"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

his pretensions. At once he proved himself to be what all Bidwell later
acknowledged him to be, a man who could handle men and affairs. Having at
that time nothing to support his pretensions he decided to put up a bluff.
With a wave of his hand and an air of knowing just what he was about, he
led the two men into the back room of the bank and shut the door leading
into the large room to which the general public was admitted. "You would
have thought he owned the place," John Clark afterward said with a note of
admiration in his voice to young Gordon Hart when he described what took
place in the back room.

Steve plunged at once into what he had to say to the two solid moneyed
citizens of his town. "Well, now, look here, you two," he began earnestly.
"I'm going to tell you something, but you got to keep still." He went to
the window that looked out upon an alleyway and glanced about as though
fearful of being overheard, then sat down in the chair usually occupied by
John Clark on the rare occasions when the directors of the Bidwell bank
held a meeting. Steve looked over the heads of the two men who in spite
of themselves were beginning to be impressed. "Well," he began, "there is
a fellow out at Pickleville. You have maybe heard things said about him.
He's telegraph operator out there. Perhaps you have heard how he is always
making drawings of parts of machines. I guess everybody in town has been
wondering what he's up to."

Steve looked at the two men and then got nervously out of the chair and
walked about the room. "That fellow is my man. I put him there," he
declared. "I didn't want to tell any one yet."

The two men nodded and Steve became lost in the notion created in his
fancy. It did not occur to him that what he had just said was untrue. He
began to scold the two men. "Well, I suppose I'm on the wrong track there,"
he said. "My man has made an invention that will bring millions in profits
to those who get into it. In Cleveland and Buffalo I'm already in touch
with big bankers. There's to be a big factory built, but you see yourself
how it is, here I'm at home. I was raised as a boy here."

The excited young man plunged into an exposition of the spirit of the new
times. He grew bold and scolded the older men. "You know yourself that
factories are springing up everywhere, in towns all over the State," he
said. "Will Bidwell wake up? Will we have factories here? You know well
enough we won't, and I know why. It's because a man like me who was raised
here has to go to a city to get money to back his plans. If I talked to you
fellows you would laugh at me. In a few years I might make you more money
than you have made in your whole lives, but what's the use talking? I'm
Steve Hunter; you knew me when I was a kid. You'd laugh. What's the use my
trying to tell you fellows my plans?"

Steve turned as though to go out of the room, but Tom Butterworth took hold
of his arm and led him back to a chair. "Now, you tell us what you're up
to," he demanded. In turn he grew indignant. "If you've got something to
manufacture you can get backing here as well as any place," he said. He