“Mrs. Vincent, I have found the insurance
policy” Page 114

The Best Policy

By ELLIOTT FLOWER

Author of

“The Spoilsman,” “Policeman Flynn,” etc.

Illustrated By

GEORGE BREHM

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Copyright 1905

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

October

TO THOSE

FOR WHOSE BENEFIT I HAVE

INSURED MY OWN

LIFE

THE BEST POLICY
INCLUDING

THE BEST POLICY

AN INCIDENTAL COMEDY

Naturally, when Harry Beckford married he began to take a more serious view of life. If there is anything at all of thoughtfulness and consideration in a man, marriage brings it out: he begins to plan. He has some one dependent upon him, some one for whom he must provide. That he should trust to luck before was solely his affair; that he should trust to luck now is quite another matter.

In the case of Beckford, as in the cases of most other young men, this feeling was of gradual growth. He was optimistic and happy; his future looked long and bright; he had ample time in which to accumulate a comfortable fortune; but—he wasn’t even beginning. He and his wife so enjoyed life that they were spending all he made. It wasn’t a large sum, but it was enough to make them comfortable and contented, enough to give them all reasonable pleasures. Later—he thought of this only in a hazy, general sort of way—they would begin to save. There was plenty of time for this, for they were both young, and he had proved himself of sufficient value to his employer to make his rapid advancement practically certain. The employer was a big corporation, the general manager of which had taken a deep personal interest in him, and the opportunities were limitless.

But the feeling of responsibility that came to him with marriage gradually took practical form, perhaps because the girl who sat opposite him at the breakfast-table was so very impractical. She was loving, lovable, delightfully whimsical, but also unreasoningly impractical in many ways. Before marriage she never had known a care; after marriage her cares were much like those of a child with a doll-house—they gave zest to life but could be easily put aside. If the maid proved recalcitrant, it was annoying, but they could dine at a restaurant and go to the theater afterward, and Harry would help her with breakfast the next morning. Harry was so awkward, but so willing, that it all became a huge joke. Harry had not passed the stage where he would “kiss the cook” in these circumstances, and an occasional hour in the kitchen is not so bad when there is a fine handsome young man there, to be ordered about and told to “behave himself.” So even marriage had not yet awakened Isabel Beckford to the stern realities of life.

It was her impracticalness, her delightful dependence, that finally brought Harry to the point of serious thought. What would she do, if anything happened to him? Her father had been successful but improvident: he would leave hardly enough for her mother alone to live in modest comfort; and, besides, Harry was not the kind of youth to put his responsibilities on another. He began to think seriously about cutting expenses and putting something aside, even at this early day. The really successful men had begun at the beginning to do this. Then there came to his notice the sad case of Mrs. Baird, who was left with nothing but a baby. Baird had been a young man of excellent promise and a good income, but he had left his widow destitute. He had put nothing aside, intending, doubtless, to begin that later.

“Just like me,” thought Harry, as he looked at his girl-wife across the table.

“Isn’t it frightful?” she asked, referring to the little tragedy contained in the item he had just read to her from the morning paper. “Every one thought the Bairds were so prosperous, too.”

“Every one thinks we are prosperous,” he commented thoughtfully.

“Oh, that’s different!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t talk like that or you’ll make me gloomy for the whole day! Why, it sounds as if you were expecting to die!”

“Not at all,” he replied, “but neither was Baird.”

“Please don’t!” she pleaded. “I shan’t have another happy minute—until I’ve forgotten what you said.”

He laughed at the ingenuousness of this and blew her a kiss across the table; but he did not abandon the subject.

“Baird was a young man,” he persisted, “but, with a little care and forethought, he could have left things in fair shape.”

“Perhaps we ought to be saving a little,” she admitted in a tone of whimsical protest. “I’ll help you do it, if you just won’t make me blue.”

“He hadn’t even life insurance,” he remarked, “and neither have I.”

“Oh, not insurance!” she cried. “I wouldn’t like that at all.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why—why, think how much you could do with the money you’d be paying to the old life insurance company!”

“Wouldn’t it be just the same if you were saving it?” he argued.

“Oh, no; not at all,” she asserted. “Why, you can get money that you’re saving whenever you want it, but life insurance money is clear out of your reach.”

“A policy has a cash surrender value,” he explained. “Every cent paid in premiums adds to its value, if you want to give it up.”

“But then you lose the insurance,” she argued with feminine inconsistency.

“Of course,” he admitted, “just as you lose your savings when you spend them.”

“Oh, but you can get at your savings easier, and it’s easier to start again, if you happen to use them,” she insisted.

“The very reason why life insurance is better for us,” he said. “I want to make sure of something for you that we’re certain not to touch while I live.”

But she took the unreasonable view of insurance that some young women do take, and refused to be convinced.

“If I should die first,” she said, with a little shudder at the very thought of death for either of them, “all the money you’d paid the company would be wasted.”

“Not necessarily,” he returned. “There might be—”

“Hush!” she interrupted, blushing so prettily that he went over and kissed her. Then he dropped the subject temporarily, which was the wisest thing he could have done. She had the feminine objection to paying out money for which she got no immediate return, but she wanted to please her husband. She was capricious, imperious at times and then meekly submissive—a spoiled child who surrendered to the emotion of the moment, but whose very inconsistencies were captivating. So when she decided that victory was hers, she also decided to be generous: to please him she would make a concession.

“I’ve changed my mind about insurance,” she told him a few days later. As a matter of fact, she had changed her mind, but not her opinions: she was not convinced, but she would please him by accepting his plan—with a slight modification.

“I knew you would see the wisdom of it!” he exclaimed joyously.

“How much insurance did you plan to get?” she asked, with a pretty assumption of business ways.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he replied.

“Well, we’ll divide it,” she said, “and each get five thousand dollars.”

“You mean that you’ll be insured, too?” he asked doubtfully.

“Of course. Isn’t my life worth as much as yours?”

“More! a thousand times more!” he cried, “but—but—”

Her eyes showed her indignation, and he stopped short.

“You don’t want me to be insured!” she exclaimed hotly. “You don’t think I’m worth it!”

“Why, dearest,” he protested, “you’re worth all the insurance of all the people in the world, but it isn’t necessary in your case. It’s my earning capacity that—”

Unfortunate suggestion! There was an inference that she considered uncomplimentary.

“Haven’t I any earning capacity?” she demanded. “Don’t I earn every cent I get? Isn’t the home as important as the office?”

“Surely, surely, darling, but—”

“Doesn’t a good wife earn half of the income that she shares?” she persisted.

“More than half, sweetheart.”

“Don’t say ‘sweetheart’ to me in the same breath that you tell me I’m not worth being insured!” she cried. “It’s positively insulting, and—and—you always said you loved me.”

Her voice broke a little, and he was beside her in an instant.

“You don’t understand,” he explained. “Insurance has nothing to do with your value to me or my value to you, but there is a more worldly value—”

“Oh, you’re of some account in the world and I’m not!” she broke in, her indignation driving back the tears.

“Isabel, you’re simply priceless to me!”

“But, if I hadn’t happened to meet you, I suppose I’d be a nonentity!” she flashed back at him. “I’m just a piece of property that you happen to like, and—why, Harry Beckford, men insure property, don’t they?”

“Of course, but—”

“And I’m not worth insuring, even as property!” she wailed. “Oh, I didn’t think you could ever be so cruel, so heartless! You might at least let me think I’m worth something.”

The young husband was in despair. He argued, pleaded, explained in vain; she could only see that he put a value on his life that he did not put on hers, and it hurt her pride. Besides, they were partners in everything else, so why not in insurance?

“But I wouldn’t want the insurance on your life,” he urged.

“Do you think I’m any more mercenary than you?” she retorted. “I don’t want the insurance, either; I want you—when you’re nice to me.”

“We’ll think it over,” he said wearily.

“I’ve thought,” she returned decisively. “If it’s such a good thing, I think you’re mean not to let me share it with you.” Then, with sudden cheerfulness: “It would be rather jolly and exciting to go together, just as we go to the theater and—and—all other amusements.”

He laughed at her classification of life insurance among the pleasures of life, and then he kissed her again. Her unreasoning opposition distressed him, but resentment was quite out of the question. There was momentary exasperation, and then a little love-making, to bring the smiles back to her face. All else could wait.

It is a noteworthy fact, however, that life insurance takes a strong hold on a man the moment he really decides he ought to have it, and opposition only adds to his determination. He who finds that, because of some unsuspected physical failing, he can not get it, immediately is possessed with a mania for it. So long as he considered it within his reach, he turned the agents away; now he goes to them and lies and pleads and tries desperately to gain that which he did not want until he found he could not get it.

Thus, in a minor degree, the opposition of Beckford’s wife served only to impress on Beckford’s mind the necessity and advantage of some such provision for the future. Perhaps the explanation of this is that in trying to convince her he had convinced himself. At any rate, the subject, at first taken up in a desultory way, became one of supreme importance to him, and he went to see Dave Murray. Dave, he was solemnly informed by a friend who claimed to know, probably had been christened David, but the last syllable of the name had not been able to stand the wear and tear of a strenuous life, in addition to which Murray was not the kind of man to invite formality. He was “Dave” to every one who got past the “Mr. Murray” stage, and it never took long to do that. “Anyhow,” his informant concluded, “you have a talk with him. There isn’t a better fellow or a more upright man in the city. The only thing I’ve got against him is that he’ll insure a fellow while he isn’t looking and then make him think he likes it. But if you want insurance, go to him.” So Beckford went, and presently he found himself telling Murray a great deal more than he had intended to tell him.

“The fact is,” he explained, “my wife was violently opposed to the idea at first.”

“Not unusual,” said Murray, and then he added sententiously: “Wives don’t care for insurance, but widows do.”

Beckford smiled as he saw the point.

“It doesn’t do a widow much good to care for insurance, if she objected to it as a wife,” he suggested.

“It may,” returned Murray. “It isn’t at all necessary that a wife should know what’s coming to her when she becomes a widow. She may be provided for in spite of herself.”

“That would be rather difficult in my case,” said Beckford, “for my wife knows just what my salary is, and we plan our expenditures together. It’s a pretty good salary, but we have been living right up to the limit of it, so I can’t provide for premiums without her knowledge, although I can do it easily with it.”

“That complicates matters a little,” remarked Murray.

“Besides,” Beckford added, “we have been so frank with each other that I should be unhappy with such a life-secret, and, if I acted on my own judgment and took the policy home to her, she says she would tear it up and throw it away.”

“I knew a woman to do that once,” said Murray reflectively. “Her husband insured his life before going on the excursion that ended in the Ashtabula disaster. A few days later her little boy came in to ask if anything could be done about the policy that she had destroyed.”

“I don’t think Isabel would really destroy it,” said the troubled Beckford, “but it would distress her very much to have me go so contrary to her wishes in a matter that we had discussed.”

“It would distress her very much to be left penniless,” remarked Murray.

“I think,” said Beckford thoughtfully, “I really think, if I had known that she was going to take this view of the matter, I would have insured myself first and talked to her about it afterward. Then the situation wouldn’t be so awkward. But I thought that all women favored life insurance.”

“Not at first,” returned Murray, “but usually there comes a change.”

“When?” asked Beckford hopefully.

“When they begin to think of the needs and the future and the possible hardships of the first baby,” replied Murray, whereat Beckford blushed a little, even as his wife had done a few days before, for young people do not consider and discuss prospective family problems with the same candor that their elders do.

“Woman, the true woman,” Murray continued, “is essentially unselfish; she thinks of others. Careless for her own future, she plans painstakingly for those she loves. The insurance premium that is for her own benefit she would rather have to spend now, but you never hear her object to the investment of any money that is to benefit her husband or children, even when she has to make sacrifices to permit it.”

“But that doesn’t help me,” complained Beckford. “I don’t want any insurance on her life; I don’t need it, and there is no reason to think that I ever shall need it. It’s for her that I am planning, but she won’t listen to anything but this dual arrangement.”

“I quite understand the situation,” returned Murray. “What insurance you are able to take out must be to protect her.”

“Precisely; and I never knew before that a woman could be so unreasoningly wilful in opposition to her own interests.”

“My dear sir,” said Murray, with some feeling, “you have a great deal to learn about women. I have more than twenty thousand dollars charged up to them in commissions that I have lost, after convincing the men interested. But if I can help you to provide for this one perverse sample of femininity, in spite of herself, I shall feel that I have taken a Christian revenge on the whole sex.” Beckford rather objected to this reference to his wife, but there was nothing of disrespect in the tone, and somehow the quaintness of the sentiment made him smile.

“I wonder,” Murray went on, “if we could refuse the risk without frightening her.”

“I’m afraid not,” returned Beckford, “but”—and a sudden inspiration lighted his face, “couldn’t you put in some restrictions that would frighten her away?”

Murray leaned back in his chair and gave the matter thoughtful consideration. Somehow he had become unusually interested in this young man’s effort to do a wise and generous thing for his wife in the face of her opposition. If the man had been seeking to gain some benefit for himself, Murray would not have listened to even a suggestion of deceit. But the aim was entirely unselfish, and Beckford had brought a letter of introduction that left no doubt as to his responsibility and integrity. Then, too, the situation was amusing. Here were two business men plotting—what? Why, the welfare of their opponent, and that only.

“So many women have beaten me,” said Murray at last, “that I should really like to beat one of them, especially when it’s for her own good. Bring your wife up here, and I’ll see what I can do.”

But here again feminine capriciousness was exemplified. Having apparently won her point, Isabel Beckford began to wish she had lost it.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “Suppose I should find that something frightful was the matter with me? Those insurance doctors are awfully particular, and—and—I’d rather not know it, if I’m going to die very soon.”

“Oh, very well,” acquiesced her husband. “We’ll go back to my original plan and put the whole ten thousand dollars on my life.”

“No, no, no!” she protested. “It would be even worse, if I learned that there was anything wrong with you. I couldn’t bear it, Harry; I couldn’t, really! There wouldn’t be anything left in life for me. Let’s not go at all.”

“That’s foolish, Isabel,” he argued. “I’m all right, and the very fact that I am accepted as a good risk will remove every doubt.”

“That’s so,” she admitted. “We’ll be sure, then, won’t we?”

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll both go,” she announced, with a sudden reversal of judgment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I’ll feel a lot better and stronger when I’m insured, because the companies are so particular, and it will be comforting to know that you are all right. It’s worth something to find that out, isn’t it? And sometimes a family physician won’t tell you the truth, because it won’t do any good and he doesn’t want to frighten you. We’ll go right away and see about it now.”

“Hardly this evening,” he answered, smiling, although he was sorely troubled. “We’ll go to-morrow afternoon.”

“But it’s so long to wait until to-morrow,” she pouted.

He regretted the delay quite as much as she did, for his experience up to date led him to think that there might be another change. First she had refused to consider the matter at all; then she had insisted they should go together; after that she had backed out; next she had demanded he should give up the idea, also; and now she was again determined it should be a joint affair.

“No man,” he muttered, as he dropped off to sleep, “knows anything about a woman until he marries, and then he only learns enough to know that he knows nothing at all.”

Then he mentally apologized to his wife for even this mild criticism, and dreamed that, through some complication, he had to insure the cook and the janitor and the grocer’s boy before he could take out a policy on his own life, and that, when he had attended to the rest, he had no money left for his own premiums, so he made all the other policies in favor of his wife and hoped to thunder that the cook and the janitor and the grocer’s boy would die a long time before he did.

However, she was still of the same mind the next day, so they went to see Murray.

“Of course,” she said, as they were on the way, “if this thing wrecks our happiness by showing that the grave is yawning for either of us, it will be all your fault.”

That made him feel nice and comfortable—so nice and comfortable that he heartily wished he never had mentioned life insurance. Still, he cheered up a little when Murray took charge of matters in a masterly, confident way.

“I understand, Mrs. Beckford,” said Murray, “that both you and your husband wish to have your lives insured.”

“Yes,” she replied, “and for some reason he has selfishly wanted to put all the insurance we can afford on his own life.”

“So he has told me.”

“What right had he to discuss family matters with you?” she demanded with asperity.

Thus Murray was jarred out of his air of easy confidence the first thing.

“Why—why, he didn’t exactly tell me,” he explained, “but my experience enabled me to surmise as much. Most men are like that.”

“I never thought Harry would be,” she said, looking at him reproachfully. “But it’s all right now,” she added.

“Yes, it’s all right now,” repeated Murray. He had intended to argue first the advisability of accepting her husband’s plan, but he deemed it unwise. He had suddenly lost faith in his powers of persuasion, so he resorted to guile. “Of course, you understand that life insurance is hedged about by many annoying restrictions,” he went on.

“I didn’t know it,” she returned.

“Oh, yes,” he said glibly, with a wink at Beckford. “Do you use gasoline at all?”

“Why, I have used it occasionally to take a spot out of a gown,” she admitted.

“Barred!” asserted Murray.

“I can’t do even the least little mite of cleaning with gasoline!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“None at all! It’s dangerous! Might just as well fool with nitroglycerin. People who handle it at all become careless.”

There were indications of a rising temper. That a mean old insurance company should have the audacity to tell her what she could or could not do was an outrage!

“And you can’t use street-cars,” added Murray.

“Can’t use street-cars!” she cried. “What will Harry do?”

“Oh, that rule doesn’t apply to men,” returned Murray calmly, “for men don’t get off the cars backward and all that sort of thing. Street-cars are considered, in our business, a danger only for women.”

“Well, it’s a hateful, insulting, unfair business!” she cried, rising in her indignation. “I wouldn’t let such a contemptible lot of people insure me for anything in the world.”

“But please don’t blame me,” urged Murray insinuatingly. “I want to do the best I can for you.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” she returned magnanimously.

“I admit that it sounds unfair,” Murray persisted, “but there was a time when we wouldn’t take risks on women at all, so, even with the restrictions, it’s quite a concession.”

“Oh, very likely, very likely,” she admitted, “but I have too much pride to accept any such humiliating conditions. Harry can do as he pleases,” with dignity, “but nothing could induce me to be insured now. I’m going home.”

Harry took her to a cab, and then returned to Murray’s office.

“Well, it’s settled,” said Murray, with a sigh of relief.

“Yes, it’s settled,” returned Beckford, “but I don’t feel just comfortable about it.”

“She sort of bowled me over the first thing,” commented Murray. “I haven’t quite recovered yet. But it’s her welfare that we’re considering. Better put in your application and take the examination before there are any more complications.”

“Perhaps that’s wise,” admitted Beckford gloomily, for he was not at all at ease about the matter. She had said he could do as he pleased, but there had been something in her tone that was disquieting; she might think there was disloyalty in his patronage of a company that had so offended her. And this was the first cloud that had appeared in the matrimonial sky; in all else there had been mutual concession and perfect agreement.

He was thinking of this when he went home—and found her in tears.

“I know what’s the matter,” she wailed. “I didn’t think of it at first, but I did afterward, and I’ve been crying ever since. I have heart trouble; that’s why he didn’t want to give me a policy.”

“Nonsense!” he protested vigorously.

“Oh, I know it! I know it!” she cried. “He didn’t want to tell me, so he put in all that about street-cars and gasoline. But it’s heart trouble or consumption! Those insurance men are so quick to see things that no one else notices. Why, I could see that he was worried the very first thing!”

Beckford got on his knees beside the bed on which she was lying and tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. He insisted that she was the strongest and healthiest woman of her size in the world; that he knew it; that Murray himself had commented on it later; that the company physician, who happened to be in the outer office as they passed through, had spoken of it; that even the clerks were impressed; but he failed to shake her conviction that she had some fatal, and hitherto unsuspected, malady. Finally, assuring her that he would have that matter settled in thirty minutes, he rushed to the nearest cab-stand and gave the driver double fare to run his horse all the way to Murray’s house.

