"What is the Eastern Conference?"
"It's a sort of association of insurance companies doing business in New England, New York, and other Atlantic states. Most of the best companies belong to it. It's a sort of offensive and defensive alliance. It keeps down the general expense of conducting business by limiting the rate of commission its members can pay to any agent, and it supplies inspections to its members and does a lot of other things. But it really isn't a question of what the Conference does for its members so much as a question of what it may do to the Guardian, if the Guardian gets out. There's considerable quiet coercion about such a union, you see—the Conference companies can make it very interesting for an outsider, if they choose to do so. And after a company has been operating on the inside for a good many years, it's hard to jump the fence and make so radical a change. It upsets your organization."
"But why should the Conference try to make you belong? And will they attempt to hurt you if you resign?"
"I don't know. Possibly not. That will soon be seen. But what I can't fathom is why O'Connor, after all these years, should now lay his wires to get the Guardian out. He never does an important thing like that for nothing; he's got some idea in the back of his head. I feel certain of that from the elaborate pains he took to make me think it was not at his instigation that the thing was done. But I know better, for I know O'Connor."
"Haven't you any clew at all?"
"Not really. They're all too vague. I can't for the life of me see what O'Connor has to gain by getting the Guardian out of the Conference. What good can it possibly do him personally?"
"I feel sure you'll hit on the correct solution at last," Helen said thoughtfully, "because I have a distinct remembrance that one of your chance shots went right to the mark when Charlie Wilkinson was trying to get Mr. Hurd to insure his street car company. Charlie thought it was tremendously clever of you. It was the first time I had ever heard of you."
Smith looked at her quickly. Feeling rather than seeing the glance, the girl hastily continued:—
"I wonder whether Mr. Hurd ever decided to carry insurance."
"I wonder, too," the underwriter agreed, with amusement. "If cool nerve counts for anything, your friend Wilkinson ought to have come out all right. I must ask Mr. Osgood about it the next time I go to Boston."