"Okay, I'll take your word for it. But there's-there's a kind of feeling in the air. It will become dangerous some day."

"It might. I'll tell you when it will."

"I thought Ellsworth worked on the Banner," Banner," said Renee Slottern vacantly, puzzled. said Renee Slottern vacantly, puzzled.

The others turned to her with indignation and pity.

"You're naive, Renee," shrugged Eve Layton.

"But what's the matter with the Banner?" Banner?"

"Now, child, don't you bother with dirty politics," said Jessica Pratt. "The Banner Banner is a wicked paper. Mr. Wynand is a very evil man. He represents the selfish interests of the rich." is a wicked paper. Mr. Wynand is a very evil man. He represents the selfish interests of the rich."

"I think he's good-looking," said Renee. "I think he has s.e.x appeal."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" cried Eve Layton.

"Now, after all, Renee is ent.i.tled to express her opinion," Jessica Pratt said with immediate rage.

"Somebody told me Ellsworth is the president of the Union of Wynand Employees," drawled Renee.

"Oh dear me, no, Renee. I'm never president of anything. I'm just a rank-and-file member. Like any copy boy."

"Do they have a Union of Wynand Employees?" asked Homer Slottern.

"It was just a club, at first," said Toohey. "It became a union last year."

"Who organized it?"

"How can one tell? It was more or less spontaneous. Like all ma.s.s movements."

"I think Wynand is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," declared Mitch.e.l.l Layton. "Who does he think he is anyway? I come to a meeting of stockholders and he treats us like flunkies. Isn't my money as good as his? Don't I own a hunk of his d.a.m.n paper? I could teach him a thing or two about journalism. I have ideas. What's he so d.a.m.n arrogant about? Just because he made that fortune himself? Does he have to be such a d.a.m.n sn.o.b just because he came from h.e.l.l's Kitchen? It isn't other people's fault if they weren't lucky enough to be born in h.e.l.l's Kitchen to rise out of! n.o.body understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich. Because people just take for granted that because you were born that way you'd just be no good if you weren't. What I mean is if I'd had Gail Wynand's breaks, I'd be twice as rich as he is by now and three times as famous. But he's so conceited he doesn't realize this at all!" think Wynand is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," declared Mitch.e.l.l Layton. "Who does he think he is anyway? I come to a meeting of stockholders and he treats us like flunkies. Isn't my money as good as his? Don't I own a hunk of his d.a.m.n paper? I could teach him a thing or two about journalism. I have ideas. What's he so d.a.m.n arrogant about? Just because he made that fortune himself? Does he have to be such a d.a.m.n sn.o.b just because he came from h.e.l.l's Kitchen? It isn't other people's fault if they weren't lucky enough to be born in h.e.l.l's Kitchen to rise out of! n.o.body understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich. Because people just take for granted that because you were born that way you'd just be no good if you weren't. What I mean is if I'd had Gail Wynand's breaks, I'd be twice as rich as he is by now and three times as famous. But he's so conceited he doesn't realize this at all!"

n.o.body said a word. They heard the rising inflection of hysteria in Mitch.e.l.l Layton's voice. Eve Layton looked at Toohey, silently appealing for help. Toohey smiled and made a step forward.

"I'm ashamed of you, Mitch," he said.

Homer Slottern gasped. One did not rebuke Mitch.e.l.l Layton on this subject; one did not rebuke Mitch.e.l.l Layton on any subject.

Mitch.e.l.l Layton's lower lip vanished.

"I'm ashamed of you, Mitch," Toohey repeated sternly, "for comparing yourself to a man as contemptible as Gail Wynand."

Mitch.e.l.l Layton's mouth relaxed in the equivalent of something almost as gentle as a smile.

"That's true," he said humbly.

"No, you would never be able to match Gail Wynand's career. Not with your sensitive spirit and humanitarian instincts. That's what's holding you down, Mitch, not your money. Who cares about money? The age of money is past. It's your nature that's too fine for the brute compet.i.tion of our capitalistic system. But that, too, is pa.s.sing."

"It's self-evident," said Eve Layton.

It was late when Toohey left. He felt exhilarated and he decided to walk home. The streets of the city lay gravely empty around him, and the dark ma.s.ses of the buildings rose to the sky, confident and unprotected. He remembered what he had said to Dominique once: "A complicated piece of machinery, such as our society ... and by pressing your little finger against one spot ... the center of all its gravity ... you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of sc.r.a.p iron ..." He missed Dominique. He wished she could have been with him to hear this evening's conversation.

