The Trainmasters by Jesse Taylor Croft Read Free Book Online Page B

her. “Don’t
     do that, Kitty. You look very good sitting there under the light,” he said. “It turns your skin into gold, and your cheeks
     into roses.”
    “I should have married you,” she said, smiling at his compliments. “I would have, if that were possible.”
    “I like you as you are,” Thomson said. “You are utter perfection as my daughter.”
    She smiled again and blushed. “You’ve been reading?” he asked.
    She raised the book for him to see. “
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “Oh, yes! It’s a delicious book. I’ve laughed and cried again and again.”
    “Should I read it, then?” he said.
    “You should, Father. But I don’t know that you will. I can’t remember the last novel that you read.”
    “Nor can I,” he said with a chuckle, slipping out of his jacket and vest. “There, that’s better,” he said with a deep, tired
     sigh. “God, I think I’d almost rather wear a suit of armor than evening clothes.”
    “So how did the meeting go?” Kitty asked, marking her place and laying the book down on the table next to her reading chair.
    He paused a moment before he started to talk. A part of him did not want to talk business with her. It was the part that wished
     her to remain forever innocent and maidenly. But there was another part of Edgar Thomson, a part that welcomed Kitty’s drive
     and energy and love of railroading.
    That part won out now, and he started to tell her everything.
    “The evening was tense, I should say. And indecisive. Will Patterson, as usual, was smooth and expansive, but now and again
     I wondered about him. He seemed to be unusually strained.”
    “He
does
have to come up with five million dollars or so, after all,” she said, “and rather soon.”
    “Yes,” he said, “but that kind of challenge never seemed to disturb his equanimity in the past.”
    “Well, there’s always a first time,” she said, dismissing whatever problems William Patterson might now be facing.
    “He’s a fool. And he doesn’t much interest me. I only hope that the board has sense enough to remove him when they meet on
     Wednesday.”
    “That’s very possible,” Thomson agreed. “The sentiment is certainly inclining that way. But in his favor,” he added, “Drew
     and Vanderbilt seemed to like him.”
    “He was all smiles, I take it—flattery and compliments —the way he always is.” “Exactly.”
    “The man has the character of a pillow. He takes the form of whatever is sitting on him.”
    He laughed. “You would think,” he said, “that men as worldly as Daniel Drew and Cornelius Vanderbilt would see through a man
     like Patterson.”
    “They haven’t known him as long as we have.”
    “Alas, no.”
    “And you?” she said. “How did you fare?”
    “Me?” he smiled. “I was quiet, as is my way. Perhaps too quiet. But I watched, and waited. Perhaps I made sense now and again
     when I did talk.”
    “Someday I’ll convince you that you don’t have to be modest.”
    He smiled again, like a boy, a little bit embarrassed.
    Kitty knew that when her father had something to say, he made devastating sense. He was not flashy or dramatic the way Will
     Patterson was. But she was well aware that if anyone had made a genuine, powerful, and lasting impression on Astor, Vanderbilt,
     and Drew, it was her father.
    “You look very tired,” Kitty said, rising from her chair and approaching him.
    “I’m exhausted. Totally depleted. I’m an engineer, not a financier. And I’m not comfortable discussing large sums of money…
     And
those
financiers! My God, Kitty, but talking to those three is like submitting to vampires. They drain your blood.”
    “Tell me about them,” she said.
    “About the financiers?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, Kitty,” he said. “Not tonight, please.”
    “Please, Father. Do tell me about them,” she said. “I want to know if they will buy the new stock that Will Patterson has
     had