The Last Days of Night

Batchelor reveals that Westinghouse was trying to scare Tesla into working for Westinghouse again. He’d asked Paul to take him to dinner that night, so they’d be out of the lab. The fire was worse than he’d intended, but the result ended up being the same.

The man who’d saved Paul’s life was one of Edison’s men who had been tailing him. He and Tesla pulled Paul from the building and then Tesla vanished. At Paul’s horrified look, Batchelor says:

‘You’ve never been good at playing the doe-eyed naïf. In the end, you did Westinghouse’s dirty work for him. You were the one who talked Tesla out of the royalty. You did more to doom Tesla with a compelling speech and a scrawl upon the dotted line than Westinghouse did with arson’ (339).

The reason Batchelor knows this, of course, is Fessenden. Paul has the epiphany that he is the villain of this story. He can’t defend himself nor anyone else anymore. Paul agrees to make a deal. To Batchelor’s surprise, Paul is the one negotiating. He offers to keep all the dirt under wraps (on both sides), to keep Fessenden out of jail, and to reinstate Batchelor as vice president of GE. Out of everything Paul could have demanded for keeping Edison’s secrets, Paul only wants justice granted to one person in particular: Agnes.

Paul searches for Agnes. Her home is locked and empty. The manager at the opera house says that she gave barely any notice that she was quitting and left New York. An article in the society pages of the newspaper reveals that she broke off her engagement to Jayne.

Paul finds her in Kalamazoo, Michigan, her birthplace. Fannie reluctantly invites him in for tea and after he’s made his request, she leaves Paul to ask it of Agnes, herself. Paul declares his love for Agnes. He intuits her plan to sing under her real name in Michigan, out of the limelight, but insists it’s unnecessary. She can go back to New York and sing under whatever name she wants, even Jayne’s if that’s what she wants.

He produces a letter from the Boston police stating that no theft occurred in the Endicott mansion while Fannie was working there. Batchelor has used Edison and Morgan’s weight to keep the Endicott family quiet. She doesn’t have to live with her huge secret anymore, lifting a huge weight from her.

Paul proposes she come back to New York and marry him:

‘We can be anyone. We can give a fortune to charity. We can found civic institutions to outlast us both. We can make New York a place where the next boy from Nashville and the next girl from Kalamazoo are welcomed with open arms. We can look after Tesla and make sure that he’s always cared for. We can do all of this and so much more. But if I cannot do this at your side, then there’s no point’ (345).

Paul details what it is the three main players have loved: Edison loved the audience, Westinghouse loved the product, and Tesla loved the idea. Paul tried to understand these men, but he knows now that he never will. He thought he loved to win, but it was the same as losing. Now he knows that he really just loves Agnes. She smiles, one of many he would inspire in her in the years to come. She accepts.

Paul and Agnes marry and have a daughter, all living on Fifth Avenue together near Fannie. Agnes stops performing professionally, but their home is filled with song. The couple becomes some of Manhattan’s greatest philanthropists, participating in the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul sits on the boards of such institutions as the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Fisk University, the Italy America Society, Julliard School of Music, and the India Society of America.

Yet, Paul’s sins against Tesla still haunt them, emerging when things get rough.

The Westinghouse Electric Company and General Electric are both wildly successful. The country is lit with alternating current from coast to coast. Paul remains, for a little while, at Westinghouse then passes the position on. Though their relationship cools, Paul never speaks to Westinghouse about setting fire to Tesla’s lab. He doesn’t idolize Westinghouse as a father figure anymore; Paul’s relationship to Erastus improves, and Erastus travels to New York to visit his granddaughter sometimes.

Morgan tries to overtake Westinghouse Electric Company at times, but Paul’s lawyerly skills keep him at bay. Paul’s new firm is highly successful with top clients. He uses the “Cravath system,” the hierarchical factory-like structure he’d employed with his associates during the lightbulb suit. His system spreads, and he muses on what would happen if he could patent it.

Tesla does fairly well. He makes enough off his partnership with Morgan to live at the Waldorf Astoria and dine at his favorite restaurant, Delmonico’s, every night. He and Agnes drifted apart eventually, and Tesla dies penniless in 1943 (outliving them all).

Westinghouse eventually develops a new lightbulb that doesn’t infringe on Edison’s patent: the double-stopper lamp. As for the big Edison v. Westinghouse case, the capstone of his career, Paul argues brilliantly before the Supreme Court. In the end, he loses the case, but it doesn’t matter. By the time he loses, the patent is about to expire and Westinghouse’s double-stopper lamps are on the market already. The fate of lawyers, Paul realizes, is to lose the case but win the war. For the rest of his life, Paul sees Edison only one more time.

Using Tesla’s ideas, Westinghouse builds a huge turbine that converts the energy of Niagara Falls into an alternating current. The unveiling ceremony is as unprecedented as the even itself. Everyone is there, including, together for the first and last time, Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla. 

Paul sees Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse standing together. They wave him over. Edison tells Paul that he’s been visiting with Bell and that Tesla has been working alongside him in his lab. He’s working on creating motion pictures. Edison claims these years are the happiest of his life (Bell was right that this is what he needed).

Edison tells Paul that whatever part he’s played in Edison’s life, he didn’t do a bad job. Paul and Edison shake hands.

The group gazes at the power of the falls and then ponder the existence of wonder in a world becoming so dizzyingly technological. Edison speaks of Henry Ford, who early in his career worked for Westinghouse and Edison, and his approach to invention and business, “setting out to grow rich from [his] idle fiddling” (356).

This new marriage of business and science was ironically created by Edison, Paul muses, and now it would “leave its maker behind” (356). One by one the men leave the falls. Paul remains a moment alone, reflecting on the fact that all three of them invented the lightbulb, and he even had a part in it too.