Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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Robledo shook his head. No, he had never heard that name.

“He is an old friend of my wife’s family. Thanks to Fontenoy, I became a while ago the director of some development projects in foreign countries, for which I get a salary that would have seemed to me magnificent a few years ago.”

Robledo expressed his professional curiosity. “Improvements in foreign countries!” Of course the engineer wanted to know more about that, and asked some very definite questions. But Torre betrayed a certain uneasiness in his replies. He stammered, and his sallow cheeks reddened slightly.

“Enterprises in Asia and in Africa—gold mines, and a railroad in China—a shipping company formed to handle the rice products of Tonkin, and—as a matter of fact, I’m not up on the scheme as a whole. I’ve never had time for the trip, and then, too, I can’t leave my wife—But Fontenoy, who has a great head of business, has been to all these places, and I have the greatest confidence in him. As a matter of fact, my job is just a matter of signing reports made by the experts Fontenoy sends out there to satisfy share-holders.”