CHAPTER XXVIII
I
Captain Martin Arrowsmith, M.R.C., came home to his good wife Leora, wailing, “I’m so rotten tired, and I feel kind of discouraged. I haven’t accomplished a darn’ thing in this whole year at McGurk. Sterile. No good. And I’m hanged if I’ll study calculus this evening. Let’s go to the movies. Won’t even change to regular human clothes. Too tired.”
“All right, honey,” said Leora. “But let’s have dinner here. I bought a wonderful ole fish this afternoon.”
Through the film Martin gave his opinion, as a captain and as a doctor, that it seemed improbable a mother should not know her daughter after an absence of ten years. He was restless and rational, which is not a mood in which to view the cinema. When they came blinking out of that darkness lit only from the shadowy screen, he snorted, “I’m going back to the lab. I’ll put you in a taxi.”
“Oh, let the beastly thing go for one night.”
“Now that’s unfair! I haven’t worked late for three or four nights now!”
“Then take me along.”
“Nope. I have a hunch I may be working all night.”
Liberty Street, as he raced along it, was sleeping below its towers. It was McGurk’s order that the elevator to the Institute should run all night, and indeed three or four of the twenty staff-members did sometimes use it after respectable hours.