The Early Ayn Rand

[HASTINGS bows as HELEN exits up the stairs with TONY. FLEMING exits Right]

HASTINGS: [Walks to door Left, turns to INGALLS] It's as I've always said, Steve. There is no perfect crime.

INGALLS: [Who has not moved from near the fireplace] No, Greg. There isn't. [HASTINGS exits Left. INGALLS turns to look at Adrienne]

ADRIENNE: What are you going to do now, Steve?

INGALLS: I'm going to ask you to marry me. [As she makes a movement forward] But before you answer, there's something I'm going to tell you. Yesterday, when you looked at those fireworks and suddenly thought of something — it was not of me or of Helen, was it?

ADRIENNE: No.

INGALLS: I know what you thought. You see, I know who killed Walter Breckenridge. I want you to know it. Listen and don't say anything until I finish.

[The lights black out completely. Then a single spotlight hits the center of the stage. We can see nothing beyond, only the figures of the two men in the spotlight: WALTER BRECKENRIDGE and STEVE INGALLS. BRECKENRIDGE is operating the levers of a portable electric switchboard. INGALLS stands beside him. INGALLS speaks slowly, evenly, quietly, in the expressionless tone of an irrevocable decision]

INGALLS: If, tomorrow at noon, Walter, you give this invention to the world — then, the day after tomorrow, Soviet Russia, Communist China, and every other dictatorship, every other scum on the face of the earth, will have the secret of the greatest military weapon ever invented.

BRECKENRIDGE: Are you going to start on that again? I thought we had settled it this afternoon.

INGALLS: This afternoon, Walter, I begged you. I had never begged a man before. I am not doing that now.

BRECKENRIDGE: You're interfering with the fireworks. Drop it, Steve. I'm not interested.

INGALLS: No, you're not interested in the consequences. Humanitarians never are. All you see ahead is lighted slums and free electric power on the farms. But you don't want to know that the same invention and the same grand gesture of yours will also send death through the air, and blow up ammunition depots, and turn cities into rubble.

BRECKENRIDGE: I am not concerned with war. I am taking a much farther perspective, I am looking down the centuries. What if one or two generations have to suffer?

INGALLS: And so, at a desperate time, when your country needs the exclusive secret and control of a weapon such as this, you will give it away to anyone and everyone.

BRECKENRIDGE: My country will have an equal chance with the rest of the world.

INGALLS: An equal chance to be destroyed? Is that what you're after? But you will never understand. You have no concern for your country, for your friends, for your property, or for yourself. You don't have the courage to hold that which is yours, to hold it proudly, wisely, openly, and to use it for your own honest good. You don't even know that that takes courage.

BRECKENRIDGE: I do not wish to discuss it.

INGALLS: You are not concerned with mankind, Walter. If you were, you'd know that when you give things to mankind, you give them also to mankind's enemies.

BRECKENRIDGE: You have always lacked faith in your fellow men. Your narrow patriotism is old-fashioned, Steve. And if you think that my decision is so dangerous, why don't you report me to the government?

INGALLS: There are too many friends of Serge Sookin's in the government — at present. It's I who must stop you.

BRECKENRIDGE: You? There's nothing you can do about it. You're only a junior partner.