Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [247]
When he named the percentage he wanted, she laughed. “That is skinning me alive and it will be worth my while. Okay.”
They agreed that it was to be her private project and that he was to be her private employee; neither of them wanted to have to deal with the interference of the Taggart Research Department. He asked to remain in Utah, in his post of watchman, where he had all the laboratory equipment and all the privacy he needed. The project was to remain confidential between them, until and unless he succeeded.
“Miss Taggart,” he said in conclusion, “I don’t know how many years it will take me to solve this, if ever. But I know that if I spend the rest of my life on it and succeed, I will die satisfied.” He added, “There’s only one thing that I want more than to solve it: it’s to meet the man who has.”
Once a month, since his return to Utah, she had sent him a check and he had sent her a report on his work. It was too early to hope, but his reports were the only bright points in the stagnant fog of her days in the office.
She raised her head, as she finished reading his pages. The calendar in the distance said: September 2. The lights of the city had grown beneath it, spreading and glittering. She thought of Rearden. She wished he were in the city; she wished she would see him tonight.
Then, noticing the date, she remembered suddenly that she had to rush home to dress, because she had to attend Jim’s wedding tonight. She had not seen Jim, outside the office, for over a year. She had not met his fiancée, but she had read enough about the engagement in the newspapers. She rose from her desk in wearily distasteful resignation: it seemed easier to attend the wedding than to bother explaining her absence afterwards.
She was hurrying across the concourse of the Terminal when she heard a voice calling, “Miss Taggart!” with a strange note of urgency and reluctance, together. It stopped her abruptly; she took a few seconds to realize that it was the old man at the cigar stand who had called.
“I’ve been waiting to catch sight of you for days, Miss Taggart. I’ve been extremely anxious to speak to you.” There was an odd expression on his face, the look of an effort not to look frightened.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling, “I’ve been rushing in and out of the building all week and didn’t have time to stop.”
He did not smile. “Miss Taggart, that cigarette with the dollar sign that you gave me some months ago—where did you get it?”
She stood still for a moment. “I’m afraid that’s a long, complicated story,” she answered.
“Have you any way of getting in touch with the person who gave it to you?”
“I suppose so—though I’m not too sure. Why?”
“Would he tell you where he got it?”
“I don’t know. What makes you suspect that he wouldn’t?”
He hesitated, then asked, “Miss Taggart, what do you do when you have to tell someone something which you know to be impossible?”
She chuckled. “The man who gave me the cigarette said that in such a case one must check one’s premises.”
“He did? About the cigarette?”
“Well, no, not exactly. But why? What is it you have to tell me?”
“Miss Taggart, I have inquired all over the world. I have checked every source of information in and about the tobacco industry. I have had that cigarette stub put through a chemical analysis. There is no plant that manufactures that kind of paper. The flavoring elements in that tobacco have never been used in any smoking mixture I could find. That cigarette was machine-made, but it was not made in any factory I know—and I know them all. Miss Taggart, to the best of my knowledge, that