Arrowsmith as though Martin were a visiting senator. He shook his hand warmly; he unbent in a smile; his baritone was mellow.
"Dr. Arrowsmith, I trust we shall do more than merely say you are welcome here; I trust we shall show you how welcome you are! Dr. Gottlieb tells me that you have a natural aptitude for cloistered investigation but that you have been looking over the fields of medical practise and public health before you settled down to the laboratory. I can't tell you how wise I consider you to have made that broad preliminary survey. Too many would-be scientists lack the tutored vision which comes from coördinating all mental domains."
Martin was dazed to discover that he had been making a broad survey.
"Now you'll doubtless wish to take some time, perhaps a year or more, in getting into your stride, Dr. Arrowsmith. I shan't ask you for any reports. So long as Dr. Gottlieb feels that you yourself are satisfied with your progress, I shall be content. Only if there is anything in which I can advise you, from a perhaps somewhat longer career in science, please believe that I shall be delighted to be of aid, and I am quite sure the same obtains with Dr. Holabird here, though he really ought to be jealous, because he is one of our youngest workers—in fact I call him my enfant terrible—but you, I believe, are only thirty-three, and you quite put the poor fellow's nose out!"
Holabird merrily suggested, "Oh, no, Doctor, it's been put out long ago. You forget Terry Wickett. He's under forty."
"Oh. Him!" murmured Dr. Tubbs.
Martin had never heard a man disposed of so poisonously with such politeness. He saw that in Terry Wickett there might be a serpent even in this paradise.
"Now," said Dr. Tubbs, "perhaps you might like to glance around my place here. I pride myself on keeping our card-indices and letter-files as unimaginatively as though I were an insurance agent. But there is a certain exotic touch in these charts." He trotted across the room to show a nest of narrow drawers filled with scientific blue-prints.
Just what they were charts of, he did not say, nor did Martin ever learn.
He pointed to the bench at the end of the room, and laughingly admitted:
