“Oh, you want to get a policy on your wife’s life,” said Murray thoughtfully, not favorably impressed with the other’s commercial tone. “How much?”
“Zwei t’ousand dollars.”
“Not very much,” commented Murray. “A man of sense would prefer a good wife to two thousand dollars any day. Is she a worker?”
“You bet you, yes,” replied Adolph earnestly. “If she die, I looss money on her at that price. I figger it all out. She safe me the wages uf a clerk and a cook and some other things. I count up what she safe me and what she cost me and she’s vorth fifteen dollars a week easy in work and ten dollars a week in saving. I can’t afford to looss that. I insure the store and the stock, and now I insure this. I watch out for myself pretty close.”
Murray was both disgusted and amused. Such a character as this was new to his experience, but the risk might be, and probably was, a perfectly good and legitimate one.
“Well, you bring your wife in,” he said after a moment of thought, “and I’ll talk to her.”
“Sure,” said Adolph. Then he winked in his wise way. “I safe you the commission. What iss there in it for me?”
“What?” exclaimed Murray.
“I haf a talk with Brown,” explained Adolph. “It’s vorth something to him to get the business, but he don’t make it vorth nothing to me to give it.”
“If he did we’d discharge him.”