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among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one

was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all

collective action.

"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what

they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as

cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their

satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me

contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribute gifts of

this nature.

"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten

that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who

were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned,

in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants

gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life.

That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the

second-hander’s credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my

life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter

who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

"It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of

greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not

understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.

"I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and

to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years

which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in

memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of

loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the

force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of

loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend--and to the battles

he won. To every creator whose name is known--and to every creator who lived,

struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator

who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To

a man who doesn’t want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and

knows that I am speaking of him."

Roark stood, his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted--as

he stood in an unfinished building. Later, when he was seated again at the

defense table, many men in the room felt as if they still saw him standing; one

moment’s picture that would not be replaced.

The picture remained in their minds through the long legal discussions that

followed. They heard the judge state to the prosecutor that the defendant had,

in effect, changed his plea: he had admitted his act, but had not pleaded guilty

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of the crime; an issue of temporary legal insanity was raised; it was up to the

jury to decide whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act, or,

if he did, whether he knew that the act was wrong. The prosecutor raised no

objection; there was an odd silence in the room; he felt certain that he had won

his case already. He made his closing address. No one remembered what he said.

The judge gave his instructions to the jury. The jury rose and left the

courtroom.

People moved, preparing to depart, without haste, in expectation of many hours

of waiting. Wynand, at the back of the room, and Dominique, in the front, sat

without moving.

A bailiff stepped to Roark’s side to escort him out Roark stood by the defense

table. His eyes went to Dominique, then to Wynand. He turned and followed the

bailiff.

He had reached the door when there was a sharp crack of sound, and a space of

blank silence before people realized that it was a knock at the closed door of

the jury room. The jury had reached a verdict.

Those who had been on their feet remained standing, frozen, until the judge

returned to the bench. The jury filed into the courtroom.

"The prisoner will rise and face the jury," said the clerk of the court.

Howard Roark stepped forward and stood facing the jury. At the back of the room,

Gail Wynand got up and stood also.

"Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?"

"We have."

"What is your verdict?"

"Not guilty."

The first movement of Roark’s head was not to look at the city in the window, at

the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.

Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the

courtroom.

19.

ROGER ENRIGHT bought the site, the plans and the ruins of Cortlandt from the

government. He ordered every twisted remnant of foundations dug out to leave a

clean hole in the earth. He hired Howard Roark to rebuild the project. Placing a

single contractor in charge, observing the strict economy of the plans, Enright

budgeted the undertaking to set low rentals with a comfortable margin of profit

for himself. No questions were to be asked about the income, occupation,

children or diet of the future tenants; the project was open to anyone who

wished to move in and pay the rent, whether he could afford a more expensive

apartment elsewhere or not.

Late in August Gail Wynand was granted his divorce. The suit was not contested

and Dominique was not present at the brief hearing. Wynand stood like a man

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facing a court-martial and heard the cold obscenity of legal language describing

the breakfast in a house of Monadnock Valley--Mrs. Gail Wynand--Howard Roark;

branding his wife as officially dishonored, granting him lawful sympathy, the

status of injured innocence, and a paper that was his passport to freedom for

all the years before him, and for all the silent evenings of those years.

Ellsworth Toohey won his case before the labor board. Wynand was ordered to

reinstate him in his job.

That afternoon Wynand’s secretary telephoned Toohey and told him that Mr. Wynand

expected him back at work tonight, before nine o’clock. Toohey smiled, dropping

the receiver.

Toohey smiled, entering the Banner Building that evening. He stopped in the city

room. He waved to people, shook hands, made witty remarks about some current

movies, and bore an air of guileless astonishment, as if he had been absent just

since yesterday and could not understand why people greeted him in the manner of

a triumphal homecoming.

Then he ambled on to his office. He stopped short. He knew, while stopping, that

he must enter, must not show the jolt, and that he had shown it: Wynand stood in

the open door of his office.

"Good evening, Mr. Toohey," said Wynand softly. "Come in."

"Hello, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey, his voice pleasant, reassured by feeling his

face muscles manage a smile and his legs walking on.

He entered and stopped uncertainly. It was his own office, unchanged, with his

typewriter and a stack of fresh paper on the desk. But the door remained open

and Wynand stood there silently, leaning against the jamb.

"Sit down at your desk, Mr. Toohey. Go to work. We must comply with the law."

Toohey gave a gay little shrug of acquiescence, crossed the room and sat down.

He put his hands on the desk surface, palms spread solidly, then dropped them to

his lap. He reached for a pencil, examined its point and dropped it

Wynand lifted one wrist slowly to the level of his chest and held it still, the

apex of a triangle made by his forearm and the long, drooping fingers of his

hand; he was looking down at his wrist watch. He said:

"It is ten minutes to nine. You are back on your job, Mr. Toohey."

"And I’m happy as a kid to be back. Honestly, Mr. Wynand, I suppose I shouldn’t

confess it, but I missed this place like all hell."