The unshared was boiling up within him. He stopped in the middle of a silent street, threw his head back and laughed aloud, looking at the tops of skysc.r.a.pers.

A policeman tapped him on the shoulder, asking: "Well, Mister?"

Toohey saw b.u.t.tons and blue cloth tight over a broad chest, a stolid face, hard and patient; a man as set and dependable as the buildings around them.

"Doing your duty, officer?" Toohey asked, the echoes of laughter like jerks in his voice. "Protecting law and order and decency and human lives?" The policeman scratched the back of his head. "You ought to arrest me, officer."

"Okay, pal, okay," said the policeman. "Run along. We all take one too many once in a while."

VII

IT WAS ONLY WHEN THE LAST PAINTER HAD DEPARTED THAT PETER Keating felt a sense of desolation and a numb weakness in the crook of his elbows. He stood in the hall, looking up at the ceiling. Under the harsh gloss of paint he could still see the outline of the square where the stairway had been removed and the opening closed over. Guy Francon's old office was gone. The firm of Keating & Dumont had a single floor left now.

He thought of the stairway and how he had walked up its red-plushed steps for the first time, carrying a drawing on the tips of his fingers. He thought of Guy Francon's office with the glittering b.u.t.terfly reflections. He thought of the four years when that office had been his own.

He had known what was happening to his firm, in these last years; he had known it quite well while men in overalls removed the stairway and closed the gap in the ceiling. But it was that square under the white paint that made it real to him, and final.

He had resigned himself to the process of going down, long ago. He had not chosen to resign himself-that would have been a positive decision-it had merely happened and he had let it happen. It had been simple and almost painless, like drowsiness carrying one down to nothing more sinister than a welcome sleep. The dull pain came from wishing to understand why it had happened.

There was "The March of the Centuries" exposition, but that alone could not have mattered. "The March of the Centuries" had opened in May. It was a flop. What's the use, thought Keating, why not say the right word? Flop. It was a ghastly flop. "The t.i.tle of this venture would be most appropriate," Ellsworth Toohey had written, "if we a.s.sume that the centuries had pa.s.sed by on horseback." Everything else written about the architectural merits of the exposition had been of the same order.

Keating thought, with wistful bitterness, of how conscientiously they had worked, he and the seven other architects, designing those buildings. It was true that he had pushed himself forward and hogged the publicity, but he certainly had not done that as far as designing was concerned. They had worked in harmony, through conference after conference, each giving in to the others, in true collective spirit, none trying to impose his personal prejudices or selfish ideas. Even Ralston Holcombe had forgotten Renaissance. They had made the buildings modern, more modern than anything ever seen, more modern than the show windows of Slottern's Department Store. He did not think that the buildings looked like "coils of toothpaste when somebody steps on the tube or stylized versions of the lower intestine," as one critic had said.

But the public seemed to think it, if the public thought at all. He couldn't tell. He knew only that tickets to "The March of the Centuries" were being palmed off at Screeno games in theaters, and that the sensation of the exposition, the financial savior, was somebody named Juanita Fay who danced with a live peac.o.c.k as sole garment.

But what if the Fair did flop? It had not hurt the other architects of its council. Gordon L. Prescott was going stronger than ever. It wasn't that, thought Keating. It had begun before the Fair. He could not say when.

There could be so many explanations. The depression had hit them all; others had recovered to some extent, Keating & Dumont had not. Something had gone out of the firm and out of the circles from which it drew its clients, with the retirement of Guy Francon. Keating realized that there had been art and skill and its own kind of illogical energy in the career of Guy Francon, even if the art consisted only of his social charm and the energy was directed at snaring bewildered millionaires. There had been a twisted sort of sense in people's response to Guy Francon.

He could see no hint of rationality in the things to which people responded now. The leader of the profession-on a mean scale, there was no grand scale left in anything-was Gordon L. Prescott, Chairman of the Council of American Builders; Gordon L. Prescott who lectured on the transcendental pragmatism of architecture and social planning, who put his feet on tables in drawing rooms, attended formal dinners in knickerbockers and criticized the soup aloud. Society people said they liked an architect who was a liberal. The A.G.A. still existed, in stiff, hurt dignity, but people referred to it as the Old Folks' Home. The Council of American Builders ruled the profession and talked about a closed shop, though no one had yet devised a way of achieving that. Whenever an architect's name appeared in Ellsworth Toohey's column, it was always that of Augustus Webb. At thirty-nine, Keating heard himself described as old-fashioned.

