Harkness looked frightened, but he answered promptly in the negative.
“Where have you been since you left Madison?”
Harkness told briefly of his movements.
“Did you ever live at 1176 Wabash Avenue?”
“No.”
The case became even more mystifying. There was a record of only one Elmer Harkness at Madison, but it was evident that two had applied for insurance, for the Harkness who had been refused had given his address as 1176 Wabash Avenue.
“I am tempted,” said Murray later, “to make a strong adverse report. At the same time I don’t want to do an injustice and refuse a man who is rightfully entitled to insurance. My refusal, coupled with the mystifying record, would make it practically impossible to get insurance anywhere at any time, and he may be all right.”
“If there’s a fraud in it anywhere,” remarked the doctor, “there are some clever and experienced people behind it.”
“Quite the contrary,” returned Murray. “The experienced people are the people we catch, because they do things the way one naturally expects. As a general thing, you will find that the police are fooled, not by the professional criminal, but by the novice who is ignorant of the ways of the crook, and the same rule applies to insurance swindles. If there is anything wrong here our difficulty lies in the fact that this fellow and those behind him are not experienced and are not going at the thing the way an experienced swindler would.”
An attempt to identify the Harkness who had applied for insurance as the Harkness who had lived at 1176 Wabash Avenue failed utterly, owing to the fact that the woman who had formerly conducted a boarding-house at that number had moved and it was impossible to find her. It was a simple matter, however, to verify other statements made by Harkness. He was now living at 2313 Wesson Street, and was employed by a large wholesale grocery firm. His employer spoke highly of him, but knew nothing of his personal affairs. He might or might not be married. The employer had been under the impression that he was a bachelor, but could not recall that Harkness ever had said so. This confusion was partly explained at the Wesson Street boarding-house, for Harkness had recently told the landlady that he expected his wife to join him soon. He explained that she had been visiting relatives during the six months he had been at this house, but that they were planning to take a small flat. They had previously had a flat, the address of which he gave, and the agent for the building remembered that Elmer Harkness had been among his tenants for two years. He knew very little about them, except that Harkness had paid his rent promptly and had been a model tenant.