Wynand made no movement to go. He stood, slouched as usual, his shoulder blades

propped against the doorjamb, arms crossed on his chest, hands holding his

elbows. A lamp with a square shade of green glass burned on the desk, but there

was still daylight outside, streaks of tired brown on a lemon sky; the room held

a dismal sense of evening in the illumination that seemed both premature and too

feeble. The light made a puddle on the desk, but it could not shut out the

brown, half-dissolved shapes of the street, and it could not reach the door to

disarm Wynand’s presence.

The lamp shade rattled faintly and Toohey felt the nimble under his shoe soles:

the presses were rolling. He realized that he had heard them for some time. It

was a comforting sound, dependable and alive. The pulse beat of a newspaper--the

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newspaper that transmits to men the pulse beat of the world. A long, even flow

of separate drops, like marbles rolling away in a straight line, like the sound

of a man’s heart.

Toohey moved a pencil over a sheet of paper, until he realized that the sheet

lay in the lamplight and Wynand could see the pencil making a water lily, a

teapot and a bearded profile. He dropped the pencil and made a self-mocking

sound with his lips. He opened a drawer and looked attentively at a pile of

carbons and paper clips. He did not know what he could possibly be expected to

do: one did not start writing a column just like that. He had wondered why he

should be asked to resume his duties at nine o’clock in the evening, but he had

supposed that it was Wynand’s manner of softening surrender by overdoing it, and

he had felt he could afford not to argue the point.

The presses were rolling; a man’s heartbeats gathered and re-broadcast. He heard

no other sound and he thought it was absurd to keep this up if Wynand had gone,

but most inadvisable to look in his direction if he hadn’t.

After a while he looked up. Wynand was still there. The light picked out two

white spots of his figure: the long fingers of one hand closed over an elbow,

and the high forehead. It was the forehead that Toohey wanted to see; no, there

were no slanting ridges over the eyebrows. The eyes made two solid white ovals,

faintly discernible in the angular shadows of the face. The ovals were directed

at Toohey. But there was nothing in the face; no indication of purpose.

After a while, Toohey said:

"Really, Mr. Wynand, there’s no reason why you and I can’t get together."

Wynand did not answer.

Toohey picked up a sheet of paper and inserted it in the typewriter. He sat

looking at the keys, holding his chin between two fingers, in the pose he knew

he assumed when preparing to attack a paragraph. The rims of the keys glittered

under the lamps, rings of bright nickel suspended in the dim room.

The presses stopped.

Toohey jerked back, automatically, before he knew why he had jerked: he was a

newspaperman and it was a sound that did not stop like that.

Wynand looked at his wrist watch. He said:

"It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The Banner has ceased to

exist."

The next incident of reality Toohey apprehended was his own hand dropping down

on the typewriter keys: he heard the metal cough of the levers tangling and

striking together, and the small jump of the carriage.

He did not speak, but he thought his face was naked because he heard Wynand

answering him:

"Yes, you had worked here for thirteen years....Yes, I bought them all out,

Mitchell Layton included, two weeks ago...." The voice was indifferent. "No, the

boys in the city room didn’t know it. Only the boys in the pressroom...."

Toohey turned away. He picked up a paper clip, held it on his palm, then turned

his hand over and let the clip fall, observing with mild astonishment the

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finality of the law mat had not permitted it to remain on his downturned palm.

He got up. He stood looking at Wynand, a stretch of gray carpet between them.

Wynand’s head moved, leaned slightly to one shoulder. Wynand’s face looked as if

no barrier were necessary now, it looked simple, it held no anger, the closed

lips were drawn in the hint of a smile of pain that was almost humble.

Wynand said:

"This was the end of the Banner....I think it’s proper that I should meet it

with you."

#

Many newspapers bid for the services of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He selected

the Courier, a paper of well-bred prestige and gently uncertain policy.

In the evening of his first day on the new job Ellsworth Toohey sat on the edge

of an associate editor’s desk and they talked about Mr. Talbot, the owner of the

Courier, whom Toohey had met but a few times.

"But Mr. Talbot as a man?" asked Ellsworth Toohey. "What’s his particular god?

What would he go to pieces without?"

In the radio room across the hall somebody was twisting a dial. "Time," blared a

solemn voice, "marches on!"

#

Roark sat at the drafting table in his office, working. The city beyond the

glass walls seemed lustrous, the air washed by the first cold of October.

The telephone rang. He held his pencil suspended in a jerk of impatience; the

telephone was never to ring when he was drawing. He walked to his desk and

picked up the receiver.

"Mr. Roark," said his secretary, the tense little note in her voice serving as

apology for a broken order, "Mr. Gail Wynand wishes to know whether it would be

convenient for you to come to his office at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?"

She heard the faint buzz of silence in the receiver at her ear and counted many

seconds.

"Is he on the wire?" asked Roark. She knew it was not the phone connection that