“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.