Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/147

 most distinguished immunologist in the world, had joined their Staff.

In his Chicago clinic, one Dr. Rouncefield chuckled, "That's what becomes of these super-highbrows. Pardon me if I seem to grin."

In the laboratories of Ehrlich and Roux, Bordet and Sir David Bruce, sorrowing men wailed, "How could old Max have gone over to that damned pill-pedler? Why didn't he come to us? Oh, well, if he didn't want to—Voila! He is dead."

In the village of Wheatsylvania, in North Dakota, a young doctor protested to his wife, "Of all the people in the world! I wouldn't have believed it! Max Gottlieb falling for those crooks!"

"I don't care!" said his wife. "If he's gone into business, he had some good reason for it. I told you, I'd leave you for—"

"Oh, well," sighingly, "give and forgive. I learned a lot from Gottlieb and I'm grateful for— God, Leora, I wish he hadn't gone wrong!"

And Max Gottlieb, with his three young and a pale, slow-moving wife, was arriving at the station in Pittsburgh, tugging a shabby wicker bag, an immigrant bundle, and a Bond Street dressing-case. From the train he had stared up at the valiant cliffs, down to the smoke-tinged splendor of the river, and his heart was young. Here was fiery enterprise, not the flat land and flat minds of Winnemac. At the station-entrance every dingy taxicab seemed radiant to him, and he marched forth a conqueror.

In the Dawson Hunziker building, Gottlieb found such laboratories as he had never planned, and instead of student assistants he had an expert who himself had taught bacteriology, as well as three swift technicians, one of them German-trained. He was received with acclaim in the private office of Hunziker, which was remarkably like a minor cathedral. Hunziker was bald and business-like as to skull but tortoise-spectacled and sentimental of eye. He stood up at his Jacobean desk, gave Gottlieb a Havana cigar, and told him that they had awaited him pantingly.