"Why?"
"You heard Barchet. Mitchison's Barchet's man. We'll have to go through shareholder channels to get rid of Mitchison."
"How long will that take?"
"Two weeks, maybe three," Raymond said. "Will that hold things up too badly?"
"We'll manage," Harker said tiredly.
Harker spent the next morning, Wednesday, at his office, tidying up unfinished business. The delayer on the Bryant hearing had come through, and he read the document carefully, scowled, and jammed it into his desk drawer. He phoned the Bryant home and learned that the old man was very low; the penguinoid doctor refused to let Harker speak with him. Harker suspected the fine hand of Jonathan Bryant lurking behind that ukase, but there wasn't much he could do about it. The old man wasn't going to last forever, anyway—but Harker genuinely wanted him to hold out until after the hearing, at least.
Nasty business. Jonathan had deliberately obtained the stay of hearing in hopes that his father would die before the case came up.
He left the office at noon, spent some time downtown in the public library trying to find some books that would give him a little scientific background, and headed for home about four that afternoon. His home life had been suffering, a bit, in the week since he had plunged himself fully into the Beller Labs project. He had been coming home at odd hours, which upset Lois' routine, and his attitude was one of withdrawn introversion, which made things tough on the children. Still, they all were very cooperative about it, Harker thought. He hoped he could make it up to them when the pressure let up.
If the pressure ever let up.