“And what is it that you want me to do?”
“You must kill him.”
It was the fact that Dr. Stadler had not cried it, but had said it in a flat, cold, suddenly and fully conscious voice, that brought a chill moment of silence as the whole room’s answer.
“You must find him,” said Dr. Stadler, his voice cracking and rising once more. “You must leave no stone unturned till you find him and destroy him! If he lives, he’ll destroy all of us! If he lives, we can’t!”
“How am I to find him?” asked Mr. Thompson, speaking slowly and carefully.
“I... I can tell you. I can give you a lead. Watch that Taggart woman. Set your men to watch every move she makes. She’ll lead you to him, sooner or later.”
“How do you know that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it sheer chance that she hasn’t deserted you long ago? Don’t you have the wits to see that she’s one of his kind?”
He did not state what kind.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Thompson thoughtfully, “yeah, that’s true.” He jerked his head up with a smile of satisfaction. “The professor’s got something there. Put a tail on Miss Taggart,” he ordered, snapping his fingers at Mouch. “Have her tailed day and night. We’ve got to find him.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mouch blankly.
“And when you find him,” Dr. Stadler asked tensely, “you’ll kill him?”
“Kill him, you damn fool? We need him!” cried Mr. Thompson.
Mouch waited, but no one ventured the question that was on everyone’s mind, so he made the effort to utter stiffly, “I don’t understand you, Mr. Thompson.”
“Oh, you theoretical intellectuals!” said Mr. Thompson with exasperation. “What are you all gaping at? It’s simple. Whoever he is, he’s a man of action. Besides, he’s got a pressure group: he’s cornered all the men of brains. He knows what to do. We’ll find him and he’ll tell us. He’ll tell us what to do. He’ll make things work. He’ll pull us out of the hole.”
“Us, Mr. Thompson?”
“Sure. Never mind your theories. We’ll make a deal with him.”
“With him?”
“Sure. Oh, we’ll have to compromise, we’ll have to make a few concessions to big business, and the welfare boys won’t like it, but what the hell!—do you know any other way out?”
“But his ideas—”
“Who cares about ideas?”
“Mr. Thompson,” said Mouch, choking, “I... I’m afraid he’s a man who’s not open to a deal.”
“There’s no such thing,” said Mr. Thompson.
A cold wind rattled the broken signs over the windows of abandoned shops, in the street outside the radio station. The city seemed abnormally quiet. The distant rumble of the traffic sounded lower than usual and made the wind sound louder. Empty sidewalks stretched off into the darkness; a few lone figures stood in whispering clusters under the rare lights.
Eddie Willers did not speak until they were many blocks away from the station. He stopped abruptly, when they reached a deserted square where the public loud-speakers, which no one had thought of turning off, were now broadcasting a domestic comedy—the shrill voices of a husband and wife quarreling over Junior’s dates—to an empty stretch of pavement enclosed by unlighted house fronts. Beyond the square, a few dots of light, scattered vertically above the twenty fifth-floor limit of the city, suggested a distant, rising form, which was the Taggart Building.
Eddie stopped and pointed at the building, his finger shaking.
“Dagny!” he cried, then lowered his voice involuntarily. “Dagny,” he whispered, “I know him. He... he works there... there...”
He kept pointing at the building with incredulous helplessness. “He works for Taggart Transcontinental...”
“I know,” she answered; her voice was a lifeless monotone.
“As a track laborer... as the lowest of track laborers...”
“I know.”
“I’ve talked to him... I’ve been talking to him for years... in the Terminal cafeteria... He used to ask questions... all sorts of questions about the railroad, and I—God, Dagny! was I protecting the railroad or was I helping to destroy it?”
“Both. Neither. It doesn’t matter now.”
“I could have staked my life that he loved the railroad!”
“He does.”
“But he’s destroyed it.”
“Yes.”
She tightened the collar of her coat and walked on, against a gust of wind.
“I used to talk to him,” he said, after a while. “His face... Dagny, it didn’t look like any of the others, it... it showed that he understood so much... I was glad, whenever I saw him there, in the cafeteria... I just talked... I don’t think I knew that he was asking questions... but he was... so many questions about the railroad and... and about you.”
“Did he ever ask you what I look like, when I’m asleep?”
“Yes... Yes, he did... I’d found you once, asleep in the office, and when I mentioned it, he—” He stopped, as a sudden connection crashed into place in his mind.
She turned to him, in the ray of a street lamp, raising and holding her face in full light for a silent, deliberate moment, as if in answer and confirmation of his thought.
He closed his eyes. “Oh God, Dagny!” he whispered.
They walked on in silence.
“He’s gone by now, isn’t he?” he asked. “From the Taggart Terminal, I mean.”
“Eddie,” she said, her voice suddenly grim, “if you value his life, don’t ever ask that question. You don’t want them to find him, do you?
Don’t give them any leads. Don’t ever breathe a word to anyone about having known him. Don’t try to find out whether he’s still working in the Terminal.”
“You don’t mean that he’s still there?”
“I don’t know. I know only that he might be.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Still?”
“Yes. Keep quiet about it, if you don’t want to destroy him.”
“I think he’s gone. He won’t be back. I haven’t seen him since... since...”
“Since when?” she asked sharply.
“The end of May. The night when you left for Utah, remember?” He paused, as the memory of that night’s encounter and the full understanding of its meaning struck him together. He said with effort, “I saw him that night. Not since... I’ve waited for him, in the cafeteria... He never came back.”
“I don’t think he’ll let you see him now, he’ll keep out of your way. But don’t look for him. Don’t inquire.”
“It’s funny. I don’t even know what name he used. It was Johnny something or—”
“It was John Galt,” she said, with a faint, mirthless chuckle. “Don’t look at the Terminal payroll. The name is still there.”
“Just like that? All these years?”
“For twelve years. Just like that.”
“And it’s still there now?”
“Yes.”
After a moment, he said, “It proves nothing, I know. The personnel office hasn’t taken a single name off the payroll list since Directive 10-289. If a man quits, they give his name and job to a starving friend of their own, rather than report it to the Unification Board.”
“Don’t question the personnel office or anyone. Don’t call attention to his name. If you or I make any inquiries about him, somebody might begin to wonder. Don’t look for him. Don’t make any move in his direction. And if you ever catch sight of him by chance, act as if you didn’t know him.”
He nodded. After a while, he said, his voice tense and low, “I wouldn’t turn him over to them, not even to save the railroad.”
“Eddie—”
“Yes?”
“If you ever catch sight of him, tell me.”
He nodded.
Two blocks later, he asked quietly, “You’re going to quit, one of these days, and vanish, aren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?” It was almost a cry.
“Aren’t you?”
She did not answer at once; when she did, the sound of despair was present in her voice only in the form of too tight a monotone: “Eddie, if I quit, what would happen to the Taggart trains?”
“There would be no Taggart trains within a week. Maybe less.”