“No. I searched for it before coming here, but could find no trace of it.”
Murray was as considerate as the circumstances would permit, but he had become suddenly business-like. Aside from the question of sympathy, the matter was now one to interest him deeply. He had been groping blindly before, but with light came the possibility of action.
“You are alone?” he asked.
“Entirely so.”
“If you will go back,” said Murray, reaching for his desk telephone, “Mrs. Murray will be there as soon as a cab can carry her. I would go myself, but I think I can be of better service to you for the moment by remaining here.”
As soon as she had gone and he had telephoned to his wife, Murray made some inquiries of the clerks in the outer office and learned of a sick man who had asked about the possibility of changing the beneficiary of a policy. The visit had been made some time before, but the man was so evidently ill and in such deep distress that the circumstances had been impressed on the mind of the clerk who had answered his questions.
“That accounts for one trip,” mused Murray. “Now for the loan-shark that he saw on the other. We’ll hear from him pretty soon, and then there will be some lively times.”
Murray had had experience with the ways of loan-sharks before, and he was confident that he now had the whole story. Vincent was out of money and desperate; he knew that Miss Bronson had been using her own money, and that not one cent of it would his wife pay back; he had tried to have the beneficiary of the policy changed, and had failed. Then, determined to get something out of the policy, he had gone to a loan-shark. The unscrupulous money-lender, getting an exorbitant rate of interest, could afford to be less particular about the wife’s signature. He would run the risk of forgery, confident that the policy would be redeemed to prevent a scandal, no matter what happened. Indeed, in some cases a loan-shark would a little rather have a forgery than the genuine signature, for it gives him an additional hold on the interested parties and lessens the likelihood of a resort to law over the question of usurious interest.
“The scoundrel will come,” said Murray, and the scoundrel came by invitation. A formal notification that he held an assignment of the policy arrived first, and that gave his name and address and enabled Murray to telephone him. A loan-shark does not lose much time in matters of this sort. Neither did Murray in this case, for his invitation to call was prompt and imperative, even to setting the exact time for the call. And a message was sent to Mrs. Albert Vincent, also.
“What’s your interest in that policy?” asked Murray.