Page:Wilson - Bunker bean.djvu/220

198 "Exactly what I told him," remarked the conscientious Tully, who was present to take notes, "and he said to me, 'Mr. Tully, I am unwilling to imagine anything of less consequence.' He seemed, uh—I might say—decided."

"Gave me the same thing," said Markham.

"Leak in the office," announced the elderly advanced dresser. "Fifty shares!" he added, twirling the glasses on their silk ribbon. "Hell! Going to let him get away with it?"

"Got to be careful," suggested a quiet director who had listened. "Can't tell who's back of him."

"Call him in," ordered the advanced dresser, fixing the glasses firmly on his purple nose. "Call him in! Bluff him in a minute!"

"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!" smote fatefully on Bean's ears. He had expected it. If they didn't let him alone, he would tell them all that he could imagine nothing of less consequence.

He entered the room. He hardly dared scan the faces of those directors in the flesh, but they were all scanning him. He stood at the end of the table and fastened his eyes on a railway map that bedecked the opposite wall, one of those mendacious maps showing a trans-continental line of unbroken tangent; three thousand miles of railway without a curve, the opposition lines being mere spirals.

"Here, boy!" It was the advanced dresser of the white parted beard and the constant indignation. Bean looked at him. He had known from the first that he must clash with this man.