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The Gun-Runner. Arthur John Arbuthnott Stringer
Читать онлайн.Название The Gun-Runner
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isbn 4064066065584
Автор произведения Arthur John Arbuthnott Stringer
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
"Why aren't you getting the Princeton, there?" Captain Yandel once more demanded from the bridge-gate. It was plain to see his feeling for the new operator was not an over-kindly one.
The new operator showed his head round one corner of the stateroom.
"I'll try again!"
Once more came the hiss and rattle and crackle of the spark, and once more the lean and sun-tanned face appeared round a corner of the stateroom.
"He's busy talking to the navy-yard!"
"To what?"
"To the navy-yard."
"What'd he tell you?"
The new operator hesitated for a moment or two before answering. His singularly quiet eyes were resting on Captain Yandel's nose, for it was a remarkable nose, something between a cardinal and magenta colour, stippled with the brighter hues of countless little broken veins.
"He told me to shut up, and cut out!" he answered at last, editing the irate officer's blasphemy out of the message.
The passenger in the raincoat fell to pacing the open deck. He stopped once or twice, quite casually, to glance in at the wireless apparatus. Then, seeing that the operator had taken off his ear-phones and was leaning back in his canvas chair, giving his open and undivided attention to the tea and coffee-cake, the stranger came to a stop and leaned companionably against the jamb of the open door.
The young man glanced up at the huge figure darkening his cabin. He did so with no outward sign of emotion. He had, apparently, become inured to the wondering eyes of the passengers, and he had his own ends to pursue. So he went on with his coffee-cake in silence.
"Could you take those messages of mine now?" asked the man in the raincoat.
"Any old time now," answered the operator, without so much as a second glance.
"I settle for it with you, don't I?" asked the stranger, drawing out a roll of bills. The formidable dimensions of that roll were lost on the man bending over the teacup.
"Leave your name and cabin number, and pay the purser. They don't seem to trust operators on this floating palace! All I do is stamp the time-check on the message and send it out."
He took the two messages, stamped them, and read them aloud, before pencilling the number of words on a corner of each sheet and stabbing it on his "send" hook. He read, perfunctorily:
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 second message he read off quite as hastily, and with equal nonchalance:
Doctor Bernardo Morales, Mobile.
Advise Charleston wireless to relay Laminian southward bound if shipment of laundry equipment and steel ties left Mobile for Ganley and date of sailing. Michael Duffy.
The stranger waited a moment at the door, as though expecting some further word or movement from the operator.
But the man of the key was already busy over his "tuner." So the stranger in the raincoat turned away, with a look of mild exasperation in his predaceous and puzzled little eyes.
CHAPTER III THE CALL FROM WITHOUT
It was four hours later that the man in the raincoat reappeared on the bridge deck. The night was thick, and McKinnon, the operator, worked with his coat off and his door hooked back against the wall-plates.
He looked up for only a moment as he saw the huge figure once more confronting him. The stranger, unrebuffed by his silence, stepped calmly inside.
"Anything come in over this machinery o' yours for me?" he inquired as he took out a cigar, pushed his hat back on his head, and struck a light. The operator looked up with his habitually abstracted and unseeing stare.
"What's the name!" he asked, once more studying his "tuner."
The other was indignantly silent for a moment; then he laughed a little, forgivingly. "Duffy," he answered. "Michael Duffy."
The operator shook his head; the movement was followed by another minute or two of silence.
"It might've come under the name of Cody, Richard Cody," explained the intruder. Something in the younger man's smile caused him to add: "You see, that's our firm name, Duffy & Cody."
An alias, south of the twentieth parallel, often enough carries its own explanation. The Laminian's bow was pointing towards a land of patriots where a change of name only too often synchronised with a change of continents. But McKinnon merely gave a shake of the head. It was several minutes before he glanced about at the other man, with a closeness of scrutiny that might have been impertinent had it seemed less frankly impersonal.
"There's nothing in for passengers this trip," he announced as he turned back to his "tuner." He drummed impatiently on the table-edge for a moment before readjusting his helmet-receiver. But the huge-shouldered intruder was not to be so easily shaken off.
"Your machine's working, isn't it?" he asked, preoccupied with an inspection of the end of his cigar. This cigar was soft and thick and short, like his own fingers. Despite its dark and baleful colour, he kept inhaling and expelling great lungsful of it as he talked. The operator idly registered the mental decision that cigars such as those were surely of Hondurian make.
"I saw you giving a message to the captain, didn't I?" And again the bellows-like lungs expelled their languid cloud.
"That was not to take on coffee at Puerto Locombia!" answered McKinnon. He delivered himself of this information casually, almost with amusement, though his half-averted eyes were not unconscious of the effect produced by what he had said.
The stranger was suddenly offering him one of the thick, short cigars. A shadow seemed to have lifted from his face.
"I don't smoke," said the ungracious man at the key, seeming to draw back into his shell of reticence. "And I'm busy sending."
"You mean you're actually talking to New York now?" amiably persisted the other. The operator's hand went out to the switch, black against the unpainted boards, and flanked on either side by a fuse.
"I've been tuning for Atlantic City. We're just picking him up," he answered as his fingers hovered over the starting-box lever, clamped to the same pine boards, above the switch. A sudden deep buzzing filled the cabin. It grew louder and louder as the lever crossed farther and farther down on the contact-pins. It sounded like a hive of bees stirred into anger. The stranger peered in at the dynamo under the operating table.
"So you're talking!" he murmured meditatively, appreciatively.
"How long will you be in communication with them?" he went on after a second or two of thought.
The other raised an earphone to listen, as the question was repeated. Then he turned back and bent over the carborundum tip between his responder-points.
"We're never really out of touch with 'em, on this run," he retorted. He seemed to resent his own increasing concessions to the other's imperturbable good-nature.
"You mean you can call up New York from the Caribbean?"
The operator put down his earphones and shook out his small cardboard box of carborundum fragments, picking through them for a fresh piece for his responder-points.