The young man had just been looking up Mr. Mottram’s docket and knew all about him well enough. But the Indescribable cultivates the family touch; it likes to treat its clients as man to man, not as so many lives. “Let’s see”—the young man appeared to be dragging the depths of memory—“you should be sixty-three now, eh? And in two years’ time—why, it looks as if it were just touch and go whether your policy covered a case of—h’m!—premature decease or not, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right. My birthday’s in a fortnight’s time, more or less. If that doctor was dead accurate, it’ll stand you in five hundred thousand; if he put the date a bit too soon, then I get nothing, and you pay nothing; that’s how it is, isn’t it?”
“Looks like it, I’m afraid. Of course, you’ll understand, Mr. Mottram, the company has to work by rule of thumb in these cases.”
“I see that. But look at it this way. When I took out that policy I wasn’t thinking much of the insurance part; I’ve no kith nor kin except one nephew, and he’s seen fit to quarrel with me, so nothing goes to him, anyhow. If that half-million falls in, it will just go to charity. But what I’d set my heart on was the annuity; we’re a long-lived family, mostly, and I’d looked forward to spending my last days in comfort, d’you see? Well, there’s no chance of that after what the doctor’s been telling me. So I don’t value that Youth-in-Asia policy as much as I did, see? And I’ve come here to make you a fair offer.”
“The company”—— began the young man.
“Let me have my say, and you shall have yours afterward. They call me rich, and I suppose I am rich; but my stuff is tied up more than you’d think; with money as tight as it is, you can’t just sell out of a thing when you feel inclined. What I want is ready money—doctors’ bills, you know, and foreign travel, and treatment, and that. So this is my offer: you pay back half the premiums from the time I started insuring with you, half the premiums, mind you; and if I die before I reach sixty-five, then we call it off; you pay no insurance: if I live beyond sixty-five we call it off, and you pay no annuity. Come now, there’s a business offer. What do you people say to it?”
“I’m sorry; I’m frightfully sorry. But, you know, we’ve had this kind of offer before, and the company has always taken the line that it can’t go back on the original contract. If we lose, we lose; if the client loses, he must shoulder the responsibility. If we once went in for cancelling our insurances like that, our whole credit would suffer. I know you mean well by us, Mr. Mottram, and we’re grateful to you for the generosity of the offer; but it can’t be done; really it can’t.”
There was a heavy silence for nearly a minute. Then Mr. Mottram, pathetic in his disappointment, tried his last card.
“You could put it to the directors, couldn’t you? Stands to reason you couldn’t accept an offer of that kind without referring it to them. But you could put it to them at their next meeting, eh?”
“I could put it to the directors; indeed, I will. But I’m sorry to say I can’t hold out any hopes. The premium of the Euthanasia policy is so stiff that we’re always having people wanting to back out of it half-way, but the directors have never consented. If you take my advice, Mr. Mottram, you’ll take a second opinion about your health, go carefully this next year or two, and live to enjoy that annuity—for many years, I hope.” The young man, after all, was a paid official; he did not stand to lose.