Atlas Shrugged Read Online Free PDF

Phoenix-Durango. We can’t help it if we’re up against destructive competition of that kind. No bodv can blame us.”
    The pressure in his chest and temples, thought Eddie Willers, was the strain of the effort he was making; he had decided to make the issue clear for once, and the issue was so clear, he thought, that nothing could bar it from Taggart’s understanding, unless it was the failure of his own presentation. So he had tried hard, but he was failing, just as he had always failed in all of their discussions; no matter what he said, they never seemed to be talking about the same subject.
    “Jim, what are you saying? Does it matter that nobody blames us—when the road is falling apart?”
    James Taggart smiled; it was a thin smile, amused and cold. “It’s touching, Eddie,” he said. “It’s touching—your devotion to Taggart Transcontinental. If you don’t look out, you’ll turn into one of those real feudal serfs.”
    “That’s what I am, Jim.”
    “But may I ask whether it is your job to discuss these matters with me?”
    “No, it isn’t.”
    “Then why don’t you learn that we have departments to take care of things? Why don’t you report all this to whoever’s concerned? Why don’t you cry on my dear sister’s shoulder?”
    “Look Jim, I know it’s not my place to talk to you. But I can’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know what it is that your proper advisers tell you, or why they can’t make you understand. So I thought I’d try to tell you myself.”
    “I appreciate our childhood friendship, Eddie, but do you think that that should entitle you to walk in here unannounced whenever you wish? Considering your own rank, shouldn’t you remember that I am president of Taggart Transcontinental?”
    This was wasted. Eddie Willers looked at him as usual, not hurt, merely puzzled, and asked, “Then you don’t intend to do anything about the Rio Norte Line?”
    “I haven’t said that. I haven’t said that at all.” Taggart was looking at the map, at the red streak south of El Paso. “Just as soon as the San Sebastián Mines get going and our Mexican branch begins to pay off—”
    “Don’t let’s talk about that, Jim.”
    Taggart turned, startled by the unprecedented phenomenon of an implacable anger in Eddie’s voice. “What’s the matter?”
    “You know what’s the matter. Your sister said—”
    “Damn my sister!” said James Taggart.
    Eddie Willers did not move. He did not answer. He stood looking straight ahead. But he did not see James Taggart or anything in the office.
    After a moment, he bowed and walked out.
    In the anteroom, the clerks of James Taggart’s personal staff were switching off the lights, getting ready to leave for the day. But Pop Harper, chief clerk, still sat at his desk, twisting the levers of a half-dismembered typewriter. Everybody in the company had the impression that Pop Harper was born in that particular corner at that particular desk and never intended to leave it. He had been chief clerk for James Taggart’s father.
    Pop Harper glanced up at Eddie Willers as he came out of the president’s office. It was a wise, slow glance; it seemed to say that he knew that Eddie’s visit to their part of the building meant trouble on the line, knew that nothing had come of the visit, and was completely indifferent to the knowledge. It was the cynical indifference which Eddie Willers had seen in the eyes of the bum on the street corner.
    “Say, Eddie, know where I could get some woolen undershirts?” he asked. “Tried all over town, but nobody’s got ‘em.”
    “I don’t know,” said Eddie, stopping. “Why do you ask me?”
    “I just ask everybody. Maybe somebody’ll tell me.”
    Eddie looked uneasily at the blank, emaciated face and white hair.
    “It’s cold in this joint,” said Pop Harper. “It’s going to be colder this winter.”
    “What are you doing?” Eddie asked, pointing at the pieces of typewriter.
    “The damn