THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 7 page

It was rumored that one had to observe a certain unwritten rule when dealing with Midas Mulligan: if an applicant for a loan ever mentioned his personal need or any personal feeling whatever, the interview ended and he was never given another chance to speak to Mr. Mulligan.

"Why yes, I can," said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. "The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon."

In his long career, he had ignored all the public attacks on him, except one. His first name had been Michael; when a newspaper columnist of the humanitarian clique nicknamed him Midas Mulligan and the tag stuck to him as an insult, Mulligan appeared in court and petitioned for a legal change of his first name to "Midas." The petition was granted.

In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was a man who had committed the one unforgivable sin: he was proud of his wealth.

These were the things Dagny had heard about Midas Mulligan; she had never met him. Seven years ago, Midas Mulligan had vanished.

He left his home one morning and was never heard from again. On the next day, the depositors of the Mulligan Bank in Chicago received notices requesting that they withdraw their funds, because the bank was closing. In the investigations that followed, it was learned that Mulligan had planned the closing in advance and in minute detail; his employees were merely carrying out his instructions. It was the most orderly run on a bank that the country ever witnessed. Every depositor received his money down to the last fraction of interest due. All of the bank's assets had been sold piecemeal to various financial institutions. When the books were balanced, it was found that they balanced perfectly, to the penny; nothing was left over; the Mulligan Bank had been wiped out.

No clue was ever found to Mulligan's motive, to his personal fate or to the many millions of his personal fortune. The man and the fortune vanished as if they had never existed. No one had had any warning about his decision, and no events could be traced to explain it. If he had wished to retire—people wondered—why hadn't he sold his establishment at a huge profit, as he could have done, instead of destroying it? There was nobody to give an answer. He had no family, no friends.

His servants knew nothing: he had left his home that morning as usual and did not come back; that was all.

There was—Dagny had thought uneasily for years—a quality of the impossible about Mulligan's disappearance; it was as if a New York skyscraper had vanished one night, leaving nothing behind but a vacant lot on a street corner. A man like Mulligan, and a fortune such as he had taken along with him, could not stay hidden anywhere; a skyscraper could not get lost, it would be seen rising above any plain or forest chosen for its hiding place; were it destroyed, even its pile of rubble could not remain unnoticed. But Mulligan had gone—and in the seven years since, in the mass of rumors, guesses, theories, Sunday supplement stories, and eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him in every part of the world, no clue to a plausible explanation had ever been discovered.

Among the stories, there was one so preposterously out of character that Dagny believed it to be true: nothing in Mulligan's nature could have given anyone ground to invent it. It was said that the last person to see him, on the spring morning of his disappearance, was an old woman who sold flowers on a Chicago street corner by the Mulligan Bank. She related that he stopped and bought a bunch of the year's first bluebells. His face was the happiest face she had ever seen; he had the look of a youth starting out into a great, unobstructed vision of life lying open before him; the marks of pain and tension, the sediment of years upon a human face, had been wiped off, and what remained was only joyous eagerness and peace. He picked up the flowers as if on a sudden impulse, and he winked at the old woman, as if he had some shining joke to share with her. He said, "Do you know how much I've always loved it—being alive?" She stared at him, bewildered, and he walked away, tossing the flowers like a ball in his hand—a broad, straight figure in a sedate, expensive, businessman's overcoat, going off into the distance against the straight cliffs of office buildings with the spring sun sparkling on their windows.

"Midas Mulligan was a vicious bastard with a dollar sign stamped on his heart," said Lee Hunsacker, in the fumes of the acrid stew. "My whole future depended upon a miserable half-million dollars, which was just small change to him, bat when I applied for a loan, he turned me down flat—for no better reason than that I had no collateral to offer.

