Atlas Shrugged [269]
It was only a moment. Francisco turned to him, his face normal, and said very quietly, "I've changed my mind, Mr. Rearden. I'm glad that you came to this party. I want you to see this."
Then, raising his voice, Francisco said suddenly, in the gay, loose, piercing tone of a man of complete irresponsibility, "You won't grant me that loan, Mr. Rearden? It puts me on a terrible spot. I must get the money-I must raise it tonight-I must raise it before the Stock Exchange opens in the morning, because otherwise-"
He did not have to continue, because the little man with the mustache was clutching at his arm.
Rearden had never believed that a human body could change dimensions within one's sight, but he saw the man shrinking in weight, in posture, in form, as if the air were let out of his lumps, and what had been an arrogant ruler was suddenly a piece of scrap that could not be a threat to anyone.
"Is . . . is there something wrong, Senor d'Anconia? I mean, on . . . on the Stock Exchange?"
Francisco jerked his finger to his lips, with a frightened glance.
"Keep quiet," he whispered. "For God's sake, keep quiet!"
The man was shaking. "Something's . . . wrong?"
"You don't happen to own any d'Anconia Copper stock, do you?"
The man nodded, unable to speak. "Oh my, that's too bad! Well, listen, I'll tell you, if you give me your word of honor that you won't repeat it to anyone, You don't want to start a panic."
"Word of honor . . ." gasped the man.
"What you'd better do is run to your stockbroker and sell as fast as you can-because things haven't been going too well for d'Anconia Copper, I'm trying to raise some money, but if I don't succeed, you'll be lucky if you'll have ten cents on your dollar tomorrow morning-
oh my! I forgot that you can't reach your stockbroker before tomorrow morning-well, it's too bad, but-"
The man was running across the room, pushing people out of his way, like a torpedo shot into the crowd.
"Watch," said Francisco austerely, turning to Rearden.
The man was lost in the crowd, they could not see him, they could not tell to whom he was selling his secret or whether he had enough of his cunning left to make it a trade with those who held favors-but they saw the wake of his passage spreading through the room, the sudden cuts splitting the crowd, like the first few cracks, then like the accelerating branching that runs through a wall about to crumble, the streaks of emptiness slashed, not by a human touch, but by the impersonal breath of terror.
There were the voices abruptly choked off, the pools of silence, then sounds of a different nature; the rising, hysterical inflections of uselessly repeated questions, the unnatural whispers, a woman's scream, the few spaced, forced giggles of those still trying to pretend that nothing was happening.
There were spots of immobility in the motion of the crowd, like spreading blotches of paralysis; there was a sudden stillness, as if a motor had been cut off; then came the frantic, jerking, purposeless, rudderless movement of objects bumping down a hill by the blind mercy of gravitation and of every rock they hit on the way. People were running out, running to telephones, running to one another, clutching or pushing the bodies around them at random. These men, the most powerful men in the country, those who held, unanswerable to any power, the power over every man's food and every man's enjoyment of his span of years on earth-these men had become a pile of rubble, clattering in the wind of panic, the rubble left of a structure when its key pillar has been cut.
James Taggart, his face indecent in its exposure of emotions which centuries