I
No one in the medical world had ever damned more heartily than Gottlieb
the commercialism of certain large pharmaceutical firms, particularly
Dawson T. Hunziker & Co., Inc., of Pittsburgh. The Hunziker Company was
an old and ethical house which dealt only with reputable doctors--or
practically only with reputable doctors. It furnished excellent
antitoxins for diphtheria and tetanus, as well as the purest of official
preparations, with the plainest and most official-looking labels on the
swaggeringly modest brown bottles. Gottlieb had asserted that they
produced doubtful vaccines, yet he returned from Chicago to write to
Dawson Hunziker that he was no longer interested in teaching, and he
would be willing to work for them on half time if he might use their
laboratories, on possibly important research, for the rest of the day.
When the letter had gone he sat mumbling. He was certainly not
altogether sane. “Education! Biggest gymnasium in the world! Incapable
of responsibility. Teaching I can do no more. But Hunziker will laugh at
me. I haf told the truth about him and I shall haf to-- Dear Gott, what
shall I do?”
Into this still frenzy, while his frightened daughters peered at him
from doorways, hope glided.
The telephone rang. He did not answer it. On the third irascible burring
he took up the receiver and grumbled, “Yes, yes, vot iss it?”
A twanging nonchalant voice: “This M. C. Gottlieb?”
“This is Dr. Gottlieb!”
“Well, I guess you’re the party. Hola wire. Long distance wants yuh.”
Then, “Professor Gottlieb? This is Dawson Hunziker speaking. From
Pittsburgh. My dear fellow, we should be delighted to have you join our
staff.”
“I-- But--”
“I believe you have criticized the pharmaceutical houses--oh, we read
the newspaper clippings very efficiently!--but we feel that when you
come to us and understand the Spirit of the Old Firm better, you’ll be
enthusiastic. I hope, by the way, I’m not interrupting something.”
Thus, over certain hundreds of miles, from the gold and blue
drawing-room of his Sewickley home, Hunziker spoke to Max Gottlieb
sitting in his patched easy chair, and Gottlieb grated, with a forlorn
effort at dignity:
“No, it iss all right.”
“Well--we shall be glad to offer you five thousand dollars a year, for a
starter, and we shan’t worry about the half-time arrangement. We’ll give
you all the space and technicians and material you need, and you just go
ahead and ignore us, and work out whatever seems important to you. Our
only request is that if you do find any serums which are of real value
to the world, we shall have the privilege of manufacturing them, and if
we lose money on ’em, it doesn’t matter. We like to make money, if we
can do it honestly, but our chief purpose is to serve mankind. Of course
if the serums pay, we shall be only too delighted to give you a generous
commission. Now about practical details--”
II
Gottlieb, the placidly virulent hater of religious rites, had a
religious-seeming custom.
Often he knelt by his bed and let his mind run free. It was very much
like prayer, though certainly there was no formal invocation, no
consciousness of a Supreme Being--other than Max Gottlieb. This night,
as he knelt, with the wrinkles softening in his drawn face, he
meditated, “I was asinine that I should ever scold the commercialists!
This salesman fellow, he has his feet on the ground. How much more
aut’entic the worst counter-jumper than frightened professors! Fine
dieners! Freedom! No teaching of imbeciles! _Du Heiliger!_”
But he had no contract with Dawson Hunziker.
III
In the medical periodicals the Dawson Hunziker Company published
full-page advertisements, most starchy and refined in type, announcing
that Professor Max Gottlieb, perhaps the most distinguished
immunologist in the world, had joined their staff.
In his Chicago clinic, one Dr. Rouncefield chuckled, “That’s what
becomes of these super-highbrows. Pardon me if I seem to grin.”
In the laboratories of Ehrlich and Roux, Bordet and Sir David Bruce,
sorrowing men wailed, “How could old Max have gone over to that damned
pill-pedler? Why didn’t he come to us? Oh, well, if he didn’t want
to--_Voila!_ He is dead.”
In the village of Wheatsylvania, in North Dakota, a young doctor
protested to his wife, “Of all the people in the world! I wouldn’t have
believed it! Max Gottlieb falling for those crooks!”
