone that needed defense.

No touch of fear rested on McKinnon as he worked out his plan, point by point; it was more perplexity as to the outcome of the movement, touched with wonder as to whether of not any contingency had been overlooked. He was glad of action, of something against which to direct his stored-up nervous energy. He regretted, vaguely, that Alicia had in any way been dragged into this trial by fire, that she had in any way been identified with a combat so sordid and demeaning. Yet he felt, in some way, that this final combat was to subject her to the acid-test of a final integrity. It would be unalloyed purity of purpose, he argued, that would keep her at his side during such an ordeal. He almost gloried in the thought that such an unequivocal and authentic seal was to be put on a relationship that had once seemed little more than fortuitous.