Keating sat on the floor, his legs spread out. He lifted one hand and studied his fingertips, then put it to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. But the movement was deceptive; the man was reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and Toohey knew that no answer could be expected.
Keating waited obediently; it seemed to make no difference; the sounds had stopped and it was now his function to wait until they started again.
Toohey put his hands on the arms of his chair, then lifted his palms, from the wrists, and clasped the wood again, a little slap of resigned finality. He pushed himself up to his feet.
"Thank you, Peter," he said gravely. "Honesty is a hard thing to eradicate. I have made speeches to large audiences all my life. This was the speech I'll never have a chance to make."
Keating lifted his head. His voice had the quality of a down payment on terror; it was not frightened, but it held the advance echoes of the next hour to come:
"Don't go, Ellsworth."
Toohey stood over him, and laughed softly.
"That's the answer, Peter. That's my proof. You know me for what I am, you know what I've done to you, you have no illusions of virtue left. But you can't leave me and you'll never be able to leave me. You've obeyed me in the name of ideals. You'll go on obeying me without ideals. Because that's all you're good for now ... Good night, Peter."
15.
"THIS is a test case. What we think of it will determine what we are. In the person of Howard Roark, we must crush the forces of selfishness and antisocial individualism — the curse of our modern world — here shown to us in ultimate consequences. As mentioned at the beginning of this column, the district attorney now has in his possession a piece of evidence — we cannot disclose its nature at this moment — which proves conclusively that Roark is guilty. We, the people, shall now demand justice."
This appeared in "One Small Voice" on a morning late in May. Gail Wynand read it in his car, driving home from the airport. He had flown to Chicago in a last attempt to hold a national advertiser who had refused to renew a three-million-dollar contract. Two days of skillful effort had failed; Wynand lost the advertiser. Stepping off the plane in Newark, he picked up the New York papers. His car was waiting to take him to his country house. Then he read "One Small Voice."
He wondered for a moment what paper he held. He looked at the name on the top of the page. But it was the Banner, and the column was there, in its proper place, column one, first page, second section.
He leaned forward and told the chauffeur to drive to his office. He sat with the page spread open on his lap, until the car stopped before the Banner Building.
He noticed it at once, when he entered the building. In the eyes of two reporters who emerged from an elevator in the lobby; in the pose of the elevator man who fought a desire to turn and stare back at him; in the sudden immobility of all the men in his anteroom, in the break of a typewriter's clicking on the desk of one secretary, in the lifted hand of another — he saw the waiting. Then he knew that all the implications of the unbelievable were understood by everyone on his paper.
He felt a first dim shock; because the waiting around him contained wonder in anyone's mind about the outcome of an issue between him and Ellsworth Toohey.
But he had no time to take notice of his own reactions. He had no attention to spare for anything except a sense of tightness, a pressure against the bones of his face, his teeth, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose — and he knew he must press back against that, keep it down, hold it.
He greeted no one and walked into his office. Alvah Scarret sat slumped in a chair before his desk. Scarret had a bandage of soiled white gauze on his throat, and his cheeks were flushed. Wynand stopped in the middle of the room. The people outside had felt relieved: Wynand's face looked calm. Alvah Scarret knew better.
"Gail, I wasn't here," he gulped in a cracked whisper that was not a voice at all. "I haven't been here for two days. Laryngitis, Gail. Ask my doctor. I wasn't here. I just got out of bed, look at me, I've got a hundred and three, fever, I mean, the doctor didn't want me to, but I ... to get up, I mean, Gail, I wasn't here, I wasn't here!"
He could not be certain that Wynand heard. But Wynand let him finish, then assumed the appearance of listening, as if the sounds were reaching him, delayed. After a moment, Wynand asked:
"Who was on the copy desk?"
"It ... it went through Alien and Falk."
"Fire Harding, Allen, Falk and Toohey. Buy off Harding's contract. But not Toohey's. Have them all out of the building in fifteen minutes."
Harding was the managing editor; Falk, a copy reader; Alien, the slot man, head of the copy desk; all had worked on the Banner for more than ten years. It was as if Scarret had heard a news flash announcing the impeachment of a President, the destruction of New York City by a meteor and the sinking of California into the Pacific Ocean.
"Gail!" he screamed. "We can't!"
"Get out of here."
Scarret got out.
Wynand pressed a switch on his desk and said in answer to the trembling voice of the woman outside:
"Don't admit anyone."
"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
He pressed a button and spoke to the circulation manager:
"Stop every copy on the street."
"Mr. Wynand, it's too late! Most of them are ... "
"Stop them."
"Yes, Mr. Wynand."
He wanted to put his head down on the desk, lie still and rest, only the form of rest he needed did not exist, greater than sleep, greater than death, the rest of having never lived. The wish was like a secret taunt against himself, because he knew that the splitting pressure in his skull meant the opposite, an urge to action, so strong that he felt paralyzed. He fumbled for some sheets of clean paper, forgetting where he kept them. He had to write the editorial that would explain and counteract. He had to hurry. He felt no right to any minute that passed with the thing unwritten.
The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought — while his hand moved rapidly — what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.
He heard the rumble, the vibration in the walls of his office, in the floor. The presses were running off his afternoon paper, a small tabloid, the Clarion. He smiled at the sound. His hand went faster, as if the sound were energy pumped into his fingers.
He had dropped his usual editorial "we." He wrote: " ... And if my readers or my enemies wish to laugh at me over this incident, I shall accept it and consider it the payment of a debt incurred. I have deserved it."
He thought: It's the heart of this building, beating — what time is it? — do I really hear it or is it my own heart? — once, a doctor put the ends of his stethoscope into my ears and let me hear my own heartbeats — it sounded just like this — he said I was a healthy animal and good for many years — for many ... years ...