The directors turned the pages with easier fingers, but a new alertness was in the air. These were details that any one could grasp--with their implications.... “Six hundred box cars--forty passenger coaches, each to cost $6,500.” The look of sleepy content was banished from the board.
But the president of the road met the glances that traveled toward him, with steady front. The figures had startled the directors, but they seemed as music in his ears. “Thirty-nine engines--twelve of the big Pacific type--” sang to him! He sat a little straighter, his quick nod assenting to each detail and vouching for items that might so easily have stirred a challenge.
The directors had no eyes for the young man taking the papers from Tetlow’s hand, reading them one by one. He was hardly more than a Voice. They did not note that the stubby hand as it reached out to take a paper from the trembling one closed upon it firmly for a minute and that the hand ceased to shake. When the next item was read, the hand lifted itself from the table with a little gesture of pride and assent. The proposed improvements and equipment would cost a round million,--But the road could stand a million dollars--and more.... The lifted hand had said this eloquently before it dropped.
The room breathed more easily, and into the voice that read the items there crept a quiet note of relief.
The president of the road swayed a little toward the table. He might be consulting the paper in his hand--it was the last one--before he handed it to the sturdy young man beside him to read.
The young man leaning toward him to take it, blotted out for a moment the thin, bent figure. When his shoulders straightened themselves again, the president of the “R. and Q.” was erect in his chair, his inscrutable face turned toward the directors.
The young man read rapidly from the paper. It was a summary of items. They had the substance of it already. This only gathered it into smaller compass for them, the quiet voice seemed to assure them, as it went swiftly to the end.
“There is one point not included in the formal report that the President intended to speak to you about.” He had laid down the paper and was looking at them.
They returned the glance, finding a certain pleasure in this sturdy young man.