Murray was just sitting down to dinner, but Beckford insisted that he should return with him immediately.

“You’ve got to straighten this matter out!” he told him excitedly. “You’ve got to give her all the insurance she wants without any restrictions! Make it fifty thousand dollars if she wants it! I’ll pay the premiums, if we have to starve!”

“But I can’t give her a policy to-night!” protested Murray.

“You can tell her about it to-night, can’t you?” demanded Beckford. “And you can take her application to-night, can’t you? Why, man, she has convinced herself that she’s going to die in a week! We can settle the details later, but we’ve got to do something to-night.”

“Oh, well, I’ll come immediately after dinner,” said Murray.

“You come now!” cried Beckford. “If you talk dinner to me, I’ll brain you! Insurance has made a wreck of me already.”

“I haven’t been getting much joy out of this particular case myself,” grumbled Murray, but he went along.

The moment he reached home, Beckford rushed to his wife’s room.

“It’s all a mistake!” he exclaimed joyfully. “You—you mustn’t cry any more, dearest, for it’s all right now. Mr. Murray didn’t understand at first—thought you were one of these capricious, careless, thoughtless women that do all sorts of absurd and foolish things on impulse—but he knows better now. There aren’t any more restrictions for you than for me, and he’s waiting in the parlor to take your application for all the insurance you want.”

“Really?” she asked, as the sobs began to subside.

“Really.”

“And there isn’t anything the matter with me?”

“Of course not, sweetheart.”

“Well,” she said, after a pause, “I can’t see him now, because my eyes are all red, but I wish he’d write that out for me. I’d feel so much more comfortable.”

“Indeed he will,” asserted Beckford, “and we can fill out the application in here, and I’ll take it back to him.”

Hopefully and happily the young husband returned to Murray and told him what was wanted. Murray sighed dismally. He had missed his dinner for a woman’s whim, and the woman was merely humiliating him. Still, he felt in a measure responsible for the trouble; he ought never to have resorted to duplicity, even for so laudable a purpose. So he wrote the following: “Investigation has convinced me that the restrictions mentioned this afternoon are unnecessary in your case, and I shall be glad to have your application for insurance on the same terms as your husband’s.”

Mrs. Beckford read this over carefully. Then she read the application blank with equal care. After that she wrote at the bottom of the note: “Insurance has almost given me nervous prostration now, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. If Harry can stand the strain, let him have it all.”

“Give him that, Harry,” she said, “and get rid of him as soon as possible, for I want you to come back and comfort me. I’m completely upset.”

Murray lit a cigar when he reached the street, and puffed at it meditatively as he walked in the direction of the nearest street-car line.

“What’s the matter with nervous prostration for me?” he muttered. “One more effort to defeat a woman who is fighting against her own interests will make me an impossible risk in any company; two more will land me in a sanatorium.”

AN INCIDENTAL QUESTION

Dave Murray, general agent, leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the young man before him.

“So you have run up against an unanswerable argument?” he remarked.

“It seems so to me,” said the inexperienced Owen Ross.

“My dear boy,” asserted Murray, “in the life insurance business the only unanswerable argument is a physician’s report that the applicant is not a good risk. What is the particular thing that has put you down and out?”

“Faith,” replied the young man; “just plain faith in the Almighty. Perhaps, some time in your career, you have run across a religious enthusiast who considers it a reflection on the all-seeing wisdom of the Almighty to take any measures for his own protection or the protection of his family.”

“I have,” admitted Murray, “but generally it has been a woman.”

“This is a man,” said Ross; “a sincere, devout man. If he were a hypocrite, it would be different, but it is a matter of religious conviction—a principle of faith—with him to trust in the Lord. Life insurance he considers almost sacrilegious—an evidence of man’s doubt in the wisdom of his Maker, and an attempt, in his puny insignificant way, to interfere with the plans of the Great Master. To all arguments he replies, ‘The Lord will provide for His children.’”

“And you consider that unanswerable?” asked Murray.

“In his case, yes. Even his wife is unable to move him, although she wants insurance as a provision for the future of the children and was instrumental in getting me to talk to him. How would you answer such a contention as that?”

“I wouldn’t answer it; I would agree with him.”

“And give up?”

“Quite the contrary. While there can be no doubt that he is right as far as he goes, he does not go far enough. I would turn his own argument against him.” Murray leaned forward in his chair and spoke with earnest deliberation. “The Lord provides for His children through human instrumentality. Why should not the man be the human instrument through which the Lord provides for that man’s family? The Lord does not directly intervene—at least, not in these days. If, in the hour of extremity, an unexpected legacy should come to relieve the necessities of that man’s family, he would say the Lord had provided. But it would be through human instrumentality: the legacy, and the method and law by which it reached them would be essentially human. If, when poverty knocks at the door, some generous philanthropist were moved to come to their relief, he would hold again that the Lord had provided; if some wealthy relative sought them out, it would be through the intervention of the Lord; if, through his own wise action, they are saved from want, is he more than the human instrument through which the Lord provides? May not an insurance company be the chosen instrument? I say this with all due reverence, and it seems to me to answer his objections fully. Is it only in unforeseen ways that He cares for His children? Has He nothing to do with those cases in which reasonable precautions are taken by the children themselves?”

Ross, the young solicitor, looked at his chief with unconcealed admiration.

“By George!” he exclaimed, “you’ve got the theory of this business down to a science. I’ll try the man again.”

“It’s not a business,” retorted Murray somewhat warmly, for this was a point that touched his pride; “it is a profession—at least, it lies with the man himself to make it a business or a profession, according to his own ability and character. There are small men who make a business of the law, and there are great men who make a profession of it; there are doctors to whom medicine is a mere commercial pursuit, and there are doctors to whom it is a study, a science, a profession. You may make of life insurance a cheap business, or you may make of it a dignified profession; you may be a mere annoying canvasser, or you may be a man who commands respect; but, to be really successful, you must have, or acquire, a technical knowledge of the basis of insurance, a knowledge of law, and, above all, a knowledge of human nature,—and even that will avail little if you are not temperamentally suited to the work. You can no more make a good insurance man of unpromising material than you can make a good artist.”

Ross caught some of the enthusiasm and earnestness of Murray, and unconsciously straightened up.

“You have made me look at the subject from a new point of view,” he said. “I confess I was rather ashamed of the soliciting part of the work at first—felt a good deal like a cripple selling pencils to support a sick wife.”

“And very likely you acted like it,” remarked Murray, “in which case the people you approached would so class you. It isn’t necessary to have the ‘iron nerve,’ so long identified with that branch of the work; it isn’t even helpful, for it makes a man unpopular, and the most successful men are the most popular ones. You’ve lost ground when you have reached a point where any man you know is not glad to see you enter his office. At the same time,”—musingly,—“nerve and persistence become forethought and wisdom when time proves you were right. I have known of cases where a man afterward thanked the solicitor who had once made life a burden to him; but it is always better to change a man’s mind without his knowledge.”

“Rather difficult,” laughed Ross.

“But it has been done,” said Murray. “As a matter of fact, you are working to save men and women from their own selfishness or heedlessness. If you think of that, you will be more convincing and will raise your work to the dignity of a profession; if you think only of the commissions, you will put yourself on the level of the shyster lawyer whose interest centers wholly in the fees he is able to get rather than in the cases he is to try. There are pot-boilers in every business and every profession, but success is not for them: they can’t see beyond the needs of the stomach, and the man who works only for his belly never amounts to much. He will stoop to small things to gain a temporary advantage, never seeing the future harm he is doing; he is the kind of man who hopes to rise by pulling others down. Remember, my boy, that insinuations as to the instability of a rival company invariably make a man suspicious of all: when you have convinced him that the rival’s proposition and methods are not based on sound financial and business principles, you have more than half convinced him that yours aren’t, either, and that very likely there is something radically wrong with the whole blame system.”

“I’m glad you spoke of that,” said Ross. “There have been cases where insinuations have been made against our company, and I have been tempted to fight back the same way. A man is at a disadvantage when he is put on the defensive and is called upon to produce evidence of what ought to be a self-evident proposition.”

“Never do it, unless the question is put to you directly,” advised Murray. “You must defend yourself when attacked, but, in every other case, go on the assumption that your company is all right, and that everybody knows it is all right. The late John J. Ingalls once said, ‘When you have to offer evidence that an egg is good, that egg is doubtful, and a doubtful egg is always bad.’ It’s worth remembering. Many a man is made doubtful of a good proposition by ill-advised efforts to prove it is good.”

“If that is invariably true,”—with a troubled scowl,—“I fear I have made some mistakes.”

“The man who thinks he makes no mistakes seldom makes anything else.”

Ross brightened perceptibly at this.

“You’ve made them yourself?” he asked.

“Lots of them,” replied Murray, and then he added whimsically: “Once I placed a risk that meant a two-hundred-dollar commission for me, and my wife and I went right out and ordered two hundred dollars’ worth of furniture and clothes. The risk was refused, and I never got the commission.”

Ross laughed.

“I’m beginning to develop enthusiasm and pride in the business—I mean profession.”

“Oh, call it a business,” returned Murray, “but think of it as a profession. It’s the way you regard it yourself that counts, and you can’t go far astray in that if you stop to think what is required of a good insurance man. Sterling integrity, for one thing, and tact and judgment. A man who brings in a good ten-thousand-dollar risk is more valuable than the man who brings in one hundred thousand dollars that is turned down by the physicians or at the home office. And the first requisite for advancement is absolute trustworthiness. There are temptations, even for a solicitor—commission rebates to the insured that are contrary to the ethics of the business—and there are greater temptations higher up. You will learn, as in no other line, that a man wants what he can’t get, even if he didn’t want it when he could get it, and he will pay a high price for what he wants. Collusion in a local office might give it to him, in spite of all precautions taken; such collusion might be worth ten thousand dollars to a man who had no record of refusal by other companies against him, and ten thousand dollars could be split up very nicely between the local agent and the company’s physician. So integrity, unswerving integrity, is rated exceptionally high, and the least suspicion of trickery or underhand dealing may keep a capable man on the lowest rung of the ladder for all time, even if it doesn’t put him out of the business entirely. You are paid to protect your company, so far as lies in your power, and to get business by all honorable means; if you resort to dishonorable means, even in your company’s interests, there is always the suspicion that you will use the same methods against its interests whenever that may be to your personal advantage.”

Owen Ross pondered this deeply on his way home. It gave a new dignity to his occupation. He had taken up insurance because it happened to be the only available opening at a time when he was out of employment. He had been a clerk for a big corporation that had recently combined two branch offices, thus materially reducing its office force, and Ross had been one of those to suffer. His father, a prosperous merchant, had expressed himself, when consulted, in this way:

“I will give you a place here whenever that is necessary to enable you to live, but I prefer that you should complete your preliminary business training under some one else. No boy can consider himself a success until he has proved his independence, and no boy can be sure he has proved that until he has made a secure place for himself outside the family circle.”

So Ross, being wise enough to see the reason and justice of this, endeavored to show his independence by securing a position with Murray. And, although fairly successful from the start, he was only just beginning to take a real interest in his work. Murray liked him and encouraged him: there was, he thought, the making of a good and successful man in him, and he frequently went to considerable trouble to explain the theory and practice of insurance. Then, too, he knew that Ross had married just before he lost his other position, and that he was living in a modest little flat on his own earnings, in spite of the fact that he had a father who would be much more ready to assist him financially than he was to take him into his own office at that particular time. In fact, the elder Ross was quite willing that his son and his son’s wife should live with him, holding only that the family influence should not extend to his first business connections, but Owen deemed the flat a necessary evidence of his independence.

“I’ll get that sanctimonious optimist to-morrow,” he mused as he walked along. “He can’t answer those arguments that Murray gave me. He is content because the Lord will provide, but why may not I be the human instrument through which the Lord makes provision? That sounds presumptuous, but why not? Hasn’t He provided for others in just this way? Hasn’t many a man, convinced against his will, protected the future of those he loved barely in time?” He laughed quietly at a thought that occurred to him. “If this man should be insured to-morrow and die the next day,” he went on, “he would think the Lord had provided, but if he has to pay the premiums for twenty years, he’ll think it all very human. I’m beginning to understand him.”

He was still smiling at this quaint conceit when he entered his flat and was informed by his wife that Mrs. Becker had been there to see him. Mrs. Becker was a woman who did washing and occasional cleaning for them.

“To see me!” he exclaimed. “Why, her dealings are all with you.”

“It has something to do with insurance,” his wife explained. “She knows you’re in that business, of course, and she is in deep distress. She was crying when she was here this afternoon, but I couldn’t understand what the trouble was. She said she’d come back this evening.”

Ross puzzled over this a good deal during dinner, and even tried to get some additional information by questioning his wife closely. Exactly what did the woman say? Her words might be “all Greek” to his wife and still be intelligible to him, if only she could repeat them.

“But I can’t,” she insisted. “I was so sorry for her and so helpless that I really didn’t hear it all, anyway. I only know that it had something to do with an application or a premium or a policy, and her husband is very sick and she needs money.”

Ross began to speculate. The ignorant have strange ideas of insurance, and very likely this woman thought she could insure a dying husband. His backbone began to stiffen at once. Of course such a thing was actually, as well as ethically, impossible, but it was going to be a very difficult matter to explain it to her, and he anticipated a distressing scene. His wife was interested in the woman, spoke frequently of her hardships and her courage, and had helped her to such trifling extent as they could afford. No doubt the woman had some wild notion that he, being an insurance man, could do this for her and would do it as a matter of charity. Ethical questions do not trouble such people.

When she came, he was prepared for a request that was impossible in honor and in fact, and he was ready to refuse it with such gentleness as he deemed due to a weary and desperate woman who did not realize what she was asking—the gentleness of sympathy coupled with the firmness of principle. Ross was a young man, inclined to exaggerate the importance and difficulties of problems that confronted him, and he was disconcerted when he found he had made an error in the basis from which he had reached his conclusion; the woman did not wish to insure a dying husband, but to protect insurance he already carried.

“Oh, good Mr. Ross,” she wailed, “you must fix it for me some way. If we don’t pay to-morrow, we’ll lose everything. And we haven’t the money, Mr. Ross, not enough to pay the doctor even, and it’s worrying Peter more than the sickness. But you can fix it for us—of course you can fix it for us,”—with appealing hopefulness.

“Sit down, Mrs. Becker, and tell me about it,” he urged. “I don’t understand.”

She sank into a chair, and looked at him with anxious, tearful doubt and hope. Worn out with work and watching, she was a prey to conflicting emotions. Never doubting that he could help her, she feared he might refuse. Her anxiety was pitiable, and it was some time before he could get the details of the story from her. Finally, however, he learned that in more prosperous days her husband had insured his life for five thousand dollars, and, even in adversity, had succeeded in keeping up the payments, until stricken by this last illness. The sum he had saved up for the next premium—the one due the following day—had been used for medicines and other necessaries, and now he was near death. The doctor held out no hope; he might live a few days, but hardly more than that, for he was slowly but surely sinking. Until the previous night, when there came a turn for the worse, his recovery had been confidently expected, and his wife had worried little about the premium; the insurance company would be glad to take it when he was well.

“But he worried,” she said with unconscious pathos; “he worried and asked about it until—he couldn’t any more. He’s too sick to know now. But,”—hopefully,—“he’ll understand when I tell him it’s all right.”

Ross was as much distressed as the woman, but he could give her little comfort. He could protect the insurance only by paying the premium himself, and he was not able to do that. Still, almost all policies provided for the payment of something proportionate to the amount paid in, even when the premiums were not kept up, so—He paused uncomfortably at this point, for the woman’s attitude and expression had changed from tearful anxiety to dull, sullen suspicion. She did not believe him; like all insurance men, he was ready to seize any opportunity to defraud her; she was helpless, and a rich company would take advantage of her helplessness.

“You can get the money, Owen,” his wife urged, almost in tears herself.

“Perhaps I can arrange it,” he said at
last. “In what company is he insured?”

“I’ll pay it back to you—when he dies!” cried the woman, and Ross gave her a quick glance. It seemed heartless, but he saw it was not. The woman was tried beyond her endurance; she, with her two children, faced a future that was absolutely devoid of hope; she was sick, wretched, despairing, and the husband she had striven so hard to keep with her was already beyond recall. She spoke of his approaching death merely as something certain, that could not be prevented, and that force of circumstances compelled her to consider. She had to think for herself and children, plan for herself and children, even at this fearful time, for there was no one to do it for her, no one to relieve her of any part of the burden. The problem of the larder and the problem of burial would confront her simultaneously; she had to face these cold, hard, brutal facts, in spite of the grief and sorrow of the moment.

All this Ross saw and appreciated, and he gave his attention to various possible ways of raising the necessary money.

“Perhaps I can arrange it,” he said at last. “In what company is he insured?”

It proved to be his own company. Instantly, his talk with Murray flashed through his mind. “You are paid to protect your company, so far as lies in your power,” Murray had said. Absolute loyalty to its interests was imperative. Would it be honorable for him to enter into any arrangement with this woman that would cost his company money? Had he any right to do more than the company would do itself? What would be thought of an employee in any other line of business who advanced money that was to be used to the financial disadvantage of his employer, however proper it might be in the case of some one else?

“I can do nothing,” he announced shortly.

“Oh, Owen!” cried his wife reproachfully.

“It is impossible!” he insisted. “If it were a proper thing to do, Murray would do it for her himself.”

“Mr. Murray doesn’t understand the situation,” urged his wife.

“Murray would understand my situation and his,” he returned. “We are taking money from this company, we are its trusted agents, and we can not do anything that would be to its disadvantage. It is a matter of business integrity.”

The woman did not weep now, but the look she gave him haunted him all that night. And his wife’s entreaties and reproaches added to his unhappiness.

“Why, Jennie,” he explained, “I stand alone between the company and a loss of over four thousand dollars. I know that this man is dying; I know that, if I pay this premium, the company will have to pay out the full amount of the insurance within a few days; I know that the premiums paid to date amount to only about five hundred or six hundred dollars, which, under the terms of the policy, the woman will not wholly lose. For me, an employee, to conspire to get the rest of the money for her would be like taking it from the cash drawer. I won’t do it; I can’t do it after Murray’s talk to me to-day about business integrity!”

“The company can afford it,” persisted Mrs. Ross, “and the woman needs it so badly.”

“There are lots of companies and individuals who could afford to let the woman have five thousand dollars,” replied Ross.

Still, Mrs. Ross could not understand. If he had been willing to pay the premium to another company, why not to his own?

“Resign and pay it!” she exclaimed suddenly, feeling that she had solved the problem; but that was a greater sacrifice than he was prepared to make. He was sincerely sorry for the woman; the case was on his mind all the following morning; but Murray’s talk had made a deep impression. This was one of the severe temptations of the business—the more severe because there was no question of corruption, but only of sympathy, in it. Such, he had read, were the temptations that led men of the best intentions astray in many of the affairs of life.

He was thinking of this when he called to see the “sanctimonious optimist”; he was thinking of it when he advanced the arguments Murray had given him; he was still thinking of it when the man said he was almost convinced and would telephone him after talking with his wife. Consequently, this success failed to elate him.

“The law of humanity,” he told himself, “is higher and more sacred than the law of business.”

He had walked unconsciously in the direction of his father’s office, and, still arguing with himself, he went in.

“Father,” he said, “I want to borrow a hundred dollars.” The premium was a little more than that, but he could supply the remainder.

“For what?” asked the senior Ross.

“There is something I may wish to do,” was the enigmatical reply. “I will repay it as rapidly as possible.”

