“All this fancy talk going ’round,” said Gus Webb in a public speech, “is a lot of bull. Here’s the plain dope. That guy Wynand’s salted away plenty, and I mean plenty, by skinning suckers in the real-estate racket all these years. Does he like it when the government muscles in and shoves him out, so’s the little fellows can get a clean roof over their heads and a modern john for their kids? You bet your boots he don’t like it, not one bit. It’s a put-up job between the two of them, Wynand and that redheaded boy friend of his, and if you ask me the boy friend got a good hunk of cash out of Mr. Wynand for pulling the job.”
“We have it from an unimpeachable source,” wrote a radical newspaper, “that Cortlandt was only the first step in a gigantic plot to blow up every housing project, every public power plant, post office and schoolhouse in the U.S.A. The conspiracy is headed by Gail Wynand–as we can see–and by other bloated capitalists of his kind, including some of our biggest moneybags.”
“Too little attention has been paid to the feminine angle of this case,” wrote Sally Brent in the New Frontiers. “The part played by Mrs. Gail Wynand is certainly highly dubious, to say the least. Isn’t it just the cutest coincidence that it was Mrs. Wynand who just so conveniently sent the watchman away at just the right time? And that her husband is now raising the roof to defend Mr. Roark? If we weren’t blinded by a stupid, senseless, old-fashioned sense of gallantry where a so-called beautiful woman is concerned, we wouldn’t allow that part of the case to be hushed up. If we weren’t overawed by Mrs. Wynand’s social position and the so-called prestige of her husband–who’s making an utter fool of himself–we’d ask a few question about the story that she almost lost her life in the disaster. How do we know she did? Doctors can be bought, just like anybody else, and Mr. Gail Wynand is an expert in such matters. If we consider all this, we might well see the outlines of something that looks like a most revolting ‘design for living.'”
“The position taken by the Wynand press,” wrote a quiet, conservative newspaper, “is inexplicable and disgraceful.”
The circulation of the Banner dropped week by week, the speed accelerating in the descent, like an elevator out of control. Stickers and buttons inscribed “We Don’t Read Wynand” grew on walls, subway posts, windshields and coat lapels. Wynand newsreels were booed off the theater screens. The Banner vanished from corner newsstands; the news vendors had to carry it, but they hid it under their counters and produced it grudgingly, only upon request. The ground had been prepared, the pillars eaten through long ago; the Cortlandt case provided the final impact.
Roark was almost forgotten in the storm of indignation against Gail Wynand. The angriest protests came from Wynand’s own public: from the Women’s Clubs, the ministers, the mothers, the small shopkeepers. Alvah Scarret had to be kept away from the room where hampers of letters to the editor were being filled each day; he started by reading the letters–and his friends on the staff undertook to prevent a repetition of the experience, fearing a stroke.
The staff of the Banner worked in silence. There were no furtive glances, no whispered cuss words, no gossip in washrooms any longer. A few men resigned. The rest worked on, slowly, heavily, in the manner of men with life belts buckled, waiting for the inevitable.
Gail Wynand noticed a kind of lingering tempo in every action around him. When he entered the Banner Building, his employees stopped at sight of him; when he nodded to them, their greeting came a second too late; when he walked on and turned, he found them staring after him. The “Yes, Mr. Wynand,” that had always answered his orders without a moment’s cut between the last syllable of his voice and the first letter of the answer, now came late, and the pause had a tangible shape, so that the answer sounded like a sentence not followed but preceded by a question mark.
“One Small Voice” kept silent about the Cortlandt case. Wynand had summoned Toohey to his office, the day after the explosion, and had said: “Listen, you. Not a word in your column. Understand? What you do or yell outside is none of my business–for the time being. But if you yell too much, I’ll take care of you when this is over.”
“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”
“As far as your column is concerned, you’re deaf, dumb and blind. You’ve never heard of any explosion. You’ve never heard of anyone named Roark. You don’t know what the word Cortlandt means. So long as you’re in this building.”
“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”
“And don’t let me see too much of you around here.”
“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”
Wynand’s lawyer, an old friend who had served him for years, tried to stop him.
“Gail, what’s the matter? You’re acting like a child. Like a green amateur. Pull yourself together, man.”
“Shut up,” said Wynand.
“Gail, you are…you were the greatest newspaperman on earth. Do I have to tell you the obvious? An unpopular cause is a dangerous business for anyone. For a popular newspaper–it’s suicide.”
“If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll send you packing and get myself another shyster.”
Wynand began to argue about the case–with the prominent men he met at business luncheons and dinners. He had never argued before on any subject; he had never pleaded. He had merely tossed final statements to respectful listeners. Now he found no listeners. He found no indifferent silence, half boredom, half resentment. The men who had gathered every word he cared to drop about the stock market, real estate, advertising, politics, had no interest in his opinion on art, greatness and abstract justice.
He heard a few answers:
“Yes, Gail, yes, sure. But on the other hand, I think it was damn selfish of the man. And that’s the trouble with the world today–selfishness. Too much selfishness everywhere. That’s what Lancelot Clokey said in his book–swell book, all about his childhood, you read it, saw your picture with Clokey. Clokey’s been all over the world, he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Yes, Gail, but aren’t you kind of old-fashioned about it? What’s all that great man stuff? What’s great about a glorified bricklayer? Who’s great anyway? We’re all just a lot of glands and chemicals and whatever we ate for breakfast. I think Lois Cook explained it very well in that beautiful little–what’s its name?–yes, The Gallant Gallstone. Yes, sir. Your own Banner plugged like blazes for that little book.”
“But look, Gail, he should’ve thought of other people before he thought of himself. I think if a man’s got no love in his heart he can’t be much good. I heard that in a play last night–that was a grand play–the new one by Ike–what the hell’s his last name?–you ought to see it–your own Jules Fougler said it’s a brave and tender stage poem.”
“You make out a good case, Gail, and I wouldn’t know what to say against it, I don’t know where you’re wrong, but it doesn’t sound right to me, because Ellsworth Toohey–now don’t misunderstand me, I don’t agree with Toohey’s political views at all, I know he’s a radical, but on the other hand you’ve got to admit that he’s a great idealist with a heart as big as a house–well, Ellsworth Toohey said…”
These were the millionaires, the bankers, the industrialists, the businessmen who could not understand why the world was going to hell, as they moaned in all their luncheon speeches.
One morning when Wynand stepped out of his car in front of the Banner Building, a woman rushed up to him as he crossed the sidewalk. She had been waiting by the entrance. She was fat and middle-aged. She wore a filthy cotton dress and a crushed hat. She had a pasty, sagging face, a shapeless mouth and black, round, brilliant eyes. She stood before Gail Wynand and she flung a bunch of rotted beet leaves at his face. There were no beets, just the leaves, soft and slimy, tied with a string. They hit his cheek and rolled down to the sidewalk.
Wynand stood still. He looked at the woman. He saw the white flesh, the mouth hanging open in triumphs, the face of self-righteous evil. Passersby had seized the woman and she was screaming unspeakable obscenities. Wynand raised his hand, shook his head, gesturing for them to let the creature go, and walked into the Banner Building, a smear of greenish-yellow across his cheek.
“Ellsworth, what are we going to do?” moaned Alvah Scarret. “What are we going to do?”
Ellsworth Toohey sat perched on the edge of his desk, and smiled as if he wished he could kiss Alvah Scarret.