Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/297

 for social climbing and catches him a rich wife, or one of the roughnecks like me and Gottlieb?"

Terry Wickett's croak was as irritating a sound as Martin had ever heard. He answered in a voice curiously like that of Rippleton Holabird:

"I don't think you need to worry. I happen to be married already!"

"Oh, don't let that fret you, Arrowsmith. Divorces are cheap, in this man's town. Well, did the Holy Wren show you Gladys the Tart?"

"Huh?"

"Gladys the Tart, or the Galloping Centrifuge."

"Oh. You mean the Berkeley-Saunders?"

"I do, soul of my soul. Whajuh think of it?"

"It's the finest centrifuge I've ever seen. Dr. Holabird said—"

"Hell, he ought to say something! He went and got old Tubbs to buy it. He just loves it, Holy Wren does."

"Why not? It's the fastest—"

"Sure. Speediest centrifuge in the whole Vereinigen, and made of the best toothpick steel. The only trouble is, it always blows out fuses, and it spatters the bugs so that you need a gas-mask if you're going to use it And did you love dear old Tubbsy and the peerless Pearl?"

"I did!"

"Fine. Of course Tubbs is an illiterate jackass but still, at that, he hasn't got persecution-mania, like Gottlieb."

"Look here, Wickett—is it Dr. Wickett?"

"Uh-huh M.D., Ph.D., but a first-rate chemist just the same."

"Well, Dr. Wickett, it seems to me a shame that a man of your talents should have to associate with idiots like Gottlieb and Tubbs and Holabird. I've just left a Chicago clinic where everybody is nice and sensible. I'd be glad to recommend you for a job there!"

"Wouldn't be so bad. At least I'd avoid all the gassing at lunch in Bonanza Hall. Well, sorry I got your goat, Arrowsmith, but you look all right to me."

"Thanks!"

Wickett grinned obscenely—red-headed, rough-faced, wiry—and snorted, "By the way, did Holabird tell you about being wounded in the first month of the war, when he was a field