“Commissions few and small?” laughed the senior Ross. “Well, a young man never finds out exactly what he’s worth, while working for a relative or a friend, so this experience ought to be valuable.”

Still undecided, but with the money in his pocket, Ross left his father’s office and went to his own. He wanted to pay that premium, but it seemed to him a very serious matter, ethically and actually. The woman faced a future of privation; he faced what seemed to him a crisis in his business career. He revolted at the thought of being false to his employer, but to let the woman suffer would be heartless.

“A letter for you, Ross,” said one of the clerks, as he entered the office. “Your wife left it.”

He opened it with nervous haste, and a notice of a premium due dropped out.

“You must find some way to help this woman, Owen,” his wife wrote. “I went to see her to-day, and the situation is pitiable. She has used up every cent she had and is in debt. Her husband is conscious at intervals, and he looks at you so wistfully, so anxiously, that it makes your heart bleed. Oh! if I could only tell him that the insurance is all right! It would give him peace for the little time that is left to him on this earth. Owen! resign, if necessary, but do what I ask!”

Ross crumpled the note in his hand and walked into Murray’s private office.

“Mr. Murray,” he said, “please accept my verbal resignation.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Murray.

“I have no time to explain now,” said Ross. “I want to be released from my obligations to the company at once.”

“You’re excited,” said Murray. “Sit down! Now, what’s the matter?”

Ross hesitated a moment, and then blurted out the whole story.

“You wish to pay this premium?” asked Murray.

“I’m going to pay it!” said Ross defiantly. “It will stick the company for more than four thousand dollars, but I’m going to pay it!”

“And you wish to resign to do it honorably?”

“Yes.”

“Pay it!” said Murray. “But your resignation is not accepted. I wouldn’t lose such a man as you for ten times four thousand dollars.”

“It is all right?” asked Ross, bewildered.

“Of course it’s all right,” asserted Murray. “As a matter of sympathy and justice, it is not only right but highly commendable; as a matter of financial profit to you, it would be despicable. Pay that premium, and I tell you now that the company will never pay a death benefit with less hesitation than it will pay this one. What is one risk more or less? We do business on the general average, and any sum is well invested that uncovers so conscientious an employee. Pay it, and come back to me.”

Three minutes later, Ross, with the receipt in his pocket, was at the telephone.

“It’s all right,” he told his wife. “The premium is paid.”

“Oh, Owen!” exclaimed Mrs. Ross, and her voice broke a little, “you don’t know what comfort you have given a dying man! If you could only see—”

“Get a cab!” he broke in. “He doesn’t know it yet, and you must tell him. Get a cab and drive like—”

He stopped short, but his wife knew what he almost said, and she forgave him without even a preliminary reproach.

His eyes were bright and his heart was light when he went back to Murray. Mrs. Becker’s situation was sad enough, but surely he had lessened the gloom of it by removing one great source of anxiety. He felt that he had done something worthy of a man, and it was a joy that he could do this without transcending the rules of business integrity and loyalty.

“I want you,” said Murray, and there was something of admiration in his tone; “I want you so much that I am going to put you in the way of making more money. You have a great deal to learn about the insurance business before you will cease making unnecessary problems for yourself, but you have one quality that makes you valuable to me.” He paused and smiled a little at the recollection of what had passed. “I would suggest,” he went on, “that you bear this in mind: life insurance is not for one life only or for one generation only, but for the centuries. Otherwise, we could not do business on the present plan. We exist by reducing the laws of chance to a science that makes us secure in the long run, although, on the basis of a single year, there may be considerable losses. And a good company will no more stoop to shabby tricks than you will; nor will it seek to escape obligations through technicalities or petty subterfuges. That’s why I told you to pay that premium, and I respect you for doing it.”

Murray picked up a memorandum on his desk.

“By the way,” he added, glancing at it, “you must have made good use of the arguments I gave you, for your sanctimonious optimist telephoned that, if you would call this afternoon or to-morrow, he would arrange with you for a ten-thousand-dollar policy.”

Grateful as Murray’s praise was to his ears, the greeting from his wife gave Ross the most joy.

“He was conscious for a moment and understood,” she said, as she put her arms around her husband’s neck, “and there was such an expression of restful peace on his face that it made me happy, in spite of the shadow of death hovering over. It made him a little better, the doctor said, but nothing can save him. And I’m so proud of you, Owen!”

“To tell the truth, dearest,” he replied tenderly, “I’m almost proud of myself.”

AN INCIDENTAL TRAGEDY

Dave Murray stretched his legs comfortably under the table, blew rings of smoke toward the ceiling, and waited for Stanley Wentworth to speak.

Having his full share of worldly wisdom, Murray knew that there was a reason for Wentworth’s most urgent invitation to lunch with him at his club. While they had been friends for years and had lunched together on many previous occasions, there was a formality about this invitation that presaged something of importance. So, when they reached the cigars, Murray smoked and waited.

“You win, Dave,” Wentworth announced at last.

“I knew I would—when you married,” returned Murray. “It was only a question of time then.”

“Especially after you got the ear of my wife,” said Wentworth. “You worked that very nicely, Dave. Do you remember the story you told her about the man who couldn’t give any time to life insurance during the busy season and who was on his death-bed when the date he had set for his examination arrived?”

“It was true, too,” asserted Murray. “The man was a good risk when I went after him, and there would have been ten thousand dollars for his wife if he hadn’t procrastinated. There’s no money in the policy that a man was just going to take out, Stanley.”

“Well, you win, anyway,” said Wentworth. “We’ve been jollying each other on this insurance business for six or eight years, and I’ve stood you off pretty well, but I can’t stand against the little woman at home. I was lost, Dave, the day I took you up to the house and introduced you to her.”

“I guess I played the cards pretty well,” laughed Murray. “I told you at the beginning that I was going to insure you before I got through, and a good insurance man doesn’t let a little matter like the personal inclinations of his subject interfere with his plans. Why, I’ve been known to put a man in a trance, have him examined, and abstract the first premium from his pocket before he waked up. But you were the hardest proposition I ever tackled. You ought to have taken out a policy ten years ago.”

“I couldn’t see any reason for it,” explained Wentworth. “I thought I was a confirmed bachelor: had no family and never expected to have one. That was at twenty-five, and at thirty I considered the matter absolutely settled, but at thirty-five the little woman just quietly reached out and took me into camp—and I’m glad of it. Never knew what real life was before. Still, I hate like thunder to surrender to you after our long, harmonious and entertaining fight, Dave; I wouldn’t do it if you hadn’t taken advantage of my hospitality to load my wife up with insurance ghost stories. If you want to be fair, you’ll pay her half the commission.”

“I’ll do it!” exclaimed Murray; “not in cash, of course, but I’ll make her a present that will cover it—something nice for the house. You won’t be jealous, will you?”

“Jealous!” returned Wentworth with a hearty laugh. “Well, I guess not! Why, I’ll help out by making the policy worth while: I’ll take out one for twenty-five thousand. I tell you, Dave, I’m not going to run any risk of leaving the little woman unprovided for, and I lost four thousand in the last month.”

The conversation had been jocular, with an undercurrent of seriousness in it, but Wentworth became really serious with the last remark. Murray saw that this loss had had more to do with the decision than any arguments that had been advanced, and he, too, dropped his bantering tone.

“I never could see,” Wentworth went on, “why insurance was any better than an investment in good stock—”

“A little more certain,” suggested Murray, “so far as your wife is concerned. No stock is safe while a man lives and continues in business. It is too convenient as collateral and can be reached too easily in the case of failure. You will take risks with stock that you will not take with insurance, even when you can; you will sell stock to get ready cash for a business venture that may prove disastrous, but it’s like robbing your own widow to touch life insurance money. No man ever raised money on his policy without feeling meaner than a yellow dog, for he is gambling with the future of the one he loves, or at least should love. He has taken money that he promised her; money that she will sadly need in case of his unexpected death. That she consented to it does not ease his conscience, if he is any sort of a man, for no woman ever freely consents to jeopardizing any part of her husband’s life insurance money; she is led to do it, against her better judgment, by love and faith, and he knows that he has demanded of her what may prove to be a great sacrifice. That is why insurance is a better investment than stocks for the purpose you have in mind, Stanley; whatever your business needs, you never can ask your wife to join you in hypothecating the policy without feeling like a mean heartless sneak.”

“I never looked at in that way,” returned Wentworth thoughtfully, “but you’re right, Dave. The policy will have a sacredness that no stock can possess. To touch it, to risk any part of it in business, would seem like taking money out of the baby’s bank. Still,” he added whimsically, “a game in which you have to die to win never did appeal to me very strongly.”

“A game in which you are sure to win when you die is better than a game in which you are likely to lose twice,” retorted Murray, “or one in which you have to live to win, so long as life is something over which you have no jurisdiction. With insurance you win when you lose, but with stocks you may lose both ways and leave nothing but a reputation for selfish improvidence. Of course, I am looking at it from the family, rather than the personal, point of view.”

“Surely,” acquiesced Wentworth. “I am thinking of the little woman and the baby.” He settled back in his chair and smoked dreamily for a few moments, his thoughts evidently wandering to the home that had given him so much of happiness during the last eighteen months. And Murray was silent, too. The affair was as much one of friendship as of business with him. It had been largely a joke when he had first declared that he would write a policy on Wentworth’s life, although he believed implicitly that every man should have insurance and should get it when he is young enough to secure a favorable rate. At that time Wentworth had no one dependent upon him, but Murray had kept at him in a bantering way, telling him that he would surely have need of insurance later and that he had better prepare for it while the opportunity offered. Then, when celibacy seemed to have become a permanent condition with him, he had married, and thereafter, while still treating the subject lightly and humorously, Murray had conducted a campaign that was really founded on friendship. No one knows better than a man who has been long in the insurance business of the tragedies resulting from procrastination and neglect; no one can better appreciate how great a risk of such a tragedy a friend may be running. So Murray, jolly but insinuating, was actuated by something more than purely business interest when he made whimsical references to his long campaign in the presence of Mrs. Wentworth and incidentally, apparently only to tease her husband, described some of the sad little dramas of life that had come to his notice. And he had won at last.

“Get the application ready,” said Wentworth, suddenly rousing himself, “and let me know when your doctor wants to see me.”

That evening Wentworth told his wife that he had arranged to take out a twenty-five-thousand-dollar policy, and she put her arms around his neck and looked up at him in an anxious, troubled way.

“You don’t think I’m mercenary, do you, Stanley?”

“Indeed, I don’t, little woman,” he replied, as he kissed her; “I think you are only wise.”

“It seems so sort of heartless,” she went on, “but you know I’m planning only for the baby. There is something sure about life insurance, and everything else is so uncertain. Some of the stories Mr. Murray told were very sad.”

“Oh, Murray was after business,” he said with a laugh. “He told me long ago that he intended to insure me, and it’s been a sort of friendly duel with us ever since. But he has convinced me that he is right in holding that every married man should carry life insurance, and, aside from that, I would cheerfully pay double premiums to relieve you of any cause for worry. The insurance company is going to get the best of me, though: I’ll live long enough to pay in more than it will have to pay out.”

“Of course you will!” she exclaimed confidently. “You’re so big and strong it seems foolish—except for the baby. That’s why we mustn’t take any chances.”

So cheerful and confident was Wentworth that he failed to notice the solemnity of the physician who examined him the next day. The doctor began with a joke, but he ended with a perplexed scowl.

“You certainly look as strong as a horse,” he said. “But you’re not,” he added under his breath.

Then he made his report to Murray.

“Heart trouble,” he explained. “The man may live twenty or thirty years or he may die to-morrow. My personal opinion is that he will die within two years.”

Murray was startled and distressed. Wentworth was his close personal friend, and to refuse his application after he had striven so hard to get it seemed heartless and cruel, especially as the refusal would have to be accompanied by an explanation that would be much like a death-warrant. Of course, he was in no way responsible for the conditions, but it would seem as if he were putting a limit on his friend’s life.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” replied the physician. “It is an impossible risk.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“And I am to dine with him and his wife to-night,” said Murray. “They will be sure to ask about the policy.”

Murray was tempted to send word that he could not come, but it was rather late for that. Besides, the information would have to be given some time, so what advantage could there be in procrastinating? But it came to him as a shock. The news of actual death would hardly have affected him more seriously, for it seemed like a calamity with which he was personally identified and for which he was largely responsible. He knew that he was not, but he could not banish the disquieting feeling that he was. He closed his desk and walked slowly and thoughtfully to Wentworth’s house, wishing, for once, that he had been less successful in the “friendly duel.”

It was a long walk; he could easily have put in another half-hour at the office had he chosen to take the elevated; but he was in no humor for business and he preferred to walk. It gave him additional time for thought. He must decide when and how he would tell Wentworth, and it is no easy task to tell a friend that his hold upon life is too slight to make him a possible insurance risk.

He would not do it to-night. It would be nothing short of brutal so to spoil a pleasant evening. Wentworth would have the knowledge soon enough, even with this respite, and he was entitled to as much of joyousness and pleasure as could be given him.

Murray was noticeably dispirited. He tried to be as jovial as usual, but he found himself looking at his friend much as he would have looked at a condemned man. There was sympathy and pity in his face. He wondered when the hour of fate would arrive. Might it not be that very evening? A moment of temporary excitement might be fatal; anything in the nature of a shock might mean the end. Indeed, the very information he had to give might be the one thing needed to snap the cord of life. If so, he would feel that he had really killed his friend, and yet he had no choice in the matter: he must refuse and he must explain why he refused. If it had been his own personal risk, he would have taken it cheerfully, but even had he so desired, he could not take it for the company in the face of the doctor’s report.

“What makes you so solemn?” asked Mrs. Wentworth. “You look as if you had lost your best friend.”

“I feel as if I had,” Murray replied thoughtlessly, and then he hastened to explain that some business affairs disturbed and worried him.

“But your victory over Stanley ought to make you cheerful,” she insisted. “Think of finally winning after so long a fight!”

“When shall I get the policy?” asked Wentworth.

“Policies are written at the home office,” answered Murray evasively.

“But the insurance becomes effective when the application is accepted and the first premium paid, doesn’t it?” asked Wentworth.

“Yes,” answered Murray.

“Well, now that I am at last converted to insurance I am an enthusiast,” laughed Wentworth. “We won’t waste any time at all. Get out your little check-book, Helen, and give Murray a check for the first premium. I’ll make it good to you to-morrow.”

“I don’t believe I could accept it now,” said Murray hesitatingly. “There are certain forms, you know—”

“Oh, well, I’ll send you a check the first thing in the morning,” interrupted Wentworth. “Perhaps it isn’t just the thing to turn a little family dinner into a business conference.”

“Better wait till you hear from me,” advised Murray, and his face showed his distress. He wished to avoid anything unpleasant at this time, but he was being driven into a corner.

“Is—is anything wrong?” asked Mrs. Wentworth anxiously.

“There is an extraordinary amount of red tape to the insurance business,” explained Murray, and the fact that he was very ill at ease did not escape the notice of Wentworth. The latter said nothing, but he lost his jovial air and he watched Murray as closely as Murray had previously watched him. It did not take him long to discover that Murray was abstracted and uncomfortable; that he was a prey to painful thoughts and kept track of the conversation only by a strong effort of will.

Mrs. Wentworth, too, discovered that something was wrong, and when the men retired to the library to smoke she went to her own room in a very unhappy frame of mind. She was sure that Murray had some bad news for her husband, but it did not occur to her that it concerned the insurance policy; it probably related to some business venture, she thought, for she knew that her husband had recently lost money and had still more invested in a speculative enterprise. Well, he would get the news from Murray, and she would get it from him.

Murray did not remain long, and he went out very quietly. Usually the two men laughed and joked at parting, but there was something subdued about them this time. As they paused for a moment at the door, she heard her husband say, “That’s all right, old man; it isn’t your fault.” Then, instead of coming to her, he put on his hat and left the house almost immediately after Murray had gone.

It was late when he came back, but she was waiting for him, and his face frightened her. He seemed to have aged twenty years in a few hours; he was haggard and pale and there was something of fear in his eyes.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look sick.”

“A little tired,” he answered with an attempt at carelessness. “I’ll be all right to-morrow.”

“Mr. Murray was troubled, too,” she persisted. “What’s it all about?”

“Oh, Murray has been unfortunate in a little business affair,” he explained.

“And you’re concerned in it, too,” she said.

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it’s all right, so don’t worry.”

More he refused to say, but later in the night, waking suddenly, she heard him in the library, and, stealing down stairs, found him pacing the floor in his dressing-gown and slippers. He meekly went back to bed when she gently chid him, but he was restless and slept little.

The next morning he held her in his arms several minutes before leaving for the office, and he knelt for some time beside the baby’s crib. It was such a leave-taking as might have been expected if he were going on a long journey. And she knew that he was withholding something from her.

At the office he shut himself up for nearly the whole morning.

“It must be a mistake,” he kept muttering. “That doctor is a fool. I’ll try another company.”

In the afternoon he put in an application and suggested that, as a matter of business convenience, he would like to be examined at once. Two days later he was politely informed that the company, on the advice of its physician, felt constrained to decline the risk. But the man who is condemned to death does not give up hope: he appeals to a higher court, holding to the last that an error of law or of fact will be discovered. Wentworth appealed his case, but the verdict of the specialist he consulted was the same: he might live many years, but he might die at any moment.

“I would advise you,” said the physician, “to give up active business and to get your financial affairs in the best possible shape. If you are to live, you must take unusual precautions to avoid excitement and worry.”

Avoid worry! What a mockery, when he was deprived of the opportunities to make proper provision for the little woman and the baby! He was well-to-do, but only so long as he continued to live and make money. Some investments he had, but they were neither numerous nor large, and not of a character that would be considered absolutely safe. He had invested to make money rather than to save it in most instances, so the amount that he had in really first-class securities was comparatively trifling.

“If I continue in business, how long can I expect to live, Doctor?” he asked.

“It is problematical,” was the reply. “Frankly, I don’t think I would give you more than two or three years of active business life, with the possibility of death at any moment during that time. Still, if you are careful, you ought to last two years.”

Wentworth shuddered. He had told the physician to speak frankly, but it was horrible to have the limit of life set in this way.

“Retire from business,” the doctor added, “go to some quiet place, and you may live as long as any other.”

“But I can’t!” cried Wentworth. “I haven’t the money, and I must provide for the little woman and the baby. My God! how helpless they would be without me!”

Wentworth went from the doctor’s office to the safe-deposit vaults where he kept his securities. He was a desperate man now—a man who had deliberately decided to sacrifice his life for those he loved. He would continue in business another year—two years, if necessary and the Lord permitted—and he would bend every energy to making provision for his little family. It might—nay, probably would—kill him, but what matter? To buy life at the expense of their future would be supremely selfish. And he might succeed before the fatal summons came: he might get his affairs in such shape in a year that he could retire with almost as good a chance of life as he had now—if he could stand the strain so long. But in his heart he felt he was pronouncing his own doom. He might put the optimistic view of the situation in words, but he did not believe the words. A great fear—a fear that was almost a certainty—gripped hard at his heart.

“Hic jacet!” he said to himself, as he went over the securities and estimated the amount of available cash he could command. He had speculated before and had been reasonably successful in most instances; he must speculate again, for in no other way could he bring his resources up to the point desired within the time limitations. The moment he reached this point he would put everything in stocks or bonds that would be absolutely safe. Indeed, he would do this as fast as he got a little ahead of the game.

