It somehow slipped by me that a new version of The Early Ayn Rand was released several years ago. Included in the new version is a short story entitled “The Night King” which I found to be a fun plot-twisting story about a criminal “mastermind” and his scheme to steal a jewel from an aristocratic millionaire, who is much smarter and described by the criminal in a manner similar to many AR heroes:
“His smile? I hated it. I hated almost everything about him: his slow, soft movements that looked as though his bones were of velvet, and with it his tanned skin that looked as though his body were of bronze; and then, his grey eyes, the eyes of a tamed tiger, that you weren’t so sure whether it’s tamed or not. But his smile was the worst of all. He always had it when he looked at people—just two little wrinkles in the corners of his mouth, which seemed to say you were terribly funny, but that he was too polite to laugh.”
