Free The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand Page B

there’s a fellow outside says he’s looking for a job here.”
    Then a voice answered, a strong, clear voice that held no tones of age:
    “Why, the damn fool! Throw him out ... Wait! Send him in!”
    The old man returned, held the door open and jerked his head at it silently. Roark went in. The door closed behind him.
    Henry Cameron sat at his desk at the end of a long, bare room. He sat bent forward, his forearms on the desk, his two hands closed before him. His hair and his beard were coal black, with coarse threads of white. The muscles of his short, thick neck bulged like ropes. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows; the bare arms were hard, heavy and brown. The flesh of his broad face was rigid, as if it had aged by compression. The eyes were dark, young, living.
    Roark stood on the threshold and they looked at each other across the long room.
    The light from the air shaft was gray, and the dust on the drafting table, on the few green files, looked like fuzzy crystals deposited by the light. But on the wall, between the windows, Roark saw a picture. It was the only picture in the room. It was the drawing of a skyscraper that had never been erected.
    Roark’s eyes moved first and they moved to the drawing. He walked across the office, stopped before it and stood looking at it. Cameron’s eyes followed him, a heavy glance, like a long, thin needle held fast at one end, describing a slow circle, its point piercing Roark’s body, keeping it pinned firmly. Cameron looked at the orange hair, at the hand hanging by his side, its palm to the drawing, the fingers bent slightly, forgotten not in a gesture but in the overture to a gesture of asking or seizing something.
    “Well?” said Cameron at last. “Did you come to see me or did you come to look at pictures?”
    Roark turned to him.
    “Both,” said Roark.
    He walked to the desk. People had always lost their sense of existence in Roark’s presence; but Cameron felt suddenly that he had never been as real as in the awareness of the eyes now looking at him.
    “What do you want?” snapped Cameron.
    “I should like to work for you,” said Roark quietly. The voice said: “I should like to work for you.” The tone of the voice said: “I’m going to work for you.”
    “Are you?” said Cameron, not realizing that he answered the unpronounced sentence. “What’s the matter? None of the bigger and better fellows will have you?”
    “I have not applied to anyone else.”
    “Why not? Do you think this is the easiest place to begin? Think anybody can walk in here without trouble? Do you know who I am?”
    “Yes. That’s why I’m here.”
    “Who sent you?”
    “No one.”
    “Why the hell should you pick me?”
    “I think you know that.”
    “What infernal impudence made you presume that I’d want you? Have you decided that I’m so hard up that I’d throw the gates open for any punk who’d do me the honor? ‘Old Cameron,’ you’ve said to yourself, ‘is a has-been, a drunken ...’ Come on, you’ve said it! ... ‘a drunken failure who can’t be particular!’ Is that it? ... Come on, answer me! Answer me, damn you! What are you staring at? Is that it? Go on! Deny it!”
    “It’s not necessary.”
    “Where have you worked before?”
    “I’m just beginning.”
    “What have you done?”
    “I’ve had three years at Stanton.”
    “Oh? The gentleman was too lazy to finish?”
    “I have been expelled.”
    “Great!” Cameron slapped the desk with his fist and laughed. “Splendid! You’re not good enough for the lice nest at Stanton, but you’ll work for Henry Cameron! You’ve decided this is the place for refuse! What did they kick you out for? Drink? Women? What?”
    “These,” said Roark, and extended his drawings.
    Cameron looked at the first one, then at the next, then at every one of them to the bottom. Roark heard the paper rustling as Cameron slipped one sheet behind another. Then Cameron raised his