Wentworth had speculated previously only with money that he could afford to lose; but he was speculating now with his entire surplus. It had been a divertisement before; it was a business now. He had to win—and he lost. No one could be more careful than he, but his judgment was wrong. When he had given the markets no particular attention he had taken an occasional “flier” with success; when he made a study of conditions and discussed the situation with friendly authorities he found himself almost invariably in error.

There was something pathetic and disquieting in the affection and consideration he displayed for his wife and child during this time. He endeavored to conceal his own distress, but morning after morning his wife clung to him and looked anxiously into his face. He spoke cheeringly, but he grew daily more haggard, and she knew he was concealing something. Once she asked for news about the life insurance policy.

“Oh, that’s all settled,” he replied, but he did not tell her how it was settled.

Finally she went to see Murray. He had brought the news that had made this great change in her husband, and he could tell her what was worrying him. Murray had not called since that evening. While in no sense responsible for it, he had been so closely identified with this blow that had fallen on his friend that he felt his presence, for a time at least, would be only an unpleasant reminder.

“I must know this secret,” she told Murray with earnest directness of speech. “It is killing Stanley. He is worried and anxious, and he is working himself to death in an effort to straighten out some complication.”

“He mustn’t do that!” exclaimed Murray quickly. “Work and worry are the two things for him to avoid.”

“Why?” demanded Mrs. Wentworth.

Murray hesitated. He knew why Wentworth had kept this from his wife, but was it wise? The man was deliberately walking to his grave. Ought not his wife to be informed in order that she might take the necessary steps to save him? It would be a breach of confidence, but did not the circumstances justify it? Wentworth was his friend, and he had a sincere regard for Mrs. Wentworth. Surely he ought not to stand idly by and witness a tragedy that he might prevent.

“You—you didn’t insure him?” she said inquiringly

“Mrs. Wentworth,” he said at last, “the thing that is worrying Stanley is the fact that we had to decline him as a risk.“

“You—you didn’t insure him?” she said inquiringly, as if she did not quite comprehend.

“No.”

“He let me think you had.”

“Because he did not wish to distress you, and I assure you, Mrs. Wentworth, I would not tell you this myself, were it not for the fact that Stanley is doing the most unwise thing possible.”

“I am very glad you did tell me,” she said quietly. She was not an emotional woman, but the pallor of her face and something of anxious fright in her eyes told how deeply she felt. “What must I do?”

“Get him out of business and away from excitement,” replied Murray promptly. “In a quiet place, if he takes care of himself, he may live as long as any of us.”

When Wentworth reached home that evening, the little woman, always affectionate, greeted him with unusual tenderness. She said nothing of her visit to Murray, but later she brought up the subject of moving to the country.

“I’m dreadfully worried about you, Stanley,” she said. “You must take a vacation.”

“I can’t,” he replied.

“But you must,” she insisted. “You’ve been working too hard lately.”

“Next year,” he said, “I hope to get out of this city turmoil and take you away to some quiet place, where we can live for each other and the baby.”

She went over and knelt beside him, as he leaned wearily back in his big arm-chair.

“Why not now?” she pleaded.

“My God! I can’t, Helen!” he cried. “I want to, but I can’t! If you only knew—”

“I only know that you will break down, if you don’t take a rest,” she interrupted hastily. It would only add to his distress to learn that she knew his secret. “Don’t you suppose I can see how you are overtaxing your strength? We must go away for a time, anyway.”

“Little woman,” he said, putting an arm round her, “it’s a question of finance, and you never could understand that very well. When I get things in shape we will go, but not yet. I have some investments to watch, and,”—wearily,—“things have gone rather against me lately. There are lots of things to be done before I can take any extended vacation, and it is even a more serious matter to retire permanently. My earning capacity is about all we have to live on now.”

“I thought you had money invested,” she remarked.

“I had,” he replied, “but it was not enough, and in trying to make it enough I made some wrong guesses on the market.”

“Never mind,” she said cheerily. “We’ll make the best of what’s left. We won’t need much if we get away from this fearful life. It isn’t money that the baby and I want, it’s you; and we don’t want you to die for us, but to live for us.”

Wentworth gave his wife a quick glance, for this was hitting very close to his secret; but he saw in her only the very natural anxiety of a loving wife, who knew that her husband was overtaxing his strength.

“You mean well,” he said, “but you don’t know.”

Mrs. Wentworth was not a business woman, and she knew little of her husband’s affairs, but she had a feeling that this question of life insurance was all that stood in the way of the precautions that he ought to take. He could get something for his interest in the business, if he retired, but not enough to make proper provision for her. He could take up some quiet pursuit and continue to make a little money as long as he lived, but he could leave only the most trifling income. And, in his efforts to improve matters, he had only made them worse. She understood so much.

There was an undercurrent of sadness, but still something beautiful, in the life that followed this conversation. All the little sympathetic attentions that love can suggest, each gave to the other, while each worried in secret, seeking only to make life a little easier and more cheerful for the other.

But Mrs. Wentworth was becoming as desperate as her husband, and even more unreasoning. Was not her husband’s life worth all the money of all the insurance companies? And were they not condemning him to death by their action? It was more than a risk that depended upon life; it was a life that depended upon the risk. In a little time she convinced herself that the insurance companies could save him and would not, failing utterly to appreciate the fact that, even with the greatest precautions, the chances were against him; that there was only a possibility that he might live longer than a few years, the probability being quite the reverse.

Murray was shocked when she called to see him again. The change in her husband was no greater than the change in her. Was not the man she loved committing suicide before her eyes? And was he not doing this for love of her and the baby? Would not such a condition of affairs make any woman desperate and unreasoning?

“Mr. Murray,” she said, “if you are as good a friend to my husband as he has always been to you, you will save his life.”

“I will do anything in my power, Mrs. Wentworth,” replied Murray. “Nothing in life ever has so distressed me as this.”

“Then give him the policy he wants.”

“Impossible! Why, the doctor—”

“You can fix it with the doctor; you know you can! Or you can get another doctor to pass him! Oh, Mr. Murray! I am not asking for money; I am asking for life—for his life! It’s suicide—murder! I want to get him away! I must get him away! But I can’t while he fears for our future—the baby’s and mine! He must provide for us, and he’s losing the little he had! He can’t stand it a month longer! Give him the policy, Mr. Murray, and I’ll swear to you never to present it for payment! It’s only for him that I ask it! You can give him life—give your friend life! Won’t you do it?”

The tears were running down the little woman’s cheeks, and Murray could not trust himself to speak for a moment.

“Mrs. Wentworth,” he said at last, “every cent I have is at your husband’s disposal, if he needs it, but what you ask is utterly impossible. The risk would be refused at the home office, even if I passed it, for the fact that he has been refused by two other companies would be reported there.”

In the case of another, Murray would have said more, but he knew that Mrs. Wentworth was quite beside herself and did not really appreciate that she was asking him to be dishonest with the company that employed him.

“He wouldn’t touch a cent of the money of such a friend!” she exclaimed with sudden anger. “He’s not a beggar, and neither am I! All I seek for him is the tranquility that means life; all I ask is the removal of the anxiety that means death. And this little you will not do for a friend!” She was beside herself with desperation.

It was bitter, it was harsh, it was unjustifiable, but Murray had forgiven her before she had ceased speaking. The depth of her feeling and the excitement under which she was laboring were sufficient to excuse her. But he felt as if he really were condemning his friend to death. Yet what could he do? He would cheerfully give a thousand dollars out of his own pocket to make things easier for the two suffering ones, but it was not a matter of ready cash. Wentworth had enough of that.

In the deepest distress Murray was pacing back and forth when the door opened and Wentworth himself staggered in. Murray was at his side in a moment and guided him to a chair.

“What’s the matter, old man?”

“Lost everything,” Wentworth gasped. “Tried to protect—margined to limit—all gone!”

“But your interest in the business?”

“Sold it—to protect deal.” He seemed almost at the point of collapse, but he rallied for a moment. “Insurance!” he cried. “I must have it! Damn the company! You must put it through for me! You hear, Murray!” The man was almost crazy, and he spoke fiercely. “You’ve got to do it—for humanity’s sake! Can’t leave them penniless!”

“We’ll talk about it to-morrow,” said Murray soothingly.

“You lie, Murray!” the excited man cried. “You won’t do it at all; you’ll see them starve first, you—you dog! I’ll kill you, if you don’t—”

Wentworth had risen in frenzied fury, as he pictured the future of his loved ones; he swayed for an instant, and Murray caught him as he fell. He was dead before Murray could get him back into the chair.

Murray did all that anyone could do for the bereaved woman, and more than any one else would have done, for the next day he sent her this letter:

Dear Mrs. Wentworth: After a conference with our physician we decided that a small risk on Mr. Wentworth would be justified, and the matter was closed up yesterday afternoon just previous to his death. As a result of my close personal relations with him, I know that he left his affairs in rather a complicated condition, so, as it will take a little time to file the necessary proofs and get the money from the company, I am taking the liberty of sending you my personal check for the amount of the policy, one thousand dollars, and I hope that you will not hesitate to call on me for any service that is in my power to render. With the deepest sympathy, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

David Murray.

“A lie,” he muttered, referring to the insurance item; “a cold, deliberate lie, but I feel better for telling it.”

AN INCIDENTAL SPECULATION

Just when the Interurban Traction Company thought the successful culmination of its plans in sight it woke up to the fact that there had been a miscalculation or an oversight somewhere. It had the absolute or prospective control of all the principal lines embraced in its elaborate scheme of connecting various towns and cities by trolley, which means that it had bought a good deal of the necessary stock and had options on most of the rest; but there was one insignificant little road that it had left to the last. This road had been a losing venture from its inception, and its stock was quoted far below par, with no buyers. As a matter of business policy, the more successful roads should be secured first, for the moment the secret was out their stocks would soar. They represented the larger investments, and their stock-holders could hold on, if they saw the advisability of it, without making any financial sacrifice; they were in a position to “hold up” the new company in the most approved modern style. But the Bington road was weak and unprofitable, valuable only as a connecting link in the chain.

“Of course,” said Colonel Babington, who was at the head of the new venture, “we’re sure to be held up somewhere on the line, and these people can hold us up for less than any of the others. They haven’t much as a basis for a hold-up, and they can’t afford to go on losing money. We can buy their road cheap the first thing, but the discovery of the purchase will give our plans away and add a million dollars to the cost of carrying them out. Any fool would know that we were not buying that road for itself alone. Why, the mere rumor that negotiations were opened would add fifty or a hundred per cent. to the value of the other stocks we want. We can’t afford even to wink at that road until we get control of the others.”

So they went about their work very secretly, hoping so to conceal their design that they would be able to get the last link at the bed-rock price; but, when the time came, entirely unexpected difficulties were encountered. The stock-holders might have been tractable enough, but the stock-holders themselves had been fooled.

“Why, there was a young fellow here last week,” they explained, “and he got a sixty-day option on enough stock to control the road.”

“Who was he?” asked the startled Colonel Babington.

“His name is Horace Lake,” they told him.

“I’ll have to look Horace up,” remarked the colonel thoughtfully.

Meanwhile, Horace was congratulating himself on having done a good stroke of business, and further amusing himself by figuring his possible profit.

“I’ve been looking for just such a chance as this,” he told Dave Murray, the insurance man.

“Have you got the money to carry it through?” asked the practical Murray.

“I had enough to put up a small forfeit to bind the option and convince them that I mean business, and I don’t need any more,” returned Lake.

“Once in a great while,” said Murray, “a man makes a good lot of money on a bluff, but even then he usually has some backing. It takes money to make money, as a general rule. You will find that most successful men, even those who are noted for their nervy financiering, got the basis of their fortunes by hard work and rigid economy. Wind may be helpful, but it makes a poor foundation.”

“This is one of the times when it is about all that is necessary,” laughed Lake. “I got a little inside information about the Interurban Traction Company’s plans in time to secure an option on one link in its chain of roads, and it has simply got to do business with me before it can make its line complete. For twenty thousand dollars, paid any time within sixty days, I can control the blooming little line, and the option to buy at that price is going to cost the traction company just twenty-five thousand dollars, which will be clear profit for me.”

“It sounds nice,” admitted Murray, “but, if I were in your place, I’d feel a good deal better if I had the money to make good. If they don’t buy, you lose your forfeit, which represents every cent you could scrape up.”

“They will buy,” asserted Lake confidently.

“They may think it cheaper to parallel your line,” suggested Murray.

“I’m not worrying,” returned Lake confidently. “I’m just waiting for them to come and see me, and they’ll come.”

Lake’s prophecy proved correct. They came—at least Colonel Babington came, he being the active manager of the company’s affairs. But Colonel Babington first took the precaution to learn all he could of Horace Lake’s financial standing and resources. This convinced him that it was what he termed a “hold-up,” but, even so, it was better to pay a reasonable bonus than to have a fight.

“We will give you,” said Colonel Babington, “a thousand dollars for your option on the majority stock of the Bington road.”

“The price,” replied Lake, “is twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“My dear young man,” exclaimed the colonel, when he had recovered his breath, “you ought to see a specialist in mental disorders. You are clearly not right in your mind.”

“The price,” repeated Lake, “is twenty-five thousand dollars now, and, if I am put to any trouble or annoyance in the matter, the price will go up.”

“A bluff,” said the colonel, “is of use only when the opposing party does not know it is a bluff. We happen to know it. You haven’t the money to buy that road, and you can’t get it.”

“You speak with extraordinary certainty,” returned Lake with dignified sarcasm.

“The road,” asserted the colonel, “is valuable only to us, and we can parallel it, if necessary. No conservative capitalist is going to advance you the money to buy it in the face of such a risk as that, so we have only to wait until your option expires to get it from the men who now own it, and I may add that we have taken a second option at a slightly higher price. Therefore, your only chance to get out of the deal with a profit is to let us acquire the road under the first option at something less than the second option price. To avoid any unnecessary delay, we might be willing to pay you a bonus of two thousand dollars.”

“The price,” said Lake, “is now twenty-six thousand.”

“Sixty days—less than fifty now, as a matter of fact—is not such a long time,” remarked the colonel. “We will wait.”

Lake told Murray later that he “had them in a corner,” but Murray was inclined to be doubtful; fighting real money with wind, he said, was always a risky undertaking, and the Interurban Traction Company had plenty of real money. Lake, however, being in the “bluffing” line himself, was inclined to think all others were doing business on the same basis, and he confidently expected the colonel to return in a few days. But the colonel came not.

Then Lake made another trip to Bington, to look the ground over, and he was disturbed to find that the colonel had been sounding the people on a proposition to put a line through the town on another street. This was only a tentative plan, to be adopted in case of failure to get the existing line, but it showed that the company was not disposed to be held up without a fight. Fortunately, the people did not take kindly to the idea. The principal shops were on the line of the trolley now, and the proprietors did not wish to have travel diverted to another street.

Lake devoted several days to missionary work in Bington, pointing out the great depreciation of property that would follow such a move, and he finally left with a feeling that the company would have an extremely difficult time getting the necessary legislation from the town officials. Still, he was not entirely at ease, for officials are sometimes “induced” to act contrary to the wishes of the people they are supposed to represent. But he believed he had made the situation such that Babington would come back to him. Surely, it would be cheaper to deal with him than to buy an entire town board.

Thirty of the sixty days slipped away, and Lake grew really anxious. The Interurban Traction Company could not be a success without a connecting link between the two main stretches of its line, and Lake had not believed that it would dare to proceed with its plans until this was assured. Consequently, he had expected all work to stop, pending negotiations with him. But work did not stop. There were two or three trifling gaps at other places, and the company was laying the rails to bridge them, in addition to improving the road-beds of the lines it had bought. It even began to build a half-mile of track to reach one terminus of his little road. Clearly, there was no anticipation of trouble in ultimately beating him.

“It’s my lack of money,” he soliloquized. “I’ve got the basis of a good thing, if I only had the money to make it good, but I haven’t, and they know it. Murray was right.”

His thoughts being thus turned to Murray, he went to see him, in the faint hope that he might interest him in the plan. Murray had money to invest. But Murray deemed the risk too great in this instance.

“They can beat you,” said Murray. “They have unlimited resources, and they’ll certainly get through Bington on another street, if you persist in making your terms too stiff. Very likely, they would have given you three thousand or possibly even five thousand for your option when they first came to you, and they may do it now.”

“I tell you, it’s a good thing,” insisted Lake.

“If it’s really as good a thing as you think it is,” said Murray, “you will have no difficulty in getting somebody with money to take it off your hands at a good margin of profit to you, but I can’t see it.”

In this emergency, Lake recalled a man of considerable wealth who had known him as a boy and had taken an interest in him. It was humiliating not to be able to put the scheme through himself, after all his planning and confident talk, but it was better to turn it over to some one else than to fail entirely. So he went to see Andrew Belden.

“There is a remote chance of success,” declared Belden, “but I would not care to risk twenty thousand on it.”

“The company can’t get through Bington, except on that franchise,” insisted Lake.

“That may be so,” admitted Belden, “but I have learned not to be too confident in forecasting the action of public officials and corporations. The company could make a strong point by threatening to cut out Bington entirely and carry its line to one side of it.”

“That would make a loop in their road that would be costly in building and in the delays it would occasion,” argued Lake. “They can’t make any circuits, if they are to do the business.”

“Nevertheless,” returned Belden, “their actions show that they are very sure of their ground.”

“Simply because I haven’t the ready cash,” said Lake bitterly. “Will you loan it to me, Mr. Belden? If you won’t go into the deal yourself, will you loan me the money to put it through? I’ll give you the stock as security, and I think you know me well enough to know that I’ll repay every cent of it as rapidly as possible.”

“My dear Horace,” exclaimed Belden with frank friendliness, “I haven’t the least doubt of your integrity, but I have very serious doubts of your ability to repay any such sum, and it is more than I care to lose. You never have had a thousand dollars at one time in your life, and I may say, without intending to be unkind, that it isn’t likely you ever will. As for the security, its value depends entirely on the success of your plans: if you fail, it won’t be worth ten cents. Now, if you had any real security, upon which I could realize in case anything happened to you, I would cheerfully let you have the money for as long a time as you wish. Although your plan does not appeal to me, I am sincerely anxious to be of assistance to you as far as possible, but I can’t make you a gift of twenty thousand dollars. Convince me that it will be repaid ultimately—no matter in how long a time—and I will let you have it.”

Lake departed, discouraged. He had no security of any sort to offer, and had only asked for the loan as a desperate last resort, without the slightest expectation that he would get it. The company, he decided, had beaten him, just because no one else was clear-headed enough to see the opportunity, and he might as well get what little profit he could while there was still time. With this object in view, he went to see the colonel.

“I have decided,” he said, “to let you have the road for a bonus of five thousand dollars.”

“That is very kind of you,” returned the colonel, “but we can get it cheaper. You see,” he explained, with the disagreeable frankness of one who thinks he holds the winning hand, “the minority stock-holders were a little disgruntled when they learned of your deal—thought they had been left out in the cold—and they were ready to make very favorable terms with us. As we have a second option on the majority stock, at a somewhat higher figure, we have only to wait until your option expires and then take the little we need to give us control.”

“I’ll let you have my option for the two thousand you offered a month ago,” said Lake in desperation.

“It’s not worth that to us now.”

“One thousand dollars.”

“Why, frankly, Mr. Lake,” said the colonel still pleasantly, “we men of some experience and standing in the business world don’t like to have half-baked financiers interfering with our plans, and we aim to discourage them as effectually as possible whenever possible.” Then, with a sudden change of tone: “We won’t give you a damn cent for your option. You were too greedy.”

“Of course, you men of money and high finance are not greedy at all,” retorted Lake sarcastically.

Lake was too depressed to see it at the moment, but later it began to dawn on him that the colonel, usually astute, had made a grievous mistake. In his anxiety to impress upon the young man the futility of his avaricious schemes, in the face of such wise and resourceful opposition, he had mentioned the fact that the minority stock had been brought within their reach. Had they already bought it, or had they only secured options on it? If already purchased, the purchase price would prove a dead loss, unless they were able to get enough more to secure control. To parallel the road would be to kill a company in which they were financially interested, in addition to incurring the considerable expense necessary for a new connecting link.

Lake went to Bington that afternoon, and returned the following morning. The game was his, if he could raise the money; they had bought most of the minority stock outright, being unable to get options on it. He was sure of victory now, if he could raise the money. He no longer wished to turn the deal over to any one else on any terms: he wished to carry it to the conclusion himself. But the money, the money!

He tried Belden again, but Belden still considered the security utterly inadequate for a loan of twenty thousand dollars. In truth, although Belden considered the outlook a little more promising now, he doubted the young man’s ability to handle such a deal, and it would take very little to upset all calculations. The company’s investment was not sufficient to prevent the abandonment of the road in some very possible circumstances, although it was ample evidence of a present plan to use it. Murray took the same view of the situation.

“It begins to look like a good speculation,” said Murray, “but I haven’t the money to invest in it, and I never was much of a speculator, anyway. I have discovered that, as a general thing, when the possible profit begins to climb very much over the legal rate of interest, the probability of loss increases with it. However, if you want to take the risk, that’s your affair, provided you have the money.”

“But I haven’t,” complained Lake; “that’s the trouble.”

“Too bad you’re not carrying enough insurance to be of some use,” remarked Murray.

“What good would that do?” asked Lake.

“Why, then you’d only have to convince your wife that you have a safe investment, and it’s always easier to convince your wife than it is to convince some coldblooded capitalist. Insurance ranks high as security, but of course the beneficiary has to consent to its use.”

“I never had thought of insurance as a factor in financiering,” said Lake. “I had regarded it more as a family matter.”

“It plays an important part in the business world,” explained Murray, “and it might even play a part in speculation. There is partnership insurance, you know.”

“I may have heard of it, but I never gave it any consideration.”

“It’s not a speculation, but a business precaution,” said Murray. “The partners are insured in favor of the firm. If one of them dies, it gives the firm the ready cash to buy his interest from the widow, without infringing on the business capital. Partnership insurance may sometimes prevent a failure; it may prevent several. Many interests may depend temporarily upon the operation of one man, and his sudden death might spell ruin for a number of people, unless they were protected by insurance. The policy is playing a more important part in the business world every day. There are lots of strange things that can be done when you fully understand it.”

“But that doesn’t help me,” asserted Lake impatiently.

“No,” returned Murray, “I don’t see how insurance could help you just now, unless you were to die. A policy won’t be accepted as security for a sum in excess of the premiums paid, for you might default.”

“I’m not the kind of man who dies to win,” said Lake rather sharply.

“Of course not,” replied Murray. “I was merely considering the financial possibilities of policies.” All insurance questions being of absorbing interest to Murray, he straightway forgot all about Lake’s predicament, and busied his mind with his own speculations. “There is so much that can be done with insurance,” he went on, “but I guess it’s just as well the public doesn’t know it all. Do you remember the case of Rankin, the banker who committed suicide?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Rankin couldn’t have done anything with our company, because the element of premeditation is assumed if death by suicide occurs within two years from the time the policy is issued. After that the manner of death cuts no figure, for the courts have held that an insurance company takes a risk on the mind as well as the body of a policy-holder, and, anyway, competition has cut out the old suicide restrictions. But there are companies that issue policies incontestable after the date of issue. Suppose Rankin, when he found his affairs in such shape that he no longer dared to face the world, had gone to one or more of these companies. A hundred thousand dollars—very likely less—would have protected his bank and provided for his family. He had already decided to kill himself, for his operations had been such that he could not hope to escape the penitentiary when discovery came, but he was ostensibly still a prosperous man. Many men of his standing insure themselves for extraordinarily large sums, to protect legitimately their business interests as well as their families.

“Not so very long ago we issued a paid-up policy for fifty thousand dollars on the life of one man, who died within three years, and we thought nothing of it. He was taking a risk on his own life then, for he thought he was going to live long enough to make a paid-up policy cheaper than the aggregate of annual payments, whereas there would have been a saving to his estate of a good many thousands of dollars if he had followed the other plan. However, that has nothing to do with this case; I mention it only to show that a man of Rankin’s apparent standing could have got insurance to any amount without creating comment. And, with an incontestable-after-date-of-issue policy, he could have protected his business associates and his family by the very culmination of his overwhelming disgrace. Why, a defaulter could use part of his stolen money in this way to provide for his family when the moment of discovery and death shall come, or a dishonest business man, facing ruin, could use his creditors’ money to make such provision, for insurance money is something sacred, that can not be reached like the rest of an estate. Oh, there are great dramatic possibilities in this business, Lake—tragedies and comedies and dramas of which the public knows nothing.”

“How does that help me?” demanded Lake gloomily, and the question brought Murray back to the realities of the moment.

“It doesn’t help you,” Murray replied, “but it’s an intensely interesting subject to one who gives it a little time and thought.”

Yet it did help Lake, although not at that moment. It was a new field, and Lake liked to explore new fields. A novelty that taxed his ingenuity appealed to him especially. True, he had enough to occupy his mind without entering upon idle speculation, but, when every other avenue to success seemed closed, his thoughts would revert to insurance.

“If it holds out such opportunities for others, why not for me?” he asked. “If others have entirely overlooked the possibilities, why may not I be doing the same thing?”

He met the colonel on the street occasionally, and the way the colonel smiled at him was maddening. There could be no doubt that the colonel considered the game won, but he was not a man to take chances: he had Lake watched, and the latter’s every move was reported to him. Even when Lake made another trip to Bington and endeavored to arrange a shrewd deal with some of the majority stock-holders, the colonel promptly heard of it.

“Accept my notes in payment for the stock,” Lake urged on that occasion, “and I’ll let you in on the profits of the deal. The traction company has got to get this road, but you can’t hold it up for a big price, because you were foolish enough to give it a second option. I can do it, however. Let me have the stock, and you can divide up among yourselves half of all I get in excess of the option price. My notes will be paid, and you will have a bonus of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars.”

But the stock-holders were conservative and cautious men, and the very fact that Lake could not command the money that he needed made them suspicious. As matters stood, they were sure of getting out of a losing venture with a small profit—at least, so it seemed to them—and they preferred that to the risk of losing everything in an effort to secure a larger profit. Furthermore, they were now on the side of the colonel, for his option was at a larger price. And the colonel was very confident—so confident that work was being rushed on details that would prove valueless without the Bington road. This was what made Lake desperately angry; it was humiliating to be treated as a helpless weakling.

As valuable time passed, his mind reverted again to the insurance field. His opportunity—the opportunity of a lifetime—was almost lost. The colonel, wishing to lose no time, had arranged for a meeting with certain of the majority stock-holders the day the first option expired. The option expired at noon, and the colonel would be ready to take over what stock he needed at one minute after the noon hour. This would not be very much, in view of the minority stock he already held, but the sanguine stock-holders did not know this: they expected him to take all of it.

“Some of them are going to find they’re tricked, just as I am,” Lake grumbled. “If I could only convince Belden of the ultimate absolute security of a loan! He wants to help me; he’s ready to be convinced; but—”

People passing saw this moody, depressed young man stop short in the street and his eye light with sudden hope.

“By thunder!” he exclaimed. “Of course, I can protect him against unforeseen disaster, if he has confidence in my integrity!”

He was almost jubilant when he entered Belden’s office.

“Got the money?” asked Belden.

“No; but I know how to get it,” replied Lake. “You believe in my honesty, don’t you?”

“Implicitly.”

“You merely doubt my ability?”

“Your financial ability,” explained Belden. “You will do what you agree to do—if you can. I have no earthly doubt of your willingness, even anxiety, to repay every obligation you may incur, but, added to other risks, there is the possibility of accident.”

“If I eliminate that?”

“You may have the money.”

“On long time?”

“The time and the terms are immaterial.”

“I’ll come for it later,” announced Lake, and he departed, leaving Belden puzzled and curious.

Once outside, Lake stopped to do a little mental figuring before taking up the other details of his plan.

“I advanced five hundred to bind the option,” he reflected. “That leaves nineteen thousand five hundred necessary to put the deal through. Twenty thousand from Belden will give me just the margin I need.”

Murray was as much puzzled and surprised by the change in the man as Belden had been, and Murray, like Belden, was anxious to help him in any reasonably safe way.

“Am I good for five hundred for thirty days, if I give you my positive assurance that I know exactly how I am going to pay it in that time?” asked Lake.

“Why, yes,” replied Murray. “On short-time figuring you’re a pretty safe man.”

“Draw me a check for it, and I’ll give you my thirty-day note,” said Lake, “and my verbal assurance that it’s a cinch.”

Murray noted the confidence of Lake’s tone and manner, and drew the check.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

“Pay a life insurance premium,” laughed Lake. “Give me an application blank and round up a medical examiner. I want a twenty-year endowment policy for twenty thousand dollars, and I want it put through like a limited express that’s trying to make up time.”

“I suppose you know what you’re doing,” said Murray doubtfully.

“You bet I do!” Lake spoke confidently.

“Oh, very well,” remarked Murray. “I don’t see how I can refuse business for the company, even if I stand to lose.”

“You won’t lose,” declared Lake with joyous enthusiasm. “I’m going to show you a new trick in the line of insurance financiering.”

After that, Lake haunted Murray’s office, and grew daily more anxious. He was a good risk, but certain formalities were necessary, and these took time, although Murray did his utmost to shorten the routine. Lake’s nervousness increased; he had Murray telegraph the home office; he grew haggard, for he had not counted on this delay; but finally, in the moment of almost utter despair, the policy was delivered to him. An hour later he was in Belden’s office.

“I want twenty thousand at four per cent., payable at the rate of one thousand a year, with interest!” he cried. “I’ll pay it, to a certainty, within sixty days, but I’m trying to make it look more reasonable, to satisfy you. You believe I can pay one thousand a year, don’t you?”

“If you live.”

“If I don’t,” exclaimed Lake, “there is insurance for twenty thousand in my wife’s favor, and duly assigned to you,” and he banged the policy down on the desk in front of the astonished Belden. “You can trust me to take care of the premiums, can’t you?”

“Your integrity I never doubted,” replied Belden, “and that obligation should be within your means.”

“My rule of life shall be: the premiums first, the payments on the note next,” declared Lake. “If I fall behind in the latter, the security will still be good. I only ask that anything in excess of what may be due you, in case of my death, shall go to my wife, and she, of course, becomes the sole beneficiary the moment you are paid. But, for the love of heaven, hurry!”

Instead of hurrying, Belden leaned back in his chair and looked at the young man with bewildered admiration.

“Such ingenuity,” he said at last, “ought not to go unrewarded. As a strict business proposition, your plan would hardly find favor with a conservative banker, but, as a matter of friendship and confidence—” He reached for his check-book. “Such a head as yours is worth a risk,” he added a moment later.

Lake reached the office of the Bington road at 11:30 on the day his option expired. The colonel was already there, waiting. So were some of the majority stock-holders. The colonel was confident and unusually loquacious.

“Now that the matter is practically settled,” he remarked with the cheerful frankness of a man who has won, “I may admit that the young man had us up a tree. He succeeded in putting the other route through Bington practically beyond our reach, and forced us to take the risk of doing business with the minority stock-holders at a possible dead loss. But we knew he didn’t have the money, so we went ahead with our plans and our work without delay. A little ready cash—”

It was then that Lake entered and deposited a small satchel on the long table.

“I will take the stock under my option,” he announced briefly to such of the majority stock-holders as were present. “I think I have got all I need, with the exception of what is represented by you gentlemen. It has been a pretty busy morning for me.” He emptied the stock certificates already acquired and some bundles of bank-notes on the table. “Colonel,” he said with a joyous and triumphant laugh, “you’d better sit up and begin to take notice.”

The colonel’s attitude and air of easy confidence already had changed, and his look of amazement and dismay was almost laughable.

“Quick, gentlemen,” cautioned Lake, with a glance at the clock. “I’ve tendered the money in time, but I’ll feel a little more comfortable when I have the rest of the needed stock.”

Like one in a dream the colonel leaned over the table and watched the transaction.

“Do—do you want to sell some of that stock?” he asked at last.

“No,” replied Lake; “I don’t want to sell some of it; I want to sell all of it.”

“We don’t need all of it,” said the colonel.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” returned Lake magnanimously. “I’ll sell you all or any part of it for fifty thousand dollars.”

“On the basis of fifty thousand for your entire holdings?” asked the colonel.

“No; at the set price of fifty thousand for whatever you take.”

“Too much,” said the colonel.

“As you please,” said Lake carelessly. “The price of the control of the Bington road goes up one thousand dollars a day. It’s dirt cheap at fifty thousand now, but, of course, if you don’t need it, Colonel, the bargain price doesn’t interest you.”

The colonel did need it; in fact, the company, in its sublime confidence, had put itself in a position where failure to get it meant a considerable loss.

“On second thought,” remarked Lake, “I’ll have to add a thousand to compensate me for the indignity of being called a half-baked financier. Do you remember that, Colonel?”

“We’ll take it,” said the colonel resignedly. Then he added reflectively: “You’ve made a pretty good thing out of this, Lake.”

“Fair, fair,” replied Lake. “After I’ve repaid the twenty thousand five hundred that I borrowed, I’ll have thirty thousand five hundred left, not to mention an insurance policy for twenty thousand in favor of my wife, with the first premium paid. You ought to study the insurance question, Colonel. There are wonderful financial possibilities in it, and some day, perhaps, you will wake up to the fact that insurance beat you in this deal.”

AN INCIDENTAL FAVOR

On the same day two women called to see Dave Murray in regard to the same matter, and that was the beginning of the trouble.

The first was Mrs. Albert Vincent. The obituary columns of the morning papers had given a few lines to the death of Albert Vincent, but Murray had not expected to hear from his widow so promptly, and she was a little too businesslike to meet his idea as to the proprieties of the occasion. In fact, there was no indication of either outward mourning or inward grief.

“Perhaps you will recall,” she said, without the slightest trace of emotion, “that I wrote to you some time ago to ask if the premiums on my husband’s insurance had been fully paid.”

“I recall it,” replied Murray.

“And you answered that they had been paid.”

“I recall that also,” said Murray.

“Well, he died last night,” explained the widow, “and I would like to know when I can get the insurance money.”

Murray looked at her in amazement. He had had to deal with many people whom necessity made importunate, but never before had he met such cold-bloodedness as this woman displayed in tone and manner. Apparently, it was no more to her than a business investment, upon which she was now about to realize.

“There are certain formalities necessary,” he said, “but there will be little delay after proper proof of death has been filed. You will, of course, have the attending physician—”

“I don’t know who he is,” interrupted the woman.

“You don’t know who he is!” repeated Murray in astonishment.

“No. But I will find out and see him at once. It is important that there shall be as little delay as possible.”

Previous experiences made Murray quick at jumping to conclusions in such cases, and he now thought he had the explanation of this unusually prompt call. The woman was stylishly dressed, but that was no proof that she had the ready cash essential at such a time.

“I think I understand,” said Murray delicately. “You can not meet the expenses incident to—”

“I have nothing to do with any expenses,” the woman again interrupted coldly. “She looked after him in life, and she can look after him now.”

“She!” exclaimed Murray. “Who?”

“The nurse,” replied the woman scornfully. “But she can’t have the insurance—not a cent of it. And that’s what she has been after.”

“Let me understand this,” said Murray thoughtfully. “You and your husband have not been living together?”

“Not for five years.”

“And this other woman?”

“She was an old flame, and she went to him when he became ill.”

“Did he send for you?”

“No. He knew better than to do that. But the insurance is in my name, and I’m going to have it—all of it. That’s my right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Murray slowly; “I’m sorry to say that is your absolute right.” The supreme selfishness and heartlessness of the woman were revolting to Murray. “The policy names you as beneficiary, and when it is presented, with proof of death, the money will have to be paid to you.”

“How am I to get the policy?” asked the woman. “He had it put away somewhere.”

“That is a matter upon which I can not undertake to advise you,” replied Murray.

“Anyhow,” declared the woman defiantly, for Murray’s words and expression showed his disapprobation, “I want to serve notice on you that not one cent of the money is to be paid to any one else. It would be just like that nurse to try to get it.”

“You shall have every cent to which you are entitled,” replied Murray with frigid courtesy, “but nothing is to be gained by further discussion.”

“I suppose,” exclaimed the woman with sharp resentfulness, “that your sympathies are with that shameless nurse.”

“I don’t know,” returned Murray quietly. “I’m not at all sure that your husband was not the one who was most entitled to sympathy.”

It was unlike Murray to speak thus brutally, but the woman irritated him. Many were the examples of selfishness that had come to his notice, but this seemed to him a little worse than any of the others. That she had been living apart from her husband might be due to no fault of hers, but she impressed him as being a vain, vindictive, mercenary woman, with no thought above the rather gaudy clothes she wore—just the kind to demand everything and give nothing. Certainly her actions showed that she lacked all the finer sensibilities that one naturally associates with true women. No matter what might lie back of it all, common decency should have prevented her from making such a display of her own small soul at such a time. At least, so Murray thought.

“She is the kind of woman who marries a man’s bank account,” he mused, “and considers the inability to supply her with all the money she wants as the first evidence of incompatibility of temper. Some women think they want a husband when they really only want an accommodating banker.”

Murray was still musing in this strain when the second woman called. Unlike the first, this woman gave some evidence of grief and mourning: her eyes showed that she had been weeping, and her attire, although not the regulation mourning, was as near to it as a scanty wardrobe would permit on short notice. But she was self-possessed, and spoke with patient resignation.

“Necessity,” she explained, “has compelled me to come to see you at this time about Albert Vincent’s life insurance policy.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Murray thoughtlessly, “you are the nurse!”

“Yes,” she replied quietly, after one startled look, “I am the nurse. I infer that Mrs. Vincent has been here.”

“She has just left,” said Murray.

“Her attentions,” said the nurse bitterly, “have been confined to an effort to get prompt news of her husband’s death.”

Murray knew instinctively that a little drama of life was opening before him, but his duty was clear.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “the policy is in her name.”

“In her name!” cried the nurse. “Why, he told me—” Then she stopped short. She would not betray his perfidy, even if he had been false to her.

“What did he tell you?” asked Murray kindly.

“No matter,” answered the nurse. “I—I only wanted enough to defray the—the necessary expenses. That’s why I came. There isn’t a cent—not a cent. Even the little money I had has been used, and there are debts—But she’ll pay, of course.”

Murray was deeply distressed. Mrs. Albert Vincent was so bitter—possibly with justification, although he did not like to believe it—that she would do nothing; her feeling was simply one of deep resentment that even death could not allay. But he hesitated to say so.

“Let me understand this matter a little better,” he said at last. “I am sincerely anxious to be of any assistance possible, but the circumstances are unusual.”

The nurse fought a brief battle with herself in silence. To bare the details of the story was like uncovering her heart to the world, but she saw the sympathy in Murray’s eyes, and she was personally helpless in a most trying emergency. She sorely needed a guiding hand.

