Atlas Shrugged [546]
"Yes," she said dully, with effort, "to the destroyer."
Then she closed her hands over the edge of the desk, to steady her purpose and her posture, and said, with the bitter hint of a smile, "Well, Eddie, let's see what two impractical persons, like you and me, can do about preventing the tram wrecks."
It was two hours later-when she was alone at her desk, bent over sheets of paper that bore nothing but figures, yet were like a motion picture film unrolling to tell her the whole story of the railroad in the past four weeks-that the buzzer rang and her secretary's
voice said, "Mrs. Rearden to see you, Miss Taggart."
"Mr. Rearden?" she asked incredulously, unable to believe either.
"No. Mrs. Rearden."
She let a moment pass, then said, "Please ask her to come in."
There was some peculiar touch of emphasis in Lillian Rearden's bearing when she entered and walked toward the desk. She wore a tailored suit, with a loose, bright bow hanging casually sidewise for a note of elegant incongruity, and a small hat tilted at an angle considered smart by virtue of being considered amusing; her face was a shade too smooth, her steps a shade too slow, and she walked almost as if she were swinging her hips.
"How do you do, Miss Taggart," she said in a lazily gracious voice, a drawing-room voice which seemed to strike, in that office, the same style of incongruity as her suit and her bow.
Dagny inclined her head gravely.
Lillian glanced about the office; her glance had the same style of amusement as her hat: an amusement purporting to express maturity by the conviction that life could be nothing but ridiculous.
"Please sit down," said Dagny.
Lillian sat down, relaxing Into a confident, gracefully casual posture.
When she turned her face to Dagny, the amusement was still there, but its shading was now different: it seemed to suggest that they shared a secret, which would make her presence here seem preposterous to the world, but self-evidently logical to the two of them. She stressed it by remaining silent.
"What can I do for you?"
"I came to tell you," said Lillian pleasantly, "that you will appear on Bertram Scudder's broadcast tonight."
She detected no astonishment in Dagny's face, no shock, only the glance of an engineer studying a motor that makes an irregular sound.
"I assume," said Dagny, "that you are fully aware of the form of your sentence."
"Oh yes!" said Lillian.
"Then proceed to support it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Proceed to tell me."
Lillian gave a brief little laugh, its forced brevity betraying that this was not quite the attitude she had expected. "I am sure that no lengthy explanations will be necessary," she said. "You know why your appearance on that broadcast is important to those in power. I know why you have refused to appear. I know your convictions on the subject.
You may have attached no importance to it, but you do know that my sympathy has always been on the side of the system now in power.
Therefore, you will understand my interest in the issue and my place in it. When your brother told me that you had refused, I decided to take a hand in the matter-because, you see, I am one of the very few who know that you are not in a position to refuse."
"I am not one of those few, as yet," said Dagny.
Lillian smiled. "Well, yes, I must explain a little further. You realize that your radio appearance will have the same value for those in power as-as the action of my husband when he signed the Gift Certificate that turned Rearden Metal over to them. You know how frequently and how usefully they have been mentioning it in all of their propaganda."
"I didn't know that," said Dagny sharply.
"Oh, of course, you have been away for most of the last two months, so you might have missed the constant reminders-in the press, on the radio, in public speeches-that even Hank Rearden approves of and supports Directive 10-289, since