"Help! Great Heavens! I could swing this deal; it would put me on my feet."
"I'm ready to pay you that amount for a few weeks of your time."
"Take a year of it, two years. Take my life's blood. Twenty-five thousand! You needn't tell me any more; just name the job and I'll take my chances of being caught. But—I say, you just told me you were broke."
"I received about fifty thousand dollars from the sale of the yacht, and I invested the money. I want you to help me realize on that investment." Murray tossed the packet of papers he had been examining into DeVoe's lap.
After scrutinizing them an instant, the latter looked up with a crooked, startled stare.
"Are you joking? Why, these are your insurance policies!"
"Exactly! There are seventeen of them, and they foot up one million dollars—the limit in every company. They begin to expire in March, and I don't intend to renew them. In fact, I couldn't if I wanted to."
The two men regarded each other silently for a moment, then the younger paled.
"Are you—crazy?" he gasped.
"The doctors didn't think so, and that is the heaviest life insurance carried by any man in America, with a few exceptions. Do you think they would have passed me if I'd been wrong up here?" He tapped his forehead. "I intend that you shall receive twenty-five thousand dollars of that money; the rest will go to Muriel."