Atlas Shrugged (87 page)

It was late and the lights of the underground cafeteria were low, but Eddie Willers could see the worker’s eyes looking at him intently.

“I feel as if ... as if there’s no people and no human language left,” said Eddie Willers. “I feel that if I were to scream in the middle of the streets, there would be no one to hear it.... No, that’s not quite what I feel, it’s this: I feel that someone is screaming in the middle of the streets, but people are passing by and no sound can reach them -and it’s not Hank Rearden or Ken Danagger or I who’s screaming, and yet it seems as if it’s all three of us.... Don’t you see that somebody should have risen to defend them, but nobody has or will? Rearden and Danagger were indicted this morning—for an illegal sale of Rearden Metal. They’ll go on trial next month. I was there, in the courtroom in Philadelphia, when they read the indictment. Rearden was very calm—I kept feeling that he was smiling, but he wasn’t. Danagger was worse than calm. He didn’t say a word, he just stood there, as if the room were empty.... The newspapers are saying that both of them should be thrown in jail.... No ... no, I’m not shaking, I’m all right, I’ll be all right in a moment.... That’s why I haven’t said a word to her, I was afraid I’d explode and I didn’t want to make it harder for her, I know how she feels.... Oh yes,
she
spoke to me about it, and she didn’t shake, but it was worse—you know, the kind of rigidity when a person acts as if she didn’t feel anything at all, and . . . Listen, did I ever tell you that I like you? I like you very much—for the way you look right now. You hear us. You understand . . . What did she say? It was strange: it’s not Hank Rearden that she’s afraid for, it’s Ken Danagger. She said that Rearden will have the strength to take it, but Danagger won’t. Not that he’ll lack the strength, but he’ll refuse to take it. She . . . she feels certain that Ken Danagger will be the next one to go. To go like Ellis Wyatt and all those others. To give up and vanish . . . Why? Well, she thinks that there’s something like a shift of stress involved—economic and personal stress. As soon as all the weight of the moment shifts to the shoulders of some one man—
he’s
the one who vanishes, like a pillar slashed off. A year ago, nothing worse could have happened to the country than to lose Ellis Wyatt. He’s the one we lost. Since then, she says, it’s been as if the center of gravity were swinging wildly—like in a sinking cargo ship out of control—shifting from industry to industry, from man to man. When we lose one, another becomes that much more desperately needed—and he’s the one we lose next. Well, what could be a greater disaster now than to have the country’s coal supply left in the hands of men like Boyle or Larkin? And there’s no one left in the coal industry who amounts to much, except Ken Danagger. So she says that she feels almost as if he’s a marked man, as if he’s hit by a spotlight right now, waiting to be cut down.... What are you laughing at? It might sound preposterous, but I think it’s true.... What? ... Oh yes, you bet she’s a smart woman! ... And then there’s another thing involved, she says. A man has to come to a certain mental stage—not anger or despair, but something much, much more than both—before he can be cut down. She can’t tell what it is, but she knew, long before the fire, that Ellis Wyatt had reached that stage and something would happen to him. When she saw Ken Danagger in the courtroom today, she said that he was ready for the destroyer.... Yes, that’s the words she used: he was ready for the destroyer. You see, she doesn’t think it’s happening by chance or accident. She thinks there’s a system behind it, an intention, a man. There’s a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose . . . She says that she won’t let him get Ken Danagger. She keeps repeating that she must stop Danagger—she wants to speak to him, to beg, to plead, to revive whatever it is that he’s losing, to arm him against the destroyer, before the destroyer comes. She’s desperately anxious to reach Danagger first. He has refused to see anyone. He’s gone back to Pittsburgh, to his mines. But she got him on the phone, late today, and she’s made an appointment to see him tomorrow afternoon.... Yes, she’ll go to Pittsburgh tomorrow.... Yes, she’s afraid for Danagger, terribly afraid.... No. She knows nothing about the destroyer. She has no clue to his identity, no evidence of his existence—except the trail of destruction. But she feels certain that he exists.... No, she cannot guess his purpose. She says that nothing on earth could justify him. There are times when she feels that she’d like to find him more than any other man in the world, more than the inventor of the motor. She says that if she found the destroyer, she’d shoot him on sight—she’d be willing to give her life if she could take his first and by her own hand . . . because he’s the most evil creature that’s ever existed, the man who’s draining the brains of the world. . . . I guess it’s getting to be too much for her, at times—even for her. I don’t think she allows herself to know how tired she is. The other morning, I came to work very early and I found hei asleep on the couch in her office, with the light still burning on her desk. She’d been there all night. I just stood and looked at her. I wouldn’t have awakened her if the whole goddamn railroad collapsed.... When she was asleep? Why, she looked like a young girl. She looked as if she felt certain that she would awaken in a world where no one would harm her, as if she had nothing to hide or to fear. That’s what was terrible—that guiltless purity of her face, with her body twisted by exhaustion, still lying there as she had collapsed. She looked—say, why should you ask me what she looks like when she’s asleep? ... Yes, you’re right, why do
I talk
about it? I shouldn’t. I don’t know what made me think of it.... Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll be all right tomorrow. I guess it’s just that I’m sort of shell-shocked by that courtroom. I keep thinking: if men like Rearden and Danagger are to be sent to jail, then what kind of world are we working in and what for? Isn’t there any justice left on earth? I was foolish enough to say that to a reporter when we were leaving the courtroom—and he just laughed and said, ‘Who is John Galt?’ ... Tell me, what’s happening to us? Isn’t there a single man of justice left? Isn’t there anyone to defend them? Oh, do you hear me? Isn’t there anyone to defend them?”

