Читать книгу The Ball of Fire онлайн

69 страница из 101

“I suppose you’ll be making some important changes, Mr. Allison,” he quavered.

“Not in the active officers,” returned Allison with a smile, and the president, who wore flowing side-whiskers, came over to shake hands with him. “How soon can you call the meeting?”

“Almost immediately,” replied the president. “I suppose there’ll be a change in policies.”

“Not at all,” Allison reassured him, and walked into the board room, where less than a dozen stockholders, as old and decrepit as the road itself, had congregated.

The president, following him, invited him to a seat next his own chair, and laid before him a little slip of paper.

“This is the official slate which had been prepared,” he explained, with a smile which it took some bravery to produce.

“It’s perfectly satisfactory,” pronounced Allison, glancing at it courteously, and the elderly stockholders, knotted in little anxious groups, took a certain amount of reassurance from the change of expression on the president’s face.

The president reached for his gavel and called the meeting. The stockholders, grey and grave, and some with watery eyes, drew up their chairs to the long table; for they were directors, too. They answered to their names, and they listened to the minutes, and waded mechanically through the routine business, always with their gaze straying to the new force which had come among them. Every man there knew all about Edward E. Allison. He had combined the traction interests of New York by methods as logical and unsympathetic as geometry, and where he appeared, no matter how pacific his avowed intentions, there were certain to be radical upheavings.