CHAPTER VII
THE TANGLING SKEIN
It was early the next morning that the Laminian ran into a coastwise gale that left her decks clear of passengers and her funnels white with salt. The intermittent crackle of "static" from the humming aerials kept obliterating the
etheric "splash" of the Laminian's low-powered coils. The ship was left inarticulate and alone on her course. Beyond the erratic "sneeze" and "cough" of the atmospheric electricity there was no answering voice within McKinnon's sternly delimited radius of communication.
The weather disturbed McKinnon much less than did his own state of mind. The day, which was one of brain-fogging pitching and tossing about his cabin, left everything connected with the night before still in suspense. The ship seemed a deserted one. Captain Yandel and his officers sat alone before the "racks" of the musty-odoured tables, between musty-odoured walls that outraged the nostrils like the effluvial dampness of a nighthawk's cab. No one ventured on deck.
McKinnon, during that enforced armistice, escaped a day of total inaction by packing away his belongings. That task accomplished, he overhauled his helix and drafted a casing for his dynamo. As the afternoon deepened into evening, and the wind fell, he coerced his attention on his Ruhmkorff-coil models. He was still studying over his reed-disk apparatus when an unexpected tap sounded on his door.
Even before he had time to answer, the door itself was opened. It was the girl in the pilot-cloth gown, his visitor of the night before. She looked back one intent moment, as though to make sure she was not being watched or followed. Then she quietly closed the door and as quietly slid the brass bolt that stood under the knob, locking herself in the cabin.
She smiled, a little nervously and yet spiritedly, as she caught sight of the other's concerned and puzzled face. Then her own face became quite sober. Again McKinnon was conscious of a faint perfume pervading the place. It seemed as finely feminine to him as the rustling of skirts. And again he was impressed by the ebullient sense of buoyancy, of youthful vigour, which persisted about her, even in shadow, like a penumbra.
"Could I speak to you?" she asked, a little disturbed at the other s continued silence. "I have something to explain," she continued, "something in which you might help me."
The flow of her English seemed as even and liquid as the flow of a river, yet there still remained that puzzling and piquant undercurrent of the exotic.
"You do not mind?" she asked, obviously puzzled by his continued aloofness. It was plain that she was not a woman who frequently asked favours of men.
"Of course I don't mind! It's only that a visit like this might be misconstrued"
She shrugged her shoulders ambiguously and sank into the steamer-chair. McKinnon discreetly slid back the shutter of his cabin window. He took the further precaution of drawing the faded denim curtain. The woman watched the operation with her mild and meditative gaze still on the figure before her. Then she motioned for him to sit down. She noticed his eyes on the door, apparently in apprehension, and she smiled a little. Then she became serious again and peered studiously about the room.
"You could put me in there?" she suggested, with a satiric motion towards the operator's closet-door.
McKinnon seemingly took her query in good faith, for he threw open the door and peered inside. His troubled look returned to him.
"There would scarcely be room," he explained. "It's so crowded and shallow, you see."
"It would be an adventure," she maintained, making due allowance for his lack of humour. He could see that she was wringing some inapposite amusement out of the situation. It threw him on his guard for a moment, but only for a moment. The open candour of her glance disarmed his abashed suspicion.
He agreed with her that it would indeed be an adventure. He even laughed at the thought of it, infected a little by her spirit of quiet audacity. Yet, in spite of himself, as he let his eyes rest on hers, there remained with him the stubborn yet vague impression that her presence there was the preamble for some deeper and undivulged purpose. The seconds lengthened themselves into a minute, and still neither spoke. 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.
There was a fleeting rustle of drapery, a warning pressure of one slender finger against the woman's lips, and a moment later she had disappeared into her place of hiding and had swung back the door. McKinnon, as soon as he saw she was safe, withdrew his bolt. In the frame of light stood the great, wide-shouldered figure of Duffy. He waited there, without advancing, for several seconds. McKinnon could see his slowly roving eye as it took in each detail of the stateroom. He betrayed no surprise and no curiosity, but across his face flitted a veiled look of apprehension.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
McKinnon nodded.
"Busy?" he next demanded.
The single word bristled with something more than interrogation. But McKinnon felt that he was not in a position to resent it. He stooped over the last of his wireless models and lifted the box back against the closet door.
"I am packing away my stuff for the night," he answered as he turned back to his operating-table and caught up his earphones. His action in doing so was simply a rite of repudiation. The gesture was not lost on the other man.
"I guess you're busy to-night," he said; "I won't take up your time. All I wanted was to close up that agreement of ours."
He reached into his pocket and drew out his roll of bills placidly, with the businesslike unconcern of a man contemptuous of small transactions. He counted off nine hundred and forty dollars, folded them together, and flung them on the pine table. McKinnon, all the while, was thinking of the half-shut closet door.