“Albert and I were engaged to be married,” she said at last, with simple frankness. “We had some trifling quarrel, and then this woman came between us. He was not rich, but he had some property and excellent prospects, and—well, they were married. It was an elopement—a matter of momentary pique, he told me afterward. God knows I never tried to interfere with their married life, and she had no reason to be jealous of me. I did not even see either of them, except at rare intervals, for a long time, but she could not forget or forgive the fact that we had been a great deal to each other. And she was selfish and extravagant. I am merely repeating the judgment of her own friends in this, for I do not wish to be unjust to her, even now. After I had forsaken society and become a trained nurse I heard something of their troubles: they were living beyond his income, and his income did not increase according to expectations. Perhaps the worry of such conditions made him less capable of improving his opportunities. At any rate, her extravagance created a great deal of comment, and he has told me since that they quarreled frequently over financial matters. Then I heard that they had separated and that he had given her nearly all of the little he had left. I was not trying to keep track of them or pry into their affairs, but there were mutual friends, and I could not help hearing what was common gossip. But I studiously avoided any chance of meeting either of them—until I heard that he was sick and alone. Then I went to him and cared for him. It was not proper, you will say? Perhaps not. It put me in a false position and invited scandal? Perhaps it did. But I went, and I would go again; I was there to soothe his last moments; I was with him when all others had forsaken him, and there is nothing in this life that I would not sacrifice for the glory of that memory!”

The light of self-sacrificing love shone in her eyes as she made this final declaration, and Murray did not trust himself to speak for a moment or two. The story had been told so quietly, so simply, that the sudden emphasis at the conclusion was almost irresistible in the sublimity of its self-denying love. The great contrast between the two women made it all the stronger.

“I shall consider it my personal privilege,” replied Murray, “to see that everything possible is done.”

“Thank you,” said the nurse.

“But there are still some points that will have to be cleared up,” continued Murray. “What made you think the policy was in your name?”

“He told me he would have it changed, so that I could pay all the bills in case of his death,” said the nurse.

“Possibly,” remarked Murray, “he thought he could, but to permit a change in the beneficiary without the consent of the original beneficiary would be a blow at the very structure of life insurance. It would put a true and devoted wife at the absolute mercy of an unscrupulous or thoughtless husband: he could change the policy without her knowledge; he could sell it for the cash-surrender value; he could transfer it to a loan-shark to meet his personal or business needs—in fact, it would be no more than so much stock that could be reached by any creditor, and the trusting wife might find herself penniless. In this particular case the inability to make such a change may work injustice, but the ability to make it would work far greater injustice in practically all other instances. Mr. Vincent may have thought he could do this, and it is the very exceptional case when I most heartily wish it had been possible, but he doubtless made inquiries and found that it was not. When the beneficiary can be deprived of her interest without her knowledge and consent the value of insurance will be gone.”

“Then that is what he learned,” she remarked, as if a question had been answered. “He was dreadfully worried before he became too ill to give much thought to business matters,” she added by way of explanation. “I thought it was because I was using my own little hoard to pay expenses, and, on the doctor’s advice, I went with him twice in a cab to see about some things that were worrying him, although even then he had no business to leave his bed. It was the lesser of two evils, the doctor said, for his mental distress was affecting his physical condition seriously. He said he never could rest until he had provided for those who had been good to him in adversity. But he didn’t mean me!” she exclaimed quickly. “He meant the doctor and some others who had been generous in the matter of credit. He knew why I—” She paused a moment, and then added: “But he wanted the others paid, and there was no one else he could trust.”

“I quite understand,” said Murray encouragingly.

“He made me stay in the cab both times,” she went on, “and the second time—when he had me sign his wife’s name—he seemed—”

“Had you sign his wife’s name!” exclaimed Murray. “To what?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It was a formality, he said, to straighten out some tangle, so I did it. I would have done anything to ease his mind and get him back to bed.”

Murray gave a low whistle. He was beginning to understand the situation.

“Pardon me, Miss—” he said.

“Miss Bronson—Amy Bronson,” she explained.

Murray had heard of Miss Bronson some years before. She had suddenly given up society to become a trained nurse, and there had been vague rumors of an unhappy love affair. Later, her father’s death had left her dependent upon her own resources, and society had commented on what a fortunate thing it was that she had already chosen an occupation and fitted herself for it. He never had known her, and only a bare suggestion of the story had come to his notice, but it was sufficient to make him more than ever her champion now.

“Miss Bronson,” he said, “I fear there are greater complications here than I had supposed. Did Mr. Vincent get any money on either of those trips?”

“Yes. On the second he told me that he closed up an old deal, and he was more contented after that. After the first he was so dreadfully disturbed, that I never dared ask him any questions.”

“Do you know where the insurance policy is?”

“No. I searched for it before coming here, but could find no trace of it.”

Murray was as considerate as the circumstances would permit, but he had become suddenly business-like. Aside from the question of sympathy, the matter was now one to interest him deeply. He had been groping blindly before, but with light came the possibility of action.

“You are alone?” he asked.

“Entirely so.”

“If you will go back,” said Murray, reaching for his desk telephone, “Mrs. Murray will be there as soon as a cab can carry her. I would go myself, but I think I can be of better service to you for the moment by remaining here.”

As soon as she had gone and he had telephoned to his wife, Murray made some inquiries of the clerks in the outer office and learned of a sick man who had asked about the possibility of changing the beneficiary of a policy. The visit had been made some time before, but the man was so evidently ill and in such deep distress that the circumstances had been impressed on the mind of the clerk who had answered his questions.

“That accounts for one trip,” mused Murray. “Now for the loan-shark that he saw on the other. We’ll hear from him pretty soon, and then there will be some lively times.”

Murray had had experience with the ways of loan-sharks before, and he was confident that he now had the whole story. Vincent was out of money and desperate; he knew that Miss Bronson had been using her own money, and that not one cent of it would his wife pay back; he had tried to have the beneficiary of the policy changed, and had failed. Then, determined to get something out of the policy, he had gone to a loan-shark. The unscrupulous money-lender, getting an exorbitant rate of interest, could afford to be less particular about the wife’s signature. He would run the risk of forgery, confident that the policy would be redeemed to prevent a scandal, no matter what happened. Indeed, in some cases a loan-shark would a little rather have a forgery than the genuine signature, for it gives him an additional hold on the interested parties and lessens the likelihood of a resort to law over the question of usurious interest.

“The scoundrel will come,” said Murray, and the scoundrel came by invitation. A formal notification that he held an assignment of the policy arrived first, and that gave his name and address and enabled Murray to telephone him. A loan-shark does not lose much time in matters of this sort. Neither did Murray in this case, for his invitation to call was prompt and imperative, even to setting the exact time for the call. And a message was sent to Mrs. Albert Vincent, also.

“What’s your interest in that policy?” asked Murray.

“A thousand dollars,” replied the money-lender.

“A thousand dollars!” ejaculated the startled Murray. “What the devil did he do with the money?”

“That is something that does not concern me,” said the money-lender carelessly.

The confidence and carelessness of the reply recalled Murray to a consciousness of the situation. He had a sharp and hard game to play with a clever and unscrupulous man.

“How much did you loan him?” he demanded.

“The note is for a thousand dollars,” was the prompt reply.

“How much did you loan him, Shylock?” repeated Murray, and the money-lender was startled out of his complacent confidence.

“I didn’t come here to be insulted!” he exclaimed. “I hold the policy and the assignment of it as security. If you can’t talk business, as man to man, I’ll quit and leave the matter to a lawyer.”

“If you put one foot outside of that door,” retorted Murray, “we’ll fight this matter to a finish, Shylock, and we’ll get some points on your business methods. Come back and sit down.”

The money-lender had made a pretense of leaving, but he paused and met the cold, hard look of Murray. Then he came back.

“Of course, we take risks,” he said apologetically.

“Mighty few,” commented Murray uncompromisingly.

“If a man has security that is good at the bank he won’t come to us,” persisted the money-lender. “We have to protect ourselves for the additional risk.”

“By getting a man to put himself in the shadow of the penitentiary,” said Murray. “I know all about you people, Shylock. How much did you loan?”

The money-lender was angered almost to the point of defiance—but not quite. Loan-sharks do not easily reach that point: the very nature of their business makes it inadvisable, except when some poor devil is in their power.

“Oh, of course, if it’s a personal matter with you,” he said, “I might scale it a little. The note is for a thousand dollars, with various incidental charges that make it now a thousand and eighty dollars. I might knock off a hundred from that.”

“How much did you loan him, Shylock?” repeated Murray.

“Nine hundred dollars,” answered the money-lender in desperation.

“Shylock,” said Murray with cold deliberation, “I know you people. If I didn’t, I might ask to see the canceled check, but that would prove nothing. You give a check for the full amount, but the man has to put up a cash bonus when he gets it. How much did you loan him?”

“I’ll stand on the note,” declared the money-lender angrily. “I know my rights, and I can be as ugly as you. The note is signed by himself and his wife, and you’ll have a hard time going back of it.”

Murray touched a bell and a boy answered.

“Ask Mrs. Vincent to step in here,” said Murray.

The money-lender was plainly disconcerted, but he was not unaccustomed to hard battles, so he nerved himself to bluff the thing through, it being too late to do anything else.

“Mrs. Vincent,” said Murray, when the woman appeared, “I have found the insurance policy.”

“Where is it?” she asked eagerly.

“Mr. Shylock,”—with a motion toward the money-lender,—“holds it.”

“Give it to me, Mr. Shylock,” demanded Mrs. Vincent, who was not a woman to grasp the bitter insult of the name, and her innocent repetition of it added to the anger of the man. Still, the habit of never letting his personal feelings interfere with business was strong within him.

“I must be paid first,” he said.

“Paid!” she cried. “What is there to pay? The insurance money is mine!”

“I hold a note,” insisted the money-lender.

“What’s that to me?” she retorted. “Do you think I’m going to pay his debts? I didn’t contract them; I wasn’t with him; he left me years ago! Let her look out for the debts! Give me the policy or I’ll have you arrested!”

The woman was wildly and covetously excited: she would not rest easy until the actual possession of the money assured her that there was no possibility of a slip. The money-lender, too, was anxious. Murray alone seemed to be taking the matter quietly, for these two were now playing the game for him, although the details required his close attention. A very slight miscalculation might carry it beyond his control.

“It’s assigned to me,” said the money-lender with a pretense of confidence. “I have your signature.”

“It’s a lie!” she cried.

“Oh, no,” interrupted Murray quietly; “it’s a forgery.”

“That woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Vincent. “She stole my name as well as my husband!”

“That man,” corrected Murray. “He did it for the woman who did so much for him. He would have given her all, if he could.”

Murray had reason to know that it was the nurse, but he lied cheerfully in what he considered a good cause. They were getting to the critical and dangerous point in the game he was playing: the widow would be merciless to the nurse.

“It’s a forgery, anyway!” declared Mrs. Vincent. “I won’t pay a cent!”

“I’ll sue,” said the money-lender threateningly.

“Well, sue!” she cried. “What do I care? You can’t get anything on a forgery. I guess I know that much.”

“It will make a scandal,” said the money-lender insinuatingly.

“Let it,” she retorted angrily.

They were again making points for Murray, each showing the weakness of the other’s position, so Murray merely watched and waited.

“If there is another woman in the case,” persisted the money-lender, who had been quick to grasp the significance of the previous remarks, “the shame and disgrace—”

“What do I care?” she interrupted. “The disgrace is for her.”

“And for him,” said the money-lender. “I can make him out a forger.”

“It won’t give you the money,” she argued.

“It will make you the widow of a criminal,” he threatened. “How would you like the disgrace of that? And the other things! If I have to go to court the whole scandal will be revealed and the very name you bear will be a shame! The widow of a forger! A woman who could not hold her husband! An object of pitying contempt, so small that she would not pay an honest debt to protect the name that is hers!” In his anxiety not to lose, the money-lender became almost eloquent in picturing possible conditions. No other sentiment or emotion could have given him this power. And he saw that the effect was not lost upon the woman, for no one knew better than she the harm the exploitation of the whole miserable story would do. Even a blameless woman can not entirely escape the obloquy that attaches to the name she bears, and there had been enough already to make it difficult for Mrs. Vincent to retain a position on the fringe of society. “Of course,” he went on, “if you’d rather stand this than pay, there is nothing for me to do but leave and put the matter in the hands of a lawyer.”

“Wait a minute, Shylock,” interrupted Murray. “Mrs. Vincent is going to pay—something.”

“Pay money that he got for her!” she exclaimed with sudden resentfulness. “She’s the forger, anyway; I know it!”

“Did you ever see her, Shylock?” asked Murray.

“He came alone,” replied the money-lender, “with the assignment of policy ready, and he swore to it.”

“That settles that,” said Murray with apparent conviction. “It would be a thankless task to try to prove that any one else forged the signature, and neither one of you is in a position to seek any court notoriety. Now, Shylock, after deducting the bonus and all trumped-up charges, how much did you loan?”

“Nine hundred dollars,” said the money-lender desperately.

“Try again, Shylock,” urged Murray. “You never loaned any such sum under any such circumstances.”

“If you don’t stop insulting me,” exclaimed the money-lender angrily, “I’ll quit right now and take my chances with the law.”

“You haven’t any chances with the law, Shylock,” retorted Murray. “You can make a scandal, but you can’t get a damn cent. That’s why you’re going to be reasonable. How much did you loan? You’d better be honest with me, for it’s your only chance.”

“I’ll take eight hundred dollars, with the interest charges.”

“You’ll take an even seven hundred dollars,” said Murray.

“But the interest!” cried the money-lender. “Don’t I get any interest?”

“Aha!” exclaimed Murray. “I guessed it right, didn’t I? That’s just what you loaned. You see, others have hypothecated policies with you people, and I’ve learned something of the business. There are more peculiar deals tried with insurance policies than with any other form of security. But you don’t get any interest, Shylock: you get your principal back, and you’re lucky to get that.”

“It’s robbery!” complained the money-lender.

“It’s generosity,” said Murray. “You ought to lose it all.”

“I won’t pay it!” declared Mrs. Vincent, and Murray turned sharply to her.

“Mrs. Vincent,” he said, “you will pay this sum to Shylock out of the policy, and you will pay all the bills, including the cost of the funeral, which I advanced. You will not do this as a matter of generosity, or even of justice, but from purely selfish motives. If you, being able to prevent it, permitted this scandal to come to light, you would be eternally disgraced: doors would be closed to you everywhere. God knows it is bad enough as it is, but this would make it infinitely worse. Even where no real blame attaches to her, there is always criticism and contempt for the woman who lets another take her husband from her, and a repudiation of the expenses of his last illness or any other bills, when you are getting the insurance, would condemn you absolutely in the eyes of all people who knew the circumstances. For this reason, you are going to do what I say, and you are going to make the necessary arrangements now. For similar selfish reasons, Shylock is going to do what I say, and he is going to make the necessary arrangements now. If either of you balk at the terms, I’ll drop the whole matter and let you fight it out, to your mutual trouble and loss.”

Neither dared take the risk, for each feared that, without Murray, the other would gain the advantage. Neither was in a position to defy the other, and Murray had forced concessions from each that the other could not. He was clearly master of the situation.

“Do you accept the terms?” he demanded. “If not, get out!”

“It’s brutal, outrageous!” declared the woman.

“A swindle!” exclaimed the man.

“That will do, Shylock,” cautioned Murray. “There is nothing to be said except ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and only thirty seconds in which to say that. I’ve reached the limit of my patience.”

He took out his watch and began to count the seconds.

When they were gone Murray sent for Amy Bronson, the nurse.

“I was just coming to see you,” she explained when she arrived. “I finally found a note hidden away among Albert’s effects. It contained five one hundred-dollar bills and the scribbled line, ‘I have tried to do more for you, but can not.’”

“I didn’t see how he could have spent all the money,” mused Murray.

“Now I can pay the bills,” she said.

“No,” said Murray. “A memorandum of all that he owed is to be sent to me. Mrs. Vincent will pay everything.”

“Mrs. Vincent!” cried the nurse. “Impossible! I couldn’t have so misjudged her.”

“I don’t think you misjudged her,” returned Murray, “but,”—whimsically,—“I’m a wonder at argument. You ought to hear me argue. Mrs. Vincent decided to take my view of the matter with the insurance.”

“But the five hundred dollars!” said Miss Bronson.

“Keep it,” said Murray. “He intended it for you, and it is little enough. I’m only sorry that the ten-thousand-dollar policy is not for you, also, but it is one of the incidental hardships that arise from an ordinarily wise provision of the law.”

The nurse’s lip quivered and the tears came to her eyes.

“I was an entire stranger to you, Mr. Murray,” she said, “but you have been very good to me when I most needed a friend. I—I don’t know how I can—”

“I have been amply repaid for all I have done,” said Murray.

“How?” she asked in surprise.

“I have had the royal satisfaction,” he answered, “of compelling an unscrupulous man and a selfish woman to do a fairly creditable thing; I have had the joy of showing my contempt for them in my very method of doing this.”

She did not quite understand, her gratitude making her blind to all else at the moment.

“And also,” added Murray to himself, when she had gone, “the great satisfaction of saving a devoted woman from the consequences of at least one of her acts of devotion. Forgery is a serious matter, regardless of the circumstances.”

AN INCIDENTAL ERROR

“It’s mighty awkward,” said Owen Ross, the insurance solicitor.

“It is,” admitted Dave Murray.

“I’ve been after him for over six months,” persisted Ross, “and now, after urging him persistently to take out a policy, I have got to tell him that we won’t give him one. That would be hard enough if he had sought us out, and it’s ten times as hard when we have sought him. Why, it looks as if we were playing a heartless practical joke on him.”

“But it can’t be helped,” said Murray. “It’s one of the disagreeable features of the business. We convince a man that it’s to his interest to carry life insurance, and then we tell him he can’t have any. Naturally, from his prejudiced viewpoint, we seem to be contemptibly insincere and deceitful.”

“Of course, we are in no sense shortening his life,” remarked Ross, “but it seems like pronouncing a sentence of death, just the same. He is sure to make an awful row about it.”

“One man,” said Murray reminiscently, “fell dead in this office when his application was refused. The shock killed him, but there was no way to avoid giving him the shock. However, that was an exceptional case: I never knew of another to succumb, although it must be admitted that the news that one is destined not to live long is distressing and depressing.”

“What’s the reason for refusing Tucker?” asked Ross.

“There are several reasons,” replied Murray. “The physician reports heart murmur, which indicates some latent trouble that is almost certain to develop into a serious affection.”

“May not the physician be wrong?”

“He is paid to be right, but, of course, we are all liable to make mistakes, and it can’t be denied that heart murmur is deceptive. I’ve known men to be the subject of unfavorable reports at one hour of the day and most favorable ones at another. The occupation immediately preceding the examination may develop symptoms that are normally absent. However, I would not feel justified in accepting this application, even if the report were favorable.”

“Why not?” demanded Ross.

“The amount of insurance he wishes to carry would make him worth more dead than alive, which is a condition of affairs that an insurance company dislikes.” Murray became reminiscent again. “I recall one such risk,” he went on. “The man found the premiums a greater burden than he could carry, so he died.”

“Suicide!” exclaimed Ross.

