The Last Days of Night(93)

Paul had been in over his head from the moment he’d taken on the Westinghouse case. He’d been drowning in water even deeper than he’d known.

Paul was clever. Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse were geniuses. What was Morgan? Paul felt himself in the presence of something else entirely.

“Is this the part where you pretend to be so much more noble than I am?” asked Morgan. “I’d rather not bother, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I didn’t illegally place a spy in your company, Mr. Morgan.”

Morgan spent a long moment looking Paul up and down. “Do you know what awaits you at the end of this, Mr. Cravath? I have a notion that you’re going to gain all of the riches that you desire. Congratulations, in advance. But have you considered what you might have to give up in return?”

“What’s that?”

“The illusion that you ever deserved it.”

Morgan gazed thoughtfully at a bronze statue. It depicted a warrior, spear in hand, galloping on horseback into a great and long-forgotten war.

“Poor people all think they deserve to be rich,” he continued. “Rich people live every day with the uneasy knowledge that we do not.”

Morgan spoke as if they were the same class of men. As if Morgan were Paul’s own reflection in a darkened mirror.

“Westinghouse is likely with Fessenden at this very moment,” said Paul.

“I’m sure.”

“I must speak with him. If he tells Fessenden about our plan…”

Paul prepared to run off to the nearest Western Union office, before he had a better idea.

“Mr. Morgan,” said Paul as he turned to face him. “I’ll ask you for one more favor.”

“Yes.”

“Could you find me a telephone?”





The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.

—NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON



AS IT HAPPENED, Luigi di Cesnola kept a telephone in his private office on the museum’s third floor. As the device had been a gift from Morgan, Cesnola was more than happy to let the banker’s young friend make use of it while he and Morgan smoked in the corridor outside. Paul listened nervously to the odd ringing noises emanating from the black earpiece he held up to his ear.

A laboratory assistant finally picked up on the other end of the line. Paul demanded to speak urgently to George Westinghouse.

“Paul?” came the scratchy but recognizable voice of George Westinghouse through the earpiece. It felt more like he was speaking with a ghost than with another human being. There was Westinghouse’s incorporeal voice, right there, pressed against Paul’s right ear. The personhood of Westinghouse had been reduced to a voice in the ether.

“Are you completely alone?” said Paul.

“Did you meet with Morgan? Did he go for it?”

“Is anyone with you in the laboratory at the moment? Next to you, while we’re speaking? That assistant I just spoke with?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

Paul could tell even this far away that Westinghouse was dismayed at the tenor of this conversation. But it couldn’t be helped.

“Then listen close.”

Paul explained as plainly as he could what Morgan had told him. Westinghouse was shocked at first and then incredulous. The lead engineer on all of his electrical projects had been working in secret for their enemy? Was Paul suggesting that he was some sort of fool?

“I’ll have the police here within the hour,” said Westinghouse. His disbelief and embarrassment had given way to a righteous anger. “False representation, intellectual theft, broken employment contracts, simple fraud—I will see him shackled before sundown.”

“That was my initial reaction as well,” said Paul calmly into the receiver. “Then I thought better of it.”

“Why?”

“Where is Fessenden now?”

“The lab, I should assume. Gathering up every detail of my work on—”

“Can you keep him there? And keep him out of the meetings you’ll need to have in the coming days concerning Edison?”

“Why would I do that? He should be arrested.”

“Think it through, sir. If you arrest Fessenden, what happens?”

There was silence on the line as Westinghouse went through the same series of thoughts that Paul had run through only a few minutes before.

“…Edison will know that we discovered his spy,” said Westinghouse.

“Yes.”

“He’ll assume that one of his own people ratted him out.”

“Yes.”

“And then he’ll go looking for a rotten apple inside his own barrel.”

“Which,” said Paul, “is exactly what we do not want him doing.”

“So what else would you propose?”

“Can you give Fessenden a task? Some sort of project—it can be a waste of time, I don’t care what it is—to keep him busy?”

“I’m sure I can come up with something,” said Westinghouse.

“Do that. Meanwhile, we might be able to get some real use out of Fessenden yet.”