Part 10

"It's great," commented the lawyer. "You've got a great head on you, Schlimmer. Not one man in a thousand would have thought of it. We'll all even up, but they would have been mighty suspicious if I had let Tainter's application go in through Mays. That's where you get the advantage of having a lawyer in the deal."

And more to the same effect, but no definite explanation of the scheme.

Murray was at his office unusually early Monday morning, and the first thing he did was to have a clerk look up the Schlimmer case. Some company, he knew, had got into trouble over a Schlimmer policy, and he wanted to know all about it. He learned that Schlimmer had taken out a policy on his wife's life, had demanded and secured a rebate from the solicitor, and that another policy-holder had taken action that resulted in nullifying the policy and imposing a fine on the company.

"I think I understand it now," mused Murray, "but it looks to me as if pretty prompt action might be necessary."

All doubt, all hesitation had disappeared. Murray was wide awake and active. He called in his private messenger.

"When Mr. Mays reports," he said, "he is to wait until I have had a talk with him before going out. I shall send for him when I am ready." Then, giving the boy a slip of paper with a name and an address on it, "I want to see that man here at once. Take a cab and bring him. Tell him the validity of his life insurance depends upon it."

While the boy was gone, Murray slipped out himself, and, when he returned, a stranger accompanied him. The stranger was secreted in a room adjoining, and then Murray took up the routine of his regular work. The only interruption came when a clerk informed him that Mays was waiting.

"Let him wait," said Murray. "I'm not quite ready for him yet. If he tries to leave, jump on his back and hold him."

After a time the messenger returned with the man for whom he had been sent, and Murray immediately took him into his private office and shut the door.

"Mr. Leckster," he said abruptly, "how much of a rebate did Mays give you on the policy you took out with us?"

Leckster was plainly mystified and frightened.

"Out with it!" commanded Murray. "Your policy isn't worth the paper it's written on unless the matter is straightened out mighty quick. How much was the rebate?"

"I don't understand," said Leckster, already nearly terror-stricken.

"How much of his commission did he give to you to get you to take out a policy?"

"Oh, he give me a half."

"Leckster," said Murray, "that was against the law. If any other policy-holder hears of it and wants to go into court, he can nullify your policy and get half of the fine that will be assessed against us for the act of our agent. If you want to make your policy unassailable, you must refund that rebate. Now, go home and think it over."

Then he sent word to Mays that he was ready to see him.

"Mays," he said abruptly, "what was your scheme?"

"Sir!" exclaimed Mays.

"What was your scheme?"

"Surely you must be joking, sir," protested Mays. "I have no scheme."

"Why did Tainter," replied Murray in deliberate tones, "a friend of yours, put in his application through another solicitor?"

"He didn't know I was in the insurance business until he came up here to be examined."

"Then why did you fail to recognize each other until you got out in the hall where you thought you were unobserved?"

Mays did not even hesitate. Evidently he had prepared himself for this.

"Another man had got his application," he said, "and I was afraid it would look as if I were trying to interfere in some way. I did nod to him, but very likely it wasn't noticed."

"What are your relations with Schlimmer?" persisted Murray.

"Oh, I got into a little business deal with him, for which I am sincerely sorry. I'm trying to get out now."

"Insurance?" asked Murray.

"No, sir; it had nothing whatever to do with insurance."

Murray was thoughtful and silent for several minutes.

"Mays," he said at last, speaking slowly, "I don't know whether you're worth saving or not. You've got in with a bad crowd and you're mixed up in a bad deal. But you impressed me favorably when you came here, and I think you are capable of being legitimately successful. Of course, you lied to me about your mother--"

"I was very anxious for the job, sir."

"I quite appreciate that, although your motive for wanting the job will hardly bear close scrutiny. Still, you are young and I am anxious to give you another chance. Now, tell me the whole story."

"There is nothing to tell, sir," Mays replied with an ingenuous air. "Your words and insinuations are a deep mystery to me."

"Think again," advised Murray. "I know the story pretty well myself."

"I shall be glad to have you tell it, sir," said Mays. "Your earnestness leads me to think it must be interesting."

"If I tell it," said Murray, "it removes your last chance of escaping any of the consequences."

"Go ahead," said Mays.

At least, he had magnificent nerve.

"Schlimmer," said Murray, fixing his eyes sharply on Mays, "was once mixed up in a little trouble over rebates, which are unlawful. He tried to get me to give him a rebate on a policy, but I refused, and he seems to have got the idea that I was directly responsible for the failure of his scheme elsewhere. He learned, however, that the informer gets half of the fine assessed against the company in each case, but that only another policy-holder is empowered to make the necessary complaint. It occurred to Schlimmer that, if he could find enough rebate cases, there would be a good bit of money in it on the division of the fines. Being a man of low cunning, it occurred to Schlimmer that these cases might be manufactured, if he could get hold of a complaisant insurance solicitor, for the company is held responsible for the act of the agent, and the easiest way to get hold of a complaisant solicitor was to make one. So he went to a young man who was absorbed in the study of tricky finance and who couldn't see why he couldn't do that sort of thing himself, and the young man got a job in this office. The young man, Max Mays by name, immediately began preparing rebate cases for future use. He worked among a class of people who knew little of insurance or insurance laws and who are in the habit of figuring very closely, and this rebate proposition looked pretty good to them.

