McKinnon

“ McKinnon rattled through the message at a breath: "Varrel, sixty Wall Street, New York. Our man on board Laminian, bound Puerto Locombia. Wire Washington. Will have him held by authorities to await instructions. ⁠ Duffy
The operator put the message on the table and calmly weighted it with his carborundum box. The other man suddenly realised, as he made note of McKinnon's attitude of unmoved neutrality, how automatic the human mind can become; how, when once immersed in the method of doing a thing, it can lose all sense of the thing itself. ”

“ Automatically, McKinnon wrote out the despatches, word for word, as a matter of record.
His chance had come at last: all he now needed was power. It would take him but a minute to slip down to the engine-room, he concluded, as he threw on a striped green bath robe with a hood like a monk's cowl. Then he could see for himself that they were slinging the right voltage up to him.
He sprang for the cabin door, unlocked it, and swung it open. As he leaped out across the door-sill he ran head-on into the arms of Ganley. ”

“ McKinnon peered through the darkness. He could see a number of moving lights; they shifted about through the gloom, small and restless, like fire-flies. He could also make out the shadowy lines of a building or two. Where the track ran between these buildings, at the end of the pier, a white-painted wooden gate had been swung and locked across the rails to stop the car. ”

“ A wayward sense of loneliness, of desertion, crept over him, and he turned about, not ungratefully, to listen to the familiar swish of deck-hose and thump of holy-stone as the early awakened deck-crew washed down the decks. It was commonplace enough, that swish of sea-water and thump of mumbling workers. But at the moment there was something wordlessly companionable in it to the listening McKinnon. It reminded him that the every-day trivialities, the orderly actualities that sustain the machinery of life, must always go on, no matter how close may brood the spirit of outer tragedy. ”

“ McKinnon, with wrinkled brow, turned to his "send-hook." He found the two sheets, and straightened them out on his knee. Then he looked up to say: "We never hold these things in our head, you know. We can't, any more than a wire can."
He let his gaze run over the sheets of paper before him. The other man sat watching him as he read. For just a moment, as he made note of what seemed the operator's half-forbearing, half-cynical indifference, a shadow of disappointment flitted across his face, typifying, apparently, some passing regret for a reconnaissance at last recognised as unnecessary. ”

“ Then she stood confronting him, with her finger to her lips, as a sign for silence. McKinnon had long since learned that great moments seldom accord with their setting, that catastrophic seconds are often wanting in ceremonial. His first impulse had been to warn her hurriedly away. Yet it was not the danger that surrounded her, but more the thought of his attire and its simplicity that disturbed and shocked him. His embarrassment, even at that moment, was greater than that of the calm-eyed girl's.
"What is it?" asked the operator, nettled by the intent look on her listening face. ”

“ The operator did not answer him. He knew that all he could do now would be to grope forward slowly and blindly; he could only crawl and test and wait, like a crustacean with foolishly waving feelers. Ganley, watching him, backed toward the door.
"I'll not say good-night," he purred, with mock affability. "If you're still in doubt about anything, you'll find me on the deck here all right!"
The operator watched him as he went through the door and as he wheeled about for one malignant and admonitory stare into the cabin.
From the depths of his soul McKinnon resented that smile. ”

“ It was then that McKinnon lifted her bodily into the driving-seat, whispering to her to sit low, even catching at her outstretched hand and conveying it to the starting-lever.
"Start as the door opens," she heard whisper, and she knew that he had crept forward again, and that she was alone in the car. She tried to school herself to calmness, to coerce her attention on which was the starting-lever and which the speed-lever, to force into life the hope that all might still turn out well. Once free of that door, she felt, she could breathe again. ”

“ The next moment McKinnon's fingers were clamped on Ganley's fat and pendulous throat and he had the man in the black raincoat thrust flat back against the berth-edge, gasping for breath, pawing the air with his thick, fat hands.
"You hound, to treat a woman like that!" ”

“ But nothing came to the quiet and sun-steeped ship to relieve McKinnon's accruing sense of anxiety. His coherer wooed no response from the silence about him; his aerials intercepted no answering message. More than once he felt tempted to confront his impassive and quiescent opponent, if for nothing more than to end the strain, to knock the chip off his shoulder and bring things to an issue.
But Ganley gave him no opening. ”

“ McKinnon was oppressed by the thought that the hour was late and his body bone-tired. But he did not close communication with the Royal Mail operator who had "picked him up" through the fog until he had been duly warned of heavy weather southeast of Hatteras. Through the night came also the news that one of the Royal Mail passengers, an American consul from Aregua, had broken his thigh-bone against a bulkhead, and the Laminian was asked to relay the news to New York. ”

“ But McKinnon was held back by a sudden disturbing thought.
"Suppose Ganley himself is able to read the Morse?"
"But don't you see that is impossible! He's shown that already. He never would have come to you as he did when the Laminian was leaving New York if he had been able to stand on the deck and read your spark at the masthead, or if he had caught the sound from your cabin as you sent. All that talk of his was only to blind you to his real end; it was only to find out if he himself had been found out." ”

“ McKinnon pointed landward savagely, toward the mangrove swamps and mountains of Locombia.
"He's been trying to stop my sending. He said he'd kill me if I sent."
"That's a lie," retorted Ganley. "He's working with this woman to juggle messages for Duran! They're making a tool of you and your ship!"
"That shows who's making a tool of you!" cried McKinnon, pointing with his lean and shaking finger to the shattered responder. The ship captain's face was blotched and purplish and horrible to look at by this time. ”

“ McKinnon continued more deliberately. "I have to go slow. But once I get that apparatus where I want it you'll never see me south of Hatteras again."
He stopped, and waited for the other man to speak.
"It's not a white man's country," admitted the stranger with a nod toward the South. "The only good thing in it's the mules."
"We've got to take that as it comes," McKinnon said with an unlooked-for placidity of tone. ”