"That puts us even, doesn't it?" Duffy said, backing away a little. His movement brought him nearer to the ever-menacing door.
McKinnon was not in a state to argue it out with him. His strangely self-frustrating wish was still to cry everything off. But he was afraid of some second complication. And he had his own reasons why these should not arise.
"Yes, that makes us even," he admitted, suddenly remembering he had a witness to the strange business in hand. The intruder stepped back to the table again.
"Then we'll both sign this slip of paper, so we'll know where we stand," he suggested.
After Duffy had ponderously signed his name with a heavy, gold-banded fountain-pen, the operator took his place. The paper seemed nothing more than a receipt, yet something about its wording was repugnant to him. He did not take time to analyse his feeling; he was too oppressed by the thought of the woman and the near-by door. He ventured one half-hearted objection, however, as Duffy thrust the pen in his hand.
"I can't say I altogether like this," he complained.
"Why not?"
McKinnon forced a laugh.
"It sounds like an army commission."
"Where'd you want it changed?" Duffy demanded as he fell to pacing the cabin. His wandering threw McKinnon into a sudden panic.
"It's not the wording—it's the signing of a thing like this."
"Of course it is," the other agreed, mild and indulging, as a doctor might be with a peevish and restless patient. "But weren't you saying you wanted to make this every-day work of yours a little more romantic?"
He had stopped in front of the closet door and was apparently studying the faded map of the Caribbean. The position was perilous.
"Where do I sign?" demanded McKinnon, bringing the other man back to his side at the table.
The ink was scarcely dry on the paper before a change crept into Duffy's manner. He seemed more sure of himself, more conscious of mastery over an ally, who, if a reluctant one, was still an ally.
He folded the receipt and dropped it into his leather wallet. Then he placed the wallet in his breast pocket; his movements were always ponderous and deliberative.
"Remember, this means a devil of a lot to me. I'll have to depend on you to do the right thing when the time comes."
"It's not that bad, is it?" the operator asked, still with an effort at humour.
"It may be as bad as either of us could imagine," Duffy retorted.
"If that's the way it's shaping I'd better draw out of it."
McKinnon seemed more and more resentful of the other's attitude of masterfulness.
Duffy slowly tapped the pocket which held his wallet.
"It's too late for you to draw out of it," he declared with heat. Then his mounting tinge of anger went suddenly out of his face.
"Pshaw! what're we squabbling about, anyway?" he cried. "We're both making easy money out of this, and that's an end of it. "We'll have time to talk later on. And I guess you're busy to-night."
There was a veiled tone of mockery in his voice that seemed to leave McKinnon a little troubled. He followed his visitor to the state room door in silence.
"We'll pull together," assuaged Duffy largely, suavely, as he stepped out on the deck. "We've got to, eh?" He laughed a little as he said "Good-night."
"Good-night," answered the operator.
The stateroom door had scarcely closed before the woman had pushed aside the model-case and was out of her hiding-place. Her face had lost its last vestige of colour.
"Oh!" she cried pantingly, and nothing more.
"Hush!" said the alarmed operator, listening at the closed door.
She stood there, breathing hard, with her hand on her breast. Her attitude reminded him of the night before, when she had so suddenly and disturbingly stepped back into his cabin.
"What is it?"
"That man!" the woman exclaimed. She looked older now under the trying white light of the electrics. Her aura of belated youth had in some way fallen away from her. "Madre de Dios! Do you know who that man is?"
"He's an agent named Duffy," explained McKinnon.
"Duffy!"
"Yes—he is acting for the information bureau of the Consolidated Fruit Concern."
He was about to say more, but on second thoughts he kept silent.
"Duffy!" once more cried the woman in derision, "Duffy!"
Then she drew herself up and gazed at her companion with what seemed a look of mingled wonder and contempt wrinkling her low, white brow.
"And you two are working together?" she murmured.
"Yes, in a way."
"But how?" she demanded. "How are you acting with him?"
Her alarm did not seem to disconcert him.
"It's not exactly a partnership. He's simply shadowing a man on this boat. I've promised to help him out when the time comes."
"How help him out?"
"Only in a trivial way."
"But how?"
"If you must know, by holding back certain despatches.
But whose despatches?" still demanded the woman.
"Despatches for the man he's shadowing, of course."
"But still you don't tell me who this man is!" cried the impatient woman. McKinnon obviously found it hard to fathom the source of her anxieties.
"I mean this man called Ganley," he explained, concealing his growing impatience.
"Ganley!" echoed the woman.
"Yes, Ganley," retorted the other. He noticed that her breath was coming in short gasps by this time and that her face was as white as his cabin walls.
"Ganley!" she cried. "Why, the man who went out of this cabin five minutes ago is Ganley!"