Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/63

 "Snug! Why, this place looked like a box stall in a livery stable. I haven't even got a silence-room or an annunciator connecting me with the bridge—I've got to be hollered at like a sinker cook in an East Side beanery!"

The stranger laughed. It was altogether a laugh of sympathy. But his meditative eye kept roving about the stateroom.

"I suppose you've seen a good deal of the South?" he said at last.

"All I want to, thank you!" promptly answered McKinnon. The vigour of his retort made the other man smile again.

"You don't like it down there, eh?"

The operator, who had slowly adjusted his caplike receiving apparatus, performed his habitual rite of lifting the 'phone-receiver from his ear to catch the question as it was repeated.

"Do you?" demanded the operator.

The stranger did not answer the question. Instead of that he asked another.

"Why don't you keep out of it, then?" There was nothing, apparently, but off-handed good nature in the query. The operator laughed.

"I can't afford to," was all he said, though he added in an afterthought: "Until I can get at the work I want."

McKinnon's questioner looked relieved. He