He had given up trying to understand. He knew dimly that the explanation of the change swallowing the world was of a nature he preferred not to know. In his youth he had felt an amicable contempt for the works of Guy Francon or Ralston Holcombe, and emulating them had seemed no more than innocent quackery. But he knew that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb represented so impertinent, so vicious a fraud that to suspend the evidence of his eyes was beyond his elastic capacity. He had believed that people found greatness in Holcombe and there had been a reasonable satisfaction in borrowing his borrowed greatness. He knew that no one saw anything whatever in Prescott. He felt something dark and leering in the manner with which people spoke of Prescott's genius; as if they were not doing homage to Prescott, but spitting upon genius. For once, Keating could not follow people; it was too clear, even to him, that public favor had ceased being a recognition of merit, that it had become almost a brand of shame.

He went on, driven by inertia. He could not afford his large floor of offices and he did not use half the rooms, but he kept them and paid the deficit out of his own pocket. He had to go on. He had lost a large part of his personal fortune in careless stock speculation; but he had enough left to insure some comfort for the rest of his life. This did not disturb him; money had ceased to hold his attention as a major concern. It was inactivity he dreaded; it was the question mark looming beyond, if the routine of his work were to be taken away from him.

He walked slowly, his arms pressed to his body, his shoulders hunched, as if drawn against a permanent chill. He was gaining weight. His face was swollen; he kept it down, and the pleat of a second chin was flattened against the knot of his necktie. A hint of his beauty remained and made him look worse; as if the lines of his face had been drawn on a blotter and had spread, blurring. The gray threads on his temples were becoming noticeable. He drank often, without joy.

He had asked his mother to come back to live with him. She had come back. They sat through long evenings together in the living room, saying nothing; not in resentment, but seeking rea.s.surance from each other. Mrs. Keating offered no suggestions, no reproaches. There was, instead, a new, panic-shaped tenderness in her manner toward her son. She would cook his breakfast, even though they had a maid; she would prepare his favorite dish-French pancakes, the kind he had liked so much when he was nine years old and sick with the measles. If he noticed her efforts and made some comment of pleasure, she nodded, blinking, turning away, asking herself why it should make her so happy and if it did, why should her eyes fill with tears.

She would ask suddenly, after a silence: "It will be all right, Petey? Won't it?" And he would not ask what she meant, but answer quietly: "Yes, Mother, it will be all right," putting the last of his capacity for pity into an effort to make his voice sound convincing.

Once, she asked him: "You're happy, Petey? Aren't you?" He looked at her and saw that she was not laughing at him; her eyes were wide and frightened. And as he could not answer, she cried: "But you've got to be happy! Petey, you've got to! Else what have I lived for?" He wanted to get up, gather her in his arms and tell her that it was all right-and then he remembered Guy Francon saying to him on his wedding day: "I want you to feel proud of me, Peter.... I want to feel that it had some meaning." Then he could not move. He felt himself in the presence of something he must not grasp, must never allow into his mind. He turned away from his mother.

One evening, she said without preamble: "Petey, I think you should get married. I think it would be much better if you were married." He found no answer, and while he groped for something gay to utter, she added: "Petey, why don't you ... why don't you marry Catherine Halsey?" He felt anger filling his eyes, he felt pressure on his swollen lids, while he was turning slowly to his mother; then he saw her squat little figure before him, stiff and defenseless, with a kind of desperate pride, offering to take any blow he wished to deliver, absolving him in advance-and he knew that it had been the bravest gesture she had ever attempted. The anger went, because he felt her pain more sharply than the shock of his own, and he lifted one hand, to let it fall limply, to let the gesture cover everything, saying only: "Mother, don't let's ..."

On weekends, not often, but once or twice a month, he vanished out of town. No one knew where he went. Mrs. Keating worried about it, but asked no questions. She suspected that there was a woman somewhere, and not a nice one, or he would not be so glumly silent on the subject. Mrs. Keating found herself hoping that he had fallen into the clutches of the worst, greediest s.l.u.t who would have sense enough to make him marry her.

He went to a shack he had rented in the hills of an obscure village. He kept paints, brushes and canvas in the shack. He spent his days in the hills, painting. He could not tell why he had remembered that unborn ambition of his youth, which his mother had drained and switched into the channel of architecture. He could not tell by what process the impulse had become irresistible; but he had found the shack and he liked going there.