“Oh, no,” replied Murray, with a peculiar smile; “merely a mistake. But, if you will put yourself in that man’s place, you will see how the mistake could happen. He was carrying twenty-five thousand dollars of insurance, and he wasn’t worth twenty-five cents at the time, owing to some recent reverses. He was ill, but was not considered dangerously ill. Still, he was depressed, believing apparently that he would not recover and knowing that he had not the money for the next premium. If he died before a certain date there would be twenty-five thousand dollars for his wife and children; if he died after that date there would be comparatively little. Now, in imagination, just assume the problem that confronted that man on a certain night: twenty-four hours of life for him meant a future of privation for his wife, if he did not recover and prosper, while immediate death for him meant comfort for those he loved. Picture yourself contemplating that prospect while lying weak and discouraged in the sick-room, with various bottles—one labeled ‘Poison’—within reach. A poison may have medicinal value when properly used, you know, but what more natural than that you should make a mistake in the gloom of the night while the tired nurse is dozing? It is so easy to get the wrong bottle—to take the poison instead of the tonic—and it solves a most distressing problem. A drop of the poison is beneficial; a teaspoonful is death; and the tonic is to be taken in large doses.” Murray paused a moment to let the terrible nature of the situation impress itself on Ross. Then he added quietly: “We paid the insurance, although the timeliness of the accident did not escape comment. The same mistake twenty-four hours later would not have had the same financial result. Now, do you understand why I would not care to put fifty thousand dollars on the life of Tucker, even if he were physically satisfactory? Unexpected reverses may make any man worth more dead than alive, but we seldom contribute knowingly to such a condition of affairs. It isn’t prudent. While the average man is not disposed to shorten his life to beat an insurance company, it isn’t wise to put the temptation in his way unless you are very sure of your man.”

“Well, we needn’t explain that to Tucker,” said Ross.

“No,” returned Murray. “We can put the whole thing on the basis of the physician’s report.”

“I wish you would break the news to him,” urged Ross. “You can do it with better grace, for you were not instrumental in getting him to put in his application. He’ll be up here to-day.”

“Oh, very well,” returned Murray. “I’ll see him when he comes.”

Though the task was far from pleasant, Murray had been long enough in the business to take matters philosophically. One must accustom oneself to the disagreeable features of any occupation, for there is none that is entirely pleasurable.

Tucker, however, did not make this interview disagreeable in the way that was expected: instead of becoming discouraged and depressed, he became indignant.

“What’s that?” he cried. “You don’t consider me a good risk?”

“I am sorry to say,” returned Murray, “that our physician does not report favorably on you.”

“Oh, he doesn’t!” exclaimed Tucker. “Well, that’s a good joke on the doctor, isn’t it?”

“What!”

“You’d better discharge him and get a man with some sense.”

“I thought,” said Murray dubiously, “that it might seem rather hard on you.”

“Hard on me!” ejaculated Tucker. “Hard on the company, you mean! You’re letting a little two-by-four doctor steer you away from a good thing. Why, say! I’m good for as long a life as an elephant!”

“I’m sure I hope so.”

“It’s robbery—plain robbery—for that doctor to take a fee from you for making such a report on me. I’ll show him up!”

“How?” asked Murray curiously.

“By living!” declared Tucker. “It’s going to give me infinite pleasure to report to you from time to time and show you one of the healthiest men that ever was turned down by an insurance company. He can’t scare me into a decline—not any! And, say! he looks to me like a young man.”

“He is.”

“A young man in fine physical condition.”

“He is.”

“Well, I’ll go to his funeral, and I’ll be in prime condition when he’s put away! You tell him that, will you? I’ll be walking when he has to be carried.”

Now, this was rather annoying to Murray. It was preferable to the despair that overwhelmed some men in similar circumstances, but it seemed to him that Tucker was overdoing it.

“Anyhow,” said Murray resentfully, “we would not care to put fifty thousand dollars on your life, for it’s more than a man in your position ought to carry. You’ll never be worth as much alive as you would be dead, with that insurance.”

“Oh, I won’t!” retorted Tucker sarcastically. “Well, now, instead of making the girl I am to marry a present of a policy on my life, I’ll just make her a present of your whole blamed company in a few years. You watch what I do with the money you might have had!”

“You are about to marry?” asked Murray with interest. “It’s a serious matter, in view of the physician’s report.”

“Marriage is always a serious matter,” asserted Tucker. “I don’t have to have a doctor tell me that. But he can’t scare me out with flubdub about heart murmur, for I know the heart was murmuring, and the prospective Mrs. Tucker does, too. She’ll interpret that murmur for him any time he wants a little enlightenment.”

Murray laughed when Tucker had gone. The man’s indignation had been momentarily irritating, but there was something amusing about it, too.

“He’s going to live to a green old age, just to spite the company,” mused Murray. “It’s a matter of no great personal interest to him, but he’d like to make the company feel bad. If a man could order his life as he can his business affairs, there would be mighty little chance for us.”

Meanwhile, Tucker was hastening to the home of Miss Frances Greer.

“I’ve come to release you,” he announced cheerfully.

“But I don’t want to be released,” she returned.

“Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t suppose you would. But you might just as well know that you’re getting a poor risk.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Why, I wanted to put fifty thousand dollars on my life, as a precaution for the future, and the fool of an insurance doctor turned me down.”

“What do I care about the doctor!” she exclaimed.

“Not a thing, of course.”

“Or insurance!”

“Still less.”

“And,” she said happily, “you’re a good enough risk for me.”

Then they went into executive session and decided that insurance doctors didn’t know anything, anyway. But they did not forget Dave Murray, and they did not let Dave Murray forget them: he heard from them indirectly in the most annoying ways. His wife informed him less than a week later that she had met Miss Greer at a reception.

“A most extraordinary girl!” his wife remarked. “I can’t understand her at all. She asked me in a most ingenuous way if I ever had noticed any indications of heart murmur about you.

“‘Never,’ said I.

“‘Not even in the engagement days when he was making love?’ she insisted.

“‘Not even then,’ I answered, bewildered.

“‘He couldn’t have been much of a lover,’ she remarked.”

Murray laughed and explained the situation to his wife. But Murray would have been better pleased if the two women had not met, for he had no desire to have this case perpetually present in the more intimate associations of life. However, he had to make the best of it, even when he was invited to the wedding, to which his wife insisted that he should go. She had discovered that the bride was related to an intimate friend of her own girlhood days, and the bride further showed flattering gratification in this discovery. She was especially gracious to Murray.

“I want to ask you a question,” she told him.

Thereupon Murray made heroic efforts to escape before she could find a suitable opportunity, but she beckoned him back whenever he got near the door.

“Mama,” she said finally, for this happened during the wedding reception, and her mother stood near her, “I wish you would take charge of Mr. Murray and see that he doesn’t run away. I have something very important to say to him before Ralph and I leave.”

Thus the unhappy Murray was held until the bride and groom were ready to depart, when the bride finally succeeded in getting him alone for a minute.

“I wanted to ask you, as a particular favor to me,” she said appealingly, “to let Ralph live a little while—that is, if your doctor won’t make too big a row about it.”

Then she laughed merrily. There could be no doubt at all that Mrs. Ralph Tucker refused absolutely to worry about the health of Mr. Ralph Tucker; she had simply put the doctor down as an ignoramus. And Mr. Ralph Tucker’s appearance certainly was not that of a man in poor physical condition. However, Murray knew how deceptive appearances may be, and, while no physician is infallible, it is necessary to rely on their judgment. Nor was it a joking matter, in his opinion. He was glad that the young people could look at the future without misgivings, but a really serious matter ought not to be treated so lightly.

It was about a week later that a note came to Murray from Mrs. Tucker.

“So grateful to you for sparing Ralph so long,” it read.

Murray crumpled it up and, with some rather warm remarks, threw it in the waste-basket.

“Why did I relieve Ross of his disagreeable task?” he grumbled.

Then he began to count the days that would precede their return from the bridal trip, for he was sure they would call on him. There could be no doubt that Mrs. Tucker had deliberately planned to make things as uncomfortable for him as possible, and there was every reason to believe that Tucker himself was aiding and abetting her.

“It isn’t fair,” he muttered, “to make it appear that this is a personal matter with me. The Lord knows I haven’t anything to do with his lease of life.”

This was just after he had received a telegram to the effect that “the patient is doing as well as can be expected,” and Ross, who happened in the office at the time, noticed that his chief looked at him reproachfully.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ross.

“Hereafter,” returned Murray morosely, “my solicitors have got to carry their own burdens. If Tucker and his wife put me in an insane asylum, the administrator of my estate will surely sue you for big damages. I never thought I was getting a life sentence when I let you unload on me.”

The physician also noticed a growing coolness and was moved to ask what was wrong.

“Didn’t you make a mistake in the Tucker case?” Murray inquired by way of reply. “I don’t wish Tucker any harm, but I’m doomed to an early death if he isn’t.”

“I don’t see what his life has to do with yours,” retorted the doctor.

“That’s because you don’t know Mrs. Tucker,” replied Murray.

“He was an impossible risk,” asserted the doctor. “The indications of serious trouble may entirely disappear, under favorable conditions of life, but they were there when I made the examination. Ours is not yet an exact science, and the human system frequently fools us. You recall the Denton case, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“At twenty the doctors, including his family physician, gave him not more than two or three years to live, and at twenty-five he was considered a good risk for any insurance company. He is nearly thirty-five now, has one policy in this company, and we would be glad to let him have another.”

“Oh, you’re all right, Doctor, of course,” returned Murray. “We must be careful to err on the safe side, if we err at all, in this business. But I wish the Tuckers would transfer their attentions to you. I’ll be tempted to jump out of the window when I see them coming in the door.”

The Tuckers, however, were not to be escaped. After an interval of about three weeks they sent him another telegram, which read: “If we retire to a ranch, will you lengthen the lease of life a little?” Then they came back and called on him.

“So kind of you to let us have this trip,” said Mrs. Tucker with every evidence of deep gratitude. “Poor Ralph appreciates it.”

Poor Ralph was looking as big and strong and happy as it was possible for a man to look, and Murray was correspondingly uncomfortable.

“The premiums on fifty thousand dollars would have been pretty heavy,” remarked Tucker with a cheerful grin.

“Yes,” admitted Murray weakly.

“I had a tidy little sum put aside to care for them,” Tucker explained. “We thought it would interest your company to know that we put that money into a small ranch out west, so it is entirely out of reach now. You don’t mind my choosing a restful place for my early demise, do you?”

“Now, see here!” cried Murray, but Mrs. Tucker interrupted him.

“Oh, he wouldn’t be so cruel as that!” she exclaimed. “Show him what the doctor said, Ralph.”

Tucker spread a sheet of paper on the desk before Murray, and the latter read: “This is to certify that I have made a careful examination of Ralph Tucker, and I believe him to be in excellent physical condition. I attach slight importance to the indications of incipient heart trouble, which, with reasonable care and proper treatment, should disappear entirely.” This was signed by a noted specialist.

“And the next,” said Mrs. Tucker.

Thereupon Tucker laid this before Murray: “The heart murmur noted I believe to be due to temporary causes and not to any permanent affection. On the occasion of one examination there were no indications of it at all.” This also was signed by a well-known physician.

“Poor Ralph!” sighed Mrs. Tucker, and Murray felt that the burden of this case was greater than he could bear.

“They don’t agree entirely,” he asserted aggressively.

“No,” admitted Tucker, “but I understand that’s not unusual in such cases.”

“And they don’t agree with your doctor at all,” added Mrs. Tucker. “But, of course, your doctor is right. Poor Ralph!”

“Please don’t do that,” pleaded Murray.

“Poor Ralph!” sighed Mrs. Tucker again. “The doctors don’t think he’ll live more than a lifetime.”

“Put in another application and take another examination,” urged Murray in despair. “The doctor may have been misled by some trifling temporary trouble.”

“What would be the use?” asked Tucker. “I’ve already invested the premium money in a small ranch.”

“It’s too bad,” remarked Mrs. Tucker lugubriously. “That money would have done the company so much good.”

“This has ceased to be a joke!” declared Murray earnestly.

“A joke!” exclaimed Mrs. Tucker. “Has it ever been a joke with you?”

“No, it hasn’t,” said Murray.

“I didn’t think you could be so heartless,” asserted Mrs. Tucker. “One has only to look at poor Ralph—”

“Don’t, don’t!” cried Murray. “On what terms will you quit this?”

“Oh, if you want to get down to business,” put in Tucker, “I’d like to begin delivering this company to Frances. You know I said I was going to do it. I don’t care for policies, but I might take some stock.”

“You said you had no money.”

“No premium money,” corrected Tucker. “I invested that in the ranch, but I was notified this morning of a legacy from a bachelor uncle that will give me some ready cash.”

“The stock of this company gets on the market very seldom,” explained Murray. “I have a little myself, but I don’t care to part with it.”

“Oh, very well,” replied Tucker in careless tones; “it’s quite immaterial to us for the moment. In fact, I’d be in no hurry about it at all if I only had a longer time to live.”

“Poor Ralph!” sighed Mrs. Tucker, as they departed.

When they had gone, Murray rang for his office-boy.

“You tell Mr. Ross,” he said to the boy, “to keep out of my way for a few days. I’m not in a mental condition to stand the sight of the man who loaded this trouble on me.”

For the next three days Murray saw as little of his office as he possibly could, fearing another call from Mr. and Mrs. Tucker. Then he learned that they had left again for the West, and he breathed more freely. But, shortly thereafter, a stock-broker called upon him.

“I am commissioned,” said the broker, “to buy some stock in your company, and I thought possibly you might know of some that is for sale.”

“I do not,” replied Murray. “As you know, it is not a speculative stock, but is held, for the most part, by conservative investors. A little gets on the market occasionally, when some estate is being settled or some holder becomes financially embarrassed, but that is about your only chance.”

“So my client informed me,” said the broker, “but he also informed me that he was sure he could get some himself, and he wished me to use every effort to add to his prospective holdings.”

“Mr. Tucker, your client, tried to buy some from me before he left for the West,” said Murray, for he had no doubt as to the identity of the man who wanted the stock.

“Indeed!” returned the broker. “I didn’t know that. He explained his anxiety for prompt action by the rather extraordinary statement that he wished to get the stock before somebody foreclosed on his life!”

“By thunder!” cried Murray, “somebody will foreclose on his life, and take the Limited west to do it, if he keeps this thing up!”

In some amazement, the broker apologized and retired, and Murray began to wonder what would happen to him if Mrs. Tucker ever did get enough of the stock to make her influence felt. Of course, there was little chance of that, but even a small stock-holder could be annoying when so disposed. He began to dream about the Tucker case, and an incidental mention of it in the office would make the atmosphere unpleasant for the day. Every clerk and solicitor understood that it was a dangerous topic. Once the name “Tucker” was mentioned in the ordinary course of business, and Murray had things at a fever heat before it could be explained to him that it was another Tucker. Then came a letter from the West, with a Tucker return card on the envelop. A council of war was held before it was delivered to Murray, and even then a time was chosen when he was absent to lay it on his desk. It was very brief—just an announcement that “the patient” had rallied splendidly after the fatigue of the journey and exhibited “really wonderful vitality for a sick man.” No one cared to go near Murray all the rest of that day.

Soon after the first of the following month another missive arrived—a mere formal affidavit, headed “Certificate of Life,” and solemnly averring that “Ralph Tucker’s heart has not ceased to murmur along in the land of the living.” This was followed a month later by a certificate from a physician to the effect that “a restful ranch life is especially conducive to longevity, and Mr. Tucker’s health continues to show all the improvement that can be expected in a man who had nothing the matter with him in the first place.”

These facetious reports continued to arrive at monthly intervals for a period of nearly a year. Usually they were brief, but occasionally the doctor, who seemed to enter into the spirit of the affair, would go into such details as weight, endurance, appetite, lifting power, respiration and—heart murmur. “The heart,” he wrote at one time, “seems to be too well satisfied to murmur now, and the patient was able to sit up and eat a large steak to-day, after which a little gentle exercise—about twenty miles on horseback—seemed to do him some good.”

Murray promptly turned this over to the company doctor, and the latter sighed. Almost the only satisfaction in life that Murray had during this time arose from his ability to make the doctor miserable.

“He was not a good risk when I examined him,” the doctor insisted, “but he may be a good one now. We can’t be certain of results in such a case, and the law of probabilities frequently works out wrong. He could not have done a better thing, under the circumstances, than to go in for a simple, outdoor life. The basis of trouble was there, in my judgment, but it may have been overcome.”

“The basis of trouble is still there,” declared Murray; “not only the basis of trouble, but the whole blame structure, and it’s resting on us. I can feel the weight.”

“So can I,” replied the doctor disconsolately.

Less than a week after this Tucker telegraphed to know if Murray had changed his mind about disposing of any stock.

“No,” was the reply sent back.

“All right,” Tucker answered. “I just wanted to give Mrs. Tucker another slice of your company. She has a little of it already.”

Investigation showed that the broker had succeeded in picking up a few shares, but hardly enough to exert any considerable influence. Still, it was disquieting to find the Tuckers so persistent.

“I’ll bet,” said Murray, “that mental worry has put me where you wouldn’t pass me for a risk.”

“If your wife,” returned the doctor, “is anything like Mrs. Tucker I’d pass you for any kind of risk rather than incur her displeasure. They’ll begin to take a stock-holder’s interest in the affairs of this particular office pretty soon.”

“The affairs are in good shape,” declared Murray.

“But a real determined stock-holder can stir up a devil of a rumpus over nothing,” asserted the doctor. “If she should send all those physicians’ reports to headquarters, they would rather offset my report on which he was turned down, and the company would feel that it had lost a good thing. The company will not stop to think that my report may have been justified by conditions at the time.”

“And the risk that I thought too big for him then may not seem too big for him now,” commented Murray ruefully.

“I’d like to examine him again,” said the doctor.

“I don’t think it would be safe,” returned Murray, “unless you were searched for weapons first.”

So the doctor and Murray settled down to await, with some anxiety, the next move in the game, and their patience was rewarded by the receipt of five certificates of health from as many different physicians, each certificate having a message of some sort scribbled across the top. “The patient had to ride a hundred miles to get these,” Mrs. Tucker had written on the first. “There were a few shares of this stock in my late lamented uncle’s estate,” appeared in Tucker’s handwriting on the second. “The president of your company is rusticating a few miles from here,” Mrs. Tucker asserted on the third. “Better come out here for a few days,” Tucker urged on the fourth. “Poor Ralph!” was Mrs. Tucker’s comment on the fifth.

“Poor Dave Murray!” grumbled Murray, and he and the doctor started West the next day. “Might as well get this thing settled,” he said. “You and I have got to be on harmonious terms with the stock-holders. Besides, there’s an early grave yawning for me if I don’t succeed in making peace with Mrs. Tucker. I tell you, Doctor, when a woman decides to make things uncomfortable for a man,—well, the man might just as well resign himself to being perpetually uncomfortable.”

And yet, no one could have greeted them more graciously than did Mrs. Tucker.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, “and brought the doctor. It is particularly pleasing to have the doctor here, for I want him to see if something can’t be done for poor Ralph. I’m sure I don’t know what’s going to become of the poor fellow. He doesn’t sleep any better than a baby, and he can’t ride over a hundred miles without getting tired. His muscles aren’t a bit harder than iron, either, and his heart beats all the time.”

“Mrs. Tucker,” said Murray appealingly, “what can we do to make peace with you?”

“Without even seeing your husband again,” added the doctor, “I am willing to concede that he will live to be three thousand years old.”

“We are beaten,” asserted Murray. “You have humbled our business and professional pride. We give Mr. Tucker none of the credit; it all belongs to you. We claim to be the equals of any man, but of no woman. Now, on what terms can we have peace?”

“I did want your insurance company for a sort of belated wedding present,” said Mrs. Tucker thoughtfully.

“I’d give it to you if I could,” said Murray with the utmost sincerity. “I assure you, that company has been nothing but an annoyance to me ever since you cast longing eyes on the stock.”

“Oh, I’ve become more modest in my expectations,” replied Mrs. Tucker cheerfully. “I don’t expect much more than we’ve got now.”

“How much have you got?” asked Murray.

“Well, our broker picked up a few shares, and there were some more in the estate of Ralph’s uncle, and the president of the company kindly arranged it so that we could get a little more. Such a delightful man he is, too! It was when I heard he had a place in this vicinity, where he came for an outing every year, that I insisted upon Ralph’s buying this ranch. I thought it would be nice to be near him—and it was. We’re great friends now, although he’s only here for a little while in the spring and fall.”