How could I have accumulated any collateral, when nobody had ever given me a chance at anything big? Why did he lend money to others, but not to me? It was plain discrimination. He didn't even care about my feelings—he said that my past record of failures disqualified me for ownership of a vegetable pushcart, let alone a motor factory. What failures? I couldn't help it if a lot of ignorant grocers refused to co-operate with me about the paper containers. By what right did he pass judgment on my ability? Why did my plans for my own future have to depend upon the arbitrary opinion of a selfish monopolist? I wasn't going to stand for that. I wasn't going to take it lying down. I brought suit against him."

"You did what?"

"Oh yes," he said proudly, "I brought suit. I'm sure it would seem strange in some of your hidebound Eastern states, but the state of Illinois had a very humane, very progressive law under which I could sue him. I must say it was the first case of its kind, but I had a very smart, liberal lawyer who saw a way for us to do it. It was an economic emergency law which said that people were forbidden to discriminate for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving his livelihood. It was used to protect day laborers and such, but it applied to me and my partners as well, didn't it? So we went to court, and we testified about the bad breaks we'd all had in the past, and I quoted Mulligan saying that I couldn't even own a vegetable pushcart, and we proved that all the members of the Amalgamated Service corporation had no prestige, no credit, no way to make a living —and, therefore, the purchase of the motor factory was our only chance of livelihood—and, therefore, Midas Mulligan had no right to discriminate against us—and, therefore, we were entitled to demand a loan from him under the law. Oh, we had a perfect case all right, but the man who presided at the trial was Judge Narragansett, one of those old-fashioned monks of the bench who thinks like a mathematician and never feels the human side of anything. He just sat there all through the trial like a marble statue—like one of those blindfolded marble statues, At the end, he instructed the jury to bring in a verdict in favor of Midas Mulligan—and he said some very harsh things about me and my partners. But we appealed to a higher court—and the higher court reversed the verdict and ordered Mulligan to give us the loan on our terms. He had three months in which to comply, but before the three months were up, something happened that nobody can figure out and he vanished into thin air, he and his bank. There wasn't an extra penny left of that bank, to collect our lawful claim. We wasted a lot of money on detectives, trying to find him—as who didn't?—but we gave it up."

No—thought Dagny—no, apart from the sickening feeling it gave her, this case was not much worse than any of the other things that Midas Mulligan had borne for years. He had taken many losses under laws of a similar justice, under rules and edicts that had cost him much larger sums of money; he had borne them and fought and worked the harder; it was not likely that this case had broken him.

"What happened to Judge Narragansett?" she asked involuntarily, and wondered what subconscious connection had made her ask it. She knew little about Judge Narragansett, but she had heard and remembered his name, because it was a name that belonged so exclusively to the North American continent. Now she realized suddenly that she had heard nothing about him for years.

"Oh, he retired," said Lee Hunsacker.

"He did?" The question was almost a gasp.

"Yeah."

"When?"

"Oh, about six months later."

"What did he do after he retired?"

"I don't know. I don't think anybody's heard from him since."

He wondered why she looked frightened. Part of the fear she felt, was that she could not name its reason, either. "Please tell me about the motor factory," she said with effort.

"Well, Eugene Lawson of the Community National Bank in Madison finally gave us a loan to buy the factory—but he was just a messy cheapskate, he didn't have enough money to see us through, he couldn't help us when we went bankrupt. It was not our fault. We had everything against us from the start. How could we run a factory when we had no railroad? Weren't we entitled to a railroad? I tried to get them to reopen their branch line, but those damn people at Taggart Trans—"

He stopped. "Say, are you by any chance one of those Taggarts?"

"I am the Operating Vice-President of Taggart Transcontinental."

For a moment, he stared at her in blank stupor; she saw the struggle of fear, obsequiousness and hatred in his filmy eyes. The result was a sudden snarl: "I don't need any of you big shots! Don't think I'm going to be afraid of you. Don't expect me to beg for a job. I'm not asking favors of anybody. I bet you're not used to hear people talk to you this way, are you?"

