Atlas Shrugged [375]
"Where?"
"He'd be either on foot or in a battered wreck of a car that's got a million-dollar motor."
"What man?"
"A tall man with blond hair."
"Who is he?"
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you, Mr. Rearden. Did you see him?"
Rearden was not aware of his own questions, only of the astonishing fact that he was able to force sounds past some beating barrier inside his throat. He was looking straight at the policeman, but he felt as if the focus of his eyes had switched to his side vision, and what he saw most clearly was Danneskjold's face watching him with no expression, with no line's, no muscle's worth of feeling. He saw Danneskjold's arms hanging idly by his sides, the hands relaxed, with no sign of intention to reach for a weapon, leaving the tall, straight body defenseless and open-open as to a firing squad. He saw, in the light, that the face looked younger than he had thought and that the eyes were sky-blue.
He felt that his one danger would be to glance directly at Danneskjold-and he kept his eyes on the policeman, on the brass buttons of a blue uniform, but the object filling his consciousness, more forcefully than a visual perception, was Danneskjold's body, the naked body under the clothes, the body that would be wiped out of existence. He did not hear his own words, because he kept hearing a single sentence in his mind, without context except the feeling that it was the only thing that mattered to him in the world: "If I should lose my life, to what better purpose could I give it?"
"Did you see him, Mr. Rearden?"
"No," said Rearden. "I didn't."
The policeman shrugged regretfully and closed his hands about the steering wheel. "You didn't see any man that looked suspicious?"
"No."
"Nor any strange car passing you on the road?"
"No."
The policeman reached for the starter. "They got word that he was seen ashore in these parts tonight, and they've thrown a dragnet over five counties. We're not supposed to mention his name, not to scare the folks, but he's a man whose head is worth three million dollars in rewards from all over the world."
He had pressed the starter and the motor was churning the air with bright cracks of sound, when the second policeman leaned forward.
He had been looking at the blond hair under Danneskjold's cap.
"Who is that, Mr. Rearden?" he asked.
"My new bodyguard," said Rearden.
"Oh . . . ! A sensible precaution, Mr. Rearden, in times like these.
Good night, sir."
The motor jerked forward. The red taillights of the car went shrinking down the road. Danneskjold watched it go, then glanced pointedly at Rearden's right hand. Rearden realized that he had stood facing the policemen with his hand clutching the gun in his pocket and that he had been prepared to use it.
He opened his fingers and drew his hand out hastily. Danneskjold smiled. It was a smile of radiant amusement, the silent laughter of a clear, young spirit greeting a moment it was glad to have lived.
And although the two did not resemble each other, the smile made Rearden think of Francisco d'Anconia.
"You haven't told a lie," said Ragnar Danneskjold. "Your bodyguard-that's what I am and what I'll deserve to be, in many more ways than you can know at present. Thanks, Mr. Rearden, and so long-we'll meet again much sooner than I had hoped."
He was gone before Rearden could answer. He vanished beyond the stone fence, as abruptly and soundlessly as he had come. When Rearden turned to look through the farm field, there was no trace of him and no sign of movement anywhere in the darkness.
Rearden stood on the edge of an empty road in a spread of loneliness vaster than it had seemed before. Then he saw, lying at his feet, an object wrapped in burlap, with one corner exposed and glistening in the moonlight, the color of the pirate's hair. He bent, picked it up and walked on.
Kip Chalmers swore as the train lurched and spilled his cocktail over the table top. He slumped forward, his elbow in the puddle, and said: "God damn these railroads!