He could not say that he liked to paint. It was neither pleasure nor relief, it was self-torture, but, somehow, that didn't matter. He sat on a canvas stool before a small easel and he looked at an empty sweep of hills, at the woods and the sky. He had a quiet pain as sole conception of what he wanted to express, a humble, unbearable tenderness for the sight of the earth around him-and something tight, paralyzed, as sole means to express it. He went on. He tried. He looked at his canvases and knew that nothing was captured in their childish crudeness. It did not matter. No one was to see them. He stacked them carefully in a corner of the shack, and he locked the door before he returned to town. There was no pleasure in it, no pride, no solution; only-while he sat alone before the easel-a sense of peace.

He tried not to think of Ellsworth Toohey. A dim instinct told him that he could preserve a precarious security of spirit so long as he did not touch upon that subject. There could be but one explanation of Toohey's behavior toward him-and he preferred not to formulate it.

Toohey had drifted away from him. The intervals between their meetings had grown longer each year. He accepted it and told himself that Toohey was busy. Toohey's public silence about him was baffling. He told himself that Toohey had more important things to write about. Toohey's criticism of "The March of the Centuries" had been a blow. He told himself that his work had deserved it. He accepted any blame. He could afford to doubt himself. He could not afford to doubt Ellsworth Toohey.

It was Neil Dumont who forced him to think of Toohey again. Neil spoke petulantly about the state of the world, about crying over spilt milk, change as a law of existence, adaptability, and the importance of getting in on the ground floor. Keating gathered, from a long, confused speech, that business, as they had known it, was finished, that government would take over whether they liked it or not, that the building trade was dying and the government would soon be the sole builder and they might as well get in now, if they wanted to get in at all. "Look at Gordon Prescott," said Neil Dumont, "and what a sweet little monopoly he's got himself in housing projects and post offices. Look at Gus Webb muscling in on the racket."

Keating did not answer. Neil Dumont was throwing his own unconfessed thoughts at him; he had known that he would have to face this soon and he had tried to postpone the moment.

He did not want to think of Cortlandt Homes.

Cortlandt Homes was a government housing project to be built in Astoria, on the sh.o.r.e of the East River. It was planned as a gigantic experiment in low-rent housing, to serve as model for the whole country; for the whole world. Keating had heard architects talking about it for over a year. The appropriation had been approved and the site chosen; but not the architect. Keating would not admit to himself how desperately he wanted to get Cortlandt and how little chance he had of getting it.

"Listen, Pete, we might as well call a spade a spade," said Neil Dumont. "We're on the skids, pal, and you know it. All right, we'll last another year or two, coasting on your reputation. And then? It's not our fault. It's just that private enterprise is dead and getting deader. It's a historical process. The wave of the future. So we might as well get our surfboard while we can. There's a good, st.u.r.dy one waiting for the boy who's smart enough to grab it. Cortlandt Homes."

Now he had heard it p.r.o.nounced. Keating wondered why the name had sounded like the m.u.f.fled stroke of a bell; as if the sound had opened and closed a sequence which he would not be able to stop.

"What do you mean, Neil?"

"Cortlandt Homes. Ellsworth Toohey. Now you know what I mean."

"Neil, I ..."

"What's the matter with you, Pete? Listen, everybody's laughing about it. Everybody's saying that if they were Toohey's special pet, like you are, they'd get Cortlandt Homes like that"-he snapped his manicured fingers-"just like that, and n.o.body can understand what you're waiting for. You know it's friend Ellsworth who's running this particular housing show."

"It's not true. He is not. He has no official position. He never has any official position."

"Whom are you kidding? Most of the boys that count in every office are his boys. d.a.m.ned if I know how he got them in, but he did. What's the matter, Pete? Are you afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey for a favor?"

This was it, thought Keating; now there was no retreat. He could not admit to himself that he was afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey.

"No," he said, his voice dull, "I'm not afraid, Neil. I'll ... All right, Neil. I'll speak to Ellsworth."

Ellsworth Toohey sat spread out on a couch, wearing a dressing gown. His body had the shape of a sloppy letter X-arms stretched over his head, along the edge of the back pillows, legs open in a wide fork. The dressing gown was made of silk bearing the trademarked pattern of Coty's face powder, white puffs on an orange background; it looked daring and gay, supremely elegant through sheer silliness. Under the gown, Toohey wore sleeping pyjamas of pistachio-green linen, crumpled. The trousers floated about the thin sticks of his ankles.

This was just like Toohey, thought Keating; this pose amidst the severe fastidiousness of his living room; a single canvas by a famous artist on the wall behind him-and the rest of the room un.o.btrusive like a monk's cell; no, thought Keating, like the retreat of a king in exile, scornful of material display.

