CHAPTER XXXIII
THE LAST WORD
McKinnon was very happy. It was six long days since they had dug the bullet out of his arm and told him to lie quiet for a while and rest up and make blood. But on this particular morning President Duran's own glimmering state-coach had carried him away from the Hospital, and he had been given prompt and official permission to go to the Palace roof, where Aikens, the Boston youth who acted as the Guariqui operator, was still struggling over his half-renovated wireless apparatus.
So McKinnon had been carried to the roof in a chair, by two of Duran's own body-guard, and the white sunlight and the many-tinted city and the companionship of the lonely and garrulous boy from Boston went to his head, like wine, and left him foolishly and wistfully happy.
He laughed at the idea of a corrugated-iron wireless station on the roof of a Palace; it seemed as incongruous to him, he told Aikens,
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