Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/224

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THE PROFFERED CROWN

any chance the man had indeed persuaded him self of the justness of his cause.

"I tell you you've got to swing in with us," Ganley was blandly declaring. "You haven't any show. This work is going to be done quick and done quiet."

"But how about leaks?"

"There's not going to be any leaks. I've got my plan for that."

"What plan?"

Ganley laughed his short and mirthless laugh.

"A little plan to keep things quiet. The one and only thing we don't want is interference. It's our fight, and once we win it there'll be no trouble. We're a nation then, damn it, the New Liberal Party. We're a government of our own, and we can go back and patch up outside quarrels when we see fit."

"But what will you do with the Laminian? How about our captain, for instance?" McKinnon asked.

"I'll give him more than aguardiente to worry over!" declared the gun-runner, with a snort of contempt for that saturnine ship's master. "Oh, I've got this thing figured out as close as a sum in arithmetic. Some night this week our men are to surround their little two-by-four capital. Tuesday morning, by day-break, if our guns and stuff are all landed,