Toohey's eyes were warm, amused, encouraging. Toohey had answered the telephone in person; Toohey had granted him the appointment at once. Keating thought: It's good to be received like this, informally. What was I afraid of? What did I doubt? We're old friends.

"Oh dear me," said Toohey, yawning, "one gets so tired! There comes a moment into every man's day when he gets the urge to relax like a stumble b.u.m. I got home and just felt I couldn't keep my clothes on another minute. Felt like a d.a.m.n peasant-just plain itchy-and had to get out. You don't mind, do you, Peter? With some people it's necessary to be stiff and formal, but with you it's not necessary at all."

"No, of course not."

"Think I'll take a bath after a while. There's nothing like a good hot bath to make one feel like a parasite. Do you like hot baths, Peter?"

"Why ... yes ... I guess so ..."

"You're gaining weight, Peter. Pretty soon you'll look revolting in a bathtub. You're gaining weight and you look peaked. That's a bad combination. Absolutely wrong esthetically. Fat people should be happy and jolly."

"I ... I'm all right, Ellsworth. It's only that ..."

"You used to have a nice disposition. You mustn't lose that. People will get bored with you."

"I haven't changed, Ellsworth." Suddenly he stressed the words. "I haven't really changed at all. I'm just what I was when I designed the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."

He looked at Toohey hopefully. He thought this was a hint crude enough for Toohey to understand; Toohey understood things much more delicate than that. He waited to be helped out. Toohey went on looking at him, his eyes sweet and blank.

"Why, Peter, that's an unphilosophical statement. Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings. The dialectic process, Peter."

"Yes, of course. Things change, so fast, in such a funny way. You don't even notice how, and suddenly one morning there it is. Remember, just a few years ago, Lois Cook and Gordon Prescott and Ike and Lance-they were n.o.body at all. And now-why, Ellsworth, they're on top and they're all yours. Anywhere I look, any big name I hear-it's one of your boys. You're amazing, Ellsworth. How anybody can do that-in just a few years-"

"It's much simpler than it appears to you, Peter. That's because you think in terms of personalities. You think it's done piecemeal. But dear me, the lifetimes of a hundred press agents wouldn't be enough. It can be done much faster. This is the age of time-saving devices. If you want something to grow, you don't nurture each seed separately. You just spread a certain fertilizer. Nature will do the rest. I believe you think I'm the only one responsible. But I'm not. Goodness, no. I'm just one figure out of many, one lever in a very vast movement. Very vast and very ancient. It just so happened that I chose the field that interests you-the field of art-because I thought that it focused the decisive factors in the task we had to accomplish."

"Yes, of course, but I mean, I think you were so clever. I mean, that you could pick young people who had talent, who had a future. d.a.m.ned if I know how you guessed in advance. Remember the awful loft we had for the Council of American Builders? And n.o.body took us seriously. And people used to laugh at you for wasting time on all kinds of silly organizations."

"My dear Peter, people go by so many erroneous a.s.sumptions. For instance, that old one-divide and conquer. Well, it has its applications. But it remained for our century to discover a much more potent formula. Unite and rule."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing that you could possibly grasp. And I must not overtax your strength. You don't look as if you had much to spare."

"Oh, I'm all right. I might look a little worried, because ..."

"Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an enlightened person. Since we are merely the creatures of our chemical metabolism and of the economic factors of our background, there's not a d.a.m.n thing we can do about anything whatever. So why worry? There are, of course, apparent exceptions. Merely apparent. When circ.u.mstances delude us into thinking that free action is indicated. Such, for instance, as your coming here to talk about Cortlandt Homes."

Keating blinked, then smiled gratefully. He thought it was just like Toohey to guess and spare him the embarra.s.sing preliminaries.

"That's right, Ellsworth. That's just what I wanted to talk to you about. You're wonderful. You know me like a book."

"What kind of a book, Peter? A dime novel? A love story? A crime thriller? Or just a plagiarized ma.n.u.script? No, let's say: like a serial. A good, long, exciting serial-with the last installment missing. The last installment got mislaid somewhere. There won't be any last installment. Unless, of course, it's Cortlandt Homes. Yes, that would be a fitting closing chapter." Keating waited, eyes intent and naked, forgetting to think of shame, of pleading that should be concealed. "A tremendous project, Cortlandt Homes. Bigger than Stoneridge. Do you remember Stoneridge, Peter?"

He's just relaxed with me, thought Keating, he's tired, he can't be tactful all the time, he doesn't realize what he ...