Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/57

 "By the way, could you take a message for New Orleans to-night?"

"I could take it all right, if you're willing to prepay land charges."

"I'll pay anything you say, so long as you get me in touch with my people there. I want to ask Jean Careche, at the St. Charles, just when a shipment of oil and mill shafting got out of that port."

"Wait a minute, then, until I get Atlantic City again. You can be writing out your message and I'll get the time-check on it.

McKinnon bent over his table, with a wrinkled brow, and started to "call." As he caught the lever-handle of the huge key in his fingers and worked it deliberately, yet slowly, up and down—he was sending "strong"—the sudden blue splash of flame exploded and leaped and hissed across the spark-gap, from one brass-knobbed discharging-rod to the other. It filled the roughly improvised station with a sound like the rattle of musketry. The ceiling and walls of the room, crusted with many paintings of white lead, mirrored and refracted the purplish-blue flashes. A faint ozonic odour, not unlike a subliminated smell of brimstone, filled the air.

The operator threw off his switch again and listened intently, with his two handkerchiefs