"Mr. Hunsacker, I will appreciate it very much if you will give me the information I need about the factory."

"You're a little late getting interested. What's the matter? Your conscience bothering you? You people let Jed Starnes grow filthy rich on that factory, but you wouldn't give us a break. It was the same factory.

We did everything he did. We started right in manufacturing the particular type of motor that had been his biggest money-maker for years. And then some newcomer nobody ever heard of opened a two bit factory down in Colorado, by the name of Nielsen Motors, and put out a new motor of the same class as the Starnes model, at half the price! We couldn't help that, could we? It was all right for Jed Starnes, no destructive competitor happened to come up in his time, but what were we to do? How could we fight this Nielsen, when nobody had given us a motor to compete with his?"

"Did you take over the Starnes research laboratory?"

"Yes, yes, it was there. Everything was there."

"His staff, too?"

"Oh, some of them. A lot of them had gone while the factory was closed."

"His research staff?"

"They were gone."

"Did you hire any research men of your own?"

"Yes, yes, some—but let me tell you, I didn't have much money to spend on such things as laboratories, when I never had enough funds to give me a breathing spell. I couldn't even pay the bills I owed for the absolutely essential modernizing and redecorating which I'd had to do —that factory was disgracefully old-fashioned from the standpoint of human efficiency. The executive offices had bare plaster walls and a dinky little washroom. Any modern psychologist will tell you that nobody could do his best in such depressing surroundings. I had to have a brighter color scheme in my office, and a decent modern bathroom with a stall shower. Furthermore, I spent a lot of money on a new cafeteria and a playroom and rest room for the workers. We had to have morale, didn't we? Any enlightened person knows that man is made by the material factors of his background, and that a man's mind is shaped by his tools of production. But people wouldn't wait for the laws of economic determinism to operate upon us. We never had a motor factory before. We had to let the tools condition our minds, didn't we? But nobody gave us time."

"Can you tell me about the work of your research staff?"

"Oh, I had a group of very promising young men, all of them guaranteed by diplomas from the best universities. But it didn't do me any good. I don't know what they were doing. I think they were just sitting around, eating up their salaries."

"Who was in charge of your laboratory?"

"Hell, how can I remember that now?"

"Do you remember any of the names of your research staff?"

"Do you think I had time to meet every hireling in person?"

"Did any of them ever mention to you any experiments with a . . . with an entirely new kind of motor?"

"What motor? Let me tell you that an executive of my position does not hang around laboratories. I spent most of my time in New York and Chicago, trying to raise money to keep us going."

"Who was the general manager of tie factory?"

"A very able fellow by the name of Roy Cunningham. He died last year in an auto accident. Drunk driving, they said."

"Can you give me the names and addresses of any of your associates? Anyone you remember?"

"I don't know what's become of them. I wasn't in a mood to keep track of that."

"Have you preserved any of the factory records?"

"I certainly have."

She sat up eagerly. "Would you let me see them?"

"You bet!"

He seemed eager to comply; he rose at once and hurried out of the room. What he put down before her, when he returned, was a thick album of clippings: it contained his newspaper interviews and his press agent's releases.

"I was one of the big industrialists, too," he said proudly. "I was a national figure, as you can see. My life will make a book of deep, human significance. I'd have written it long ago, if I had the proper tools of production." He banged angrily upon his typewriter. "I can't work on this damn thing. It skips spaces. How can I get any inspiration and write a best seller with a typewriter that skips spaces?"

"Thank you, Mr. Hunsacker," she said. "I believe this is all you can tell me." She rose. "You don't happen to know what became of the Starnes heirs?"

"Oh, they ran for cover after they'd wrecked the factory. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter. Last I heard, they were hiding their faces out in Durance, Louisiana."

The last sight she caught of Lee Hunsacker, as she turned to go, was his sudden leap to the stove; he seized the lid off the pot and dropped it to the floor, scorching his fingers and cursing: the stew was burned.

