CHAPTER X
Harker looked up the phone number of Gerhardt's New York office, called, and spoke briefly with the lawyer. It was not a very pleasant conversation. Gerhardt seemed almost offensively bubbling with confidence, gloating as he informed Harker that it was only a matter of days before the court tossed Raymond and Harker out of control of Beller Labs and reinstated Klaus and Mitchison. No, Harker was told, he would not be given the present whereabouts of the two dismissed employees. And yes, the suit had already been filed—control of the labs and $1,000,000 in punitive damages.
"Okay," Harker said. "I'll prepare a countersuit against your clients on grounds of malfeasance, insubordination, and half a dozen other things. I don't mind fighting, Gerhardt."
He hung up. After a moment's thought he pulled a sheet of note-paper from a desk drawer and started to jot down notes for the counter-offensive. This was an additional nuisance; things grew more complicated by the moment.
And Gerhardt was a prominent member of the American-Conservative Party's national committee. Harker could see the battle-lines beginning to form—with Klaus and Mitchison, Gerhardt, the American-Conservatives, the organized churches, Jonathan Bryant, and Senator Thurman on one side, and, at the moment, nobody but Harker, Raymond, and the staff of Beller Labs on the other.
During the day, tension rose at the Litchfield headquarters. The phone rang constantly; from time to time the mail-truck arrived with more letters, and Harker found it necessary to clear out one of the less important lab rooms to store them.
"Have a couple of men start going through them," he told Lurie. The gangling biologist had slipped easily into the role of messenger-boy and general go-between. "Have all the letters pleading for revivification of long-dead relatives burned immediately. Likewise the ones asking for miracles we can't perform, like that cancer business."
"How about the abusive ones?"
"Save those," Harker said. "It helps to know who our enemies are."