“ McKinnon continued to look down at Guariqui, after Aikens had gone back to his work. He could see the iron-fenced Palace gardens, cool and shadowy and secluded-looking. In the Plaza beyond he could see the splash of water from a frond-hidden fountain, and the white statue of some unknown hero who had died in some unknown war for Locombian liberty. He could see the yellow front of the cathedral and the sun-steeped Prado white with dust. He could see the American bluejackets, from the Princeton, who were still picketing the streets, and a bullock-cart that crawled noisily over the cobblestones. ”

“ I hate the thought of Arturo being dealt with so unfairly. It—it—— Oh, I think it must be because my own father was a soldier himself!"
"I rather imagine I know the feeling," McKinnon told her. "I think I've carried the same fighting madness in my own blood for quite a number of years."
"But you're a man, and you're still young," she murmured, looking up at him a little sorrowfully, wondering at the touch of bitterness that had crept into his voice. "You do it from choice; I must do it from necessity. You can glory in it—it's unselfishness with you; it's the spirit of adventure. ”

“ Yet as she stood there at McKinnon's side the strangeness and the loneliness of Guariqui seemed almost to fade away. She humanised it and brought it nearer to him. Then his eyes fell on the figure of an officer in full uniform, passing in through the Palace gates, with his scabbard in his gauntleted hand. He was as gilded and as ornamental as a character from a Broadway musical comedy. But he served to bring a wayward surge of misery over the soul of the American. ”

“ McKinnon was very happy. It was six long days since they had dug the bullet out of his arm and told him to lie quiet for a while and rest up and make blood. But on this particular morning President Duran's own glimmering state-coach had carried him away from the Hospital, and he had been given prompt and official permission to go to the Palace roof, where Aikens, the Boston youth who acted as the Guariqui operator, was still struggling over his half-renovated wireless apparatus. ”

“ A wave of something that was vaguely disheartening, that was almost nauseating, swept through McKinnon. It left him momentarily dazed, as men are dazed with that forlornest sickness which follows a seismic upheaval. ”

“ I might be sending to hold Ganley, and not to warn you."
They stood in thought for still another moment or two. McKinnon was not altogether unconscious of her presence, so companionably close to him. Until that day he had faced the isolation of the man who plans and fights alone. There was something vaguely consoling in the thought of comradeship so unlocked for and yet so sustaining. ”

“ He opened his door, guardedly, and was both relieved and disconcerted to see the figure of Captain Yandel swaying there.
"What're you picking up?" demanded the captain, thickly. His face was an almost apoplectic red, and a heavy odour of brandy drifted into the close little cabin. Yet the squat, wide-shouldered figure stood erect and steady enough on the ludicrously short and wide-planted legs. McKinnon wondered how many years he would last, in such a climate. Then he marvelled at the thought of how slowly men were able to kill themselves ”

“ McKinnon pondered the situation. It was plain that Ganley had regained his self-control, that he could no longer be counted on to act with the unthinking directness of the outraged savage he had seemed.
"There's a very simple way to settle this problem," McKinnon suggested. "We'll lock this cabin, so nothing in it can be interfered with. The three of us will step into your cabin. ”

“ She would have made an ideal figure, the operator felt, for the nurse of the Capulets.
McKinnon put down his 'phone and rose from his seat, still peering at the figure nearer him, the woman in the doorway. He looked at her closely, perhaps too closely, for he had not imagined any such woman aboard the Laminian. He noticed that she was wearing a gown of dark-blue pilot-cloth, and that she was younger than he had at first supposed. One of her hands had been thrown out to the door-jamb to steady her against the roll and pitch of the deck. ”

“ As big as Ganley could afford to make it?"
"I don't pretend to knowledge as to what a man will do when he's tempted enough," answered McKinnon, as he fixed his absent and studious eyes on the troubled woman. "But something instinctively tells me Captain Yandel is not going to be our danger-point." ”

“ McKinnon had a twofold end in view, and his line of advance was not an easy one.
"There's been hard fighting in Locombia," he slowly asserted.
Again the pajama-clad figure merely nodded.
"I've picked up a Savannah liner bound north; she relays the news from an Atlas fruiter. They've got this revolution of Ganley's in full swing." ”

“ They were still gazing at each other when the sound of a quick step on the deck without fell on their ears.
The woman stood up with a little gasp. The look on her face changed into one of appeal. McKinnon, impressed with her fear, also rose to his feet. They could hear the locked cabin door being impatiently shaken.
"What shall I do?" whispered the woman. The operator pointed towards his clothes-closet. It was the only resource. He motioned for her to step into it as he himself crossed the cabin towards the outer door, on which someone was now openly and impatiently knocking. ”

“ He was a thinking being once more, with his own secret ends and his own secret means to them. And she was sick of the primordial; every woman's fibre in her body was offended and felt degraded by that caveman's hand-to-hand fight through which she had passed.
The shaking-limbed captain had swung about on McKinnon.
"Have you picked up anything about fightin' in there?" he demanded, with his guttural running obligate of mariner's oaths. "Or have you been too taken up with your own fightin'?"
"I've picked up nothing," was McKinnon's answer. ”

“ I've got to watch myself and go slow," equivocated McKinnon.
"But what's the use o' falling between two stools? Why not swing in with the right side, nip and tuck, while you've still got the chance?"
Ganley was on his feet by this time, standing over him.
"See here, you're no piker. You're quick, and you're clever.
"You're not afraid of a big thing, just because it is big. I've got my wires laid, and I'm going to knock that Locombian government off its feet, if it costs me half a million to do it. ”