Atlas Shrugged [139]
"Never mind."
"But I only-"
"Why do you insist on talking about it?"
"I . . ." Larkin's voice was pleading. "I gave you the best price, Hank. The law said 'reasonable compensation.' My bid was higher than anyone else's."
Rearden looked at the papers still lying across the desk. He thought of the payment these papers gave him for his ore mines. Two-thirds of the sum was money which Larkin had obtained as a loan from the government; the new law made provisions for such loans "in order to give a fair opportunity to the new owners who have never had a chance."
Two-thirds of the rest was a loan he himself had granted to Larkin, a mortgage he had accepted on his own mines. . . . And the government money, he thought suddenly, the money now given to him as payment for his property, where had that come from? Whose work had provided it?
"'You don't have to worry, Hank," said Larkin, with that incomprehensible, insistent note of pleading in his voice. "It's just a paper formality."
Rearden wondered dimly what it was that Larkin wanted from him.
He felt that the man was waiting for something beyond the physical fact of the sale, some words which he, Rearden, was supposed to pronounce, some action pertaining to mercy which he was expected to grant. Larkin's eyes, in this moment of his best fortune, had the sickening look of a beggar.
"Why should you be angry, Hank? It's only a new form of legal red tape. Just a new historical condition. Nobody can help it, if it's, a historical condition. Nobody can be blamed for it. But there's always a way to get along. Look at all the others. They don't mind. They're-"
"They're setting up stooges whom they control, to run the properties extorted from them. I-"
"Now why do you want to use such words?"
"I might as well tell you-and I think you know it-that I am not good at games of that kind. I have neither the time nor the stomach to devise some form of blackmail in order to tie you up and own my mines through you. Ownership is a thing I don't share. And I don't wish to hold it by the grace of your cowardice-by means of a constant struggle to outwit you and keep some threat over your head. I don't do business that way and I don't deal with cowards. The mines are yours. If you wish to give me first call on all the ore produced, you will do so.
If you wish to double-cross me, it's in your power."
Larkin looked hurt. "That's very unfair of you," he said; there was a dry little note of righteous reproach in his voice. "I have never given you cause to distrust me." He picked up the papers with a hasty movement.
Rearden saw the papers disappear into Larkin's inside coat pocket.
He saw the flare of the open coat, the wrinkles of a vest pulled tight over flabby bulges, and a stain of perspiration in the armpit of the shirt.
Unsummoned, the picture of a face seen twenty-seven years ago rose suddenly in his mind. It was the face of a preacher on a street corner he had passed, in a town he could not remember any longer. Only the dark walls of the slums remained in his memory, the rain of an autumn evening, and the righteous malice of the man's mouth, a small mouth stretched to yell into the darkness: ". . . the noblest ideal-that man live for the sake of his brothers, that the strong work for the weak, that he who has ability serve him who hasn't . . ."
Then he saw the boy who had been Hank Rearden at eighteen. He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted. And he saw what Paul Larkin must have been at that time-a youth with an aged baby's face, smiling ingratiatingly, joylessly, begging to be spared, pleading with the