He died five years ago, of a heart ailment from which he had suffered for some time.”
Dagny asked hopelessly, “Did you know the nature of his experiments?”
“No. I know very little about engineering.”
“Did you know any of his professional friends or co-workers, who might have been acquainted with his research?”
“No. When he was at Twentieth Century Motors, he worked such long hours that we had very little time for ourselves and we spent it together. We had no social life at all. He never brought his associates to the house.”
“When he was at Twentieth Century, did he ever mention to you a motor he had designed, an entirely new type of motor that could have changed the course of all industry?”
“A motor? Yes. Yes, he spoke of it several times. He said it was an invention of incalculable importance. But it was not he who had designed it. It was the invention of a young assistant of his.”
She saw the expression on Dagny’s face, and added slowly, quizzically, without reproach, merely in sad amusement, “I see.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Dagny, realizing that her emotion had shot to her face and become a smile as obvious as a cry of relief.
“It’s quite all right. I understand. It’s the inventor of that motor that you’re interested in. I don’t know whether he is still alive, but at least I have no reason to think that he isn’t.”
“I’d give half my life to know that he is—and to find him. It’s as important as that, Mrs. Hastings. Who is he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know his name or anything about him. I never knew any of the men on my husband’s staff. He told me only that he had a young engineer who, some day, would up-turn the world.
My husband did not care for anything in people except ability. I think this was the only man he ever loved. He didn’t say so, but I could tell it, just by the way he spoke of this young assistant. I remember—the day he told me that the motor was completed—how his voice sounded when he said, ‘And he’s only twenty-six!’ This was about a month before the death of Jed Starnes. He never mentioned the motor or the young engineer, after that.”
“You don’t know what became of the young engineer?”
“No.”
“You can’t suggest any way to find him?”
“No.”
“You have no clue, no lead to help me learn his name?”
“None. Tell me, was that motor extremely valuable?”
“More valuable than any estimate I could give you.”
“It’s strange, because, you see, I thought of it once, some years after we’d left Wisconsin, and I asked my husband what had become of that invention he’d said was so great, what would be done with it.
He looked at me very oddly and answered, ‘Nothing.’ ”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Can you remember anyone at all who worked at Twentieth Century? Anyone who knew that young engineer? Any friend of his?”
“No, I . . . Wait! Wait, I think I can give you a lead. I can tell you where to find one friend of his. I don’t even know that friend’s name, either, but I know his address. It’s an odd story. I’d better explain how it happened. One evening—about two years after we’d come here—my husband was going out and I needed our car that night, so he asked me to pick him up after dinner at the restaurant of the railroad station. He did not tell me with whom he was having dinner. When I drove up to the station, I saw him standing outside the restaurant with two men. One of them was young and tall. The other was elderly; he looked very distinguished. I would still recognize those men anywhere; they had the kind of faces one doesn’t forget. My husband saw me and left them. They walked away toward the station platform; there was a train coming. My husband pointed after the young man and said, ‘Did you see him? That’s the boy I told you about.1 ‘The one who’s the great maker of motors?’ The one who was.’ ”
“And he told you nothing else?”
“Nothing else. This was nine years ago. Last spring, I went to visit my brother who lives in Cheyenne. One afternoon, he took the family out for a long drive. We went up into pretty wild country, high in the Rockies, and we stopped at a roadside diner. There was a distinguished, gray-haired man behind the counter. I kept staring at him while he fixed our sandwiches and coffee, because I knew that I had seen his face before, but could not remember where. We drove on, we were miles away from the diner, when I remembered. You’d better go there.
It’s on Route 86, in the mountains, west of Cheyenne, near a small industrial settlement by the Lennox Copper Foundry. It seems strange, but I’m certain of it: the cook in that diner is the man I saw at the railroad station with my husband’s young idol.”
The diner stood on the summit of a long, hard climb. Its glass walls spread a coat of polish over the view of rocks and pines descending in broken ledges to the sunset. It was dark below, but an even, glowing light still remained in the diner, as in a small pool left behind by a receding tide.
Dagny sat at the end of the counter, eating a hamburger sandwich.
It was the best-cooked food she had ever tasted, the product of simple ingredients and of an unusual skill. Two workers were finishing their dinner; she was waiting for them to depart.
She studied the man behind the counter. He was slender and tall; he had an air of distinction that belonged in an ancient castle or in the inner office of a bank; but his peculiar quality came from the fact that he made the distinction seem appropriate here, behind the counter of a diner. He wore a cook’s white jacket as if it were a full-dress suit. There was an expert competence in his manner of working; his movements were easy, intelligently economical. He had a lean face and gray hair that blended in tone with the cold blue of his eyes; somewhere beyond his look of courteous sternness, there was a note of humor, so faint that it vanished if one tried to discern it.
The two workers finished, paid and departed, each leaving a dime for a tip. She watched the man as he removed their dishes, put the dimes into the pocket of his white jacket, wiped the counter, working with swift precision. Then he turned and looked at her. It was an impersonal glance, not intended to invite conversation; but she felt certain that he had long since noted her New York suit, her high-heeled pumps, her air of being a woman who did not waste her time; his cold, observant eyes seemed to tell her that he knew she did not belong here and that he was waiting to discover her purpose.
“How is business?” she asked.
“Pretty bad. They’re going to close the Lennox Foundry next week, so I’ll have to close soon, too, and move on.” His voice was clear, impersonally cordial.
“Where to?”
“1 haven’t decided.”
“What sort of thing do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking of opening a garage, if I can find the right spot in some town.”
“Oh no! You’re too good at your job to change it. You shouldn’t want to be anything but a cook.”
A strange, fine smile moved the curve of his mouth. “No?” he asked courteously.
“No! How would you like a job in New York?” He looked at her, astonished. “I’m serious. I can give you a job on a big railroad, in charge of the dining-car department.”
“May I ask why you should want to?”
She raised the hamburger sandwich in its white paper napkin.
“There’s one of the reasons.”
“Thank you. What are the others?”
“T don’t suppose you’ve lived in a big city, or you’d know how miserably difficult it is to find any competent men for any job whatever.”
“I know a little about that.”
“Well? How about it, then? Would you like a job in New York at ten thousand dollars a year?”
“No.”
She had been carried away by the joy of discovering and rewarding ability. She looked at him silently, shocked. “I don’t think you understood me,” she said.
“I did.”
“You’re refusing an opportunity of this kind?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“That is a personal matter.”
“Why should you work like this, when you can have a better job?”
“I am not looking for a better job.”
“You don’t want a chance to rise and make money?”
“No. Why do you insist?”
“Because I hate to see ability being wasted!”