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.
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