He had attempted to reply to the previous newspaper attack, but now he
remained silent. Bitterness had already corroded his soul. The
University faculty appealed to him to defend himself, but he sullenly
declined, even refusing to enter in defence a copy of his paper to save
himself from expulsion. He refused to resign, and was discharged from
the University faculty. It must be added that political pressure had
been put upon the University Regents and the President.
Persecuted, maligned, and misunderstood, the forlorn and lonely man made
no attempt at retaliation. All his life he had been sinned against, and
all his life he had sinned against no one. But his cup of bitterness was
not yet full to overflowing. Having lost his position, and being without
any income, he had to find work. His first place was at the Union Iron
Works, in San Francisco, where he proved a most able draughtsman. It was
here that he obtained his firsthand knowledge of battleships and their
construction. But the reporters discovered him and featured him in his
new vocation. He immediately resigned and found another place; but after
the reporters had driven him away from half-a-dozen positions, he steeled
himself to brazen out the newspaper persecution. This occurred when he
started his electroplating establishment—in Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue.
It was a small shop, employing three men and two boys. Gluck himself
worked long hours. Night after night, as Policeman Carew testified on
the stand, he did not leave the shop till one and two in the morning. It
was during this period that he perfected the improved ignition device for
gas-engines, the royalties from which ultimately made him wealthy.
He started his electroplating establishment early in the spring of 1928,
and it was in the same year that he formed the disastrous love attachment
for Irene Tackley. Now it is not to be imagined that an extraordinary
creature such as Emil Gluck could be any other than an extraordinary
lover. In addition to his genius, his loneliness, and his morbidness, it
must be taken into consideration that he knew nothing about women.
Whatever tides of desire flooded his being, he was unschooled in the
conventional expression of them; while his excessive timidity was bound
to make his love-making unusual. Irene Tackley was a rather pretty young
woman, but shallow and light-headed. At the time she worked in a small
candy store across the street from Gluck’s shop. He used to come in and
drink ice-cream sodas and lemon-squashes, and stare at her. It seems the
girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was “queer,”
she said; and at another time she called him a crank when describing how
he sat at the counter and peered at her through his spectacles, blushing
and stammering when she took notice of him, and often leaving the shop in
precipitate confusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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