CHAPTER XI
THE MOVEMENT IN RETREAT
It was the next morning that McKinnon came unexpectedly face to face with Alicia Boynton in one of the Laminian's narrow companionways. He was hurrying up to his operating- room after a brief mockery of a breakfast in the ship's musty-odoured dining-saloon, and would have passed on with nothing more than an unbetraying nod. But the anxious-eyed young woman, with a barely perceptible gesture, signalled for him to turn back.
He followed her at a discreet distance as she stepped into a damp-carpeted side corridor flanked by white-leaded cabin doors. She quietly opened one of these, with a half-obliterated "7" on its lintel, and motioned him inside.
He surmised at a glance that it was her state-room. He next noticed that she had closed the door and locked it. Something in the quick decisiveness and directness of her movements touched him to a fleeting moment of admiration. He was conscious of the fact, as he turned to her, that his earlier sense of uneasiness had departed from him.
"Listen," said the quiet-moving and clear-eyed girl, peering impersonally up at him as she spoke, and yet standing so close that her sleeve brushed his hand, "I've been thinking a great deal about that foolish receipt. It's the only thing, now, that stands between us and our freedom of action. We have cleared away so much: but this is still one of the things that stand between us. I mean it's still a danger to you—much more a danger than I can make you understand, unless you know how treacherous and vindictive this man Ganley can be."
"But why should I be afraid of Ganley?" McKinnon maintained. "I can fight him in his own way. I am fighting him in his own way."
"You might do it at home, in your own country," she warned him, "but not in Locombia—not anywhere in Latin America. He knows his ground too well, his tricks and his chances, his burrows of escape when he needs them. He would never give you a fighting chance. That s why we must do what we can, at once, without delay."
Still again he marvelled at her directness of purpose and movement, at her unequivocating frankness of outlook. It implied, he felt, a courage seldom demanded or met with in the immured and upholstered walls of a modern woman's world.
"I thought it could be done this morning," she went on hurriedly, yet in a tone so low that he had to stoop a little to catch her words. "Ganley left his cabin early; I was ready and waiting. The moment he was away I let myself into his room."
She stopped to smile at his start of astonishment.
"I had won over my stewardess," she went on. "A few dollars completed the conquest and made everything so much easier. She even found a pass-key that fitted. I could see it was dangerous, and I had very little time. But I failed. The receipt was not there."
But you can't do this sort of thing," McKinnon expostulated. He remembered an earlier speech of hers: "It's one of the small things that count in war—and this is war."
"Isn't it rather late for going back over that ground?" she was saying.
"But this sort of thing involves too much risk! It's too unfair to you!"
"I looked through everything, as far as I could," the girl at his side went on, not heeding his protest. "I could find no trace of the receipt."
"Of course not! He shows the value he puts on it by carrying it about on his person, in his wallet."
"But there was something else I did find out," she said, lowering her voice; and again he was struck by the aura of sheer vigour that seemed always to float and cling about her. "It's the fact that eight mountain-guns are to be shipped out of Mobile this week, invoiced and crated as steam-laundry equipment. They are Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns, breech-loading, and with fixed ammunition. Those are the guns that are to be landed somewhere in northern Locombia. They can be taken apart, piece by piece, and carried up through the hills to Guariqui on burros."
"And he had the coolness to send out a wireless about that equipment!" commented McKinnon. The woman, with a warning look, motioned for him to speak more quietly.
"My second discovery was even more important. It began with what seems to be a note from one of De Brigard's generals. They are still afraid of some counter-movement to seize their cartridge shipment. I mean they are worrying about the very ammunition on this ship, the cartridges in the slag-boxes you spoke about. As far as I can make out, they intend to commandeer a certain track-motor from the Consolidated Fruit Concern. They are to seize it and take it from the roundhouse just north of Puerto Locombia."
"What kind of track-motor?" broke in the thoughtful-eyed operator.
"It's a specially built sixty-horse-power Birmingham motor, belonging to the railway department of the Fruit Concern. I can remember when it was first imported, a year ago. The new railway construction engineers have been using it instead of a coach and locomotive for inspecting the ore-road extensions and the narrow-gauge banana lines that have been run out into the Parroto plantations. You see, it's so light in weight that six or eight peons can lift it about on the track; they can reverse it with out a turntable. De Brigard's men intend to run this motor out on the railway along the pier, at night, and keep it hidden in the Fruit Concern s weigh-scales shed, not forty feet from where the Laminian will be sure to dock. Then, as far as I can make out, the slag-boxes are to be quietly dropped over the side and piled up in the motor's tonneau. Then it is to be hurried out along the railway track to Cocoanut Hill, where everything is to be stored in the power-house until the Junta distributes the supplies to De Brigard's men."
"But what power-house is this?"
"I mean the electric-light power-house just outside the town."
"This is worth knowing!" said McKinnon, his leaping thought already struggling to bridge the vicissitudes of the future.