“Did—did you tell him about the insurance?” asked Murray.

“What insurance?” asked Mrs. Tucker blandly. “We haven’t any insurance. Poor Ralph—”

“Mrs. Tucker,” interrupted Murray, “if you say ‘Poor Ralph’ again, you will see a driveling idiot making streaks across the prairie. I have reached the limit of endurance. All I want is peace, peace, peace, and I’ll pay the price for it. Do you want some of my stock?”

“Oh, dear, no,” she replied. “We’ve got it fixed now so that Ralph is pretty sure to be a director next year. We talked it over with the president.”

“Does Mr. Tucker still want a policy?” asked Murray.

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Tucker. “If he’s going to die so soon, it would be beating the company, and we’re part of the company now, so we—”

“Stop it! stop it!” pleaded Murray. “I’ll bet you couldn’t kill him with an ax!”

“Sir!”

“I beg your pardon, but this is the climax of a year of torment that I didn’t suppose was possible this side of the infernal regions,” explained Murray dismally, “and I’m just naturally wondering why you brought me out here.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you that, did I?” returned Mrs. Tucker ingenuously. “I just wanted to tell you that, now that we’re stock-holders to a reasonable amount—Ralph retained a few shares, you know, and holds a proxy for mine—we look at the matter from an entirely different viewpoint, and we think that every reasonable precaution should be taken to avoid poor risks, as you call them. We are highly gratified by the evidence of caution that has inadvertently come under our notice, even if there was an incidental error that baffled human foresight.”

The sudden and startling changes of position by this young woman were too much for both Murray and the doctor; they could only look at her in amazement as she calmly commended their course.

“You have brought us all this distance to tell us that!” ejaculated Murray at last.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s worth the trip!” he announced, as he recalled the events of the last year.

Then Tucker appeared, big, strong, bronzed, hearty, and shook hands with them. Never a weakling in appearance, his year of outdoor life had made him the embodiment of health. He beamed upon his guests with hearty good nature as he gave them each a grip that made them wince. His wife regarded him critically for a moment.

“Poor Ralph!” she said mischievously, and then she hastily assured them that this was really the last of the joke.

AN INCIDENTAL FAILURE

Adolph Schlimmer’s wink was of the self-satisfied variety that plainly says to the person at whom it is directed, “They’re mostly fools in this world—except you and me, and I’m not quite sure about you.” Adolph Schlimmer was a small man, but he thought he had enough worldly wisdom and sharpness for a giant. “You bet you, I don’t get fooled very much,” he boasted.

Just now his wink was directed at Carroll Brown, an insurance solicitor.

“How much iss there in it for you?” he asked.

“Oh, I get my commission, of course,” replied Brown.

“Sure, sure,”—and again Adolph winked. “You don’t need it all, maybe.”

“Why not?” asked Brown with disconcerting frankness. “I’m entitled to what I earn.”

“Sure, sure,” admitted Adolph, somewhat annoyed. “It’s vorth something to you to make the money, ain’t it, yes? I gif you the chance. It might be vorth something to me, perhaps, maybe.”

“Oh, if you want me to divide my commission with you,” exclaimed Brown, “we might as well quit talking right here. It would cost me my job, if anybody found it out.”

“Who iss to find it out? I bet you, if people could find out things, we’d haf more people in jail than out. Some big men, vorth millions, would haf to live a century to serf their time out. The boss discharges hiss clerk for doin’ what he iss doin’ himself.”

“It’s against the law,” argued Brown. “It’s a rebate on premiums and is prohibited.”

“Sure, sure,” conceded Adolph again. “But you got to do something to make business, ain’t it? I gif premiums and I get discounts. There don’t nobody fool me very much.”

“Well, I’m taking no chances with either my job or the law,” announced Brown, “even if I wanted to sacrifice part of my legitimate commission. I’m offering you a policy in a first-class company on the same terms that we give them to all others, and that’s the best I can do. If you’re looking for an advantage over your neighbors, you’ll have to go elsewhere. The very first rule of straight business is to treat all alike.”

“Sure it iss,” returned Adolph. “Look at the railroads and the big shippers.” Again he winked wisely. “I bet you, your boss ain’t such a fool as you. Make the big money when you can, but don’t run avay from the little money. I gif you a chance for the little money because I’m smart; some other feller let you haf it all because he issn’t.”

Therein lay the measure of Adolph. It was beyond his comprehension that any man should treat all fairly: some one surely was “on the inside,” and his first thought in any transaction was to make a quiet “deal” with some interested party that would give him a trifling advantage over others. He was shrewd in a small and near-sighted way, and he had an idea that all men, except fools, looked at things as he did. He believed there was “graft” in everything. That being the case, it was the duty of a sharp man to get a share of it, even if, as in this instance, it only lessened his own expense somewhat. So Adolph Schlimmer went to see Brown’s boss, who happened to be Dave Murray.

“I get me some insurance,” he announced.

“All right,” returned Murray agreeably. “You look like a good risk.”

“Risk?” repeated Adolph. “No, nein. I’m a sure thing.”

Murray laughed.

“That’s bad,” he said banteringly. “Sure things are what men go broke on in this world; they’re the biggest risks of all.” Then, explanatorily: “I mean you seem to be in good physical condition, so that our physician is likely to pass you.”

“You bet you,” returned Adolph, “but it’s my vife what counts. If I die, I leaf her the money; if she die, she leaf me nothing.”

“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.”

“Sure, sure,” returned the imperturbable Adolph. “We got to watch the boys or there won’t be nothing left for us. So I safe the commission for you. What iss there in it for me?”

“Not a damn thing!”

“You play it that way with the fool,” advised Adolph complacently. “It’s a bully bluff for the feller that don’t know how things was done in business. Then we go splits, yes?”

The ignorance and effrontery of the man so amazed Murray that he forgot his indignation for a moment and undertook to explain.

“There is no commission on business that comes to the office,” he said.

“Sure!” laughed Adolph, again resorting to that sagacious wink. “You let the company make it, yes? I stay home, you send man to tell me get insured, I say yes, man get paid—ain’t it so? I come here to get insured, and you give that man’s pay to the company, the men vorth millions—oh, yes, sure!” Adolph laughed at the absurdity of the thing. “Iss there anything in my eye?” he asked suddenly.

“You sit down there!” ordered Murray, for Adolph was now leaning familiarly over Murray’s desk. “I ought to kick you out, but I’m going to tell you a few things. Sit down and keep still. I’m several sizes bigger than you are and it’s my turn.” Murray spoke so aggressively that Adolph promptly returned to his seat. “Now, to begin with, you make a mistake in judging everybody else by yourself; there are a lot of decent people in this world. A good many may worship the almighty dollar, and that’s bad enough, but God help the few who get down to worshiping the almighty cent. A good many keep a lookout for graft, but you are the first one I ever saw who seemed to think everybody was crooked.”

“No, nein; only business—”

“Keep still! You insult everybody you try to do business with by acting on the assumption that he is in your class. You have absorbed some of the tricky commercialism that is prevalent these days, and you’ve got the idea that there isn’t anything else—not even common sense. You would break the law for a trifle. What you propose is morally wrong, but we won’t discuss that, because you can’t understand it.”

“I don’t like—”

“Keep still! I’m doing you a favor, but I’ve got to tell you first what a libel you are on the average human being. The law that you want to break was made for the protection of just such financially insignificant people as you. It prohibits giving rebates in any form on insurance premiums and provides that the acceptance of such a rebate by the policy-holder shall invalidate his policy, and that the giving of such a rebate by a company or any of its agents shall subject the company to a fine. Do you understand?”

“Sure; but who iss to know?”

Murray was discouraged, but he had set out to drive a lesson home to this dull-witted fellow who thought he was smart, and he valiantly held to his task. He could feel nothing but contempt for the man, but he had become rather interested in convincing him how foolish he was. Besides, Murray was a bitter opponent of the rebate evil in all lines of business—every one knows how it fosters monopoly—and he attacked it whenever and wherever he could.

“If rebates on insurance premiums were not unlawful,” he asked, “do you think people of your kind are the ones who would get them? Well, hardly. The millionaires, the rich men, the men who take out the big policies, would get them, and you little fellows would pay the full price, just as you do wherever else the rebate evil exists. This law was made to protect you, and you want to break it down. Well, I suppose there are others just as bad. The men for whose benefit a law is made frequently insist upon playing with it until they drop it and break it, and then they wonder why the splinters won’t do them as much good as the original law.” Having warmed up to a subject that interested him, Murray was talking for himself now. Adolph could understand in a general way what he meant, but many of the remarks were entirely beyond his comprehension. “Look at it in another way,” Murray went on. “As a speculation, the insurance rebate is a mistake. The man who gets or accepts a rebate is taking a risk. ‘Well,’ he argues, ‘so is the man who buys wheat or stocks or undeveloped real estate of problematical future value.’ Quite right; but when you speculate you want to be sure that your probable or possible profits bear a fair proportion to the risk and your possible losses. It’s all right to make a secured loan of one thousand dollars at five per cent., but when you put your thousand into a scheme where there is a chance of losing every cent of it, you also want a chance of making a good deal more than the legal rate of interest. Russell Sage is said to look as closely after the small profits as the large, but Russell would shy away from an investment—a real safe investment—that promised only a ten cent profit on five dollars; and if it were a speculation, where he might lose the whole five, he would want to see a possibility of winning at least half as much. The man who accepts an insurance premium rebate is going into a speculation—a flimsy, cheap speculation, with a chance of loss so entirely out of proportion to the slight advantage he gains over other policy-holders that no man with a grain of sense would consider it for a moment. To secure a discount on his premium he risks his whole policy. Why, in your case you would put a two-thousand-dollar policy in danger to save a few miserable dollars. It isn’t cleverness, it isn’t shrewdness, it isn’t business, it isn’t sense; it isn’t anything but damn foolishness. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” answered Adolph. “If we iss found out, I looss the policy and you looss a fine. We both looss.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Vell, if we both looss by telling, who iss going to find it out?” demanded Adolph triumphantly. “You bet you, I take the chance. Go ahead with her.”

Murray leaned wearily back in his chair.

“You’d better get out of here,” he said. “This company wouldn’t issue a policy in which you had any sort of interest on any terms. I was curious to discover if I could not stir up just a glimmer of business sense in you, and my curiosity is satisfied. You seem to me like a man who would risk all his money to win a fly-speck, if he thought he was going to win it by some underhand deal. Get out as quick as you can! But I tell you again, don’t fool with rebates!”

Adolph stopped in the doorway.

“You got to haf the whole commission, yes?” he remarked with accusing bitterness. “I take you for a hog.”

Then he disappeared very suddenly, for he feared Murray would pursue.

Here again was the measure of Adolph. In spite of Murray’s explanation, he could see nothing except a chance to win by saving a part of the commission. He could not comprehend that he was running any unusual risk or doing anything that another would not do, if the other had the sense to see the chance. In fact, he was fully convinced in his own mind that Murray was merely talking for effect and really desired the whole commission for himself. This made him the more determined to gain this small advantage for himself—partly because his little business world was made up of such devious methods, and partly because it would be an evidence of his own cleverness.

Now, occasionally a solicitor for a company of high standing, acting on his own responsibility, will divide his commission in order to get some one to take out a policy. If he is trying to make a record, the temptation is considerable. If the policy is large, his half of this commission may be more than his whole commission in most other cases. He does this secretly, but he is inviting three kinds of trouble: his own discharge, a fine for his company, and a loss for the policy-holder. These three things will follow discovery, but he takes the chance. And there are irresponsible or unscrupulous companies or agencies (so it is said) that will tacitly approve such a course in some instances, taking the necessary risk in order to get business. Of course, no first-class or reliable company will sanction or even tolerate such methods.

Nevertheless, Adolph, the shrewd fool, finally found the man for whom he was searching. A man may nearly always find trouble if he searches for it industriously, and Adolph was industrious. Unfortunately for him, however, he treated several other solicitors to his knowing wink before he met the one who agreed to his proposition, and, when it was learned that Adolph was taking out a policy on his wife’s life, they were quick to reach conclusions. But it was none of their business, and they said nothing. What they knew merely made it easier to prove the case, if the question should ever arise. The solicitor who finally entered into the deal was one who had done the same thing before. He was “broke” a good part of the time, and, when in that condition, he did not question closely the ethics of any proposition that promised an early, even though small, cash return. He was an outcast among such of the many conscientious men of the fraternity as knew him, but the local agent of the company that employed him was not particular, and there were rumors that the company itself might have been more strict.

Anyhow, Adolph got the policy he wanted. His wife was disposed to object at first, for she had not been consulted until Adolph had made his bargain. There was no use, he argued, in telling her about it until he knew what he was going to do.

“I buy you a policy,” he finally told her in the tone that a man—another man—might tell his wife he would buy her a sealskin coat.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It pays zwei t’ousand dollars,” he explained.

Mrs. Schlimmer was not enthusiastic.

“When?” she asked.

“What’s the use to me?” she persisted

“When you are in the grafe,” he answered after a pause.

“What’s the use to me?” she persisted.

“My dear,” he said, with such gallantry as he could command, “it shows what you iss vorth.”

Somehow, she was not flattered. She was a good wife, who worked hard, and she herself thought she was worth it, but she was selfish enough to think she ought to realize on her own value.

“No, nein,” he argued, “it ain’t the vay it’s done. You got yourself, ain’t it, yes? When you ain’t got yourself, you ain’t here, but I am. You don’t looss yourself when you die, but I looss you, and you’re vorth a lot.”

“There’s other women,” she retorted.

“But they ain’t vorth what you are by zwei t’ousand dollars,” he insisted, and this delicate bit of flattery won the day. After all, it made no difference to her. She rebelled a little at going to the insurance office to be examined, however.

“You tell ’em I’m all right,” she urged. “You know.”

But a new gown—a cheap one—gained this point, and she went.

Adolph prided himself very much on this stroke of business. His great aim in life was to pay a little less than the market price for everything, and he was never convinced that he was really doing this unless the deal had to be carried out in some underhand way. When he could buy for less than others he was making so much more money, and it was his experience that the biggest profit lay in shady transactions. In others he had made, or saved, much more than in this, but the difficulties he encountered in this instance convinced him that it was an especially notable achievement. He was proud of his success.

“You bet you, they don’t fool me very much,” he asserted frequently.

And, in time, he told how clever he was. Not at first, however; he was very cautious at first, for Murray’s words had made an impression on him. But, after he had paid a few premiums, the lapse of time gave him a feeling of security, and one day, in boasting of his business shrewdness, he mentioned that he was even sharp enough to get life insurance at a bargain. After that, it was easier to speak of it again, and he finally told the story. The news spread in his own little circle. It was quite a feat, and he was held to have demonstrated remarkable cleverness. When another told of some sharp business deal, some one would remark, “Yes, that was clever, but you never got life insurance at a bargain.” And, in the course of time—six months or more from the time the story was first breathed—it came to the ears of one Daniel Grady. This was unfortunate, for Daniel at once jumped to the conclusion that he had been cheated. Daniel had a small policy in the same company, and this policy was costing him the full premium without rebate of any kind from any insurance solicitor or anybody else. Daniel did not like this, and neither did he like Adolph; in fact, he would have been willing to pay a little higher premium for the privilege of making trouble for Adolph. Failing that, Daniel would like to get on even terms with him.

“It’s th’ divil iv a note,” said Daniel, “that I sh’u’d be payin’ more than that little shrimp, an’ me only thryin’ to take care iv Maggie an’ th’ childhern. I’ll go down to th’ office an’ push th’ face iv th’ man in if he don’t give me th’ same rate, I will so.”

But Daniel wisely did nothing of the kind, for he recalled that there were a number of clerks in the office and a police station not far away, and he had no wish to add a fine to his expenses. Instead, after pondering the matter a few weeks and growing steadily more indignant, he went to see a little lawyer who had an office over a saloon, next to a justice of the peace. Daniel planned only to get his premiums reduced, but the lawyer saw other opportunities.

“It’s a great chance,” said the lawyer. “You’re a policy-holder—”

“Who says so?” demanded Daniel, for this sounded to him like an accusation.

“I mean,” explained the lawyer, “that you are insured in the company.”

“What iv it?” asked Daniel.

“Why, the other policy-holders are the ones discriminated against in a case like this,” said the lawyer, “and any one of them can file a complaint.”

“I’m not the kind iv a man to do much complainin’,” declared Daniel. “I niver see that it did much good. If I c’u’d give Schlimmer a bad turn—”

“That’s it; that’s it exactly. You can knock his insurance sky-high and get some money yourself.”

“Say that wanst more,” urged Daniel. “Me hearin’ seems to be playin’ thricks.”

“The law,” said the lawyer slowly, “fines a company for doing that—”

“How much?”

“I’ll have to look it up. Pretty stiff fine, though, and the informer—”

“I don’t like th’ word.”

“Well, the man who makes the complaint gets half the fine. Do you understand that? Let me take charge of the matter for you, and we’ll divide the money.”

“Will it hurt me own insurance?” asked Daniel.

“Not a bit.”

“I’m not lukkin’ to l’ave Maggie an’ th’ childhern without money whin I die, jist to land a dollar-twinty f’r me own pocket now. That’s a Schlimmer thrick.”

“Your insurance will be just as good as it ever was,” the lawyer asserted.

“Will there be twinty dollars in it f’r me?” Daniel persisted.

“There’ll be a good deal more than that—exactly how much I can’t say.”

“Go ahead,” instructed Daniel. “Put the little divil through.”

The lawyer investigated and found his task comparatively easy, for Adolph had now personally told the story to several people. Indeed, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, the lawyer got him to tell it to him. Then he acted.

When the news reached the local agency of the company there was no indecision as to what should be done. Unnecessary publicity in a matter of that kind was the very last thing sought. The solicitor was called in, put on the rack, and promptly confessed. Then he was discharged without further questioning. Perhaps the local agent was afraid he might learn of other similar instances if he pressed the matter too far, and he was quite content to remain in ignorance of anything else of that nature, so long as the public also remained in ignorance. The company promptly acknowledged its fault, showed that it had cleared itself morally by discharging the offending agent, and proceeded to clear itself legally by paying the necessary fine.

When the news came to Adolph, however, there was wailing prolonged, for his policy was annulled.

“I bet you,” said Adolph, “that feller Murray put up the job. He iss a great hog; he iss like those monopolists that puts smaller people out of business and gobbles it all.”

Then Adolph got a pencil and a sheet of paper and began to figure his losses.

“Zwei t’ousand dollar insurance,” he groaned, “and maybe she wouldn’t lif long. And I gif her a dress, too—a new dress. Ach, Himmel! it’s hard when a man’s vife beats him. A new dress for nothing at all but to looss money. That law iss a shame. It iss a—what you call it?—restriction of business.”

Thereafter, for some time, the sight of the new gown would make Adolph morose and gloomy, and his friends found him unusually modest and unobtrusive.

AN INCIDENTAL SCHEME

There came to Dave Murray one day a young man who was looking for a job. He was a bright young fellow and seemed to be very earnest.

“I have been a clerk,” he explained, “but there is little prospect for the future where I am now, and I want to get something that has some promise in it. In fact, I must do so. I am making barely enough to support my mother and myself, and I may want to marry, you know.”

Murray readily admitted that young men frequently were attacked by the matrimonial bacillus and that, there being no sure antidote, the disease had to run its course. “Which is a good thing for the world,” he added, “so you are quite right to prepare yourself for the attack. But are you sure that insurance is your field?”