Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/92

 "Yes, I have," she said with a preoccupied nod, turning her gaze from the switch-lever to McKinnon's face.

He caught the key in his fingers and the blue spark once more leaped and exploded across the spark-gap. The girl watched him with intent eyes and slightly parted lips as he fitted the "set" to his head and listened with the 'phones pressed against his ears.

McKinnon was keenly conscious of her presence there so close beside him. There was something perversely and insidiously exhilarating in it. It made him forget the hour and the fact that he was bone-tired. The orderlylike stewardess fluttering about, he supposed, somewhere beyond the closed door, alone took the romance out of a visit so deliberately secret. He turned to his key again, and again called through the night. Then he adjusted his phones and listened. He finally put down his "set," with a shake of the head.

"I'm afraid we'll have to wait until morning," he said.

"I'm sorry," she answered, with her studious eyes on the dancing-girl lithograph above the faded wall-map.

"If you'll leave the message, I'll file it," McKinnon explained, to hide his resentment at the