Little was left of the Starnes fortune and less of the Starnes heirs.

"You won't like having to see them, Miss Taggart," said the chief of police of Durance, Louisiana; he was an elderly man with a slow, firm manner and a look of bitterness acquired not in blind resentment., but in fidelity to clear-cut standards. "There's all sorts of human beings to see in the world, there's murderers and criminal maniacs—but, somehow, I think these Starnes persons are what decent people shouldn't have to see. They're a bad sort, Miss Taggart. Clammy and bad . . .

Yes, they're still here in town—two of them, that is. The third one is: dead. Suicide. That was four years ago. It's an ugly story. He was the youngest of the three, Eric Starnes. He was one of those chronic young men who go around whining about their sensitive feelings, when they're well past forty. He needed love, was his line. He was being kept by older women, when he could find them. Then he started running after a girl of sixteen, a nice girl who wouldn't have anything to do with him.

She married a boy she was engaged to. Eric Starnes got into their house on the wedding day, and when they came back from church after the ceremony, they found him in their bedroom, dead, messy dead, his wrists slashed. . . . Now I say there might be forgiveness for a man who kills himself quietly. Who can pass judgment on another man's suffering and on the limit of what he can bear? But the man who kills himself, making a show of his death in order to hurt somebody, the man who gives his life for malice—there's no forgiveness for him, no excuse, he's rotten clear through, and what he deserves is that people spit at his memory, instead of feeling sorry for him and hurt, as he wanted them to be. . . . Well, that was Eric Starnes. I can tell you where to find the other two, if you wish."

She found Gerald Starnes in the ward of a flophouse. He lay half twisted on a cot. His hair was still black, but the white stubble of his chin was like a mist of dead weeds over a vacant face. He was soggy drunk. A pointless chuckle kept breaking his voice when he spoke, the sound of a static, unfocused malevolence, "It went bust, the great factory. That's what happened to it. Just went up and bust. Does that bother you, madam? The factory was rotten. Everybody is rotten. I'm supposed to beg somebody's pardon, but I won't. I don't give a damn. People get fits trying to keep up the show, when it's all rot, black rot, the automobiles, the buildings and the souls, and it doesn't make any difference, one way or another. You should've seen the kind of literati who turned flip-flops when I whistled, when I had the dough. The professors, the poets, the intellectuals, the world-savers and the brother-lovers. Any way I whistled. I had lots of fun. I wanted to do good, but now I don't. There isn't any good. Not any goddamn good in the whole goddamn universe. I don't propose to take a bath if I don't feel like it, and that's that. If you want to know anything about the factory, ask my sister. My sweet sister who had a trust fund they couldn't touch, so she got out of it safe, even if she's in the hamburger class now, not the filet mignon a la Sauce Bearnaise, but would she give a penny of it to her brother? The noble plan that busted was her idea as much as mine, but will she give me a penny?

Hah! Go take a look at the duchess, take a look. What do I care about the factory? It was just a pile of greasy machinery. I'll sell you all my rights, claims and title to it—for a drink. I'm the last of the Starnes name. It used to be a great name—Starnes. I'll sell it to you. You think I'm a stinking bum, but that goes for all the rest of them and for rich ladies like you, too. I wanted to do good for humanity. Hah! I wish they'd all boil in oil. Be lots of fun. I wish they'd choke. What does it matter? What does anything matter?"

On the next cot, a white-haired, shriveled little tramp turned in his sleep, moaning; a nickel clattered to the floor out of his rags. Gerald Starnes picked it up and slipped it into his own pocket. He glanced at Dagny. The creases of his face were a malignant smile.

"Want to wake him up and start trouble?" he asked. "If you do, I'll say that you're lying."

