“I hoped you would come to your senses, Mr. Bateman, before a declination was necessary,” I observed, keeping my eyes steadily upon the twitching face of my client.
He stared at me for a moment in silence, and then burst out,
“Nonsense, Wainwright, nonsense! You don’t understand! What’s the matter with you, anyway? I have desperate need of money and cannot get it from any ordinary channel without ruin. I so arrange that I shall be thought dead. I have absolutely no relations. You collect my life insurance and pay the money where I direct, and I am saved financially. I can then return and the amount paid by the life Insurance Companies will be refunded, and who, in God’s name, is hurt?”
“I have heard,” I began, smiling, “that emergency evolves ethics, but——”
“O don’t go sermonizing about ethics, and stop that silly smiling! Either I’m crazy, in which case you ought to humour me, or sane, and entitled to an intelligent hearing. I understand the proposition is a new one. It is made for new facts. But that does not argue it a crime. The only possible wrong in it is involved in the probate affidavits, but you know in nine out of ten cases you don’t comply with the statutes in making affidavits, so there’s no perjury. I only ask you to tell a lie—a lie which cannot possibly hurt anybody, but which will save me.”
“And incidentally help to perpetrate a fraud on the Insurance Companies.”
“An innocent fraud!—We will return the money with interest the moment it goes through.”
“And if it does not go through?”
“It will.—It cannot fail, I tell you! But if it does,” Mr. Bateman looked me steadily in the eyes, “if it does fail, no harm will be done. I shall be dead. Before God, I swear it.”