They knew that James Taggart was fully aware of it, when they saw him moving among his guests. He walked briskly, in a Morse code pattern of short dashes and brief stops, with a manner of faint irritation, as if conscious of the number of people whom his displeasure might worry. The hint of a smile on his face had a flavor of gloating—as if he knew that the act of coming to honor him was an act that disgraced the men who had come; as if he knew and enjoyed it.
A tail of figures kept trailing and shifting behind him, as if their function were to give him the pleasure of ignoring them. Mr. Mowen flickered briefly among the tail, and Dr. Pritchett, and Balph Eubank.
The most persistent one was Paul Larkin. He kept describing circles around Taggart, as if trying to acquire a suntan by means of an occasional ray, his wistful smile pleading to be noticed.
Taggart’s eyes swept over the crowd once in a while, swiftly and furtively, in the manner of a prowler’s flashlight; this, in the muscular shorthand legible to Orren Boyle, meant that Taggart was looking for someone and did not want anyone to know it. The search ended when Eugene Lawson came to shake Taggart’s hand and to say, his wet lower lip twisting like a cushion to soften the blow, “Mr. Mouch couldn’t come, Jim, Mr. Mouch is so sorry, he had a special plane chartered, but at the last minute things came up, crucial national problems, you know.” Taggart stood still, did not answer and frowned.
Orren Boyle burst out laughing. Taggart turned to him so sharply that the others melted away without waiting for a command to vanish.
“What do you think you’re doing?” snapped Taggart.
“Having a good time, Jimmy, just having a good time,” said Boyle. “Wesley is your boy, wasn’t he?”
“I know somebody who’s my boy and he’d better not forget it.”
“Who? Larkin? Well, no, I don’t think you’re talking about Larkin.
And if it’s not Larkin that you’re talking about, why then I think you ought to be careful in your use of the possessive pronouns. I don’t mind the age classification, I know I look young for my years, but I’m just allergic to pronouns.”
“That’s very smart, but you’re going to get too smart one of these days.”
“If I do, you just go ahead and make the most of it, Jimmy. If.”
“The trouble with people who overreach themselves is that they have short memories. You’d better remember who got Rearden Metal choked off the market for you.”
“Why, I remember who promised to. That was the party who then pulled every string he could lay his hands on to try to prevent that particular directive from being issued, because he figured he might need rail of Rearden Metal in the future.”
“Because you spent ten thousand dollars pouring liquor into people you hoped would prevent the directive about the bond moratorium!”
“That’s right. So I did. I had friends who had railroad bonds. And besides, I have friends in Washington, too, Jimmy. Well, your friends beat mine on that moratorium business, but mine beat yours on Rearden Metal—and I’m not forgetting it. But what the hell!—it’s all right with me, that’s the way to share things around, only don’t you try to fool me, Jimmy. Save the act for the suckers.”
“If you don’t believe that I’ve always tried to do my best for you—”
“Sure, you have. The best that could be expected, all things considered. And you’ll continue to do it, too, so long as I’ve got somebody you need—and not a minute longer. So I just wanted to remind you that I’ve got my own friends in Washington. Friends that money can’t buy—just like yours, Jimmy.”
“What do you think you mean?”
“Just what you’re thinking. The ones you buy aren’t really worth a damn, because somebody can always offer them more, so the field’s wide open to anybody and it’s just like old-fashioned competition again.
But if you get the goods on a man, then you’ve got him, then there’s no higher bidder and you can count on his friendship. Well, you have friends, and so have I. You have friends I can use, and vice versa.
That’s all right with me—what the hell!—one’s got to trade something.
If we don’t trade money—and the age of money is past—then we trade men.”
“What is it you’re driving at?”
“Why, I’m just telling you a few things that you ought to remember.
Now take Wesley, for instance. You promised him the assistant’s job in the Bureau of National Planning—for double-crossing Rearden, at the time of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. You had the connections to do it, and that’s what I asked you to do—in exchange for the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule, where I had the connections. So Wesley did his part, and you saw to it that you got it all on paper—oh sure, I know that you’ve got written proof of the kind of deals he pulled to help pass that bill, while he was taking Rearden’s money to defeat it and keeping Rearden off guard. They were pretty ugly deals. It would be pretty messy for Mr. Mouch, if it all came out in public. So you kept your promise and you got the job for him, because you thought you had him. And so you did. And he paid off pretty handsomely, didn’t he? But it works only just so long. After a while, Mr. Wesley Mouch might get to be so powerful and the scandal so old, that nobody will care how he got his start or whom he double-crossed. Nothing lasts forever. Wesley was Rearden’s man, and then he was your man, and he might be somebody else’s man tomorrow ”
“Are you giving me a hint?”
“Why no, I’m giving you a friendly warning. We’re old friends.
Jimmy, and I think that that’s what we ought to remain. I think we can be very useful to each other, you and I, if you don’t start getting the wrong ideas about friendship. Me—I believe in a balance of power.”
“Did you prevent Mouch from coming here tonight?”
“Well, maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. I’ll let you worry about it.
That’s good for me, if I did—and still better, if I didn’t.”
Cherryl’s eyes followed James Taggart through the crowd. The faces that kept shifting and gathering around her seemed so friendly and their voices were so eagerly warm that she felt certain there was no malice anywhere in the room. She wondered why some of them talked to her about Washington, in a hopeful, confidential manner of half sentences, half-hints, as if they were seeking her help for something secret she was supposed to understand. She did not know what to say, but she smiled and answered whatever she pleased. She could not disgrace the person of “Mrs. Taggart” by any touch of fear.
Then she saw the enemy. It was a tall, slender figure in a gray evening gown, who was now her sister-in-law.
The pressure of anger in Cherryl’s mind was the stored accumulation of the sounds of Jim’s tortured voice. She felt the nagging pull of a duty left undone. Her eyes kept returning to the enemy and studying her intently. The pictures of Dagny Taggart in the newspapers had shown a figure dressed in slacks, or a face with a slanting hat brim and a raised coat collar. Now she wore a gray evening gown that seemed indecent, because it looked austerely modest, so modest that it vanished from one’s awareness and left one too aware of the slender body it pretended to cover. There was a tone of blue in the gray cloth that went with the gun-metal gray of her eyes. She wore no jewelry, only a bracelet on her wrist, a chain of heavy metal links with a green blue cast.
Cherryl waited, until she saw Dagny standing alone, then tore forward, cutting resolutely across the room. She looked at close range into the gun-metal eyes that seemed cold and intense at once, the eyes that looked at her directly with a polite, impersonal curiosity.
“There’s something I want you to know,” said Cherryl, her voice taut and harsh, “so that there won’t be any pretending about it. I’m not going to put on the sweet relative act. I know what you’ve done to Jim and how you’ve made him miserable all his life. I’m going to protect him against you. I’ll put you in your place. I’m Mrs. Taggart. I’m the woman in this family now.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Dagny. “I’m the man.”
Cherryl watched her walk away, and ihoug’rit1 that Jim had been right: this sister of his was a creature of cold evil who had given her no response, no acknowledgment, no emotion of any kind except a touch of something that looked like an astonished, indifferent amusement.