Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/41

 "I can't be an operator until I've got something to operate on," said the voice from the room. Its barbed curtness of tone no more reached the quick of the newcomer than water could reach a duck's breast.

"Then you're not sending yet?" he amiably persisted, with his shoulder against the doorpost.

"Not till I've tuned up this pile of junk!" was the preoccupied answer of the operator, bent low over his work.

"You don't mean she's off her trolley, our first hour out?" asked the other. His patience seemed infinite. He still stood there, studying the shirt-sleeved figure in the centre of the room.

"I can't make her spark right. And I've got a damp helix and a motor running weak!"

The words were followed by a gasp of exasperation and the rattle of a tool flung to the floor.

The huge-shouldered man in the raincoat made no effort to conceal his disappointment. It was what one deserved, he conceded, for travelling in such a punk-riveted, slush-pitted, coal-eating second-rater!

But he remained up on the bridge-deck. He continued to lean nonchalantly against the dripping rail, peering out from under bushy iron-grey eyebrows drawn close to the flat-bridged