The ill-smelling bungalow, where she found Ivy Starnes, stood on the edge of town, by the shore of the Mississippi. Hanging strands of moss and clots of waxy foliage made the thick vegetation look as if it were drooling; the too many draperies, hanging in the stagnant air of a small room, had the same look. The smell came from undusted corners and from incense burning in silver jars at the feet of contorted Oriental deities. Ivy Starnes sat on a pillow like a baggy Buddha. Her mouth was a tight little crescent, the petulant mouth of a child demanding adulation—on the spreading, pallid face of a woman past fifty. Her eyes were two lifeless puddles of water. Her voice had the even, dripping monotone of rain: "I can't answer the kind of questions you're asking, my girl. The research laboratory? The engineers? Why should I remember anything about them? It was my father who was concerned with such matters, not I, My father was an evil man who cared for nothing but business.

He had no time for love, only for money. My brothers and I lived on a different plane. Our aim was not to produce gadgets, but to do good.

We brought a great, new plan into the factory. It was eleven years ago.

We were defeated by the greed, the selfishness and the base, animal nature of men. It was the eternal conflict between spirit and matter, between soul and body. They would not renounce their bodies, which was all we asked of them. I do not remember any of those men. I do not care to remember. . . . The engineers? I believe it was they who started the hemophilia. . . . Yes, that is what I said: the hemophilia—the slow leak—the loss of blood that cannot be stopped. They ran first.

They deserted us, one after another . . . Our plan? We put into practice that noble historical precept: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Everybody in the factory, from charwomen to president, received the same salary—the barest minimum necessary.

Twice a year, we all gathered in a mass meeting, where every person presented his claim for what he believed to be his needs. We voted on every claim, and the will of the majority established every person's need and every person's ability. The income of the factory was distributed accordingly. Rewards were based on need, and penalties on ability. Those whose needs were voted to be the greatest, received the most. Those who had not produced as much as the vote said they could, were fined and had to pay the fines by working overtime without pay.

That was our plan. It was based on the principle of selflessness. It required men to be motivated, not by personal gain, but by love for their brothers."

Dagny heard a cold, implacable voice saying somewhere within her: Remember it—remember it well—it is not often that one can see pure evil—look at it—remember—and some day you'll find the words to name its essence. . . . She heard it through the screaming of other voices that cried in helpless violence: It's nothing—I've heard it before —I'm hearing it everywhere—it's nothing but the same old tripe—why can't I stand it?—I can't stand it—I can't stand it!

"What's the matter with you, my girl? Why did you jump up like that? Why are you shaking? . . . What? Do speak louder, I can't hear you. . . . How did the plan work out? I do not care to discuss it.

Things became very ugly indeed and went fouler every year. It has cost me my faith in human nature. In four years, a plan conceived, not by the cold calculations of the mind, but by the pure love of the heart, was brought to an end in the sordid mess of policemen, lawyers and bankruptcy proceedings. But I have seen my error and I am free of it, I am through with the world of machines, manufacturers and money, the world enslaved by matter. I am learning the emancipation of the spirit, as revealed in the great secrets of India, the release from bondage to flesh, the victory over physical nature, the triumph of the spirit over matter."

Through the blinding white glare of anger, Dagny was seeing a long strip of concrete that had been a road, with weeds rising from its cracks, and the figure of a man contorted by a hand plow.

"But, my girl, I said that I do not remember. . . . But I do not know their names, I do not know any names, I do not know what sort of adventurers my father may have had in that laboratory! . . .

Don't you hear me? . . . I am not accustomed to being questioned in such manner and . . . Don't keep repeating it. Don't you know any words but 'engineer'? . . . Don't you hear me at all? . . . What's the matter with you? I—I don't like your face, you're . . . Leave me alone. I don't know who you are, I've never hurt you, I'm an old woman, don't look at me like that, I . . . Stand back! Don't come near me or I'll call for help! I'll . . . Oh, yes, yes, I know that one!

The chief engineer. Yes. He was the head of the laboratory. Yes.

William Hastings. That was his name—William Hastings. I remember.

