Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/81

 that? Good heavens, man, you're not doing anything crooked! Nobody's cut a throat back there in New York! Nobody's trying to get away from your Centre Street people. You're not doing anything against the penal code."

"Why didn't you go to the captain about this?" complained the operator. The tacit note of concession in that complaint did not escape his companion.

"That low-brow!" he grunted in disgust.

"Being a low-brow, as you call him, ought to make him all the easier to handle," suggested McKinnon, with his short and puzzling laugh. "And he's still the master of the ship."

"The captain has no more to do with this than De Forest himself! And I imagine he'd rather be soaking in brandy pawnees than talking business to outsiders. This is something between us two. You're not cheating anybody. You're not hurting anybody. All you do is to help me win a big case, and get well paid for your trouble. And a twist of the wrist is what it costs you. For I'm assuming, of course, you can put that machinery of yours out of business for the time being without exactly showing how.

"That's easy enough," said the operator, with a stare at his apparatus. "There are a dozen ways of throwing a complicated thing like