at first, then the pause, then the growing intentness, then a movement of his lips which, from another man, would have been a whistle or a gasp. She saw him stop for long minutes and look off, as if his mind were racing over countless sudden trails, trying to follow them all—she saw him leaf back through the pages, then stop, then force himself to read on, as if he were torn between his eagerness to continue and his eagerness to seize all the possibilities breaking open before his vision. She saw his silent excitement, she knew that he had forgotten her office, her existence, everything but the sight of an achievement—and in tribute to his being capable of such reaction, she wished it were possible for her to like Dr. Robert Stadler.
They had been silent for over an hour, when he finished and looked up at her. “But this is extraordinary!” he said in the joyous, astonished tone of announcing some news she had not expected.
She wished she could smile in answer and grant him the comradeship of a joy celebrated together, but she merely nodded and said coldly, “Yes.”
“But, Miss Taggart, this is tremendous!”
“Yes.”
“Did you say it’s a matter of technology? It’s more, much, much more than that. The pages where he writes about his converter—you can see what premise he’s speaking from. He arrived at some new concept of energy. He discarded all our standard assumptions, according to which his motor would have been impossible. He formulated a new premise of his own and he solved the secret of converting static energy into kinetic power. Do you know what that means? Do you realize what a feat of pure, abstract science he had to perform before he could make his motor?”
“Who?” she asked quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That was the first of the two questions I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler: can you think of any young scientist you might have known ten years ago, who would have been able to do this?”
He paused, astonished; he had not had time to wonder about that question. “No,” he said slowly, frowning, “no, I can’t think of anyone.
... And that’s odd... because an ability of this kind couldn’t have passed unnoticed anywhere... somebody would have called him to my attention... they always sent promising young physicists to me.
... Did you say you found this in the research laboratory of a plain, commercial motor factory?”
“Yes.”
“That’s odd. What was he doing in such a place?”
“Designing a motor.”
“That’s what I mean. A man with the genius of a great scientist, who chose to be a commercial inventor? I find it outrageous. He wanted a motor, and he quietly performed a major revolution in the science of energy, just as a means to an end, and he didn’t bother to publish his findings, but went right on making his motor. Why did he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?”
“Perhaps because he liked living on this earth,” she said involuntarily.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, I... I’m sorry, Dr. Stadler. I did not intend to discuss any... irrelevant subject.”
He was looking off, pursuing his own course of thought, “Why didn’t he come to me? Why wasn’t he in some great scientific establishment where he belonged? If he had the brains to achieve this, surely he had the brains to know the importance of what he had done. Why didn’t he publish a paper on his definition of energy? I can see the general direction he’d taken, but God damn him!—the most important pages are missing, the statement isn’t here! Surely somebody around him should have known enough to announce his work to the whole world of science. Why didn’t they? How could they abandon, just abandon, a thing of this kind?”
“These are the questions to which I found no answers.”
“And besides, from the purely practical aspect, why was that motor left in a junk pile? You’d think any greedy fool of an industrialist would have grabbed it in order to make a fortune. No intelligence was needed to see its commercial value.”
She smiled for the first time—a smile ugly with bitterness; she said nothing.
“You found it impossible to trace the inventor?” he asked.
“Completely impossible—so far.”
“Do you think that he is still alive?”
“I have reason to think that he is. But I can’t be sure.”
“Suppose I tried to advertise for him?”
“No. Don’t.”
“But if I were to place ads in scientific publications and have Dr. Ferris”—he stopped; he saw her glance at him as swiftly as he glanced at her; she said nothing, but she held his glance; he looked away and finished the sentence coldly and firmly—“and have Dr. Ferris broadcast on the radio that I wish to see him, would he refuse to come?”
“Yes, Dr. Stadler, I think he would refuse.”
He was not looking at her. She saw the faint tightening of his facial muscles and, simultaneously, the look of something going slack in the lines of his face; she could not tell what sort of light was dying within him nor what made her think of the death of a light.
He tossed the manuscript down on the desk with a casual, contemptuous movement of his wrist. “Those men who do not mind being practical enough to sell their brains for money, ought to acquire a little knowledge of the conditions of practical reality.”
He looked at her with a touch of defiance, as if waiting for an angry answer. But her answer was worse than anger: her face remained expressionless, as if the truth or falsehood of his convictions were of no concern to her any longer. She said politely, “The second question I wanted to ask you was whether you would be kind enough to tell me the name of any physicist you know who, in your judgment, would possess the ability to attempt the reconstruction of this motor.”
He looked at her and chuckled; it was a sound of pain. “Have you been tortured by it, too, Miss Taggart? By the impossibility of finding any sort of intelligence anywhere?”
“I have interviewed some physicists who were highly recommended to me and I have found them to be hopeless.”
He leaned forward eagerly. “Miss Taggart,” he asked, “did you call on me because you trusted the integrity of my scientific judgment?”
The question was a naked plea.
“Yes,” she answered evenly, “I trusted the integrity of your scientific judgment.”
He leaned back; he looked as if some hidden smile were smoothing the tension away from his face. “I wish I could help you,” he said, as to a comrade. “I most selfishly wish I could help you, because, you see, this has been my hardest problem—trying to find men of talent for my own staff. Talent, hell! I’d be satisfied with just a semblance of promise—but the men they send me couldn’t be honestly said to possess the potentiality of developing into decent garage mechanics. I don’t know whether I am getting older and more demanding, or whether the human race is degenerating, but the world didn’t seem to be so barren of intelligence in my youth. Today, if you saw the kind of men I’ve had to interview, you’d—”
He stopped abruptly, as if at a sudden recollection. He remained silent; he seemed to be considering something he knew, but did not wish to tell her; she became certain of it, when he concluded brusquely, in that tone of resentment which conceals an evasion, “No, I don’t know anyone I’d care to recommend to you.”
“This was all I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler,” she said. “Thank you for giving me your time.”
He sat silently still for a moment, as if he could not bring himself to leave.
“Miss Taggart,” he asked, “could you show me the actual motor itself?”
She looked at him, astonished. “Why, yes... if you wish. But it’s in an underground vault, down in our Terminal tunnels.”
“I don’t mind, if you wouldn’t mind taking me down there. I have no special motive. It’s only my personal curiosity. I would like to see it—that’s all.”
When they stood in the granite vault, over a glass case containing a shape of broken metal, he took off his hat with a slow, absent movement—and she could not tell whether it was the routine gesture of remembering that he was in a room with a lady, or the gesture of baring one’s head over a coffin.