He went off to Brandon, Wyoming. He quit the day after we introduced the plan. He was the second man to quit us. . . . No. No, I don't remember who was the first. He wasn't anybody important."

The woman who opened the door had graying hair and a poised, distinguished look of grooming; it took Dagny a few seconds to realize that her garment was only a simple cotton housedress, "May I see Mr. William Hastings?" asked Dagny.

The woman looked at her for the briefest instant of a pause; it was an odd glance, inquiring and grave. "May I ask your name?"

"I am Dagny Taggart, of Taggart Transcontinental."

"Oh. Please come in, Miss Taggart. I am Mrs. William Hastings."

The measured tone of gravity went through every syllable of her voice, like a warning. Her manner was courteous, but she did not smile.

It was a modest home in the suburbs of an industrial town. Bare tree branches cut across the bright, cold blue of the sky, on the top of the rise that led to the house. The walls of the living room were silver-gray; sunlight hit the crystal stand of a lamp with a white shade; beyond an open door, a breakfast nook was papered in red-dotted white.

"Were you acquainted with my husband in business, Miss Taggart?"

"No. I have never met Mr. Hastings. But I should like to speak to him on a matter of business of crucial importance."

"My husband died five years ago, Miss Taggart."

Dagny closed her eyes; the dull, sinking shock contained the conclusions she did not have to make in words: This, then, had been the man she was seeking, and Rearden had been right; this was why the motor had been left unclaimed on a junk pile.

"I'm sorry," she said, both to Mrs. Hastings and to herself.

The suggestion of a smile on Mrs. Hastings' face held sadness, but the face had no imprint of tragedy, only a grave look of firmness, acceptance and quiet serenity.

"Mrs. Hastings, would you permit me to ask you a few questions?"

"Certainly. Please sit down."

"Did you have some knowledge of your husband's scientific work?"

"Very little. None, really. He never discussed it at home."

"He was, at one time, chief engineer of the Twentieth Century Motor Company?"

"Yes. He had been employed by them for eighteen years."

"I wanted to ask Mr. Hastings about his work there and the reason why he gave it up. If you can tell me, I would like to know what happened in that factory."

The smile of sadness and humor appeared fully on Mrs. Hastings' face. "That is what I would like to know myself," she said. "But I'm afraid I shall never learn it now. I know why he left the factory. It was because of an outrageous scheme which the heirs of led Starnes established there. He would not work on such terms or for such people.

But there was something else. I've always felt that something happened at Twentieth Century Motors, which he would not tell me."

"I'm extremely anxious to know any clue you may care to give me."

"I have no clue to it. I've tried to guess and given up. I cannot understand or explain it. But I know that something happened.

When my husband left Twentieth Century, we came here and he took a job as head of the engineering department of Acme Motors. It was a growing, successful concern at the time. It gave my husband the kind of work he liked. He was not a person prone to inner conflicts, he had always been sure of his actions and at peace with himself. But for a whole year after we left Wisconsin, he acted as if he were tortured by something, as if he were struggling with a personal problem he could not solve. At the end of that year, he came to me one morning and told me that he had resigned from Acme Motors, that he was retiring and would not work anywhere else. He loved his work; it was his whole life. Yet he looked calm, self-confident and happy, for the first time since we'd come here. He asked me not to question him about the reason of his decision. I didn't question him and I didn't object. We had this house, we had our savings, we had enough to live on modestly for the rest of our days. I never learned his reason. We went on living here, quietly and very happily. He seemed to feel a profound contentment. He had an odd serenity of spirit that I had never seen in him before. There was nothing strange in his behavior or activity—except that at times, Very rarely, he went out without telling me where he went or whom he saw. In the last two years of his life, he went away for one month, each summer; he did not tell me where. Otherwise, he lived as he always had. He studied a great deal and he spent his time on engineering research of his own, working in the basement of our house. I don't know what he did with his notes and experimental models. I found no trace of them in the basement, after his death.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 521