Atlas Shrugged [283]
As she looked up, her eyes met the glance of the secretary watching her. "I am sorry, Miss Taggart. I don't know what to do about it."
It was an openly desperate plea. "I don't dare interrupt."
Dagny asked slowly, as a demand, in defiance of office etiquette, "Who is with Mr. Danagger?"
"I don't know, Miss Taggart. I have never seen the gentleman before." She noticed the sudden, fixed stillness of Dagny's eyes and added, "I think it's a childhood friend of Mr. Danagger."
"Oh!" said Dagny, relieved.
"He came in unannounced and asked to see Mr. Danagger and said that this was an appointment which Mr. Danagger had made with him forty years ago,"
"How old is Mr. Danagger?"
"Fifty-two," said the secretary. She added reflectively, in the tone of a casual remark, "Mr. Danagger started working at the age of twelve."
After another silence, she added, "The strange thing is that the visitor does not look as if he's even forty years old. He seems to be a man in his thirties."
"Did he give his name?"
"No."
"What does he look like?"
The secretary smiled with sudden animation, as if she were about to utter an enthusiastic compliment, but the smile vanished abruptly.
"I don't know," she answered uneasily. "He's hard to describe. He has a strange face."
They had been silent for a long time, and the hands of the dial were approaching 3:50 when the buzzer rang on the secretary's desk-
the bell from Danagger's office, the signal of permission to enter.
They both leaped to their feet, and the secretary rushed forward, smiling with relief, hastening to open the door.
As she entered Danagger's office, Dagny saw the private exit door closing after the caller who had preceded her. She heard the knock of the door against the jamb and the faint tinkle of the glass panel.
She saw the man who had left, by his reflection on Ken Danagger's face. It was not the face she had seen in the courtroom, it was not the face she had known for years as a countenance of unchanging, unfeeling rigidity-it was a face which a young man of twenty should hope for, but could not achieve, a face from which every sign of strain had been wiped out, so that the lined cheeks, the creased forehead, the graying hair-like elements rearranged by a new theme-were made to form a composition of hope, eagerness and guiltless serenity: the theme was deliverance.
He did not rise when she entered-he looked as if he had not quite returned to the reality of the moment and had forgotten the proper routine-but he smiled at her with such simple benevolence that she found herself smiling in answer. She caught herself thinking that this was the way every human being should greet another-and she lost her anxiety, feeling suddenly certain that all was well and that nothing to be feared could exist.
"How do you do, Miss Taggart," he said. "Forgive me, I think that I have kept you waiting. Please sit down." He pointed to the chair in front of his desk.
"I didn't mind waiting," she said. "I'm grateful that you gave me this appointment. I was extremely anxious to speak to you on a matter of urgent importance."
He leaned forward across the desk, with a look of attentive concentration, as he always did at the mention of an important business matter, but she was not speaking to the man she knew, this was a stranger, and she stopped, uncertain about the arguments she had been prepared to use.
He looked at her in silence, and then he said, "Miss Taggart, this is such a beautiful day-probably the last, this year. There's a thing I've always wanted to do, but never had time for it. Let's go back to New York together and take one of those excursion boat trips around the island of Manhattan. Let's take a last look at the greatest city in the world."
She sat still, trying to hold her eyes fixed in order to stop the office from swaying. This was the Ken Danagger who