"But this isn't the problem that's blocking our way," his companion warned him. "The first thing we must do is to recover our lost ground. We have to get back this receipt that ties you down to Ganley."
"But even for that we have to wait our chance."
"Why not make the chance?"
"How make it?"
"Ganley is in hourly dread of every message that comes into your wireless-room. He insists on censoring anything that might betray him. Then, after he has gone to bed, to-night, why not send for him—hurriedly call him up to your operating-room? Why not insist that he should come, before he has time to dress? The mere fact that he carries this receipt about with him on his person, as you said, shows how precious he holds it to be. But if he's caught off his guard in that way he might forget. You might easily enough keep him there with you for ten or fifteen minutes!"
"You mean the chances are that he'll simply throw on anything that's nearest him—a blanket or a bathrobe, if it's late enough?"
"Yes."
"But there's the captain!" objected McKinnon. "There's the scene we went through last night."
"Then wait until the captain has gone to his cabin for the night. The later it is when you call Ganley the better. I can be waiting. The moment he has left his cabin, locked or unlocked, I can be there making my search."
McKinnon looked down at her, puzzled, not by her proposal, but by the sheer fact that she could make it. He began to feel that some kindred and companionable love for the casually adventurous linked them together; he began to realise that, for all her sex, she was not without her youthful and full-blooded relish for the hazard of any true game that was worth its candle.
"Suppose Ganley suspects something?"
"He can suspect nothing if we only do our part of it in the right way," admonished the youthful intrigante before him. "He lives in daily dread that you may receive messages about the Locombian uprising, or his own connection with it. Then why not assume that a despatch has come in, one, for instance, stating that De Brigard and Ulloa have met, that this revolution about which you understand so little has actually begun? You have no suspicion as to who these men really are. It will only be natural for you to make inquiries. You might even be sending for further particulars. That would keep him in suspense: that would hold him there and give me the time I need!"
"But if he insisted on not waiting?"
She stood for a moment or two in deep thought.
"Then you would have to warn me."
"But how?"
Again she stood gazing at him with meditative eyes.
"Why not by the sound of your spark? You could start to send quickly. I could hear it quite plainly through the open port-hole."
"But even in that, again, is a risk. 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.
"Wait," he said, as a sudden thought came to him. "I might send one word, a simple word like 'Go'. You could easily recognize it, then, as a warning. That would be simple enough, if you could only remember the Morse."
"Would it be hard?"
He tapped out the dots and dashes with his finger-tip on the rod of brass from which the berth-curtains hung. She listened closely as he repeated them. Then she stooped and reproduced the signal with her own finger-tip on the wooden edge of her narrow berth. The light and alertness of her inquiring eyes as she looked up into his sent a quick and inapposite thrill of appreciation through McKinnon.
"That will be the danger-signal," she agreed. "When I hear it I'll understand."
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."
"But even if we have the good luck to get back this paper he's holding," began McKinnon, once more marvelling at the quick coherence of her reasoning, "that is only the beginning of things.
"Yes," she agreed, dropping her intent and troubled eyes before his steady gaze. "But why should we cross our bridges before we come to them?"
He still had to confess to himself that there was something almost enigmatic in that persistent yet febrile energy of hers. It was so vastly different from what life had taught him to expect from women whom, the hardening years had not touched with bitterness and left old and wise. It seemed a contradiction of everything about her—her youth, her Aprilian softness, her obvious honesty of outlook, her childlike can dour of face and character.
Intuitively, as she stood there studying his changing expression, she caught at the feeling that was still challenging and bewildering him.
"This is puzzling you—that a woman can face such things as this?" she demanded, with what was only a moment's hurried and unhappy smile. "But you must remember that I have lived in the midst of such things for nearly three years."
"Were they always this bad?" he asked her, with an answering smile that unedged the solemnity of the question.
"No," she replied; "but all the while I was in Guariqui I breathed nothing but an atmosphere of intrigue and counter-intrigue. It was the same with my brother Arturo, ever since he went south to fight for father's claims. We talked and worked together often in Guariqui. It must have crept into my blood in some way, for even when I was away from it, even when I was safe and happy in New York, I wasn't altogether sorry when a Locombian planter's son, studying in the School of Mines there, came and gave me the first inkling of what was going on. I believe I was almost glad when I found Arturo needed me again, and needed me so badly. It appealed to something dominant in me; it made idling seem so empty and foolish. Then I found it was more than an escapade, a game—that it was a peril, and I couldn't stand off. I couldn't hold myself away from it a moment longer."
He moved his head slowly up and down as a sign of comprehension. His sympathy brought the fleetest shadow of a smile to her still troubled lips.
"It's not that I like it," she said. "It's more that I can't bear to see anything that's near to me suffer undeservedly. 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. With me it's only selfishness—it's only fighting for my own."
"But isn't that enough?" asked McKinnon comprehendingly as he took her hand and turned away toward the door.
He could imagine nothing less militant and predaceous than that soft and birdlike warmth which lay for a moment between his fingers.