King Cole Read Online Free Page A

little bit more careful how you act around women when I’m with you. After all, I’m the Governor and have a certain dignity to maintain. I don’t like to have you dating up a cheap little check-girl right under my nose.”
    “Excuse me, Your Honor.” Gregg laughed, but when he noticed the expression on Read’s face, he said: “I’m sorry, Read. She’s the kind of girl that asks for attention without saying a word. I spoke automatically. Good Lord! Look—Eagle Beak himself!”
    Read glanced up. Asa Fielding, looking shabby and rural, though he was a city lawyer and a smart one, was coming down the stairs from the mezzanine with two of his henchmen. He saw Read and stiffened slightly, then he smiled and came over.
    “How do, Governor.”
    Read shook hands with him, bowing slightly. Fielding’s face was hawklike and sunburnt; his huge, beaked nose projected far beyond his heavy, straggling, gray mustache. His eyes were pale and shrewd and a little too bright.
    “How are you, Mr. Fielding?”
    “Fine, fine. Governor, you better get the Mansion all swept up and cleaned because I’m moving in shortly.”
    Read flushed slightly.
    “You’ll find it a very nice place to live in, very comfortable.”
    “Hate to move, don’t you?”
    “Oh, no. I don’t care where I live.”
    Gregg was pale with anger but lowered his eyes from the grinning faces of Eagle Beak’s henchmen and said nothing.
    “Well, that’s the right spirit,” said Fielding. “As a matter of fact, I ain’t going to live in the Mansion.
    Too expensive. I’m going to stay in one room. I’ll rent the Mansion and turn the rent back to the State.”
    “Yes,” said Read, “you might feel a little out of place there. Goodbye, Mr. Fielding. Very glad to have seen you.”
    When Read and Gregg reached the sidewalk, Gregg said:
    “Let me shake hands with you, Read Cole. Sometimes I have my doubts about you. But that was perfect.”

IV
    That night at dinner, while Read was finishing his dessert, his daughter, Jean, rushed in all out of breath and began to talk very fast. She had on whipcord riding breeches and tan boots. She looked very young and flushed and excited.
    “I’m so sorry, Dad,” she cried. “But Fred’s car broke down when we were coming in from the riding school and we were a long ways from a filling station or anything and we… so…”
    “In short, you’re late for dinner again. Well, sit down.”
    Jean pulled up a chair and sat looking at her father anxiously. Boyle, the Negro butler, came in with her soup. She picked up her spoon and took a sip, then she laid down her spoon and said:
    “Dad, I’ll tell you the truth. Fred and I ran away to get married and I lost my nerve. I was so afraid that… with the election and all… you…”
    “You what?’’ Read was genuinely startled. He studied his daughter’s face. She looked like her mother, only prettier. She was in fact very pretty indeed and looked much younger than she really was. Let’s see; she must be twenty-two. She had her mother’s copper hair and her full lips and her blue eyes. She was also very impulsive as her mother had been; easily moved to tears and to anger. There was a certain instability about her that worried Read at times.
    “We wanted to,” said Jean; then she put her head down and began to cry. Read saw a tear fall into her soup.
    “Jean,” he said sharply, “for heaven’s sake, control yourself. You’re crying into your soup like a barfly into his beer. What’s all the excitement?”
    “Well, Fred’s mad at me because I didn’t go through with it. He says he’ll never speak to me again.”
    “Oh, that’s silly.”
    Boyle came in, glanced at Jean, and went out.
    “It isn’t silly. Fred has a terrible temper and he’s stubborn as a mule.”
    “He’s just a plain damn fool. That’s all.”
    “He isn’t. He’s a darling and I should have married him when I said I would. Oh, you don’t know how I feel.