“Mr. Danagger will be free in a moment, Miss Taggart. He has a visitor in his office. Will you excuse it, please?” said the secretary.

Through the two hours of her flight to Pittsburgh, Dagny had been tensely unable to justify her anxiety or to dismiss it; there was no reason to count minutes, yet she had felt a blind desire to hurry. The anxiety vanished when she entered the anteroom of Ken Danagger’s office: she had reached him, nothing had happened to prevent it, she felt safety, confidence and an enormous sense of relief.

The words of the secretary demolished it. You’re becoming a coward—thought Dagny, feeling a causeless jolt of dread at the words, out of all proportion to their meaning.

“I am so sorry, Miss Taggart.” She heard the secretary’s respectful, solicitous voice and realized that she had stood there without answering. “Mr. Danagger will be with you in just a moment. Won’t you sit down?” The voice conveyed an anxious concern over the impropriety of keeping her waiting.

Dagny smiled. “Oh, that’s quite all right.”

She sat down in a wooden armchair, facing the secretary’s railing. She reached for a cigarette and stopped, wondering whether she would have time to finish it, hoping that she would not, then lighted it brusquely.

It was an old-fashioned frame building, this headquarters of the great Danagger Coal Company. Somewhere in the hills beyond the window were the pits where Ken Danagger had once worked as a miner. He had never moved his office away from the coal fields.

She could see the mine entrances cut into the hillsides, small frames of metal girders, that led to an immense underground kingdom. They seemed precariously modest, lost in the violent orange and red of the hills.... Under a harsh blue sky, in the sunlight of late October, the sea of leaves looked like a sea of fire . . . like waves rolling to swallow the fragile posts of the mine doorways. She shuddered and looked away: she thought of the flaming leaves spread over the hills of Wisconsin, on the road to Starnesville.

She noticed that there was only a stub left of the cigarette between her fingers. She lighted another.

When she glanced at the clock on the wall of the anteroom, she caught the secretary glancing at it at the same time. Her appointment was for three o.‘clock; the white dial said: 3:12.

