"Models cost money, of course," McKinnon continued more deliberately. "I have to go slow. But once I get that apparatus where I want it you'll never see me south of Hatteras again."
He stopped, and waited for the other man to speak.
"It's not a white man's country," admitted the stranger with a nod toward the South. "The only good thing in it's the mules."
"We've got to take that as it comes," McKinnon said with an unlooked-for placidity of tone. Then he leaned back, with half-closed eyes, and linked his long forefingers together behind his head. "You see, I can always save money on a coastwise run like this: there's no way of getting rid of it."
"Well, money's worth having now and then," the stranger remarked as his sagely ruminative eye fell on the little varnished box that held the wireless responder.
He was silent for a moment or two, though McKinnon watched him closely out of his half-shut eyes. Then the stranger swung slowly about and touched the operator on his soiled shirt-sleeve. McKinnon felt the heavy forefinger on his arm, but he did not move.
"See here," said the stranger, and both his voice and his expression had undergone some