“I don’t care!” said his wife. “If he’s gone into business, he had some
good reason for it. I told you, I’d leave you for--”
“Oh, well,” sighingly, “give and forgive. I learned a lot from Gottlieb
and I’m grateful for-- God, Leora, I wish _he_ hadn’t gone wrong!”
And Max Gottlieb, with his three young and a pale, slow-moving wife, was
arriving at the station in Pittsburgh, tugging a shabby wicker bag, an
immigrant bundle, and a Bond Street dressing-case. From the train he had
stared up at the valiant Clifs, down to the smoke-tinged splendor of
the river, and his heart was young. Here was fiery enterprise, not the
flat land and flat minds of Winnemac. At the station-entrance every
dingy taxicab seemed radiant to him, and he marched forth a conqueror.
IV
In the Dawson Hunziker building, Gottlieb found such laboratories as he
had never planned, and instead of student assistants he had an expert
who himself had taught bacteriology, as well as three swift technicians,
one of them German-trained. He was received with acclaim in the private
office of Hunziker, which was remarkably like a minor cathedral.
Hunziker was bald and business-like as to skull but tortoise-spectacled
and sentimental of eye. He stood up at his Jacobean desk, gave Gottlieb
a Havana cigar, and told him that they had awaited him pantingly.
In the enormous staff dining-room Gottlieb found scores of competent
young chemists and biologists who treated him with reverence. He liked
them. If they talked too much of money--of how much this new tincture of
cinchona ought to sell, and how soon their salaries would be
increased--yet they were free of the careful pomposities of college
instructors. As a youngster, the cap-tilted young Max had been a
laughing man, and now in gusty arguments his laughter came back.
His wife seemed better; his daughter Miriam found an excellent piano
teacher; the boy Robert entered college that autumn; they had a spacious
though decrepit house; the relief from the droning and the annually
repeated, inevitable routine of the classroom was exhilarating; and
Gottlieb had never in his life worked so well. He was unconscious of
everything outside of his laboratory and a few theaters and
concert-halls.
Six months passed before he realized that the young technical experts
resented what he considered his jolly thrusts at their commercialism.
They were tired of his mathematical enthusiasms and some of them viewed
him as an old bore, muttered of him as a Jew. He was hurt, for he liked
to be merry with fellow workers. He began to ask questions and to
explore the Hunziker building. He had seen nothing of it save his
laboratory, a corridor or two, the dining-room, and Hunziker’s office.
However abstracted and impractical, Gottlieb would have made an
excellent Sherlock Holmes--if anybody who would have made an excellent
Sherlock Holmes would have been willing to be a detective. His mind
burned through appearances to actuality. He discovered now that the
Dawson Hunziker Company was quite all he had asserted in earlier days.
They did make excellent antitoxins and ethical preparations, but they
were also producing a new “cancer remedy” manufactured from the orchid,
pontifically recommended and possessing all the value of mud. And to
various billboard-advertising beauty companies they sold millions of
bottles of a complexion-cream guaranteed to turn a Canadian Indian guide
as lily-fair as the angels. This treasure cost six cents a bottle to
make and a dollar over the counter, and the name of Dawson Hunziker was
never connected with it.
It was at this time that Gottlieb succeeded in his masterwork after
twenty years of seeking. He produced antitoxin in the test-tube, which
meant that it would be possible to immunize against certain diseases
without tediously making sera by the inoculation of animals. It was a
revolution, the revolution, in immunology ... if he was right.
He revealed it at a dinner for which Hunziker had captured a general, a
college president, and a pioneer aviator. It was an expansive dinner,
with admirable hock, the first decent German wine Gottlieb had drunk in
years. He twirled the slender green glass affectionately; he came out of
his dreams and became excited, gay, demanding. They applauded him and
for an hour he was a Great Scientist. Of them all, Hunziker was most
generous in his praise. Gottlieb wondered if some one had not tricked
this good bald man into intrigues with the beautifiers.
Hunziker summoned him to the office next day. Hunziker did his summoning
very well indeed (unless it happened to be merely a stenographer). He
sent a glossy morning-coated male secretary, who presented Mr.
Hunziker’s compliments to the much less glossy Dr. Gottlieb, and hinted
with the delicacy of a lilac bud that if it was quite altogether
convenient, if it would not in the least interfere with Dr. Gottlieb’s
experiments, Mr. Hunziker would be flattered to see him in the office at
a quarter after three.
