The lawyers folded up their papers preparatory to leaving the court room, while the large crowd which had gathered out of curiosity to hear how one of the wealthiest bankers of the city had met his destiny, slowly filed out. Dr. Jarvis, seeing the physician of the insurance company, whom he knew well, at the table, joined him as he packed a sheaf of papers into a wallet.
“What do you make of it, Fulton?” he questioned the doctor.
“So far, we have learned nothing, Jarvis,” said Dr. Fulton, slowly. “I know how close you and Craighead were. You must feel terribly shocked. It seems clear that the operation killed him. There is no ground for suspicion, but we must make some kind of fight, before we pay a $300,000 policy which has been in force only six months. He left a large estate too, as you probably know.”
Dr. Jarvis went home in a deep, brown study. He was shocked and horrified by the loss of his dearest friend. He could not reconcile the thought that this big, hearty person was the victim of blood poison or shock. Why, the man had always been immune. He had been proverbially tough, bubbling over with vitality. “How had he lost that immunity?” he asked himself. He recalled their last day together—the day before he had sailed for Europe. They were playing tennis at the country club.
Dr. Jarvis, trying desperately to prevent his rival from scoring the last point in a hard-fought game, swung down viciously on a high bounding ball, sending it back low over the net in what looked like a volley, impossible to handle. But Jim Craighead whipped his racquet up in a swift lawford and the ball, like a shot from a gun, sped down the side line far from the doctor’s reach.
“Damn,” he cried, “trimmed 8 to 6 by a man of fifty and I’m your junior by ten years. But you sure do keep in condition.”
“Doc,” answered Craighead, “just three months ago, when I took out life insurance policies for $300,000, the examiner said he would like to have a dozen risks in my condition. I can run a mile at a good pace and do any stunts in the gym that a kid can do.”
“That’s right, Doctor Jarvis,” chimed in a young man of twenty-two, who, with a beautiful girl about the same age, had just run up to the clubhouse in Craighead’s sedan, “he made me go some to keep ahead of him in a long swim, though he didn’t even know the crawl.”
Doctor Jarvis recalled that picture now—the great, tawny-haired Craighead towering above his adopted son’s head, his arm fondly on his shoulder and the youth’s arm about the girl’s waist. The girl, the jewel in the setting, had light hair, neither golden nor yellow, although with a touch of autumn wheat; she was delicately featured, with an expressive mouth, inclined to be serious. Now, with these two men, apparently happy and smiling, she revealed very regular, white teeth. Ross Craighead was almost as tall as his adopted father but slender; Jim was wide shouldered and robust. The girl, although tall, seemed diminutive beside these two.