He wrote down the number of the house and the name and address of the real estate firm from the sign and we were through. An agent was sent immediately to buy the property. He telephoned before the end of the day.
“We’ve got it, Coxey,” said Galt. “The transfer will be made in your name. This is all a dead secret. Not a word. Find the best architect in New York and have him down here tomorrow.”
As luck was, the architect had a set of beautiful plans that had been abandoned on account of cost. With but few modifications they suited Galt perfectly. He could hardly wait until everything was settled,—not only as to the house itself, but as to its equipment, decorations and furnishings complete, even pictures, linen and plate.
“When it’s done,” he said, “I want to walk in with a handbag and stay there.”
Having signed the contracts he added an extra cumulative per diem premium for completion in advance of a specified date. Then he put it away from his mind and returned,—I had almost said,—to his money making. That would not be true. His mind was not on money, primarily. He thought in terms of creative achievement.
There are two regnant passions in the heart of man. One is to tear down, the other is to build up. Galt’s passion was to build. In his case the passion to destroy, which complements the other, was satisfied in removing obstacles. Works enthralled him in right of their own magic. To see a thing with the mind’s eyes as a vision in space, to give orders, then in a little while to go and find it there, existing durably in three dimensions,—that was power! No other form of experience was comparable to this.
His theory, had he been able to formulate one, would have been that any work worth doing must pay. That was the ultimate test. If it didn’t pay there was something wrong. But profit was what followed as a vindication or a conclusion in logic. First was the thing itself to be imagined. The difference between this and the common attitude may be subtle; it is hard to define; yet it is fundamental. He did not begin by saying: “How can the Great Midwestern be made to earn a profit of ten per cent.?” No. He said: “How shall we make the Great Midwestern system the greatest transportation machine in the world?” If that were done the profit would mind itself. He could not have said this himself. He never troubled his mind with self-analysis. I think he never knew how or why he became the greatest money maker of his generation in the world.
iv
Nothing happened to betray the secret of the house that rose in Fifth Avenue opposite Valentine’s. The real estate news reporters all went wild in their guesses as to its ownership. Galt never interfered about details; but if the chart of construction progress which he kept on his desk showed the slightest deviation from ideal he must know at once what was going wrong. There was a strike of workmen. He said to give them what they wanted and indemnified the contractors accordingly. Once it was a matter of transportation. Three car loads of precious hewn stone got lost in transit. The records of the railroad that had them last showed they had been handed on. The receiving road had no record of having received them. They had vanished altogether. At last they were found in Jersey City. A yard crew had been using them for three weeks as a make-weight to govern the level of one of those old-fashioned pontoons across which trains were shunted from the mainland tracks to car barges in the river. They happened to be just the right weight for the purpose. After that every railroad with a ferry transfer that the Great Midwestern had anything to say about installed a new kind of pontoon, raised and lowered by a simple hydraulic principle.