Atlas Shrugged

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sociological viewpoint, that the Miami branch carried a much more important class of passenger traffic;
therefore, the chief engineer suggested that Winston could be kept waiting a little longer, and
recommended the sacrifice of an obscure section of mountain trackage for the sake of a branch where
"Taggart Transcontinental could not afford to create an unfavorable impression."
She read, slashing furious pencil marks on the margins of the pages, thinking that her first duty of the day,
ahead of any other, was to stop this particular piece of insanity.
The telephone rang.
"Yes?" she asked, snatching the receiver. "McNeil Car Foundry?"
"No," said the voice of her secretary. "Senor Francisco d'Anconia."
She looked at the phone's mouthpiece for the instant of a brief shock. "All right. Put him on."
The next voice she heard was Francisco's. "I see that you're in your office just the same," he said; his
voice was mocking, harsh and tense.
"Where did you expect me to be?"
"How do you like the new suspension?"
"What suspension?"
"The moratorium on brains."
"What are you talking about?"
"Haven't you seen today's newspapers?"
"No."
There was a pause; then his voice came slowly, changed and grave: "Better take a look at them, Dagny."
"All right."
"I'll call you later."
She hung up and pressed the switch of the communicator on her desk. "Get me a newspaper," she said
to her secretary.
"Yes, Miss Taggart," the secretary's voice answered grimly.
It was Eddie Willers who came in and put the newspaper down on her desk. The meaning of the look
on his face' was the same as the tone she had caught in Francisco's voice: the advance notice of some
inconceivable disaster.
"None of us wanted to be first to tell you," he said very quietly and walked out.
When she rose from her desk, a few moments later, she felt that she had full control of her body and that