Thus was Terry Wickett discharged from McGurk. He patented the process of synthesizing his quinine derivative and retired to Birdies’ Rest, to build a laboratory out of his small savings and spend a life of independent research supported by a restricted sale of sera and of his drug.
For Terry, wifeless and valetless, this was easy enough, but for Martin it was not simple.
III
Martin assumed that he would resign. He explained it to Joyce. How he was to combine a town house and a Greenwich castle with flannel-shirt collaboration at Birdies’ Rest he had not quite planned, but he was not going to be disloyal.
“Can you beat it! The Holy Wren fires Terry but doesn’t dare touch me! I waited simply because I wanted to watch Holabird figure out what I’d do. And now—”
He was elucidating it to her in their—in her—car, on the way home from a dinner at which he had been so gaily charming to an important dowager that Joyce had crooned, “What a fool Latham Ireland was to say he couldn’t be polite!”
“I’m free, by thunder at last I’m free, because I’ve worked up to something that’s worth being free for!” he exulted.
She laid her fine hand on his, and begged, “Wait! I want to think. Please! Do be quiet a moment.”
Then: “Mart, if you went on working with Mr. Wickett, you’d have to be leaving me constantly.”
“Well—”