The Last Days of Night(80)

It took less than a week to lay out the basic structure of the operation. It was an unemotional ordeal. The carving up of the Westinghouse corpse was performed with a clinical disassociation. Paul could devote himself to the complexity of the task and thus ignore its larger implications.

Hughes’s wife—Carter’s daughter—was due to give birth to her first child before the new year. Paul’s senior partners would move on to new cases, established careers, and full lives. What would happen to Paul was far less certain.

It was a bright and clear Tuesday morning when Paul and his partners finished. The tired men surveyed the delicate paper stacks before them. New York was waking up, Paul thought, as they were finally ready to put Westinghouse to bed. Paul cradled the warm china cup in his hands, taking small sips of black coffee. Carter smoked. Hughes stared out the window as if somewhere in the bricks of the neighboring buildings was a place he’d rather be.

“Well then,” said Carter as he rested his cigar on the table. “Who’s going to tell him?”





Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

—THOMAS EDISON



IT WAS A long train ride to Pittsburgh. He’d made this trip many times over the past year and a half, but this journey felt infinitely longer. The gray Pennsylvania prairie stretched on endlessly. Paul felt that he was being delivered, ever so slowly, to the gallows. And what he felt as he approached the gilded noose, more than anything else, was shame.

He kept imagining Westinghouse’s face. Westinghouse had done everything right. He’d made the big gambles, and he’d gambled correctly: first on electrical light, then again on alternating current. He’d identified a future market, he’d identified the technological problems that would need solving in order to serve this market, and he’d then designed and manufactured the best product in the world to fill this niche. What more could one ask of a businessman?

One could ask for a better attorney. If Carter had been in charge from the beginning, would they still be in this position? Could Hughes have negotiated their way out of it if he’d been given a chance? Could anyone? Why had George Westinghouse done something so foolish as to entrust the future of his company to Paul?

Paul had been called a prodigy when he’d signed Westinghouse as his client, but he had not felt like one. And only now, as he came to the end of his brief career as a lawyer, was he aware of the extent of his previous accomplishments. Now that it no longer mattered, he realized what a marvel his early work had been. He’d made it far. How many people could claim that?

And how many people had squandered such promise?

Paul entered the Westinghouse estate’s central mansion wearily. The butler took his coat, his hat, his worn gloves. Mr. Westinghouse was in the study. Paul made his way slowly through the house. This would likely be his last time here. Westinghouse would remain cordial, to be sure. Marguerite might even extend the occasional invitation to dinner. But Paul knew that he wouldn’t be able to bear attending. His shame was so deep that he could not imagine ever being able to look George Westinghouse in the eye again.

Paul paused in the study’s doorway. Westinghouse was seated at his enormous desk. He was absorbed in diagrams of some sort. Mechanical designs that, most likely, would never come into being.

Paul waited there for a long moment. He took the longest breath of his life before he opened his mouth.

“Mr. Westinghouse,” said Paul. “We need to talk.”

Westinghouse didn’t look up. “Yes, yes,” he said, still focused on his diagrams. “Take a seat, kid.”

Paul didn’t feel like sitting. He stood there another moment, marshaling his strength.

There was a loud knock at the door.

“Come in!” called out Westinghouse.

The butler entered. “Pardon, sir. But there’s a telegram just arrived. Marked ‘urgent.’?”

“Fine, fine,” said Westinghouse. “Bring it here.”

“It’s for Mr. Cravath.”

Carter and Hughes wouldn’t have interrupted him at such a moment. They’d wanted to be as far away from this meeting as possible. Who even knew he was there?

Paul took the telegram from the butler and peeled open its wax seal.

This was easily the second-most mysterious telegram he’d ever received.

“The Tennessee sunflowers have bloomed,” the message read. “They are the most beautiful sight. You must see them for yourself. Please come to Nashville posthaste.”

It was signed “A.G.”





At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

—CARL SAGAN



“WHERE’S TESLA?” WERE the first words that Paul spoke to Agnes, improbably seated in his parents’ Nashville kitchen. Ruth Cravath was heating the kettle for tea while Erastus puttered about, making sure Agnes had everything she required. She had evidently been here a few days.

Paul could not help but notice the bright diamond on Agnes’s ring finger. He tried not to stare. It probably cost more than the entire house in which they were seated, though that wasn’t saying much. At least he would not have to ask whether her trip to France with Henry La Barre Jayne had gone according to plan.