“Please forgive it, Miss Taggart,” said the secretary. “Mr. Danagger will be through, any moment now. Mr. Danagger is extremely punctual about his appointments. Please believe me that this is unprecedented.”

“I know it.” She knew that Ken Danagger was as rigidly exact about his schedule as a railroad timetable and that he had been known to cancel an interview if a caller permitted himself to arrive five minutes late.

The secretary was an elderly spinster with a forbidding manner: a manner of even-toned courtesy impervious to any shock, just as her spotless white blouse was impervious to an atmosphere filled with coal dust. Dagny thought it strange that a hardened, well-trained woman of this type should appear to be nervous: she volunteered no conversation, she sat still, bent over some pages of paper on her desk. Half of Dagny’s cigarette had gone in smoke, while the woman still sat looking at the same page.

When she raised her head to glance at the clock, the dial said: 3:30. “I know that this is inexcusable, Miss Taggart.” The note of apprehension was obvious in her voice now. “I am unable to understand it.”

“Would you mind telling Mr. Danagger that I’m here?”

“I can.‘t!” It was almost a cry; she saw Dagny’s astonished glance and felt obliged to explain: “Mr. Danagger called me, on the interoffice communicator, and told me that he was not to be interrupted under any circumstances or for any reason whatever.”

“When did he do that?”

The moment’s pause was like a small air cushion for the answer: “Two hours ago.”

Dagny looked at the closed door of Danagger’s office. She could hear the sound of a voice beyond the door, but so faintly that she could not tell whether it was the voice of one man or the conversation of two; she could not distinguish the words or the emotional quality of the tone: it was only a low, even progression of sounds that seemed normal and did not convey the pitch of raised voices.

“How long has Mr. Danagger been in conference?” she asked.

“Since one o.‘clock,” said the secretary grimly, then added in apology, “It was an unscheduled caller, or Mr. Danagger would never have permitted this to happen.”

The door was not locked, thought Dagny; she felt an unreasoning desire to tear it open and walk in—it was only a few wooden boards with a brass knob, it would require only a small muscular contraction of her arm—but she looked away, knowing that the power of a civilized order and of Ken Danagger’s right was more impregnable a barrier than any lock.

She found herself staring at the stubs of her cigarettes in the ashtray stand beside her, and wondered why it gave her a sharper feeling of apprehension. Then she realized that she was thinking of Hugh Akston: she had written to him, at his diner in Wyoming, asking him to tell her where he had obtained the cigarette with the dollar sign; her letter had come back, with a postal inscription to inform her that he had moved away, leaving no forwarding address.

She told herself angrily that this had no connection with the present moment and that she had to control her nerves. But her hand jerked to press the button of the ashtray and make the cigarette stubs vanish inside the stand.

As she looked up, her eyes met the glance of the secretary watching her. “I am sorry, Miss Taggart. I don’t know what to do about it.” It was an openly desperate plea. “I don’t dare interrupt.”

Dagny asked slowly, as a demand, in defiance of office etiquette, “Who is with Mr. Danagger?”

“I don’t know, Miss Taggart. I have never seen the gentleman before.” She noticed the sudden, fixed stillness of Dagny’s eyes and added, “I think it’s a childhood friend of Mr. Danagger.”

“Oh!” said Dagny, relieved.

“He came in unannounced and asked to see Mr. Danagger and said that this was an appointment which Mr. Danagger had made with him forty years ago.”

“How old is Mr. Danagger?”

“Fifty-two,” said the secretary. She added reflectively, in the tone of a casual remark, “Mr. Danagger started working at the age of twelve.” After another silence, she added, “The strange thing is that the visitor does not look as if he’s even forty years old. He seems to be a man in his thirties.”

“Did he give his name?”

“No.”

“What does he look like?”

The secretary smiled with sudden animation, as if she were about to utter an enthusiastic compliment, but the smile vanished abruptly. “I don’t know,” she answered uneasily. “He’s hard to describe. He has a strange face.”