his call. And he had to restrain a smile at the thought of how identical were the tactics adopted by both his enemy and himself.
"Well?" demanded the non-committal and titanlike figure as McKinnon worked his key for a preoccupied moment or two, switched off, and once more took up his earphones.
It was at least a minute before the operator deigned to look about. When he did turn, his first movement was a peremptory sign for his visitor to close the cabin door. Yet before the man with the phones had once more turned about to his key and closed communication with a studiously weak-powered "Good-night," he had made careful note of the intruder's figure. It suggested, as he had hoped, that of a sleeper turned unexpectedly out of his berth.
Ganley was still in his pajamas of braided Chinese silk. Over these he had thrown his great black raincoat. This he held together at the waist in an attitude incongruously feminine, though the operator could still see the fat, dead-white flesh where the sleeping-jacket stood apart beneath the pendulous and weather-darkened throat. There seemed something gigantically and incongruously Columbinelike, something shaming and over-intimate and repulsive in the waiting figure and its accidental exposure of dead-white flesh.