When Gottlieb rambled in, Hunziker motioned the secretary out of
existence and drew up a tall Spanish chair.
“I lay awake half the night thinking about your discovery, Dr. Gottlieb.
I’ve been talking to the technical director and sales-manager and we
feel it’s the time to strike. We’ll patent your method of synthesizing
antibodies and immediately put them on the market in large quantities,
with a great big advertising campaign--you know--not circus it, of
course--strictly high-class ethical advertising. We’ll start with
anti-diphtheria serum. By the way, when you receive your next check
you’ll find we’ve raised your honorarium to seven thousand a year.”
Hunziker was a large purring pussy, now, and Gottlieb death-still. “Need
I say, my dear fellow, that if there’s the demand I anticipate, you will
have exceedingly large commissions coming!”
Hunziker leaned back with a manner of “How’s that for glory, my boy?”
Gottlieb spoke nervously: “I do not approve of patenting serological
processes. They should be open to all laboratories. And I am strongly
against premature production or even announcement. I think I am right,
but I must check my technique, perhaps improve it--be _sure_. Then, I
should think, there should be no objection to market production, but in
ve-ry small quantities and in fair competition with others, not under
patents, as if this was a dinglebat toy for the Christmas tradings!”
“My dear fellow, I quite sympathize. Personally I should like nothing so
much as to spend my whole life in just producing one priceless
scientific discovery, without consideration of mere profit. But we have
our duty toward the stockholders of the Dawson Hunziker Company to make
money for them. Do you realize that they have--and many of them are poor
widows and orphans--invested their Little All in our stock, and that we
must keep faith? I am helpless; I am but their Humble Servant. And on
the other side: I think we’ve treated you rather well, Dr. Gottlieb, and
we’ve given you complete freedom. And we intend to go on treating you
well! Why, man, you’ll be rich; you’ll be one of us! I don’t like to
make any demands, but on this point it’s my duty to insist, and I shall
expect you at the earliest possible moment to start manufacturing--”
Gottlieb was sixty-two. The defeat at Winnemac had done something to his
courage.... And he had no contract with Hunziker.
He protested shakily, but as he crawled back to his laboratory it seemed
impossible for him to leave this sanctuary and face the murderous
brawling world, and quite as impossible to tolerate a cheapened and
ineffective imitation of his antitoxin. He began, that hour, a sordid
strategy which his old proud self would have called inconceivable; he
began to equivocate, to put off announcement and production till he
should have “cleared up a few points,” while week on week Hunziker
became more threatening. Meantime he prepared for disaster. He moved his
family to a smaller house, and gave up every luxury, even smoking.
Among his economies was the reduction of his son’s allowance.
Robert was a square-rigged, swart, tempestuous boy, arrogant where there
seemed to be no reason for arrogance, longed for by the anemic, milky
sort of girls, yet ever supercilious to them. While his father was
alternately proud and amiably sardonic about his own Jewish blood, the
boy conveyed to his classmates in college that he was from pure and
probably noble German stock. He was welcomed, or half welcomed, in a
motoring, poker-playing, country-club set, and he had to have more
money. Gottlieb missed twenty dollars from his desk. He who ridiculed
conventional honor had the honor, as he had the pride, of a savage old
squire. A new misery stained his incessant bitterness at having to
deceive Hunziker. He faced Robert with, “My boy, did you take the money
from my desk?”
Few youngsters could have faced that jut of his hawk nose, the
red-veined rage of his sunken eyes. Robert spluttered, then shouted:
“Yes, I did! And I’ve got to have some more! I’ve got to get some
clothes and stuff. It’s your fault. You bring me up to train with a lot
of fellows that have all the cash in the world, and then you expect me
to dress like a hobo!”
“Stealing--”
“Rats! What’s stealing! You’re always making fun of these preachers that
talk about Sin and Truth and Honesty and all those words that’ve been
used so much they don’t mean a darn’ thing and-- I don’t care! Daws
Hunziker, the old man’s son, he told me his dad said you could be a
millionaire, and then you keep us strapped like this, and Mom sick-- Let
me tell you, back in Mohalis Mom used to slip me a couple of dollars
almost every week and-- I’m tired of it! If you’re going to keep me in
rags, I’m going to cut out college!”
