Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/93

 half-derisive touch that had crept into her glance.

The woman handed him the message-form, with her intent eyes now on his.

"Must I pay now?" she asked.

"It will be charged against your stateroom; the purser will collect it before you land," explained the operator as he jabbed the message on his send-hook with a businesslike sweep of the hand.

"But you will see that it's sent?" she asked as she rose to her feet.

"It will be off before you're up," McKinnon answered, watching her as she drew the heavy folds of her veil close down over her face. She looked back, at the door, with a timidly audacious nod of the head. The next moment the door closed and she was gone.

McKinnon, still conscious of the subtle fragrance that filled the room, swung about to his table. He paused only a second to wonder a little at this faint but persistent perfume that seemed to have charged and changed the very atmosphere about him. Then he crossed the cabin and reached up and ripped a brightly coloured lithograph from the wall, bisecting the terpsichorean figure with one impatient tear of the paper.