Gottlieb stormed, but there was no force in it. He did not know, all the
next fortnight, what his son was going to do, what himself was going to
do.
Then, so quietly that not till they had returned from the cemetery did
they realize her passing, his wife died, and the next week his oldest
daughter ran off with a worthless laughing fellow who lived by gambling.
Gottlieb sat alone. Over and over he read the Book of Job. “Truly the
Lord hath smitten me and my house,” he whispered. When Robert came in,
mumbling that he would be good, the old man lifted to him a blind face,
unhearing. But as he repeated the fables of his fathers it did not occur
to him to believe them, or to stoop in fear before their God of
Wrath--or to gain ease by permitting Hunziker to defile his discovery.
He arose, in time, and went silently to his laboratory. His experiments
were as careful as ever, and his assistants saw no change save that he
did not lunch in hall. He walked blocks away, to a vile restaurant at
which he could save thirty cents a day.
V
Out of the dimness which obscured the people about him, Miriam emerged.
She was eighteen, the youngest of his brood, squat, and in no way comely
save for her tender mouth. She had always been proud of her father,
understanding the mysterious and unreasoning compulsions of his science,
but she had been in awe till now, when he walked heavily and spoke
rarely. She dropped her piano lessons, discharged the maid, studied the
cook-book, and prepared for him the fat crisp dishes that he loved. Her
regret was that she had never learned German, for he dropped now and
then into the speech of his boyhood.
He eyed her, and at length: “So! One is with me. Could you endure the
poverty if I went away--to teach chemistry in a high school?”
“Yes. Of course. Maybe I could play the piano in a movie theater.”
He might not have done it without her loyalty, but when Dawson Hunziker
next paraded into the laboratory, demanding, “Now look here. We’ve
fussed long enough. We got to put your stuff on the market,” then
Gottlieb answered, “No. If you wait till I have done all I can--maybe
one year, probably three--you shall have it. But not till I am sure.
No.”
Hunziker went off huffily, and Gottlieb prepared for sentence.
Then the card of Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs, Director of the McGurk Institute
of Biology, of New York, was brought to him.
Gottlieb knew of Tubbs. He had never visited McGurk but he considered
it, next to Rockefeller and McCormick, the soundest and freest
organization for pure scientific research in the country, and if he had
pictured a Heavenly laboratory in which good scientists might spend
eternity in happy and thoroughly impractical research, he would have
devised it in the likeness of McGurk. He was mildly pleased that its
director should have called on him.
Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs was tremendously whiskered on all visible spots save
his nose and temples and the palms of his hands, short but passionately
whiskered, like a Scotch terrier. Yet they were not comic whiskers; they
were the whiskers of dignity; and his eyes were serious, his step an
earnest trot, his voice a piping solemnity.
“Dr. Gottlieb, this is a great pleasure. I have heard your papers at the
Academy of Sciences but, to my own loss, I have hitherto failed to have
an introduction to you.”
Gottlieb tried not to sound embarrassed.
Tubbs looked at the assistants, like a plotter in a political play, and
hinted, “May we have a talk--”
Gottlieb led him to his office, overlooking a vast bustle of sidetracks,
of curving rails and brown freight-cars, and Tubbs urged:
“It has come to our attention, by a curious chance, that you are on the
eve of your most significant discovery. We all wondered, when you left
academic work, at your decision to enter the commercial field. We wished
that you had cared to come to us.”
“You would have taken me in? I needn’t at all have come here?”
“Naturally! Now from what we hear, you are not giving your attention to
the commercial side of things, and that tempts us to wonder whether you
could be persuaded to join us at McGurk. So I just sprang on a train and
ran down here. We should be delighted to have you become a member of the
institute, and chief of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology.
Mr. McGurk and I desire nothing but the advancement of science. You
would, of course, have absolute freedom as to what researches you
thought it best to pursue, and I think we could provide as good
assistance and material as would be obtainable anywhere in the world. In
regard to salary--permit me to be business-like and perhaps blunt, as my
train leaves in one hour-- I don’t suppose we could equal the doubtless
large emolument which the Hunziker people are able to pay you, but we
can go to ten thousand dollars a year--”
“Oh, my God, do not talk of the money! I shall be wit’ you in New York
one week from to-day. You see,” said Gottlieb, “I haf no contract
here!”