"Next, Schlimmer and Mays got a lawyer into the scheme, because they would need him when it came to the later proceedings, and they further prepared for their _coup_ by having a confederate, named Tainter, take out a policy in the company, so that he would be in a position to make the necessary complaint. In order to avert suspicion, when the time for action came, Tainter applied for his policy through another solicitor. I think that is about all, Mays, except that you were ready to spring your surprise as soon as the policies had been issued on two or three applications now under consideration. I was in the next room to you when you held your meeting yesterday, Mays."

Mays had grown very white during this recital, but he still kept his nerve, although he now showed it in a different way.

"Yes," he said, "that is about all. There are some details lacking, but the story is practically correct. What do you intend to do with me?"

Then Mays was suddenly conscious of the fact that a man, a stranger, was standing beside him. The man had emerged quietly from the room in which he had been concealed.

"There are the warrants for the whole crowd, including this man," said Murray, handing the stranger a number of documents. "The charge is conspiracy, and, if they could have secured half the fine in each of the cases they prepared so carefully, they would have made a pretty good thing. Now, I've got the job of straightening this matter out so that both the policies and the company will be unassailable under the rebate law. But, at any rate, Schlimmer has got his second lesson, and it's a good one. Look out for him especially, officer. If you keep this man away from the telephone, you'll have no difficulty in getting Schlimmer and all the others."

AN INCIDENTAL COURTSHIP

Harry Renway was the kind of man that people refer to as "a simple soul." He might feel deeply, but he did not think that way. As a matter of fact, it was stretching things a little to call him a man, for he was hardly more than a boy--a youth in years, but a boy in everything else. Nevertheless, it is worth recording that he was a reasonably thrifty boy, although his earning capacity had not permitted him to put aside anything resembling a fortune.

Love, however, visits the poor as well as the wealthy, the simple as well as the wise. Indeed, sometimes it seems as if Love rather avoids the wealthy and wise and chooses the companionship of less-favored mortals. So, perhaps, it is not at all extraordinary that Harry Renway was in love, and the object of his affections was one of the most tantalizing specimens of femininity that ever annoyed and delighted man.

She said frankly that she was mercenary, but it is probable she exaggerated. She had been poor all her life, but she had no dreams of great wealth and no ambition for it: she merely wanted to be assured reasonable comfort--that is, what seemed to her reasonable comfort. A really mercenary girl would have deemed it poverty and hardship. Somehow, when one has been poor and has suffered some privations, one learns to give some thought to worldly affairs, and it is to the credit of Alice Jennings that she did not grade men more exactly by the money standard. Harry's modest salary would be sufficient to meet her requirements, but Harry had nothing but his salary. A larger salary might give something of luxury, in addition to comfort, but, assured the comfort and freedom from privation, she would be guided by the inclinations of her heart. So, perhaps, she was wise rather than mercenary. Love needs a little of the fostering care of money, although too much of this tends to idleness and scandal.

"But if anything should happen to you," argued Alice, when Harry tried to tell her how hard he would work for her.

"What's going to happen to me?" he demanded.

"I don't know," she answered lightly. "You're a dear, good boy, Harry, and I like you, but I've had all the poverty I want."

"Who's talking about poverty?" persisted Harry stoutly. "I've got more than two hundred dollars saved up, and I'll have a bigger salary pretty soon."

"What's two hundred dollars!" she returned. "We'd use that to begin housekeeping. Then, if anything should happen to you--Why, Harry, I'd be worse off than I am now. I don't want much, but I've learned to look ahead--a little. I've neither the disposition nor the training to be a wage-earner, and I'll never go back home after I marry. Dad has a hard enough time of it, anyhow." There was raillery in her tone, but there was also something of earnestness in it. "Now, Tom Nelson has over two thousand dollars," she added.

"Oh, if you're going to sell yourself!" exclaimed Harry bitterly.

"I didn't say I'd marry him," she retorted teasingly, "but, if I did and anything happened to him--"

"You'd probably find he'd lost it in some scheme," put in Harry.

"He might," admitted Alice thoughtfully, "but he's pretty careful."

"And too old for you," added Harry angrily. "Still, if it's only money--"

"It isn't," she interrupted more seriously; "it's caution. I've had enough to make me just a little cautious. You don't know how hard it has been, Harry, or you'd understand. If you knew more of the disappointments and heartaches of some of the girls who are deemed mercenary, you wouldn't blame them for sacrificing sentiment to a certain degree of worldliness. 'I just want to be sure I'll never have to go through this again,' says the girl, and she tries to make sure. It isn't a question of the amount of money she can get by marriage, nor of silks or satins, but rather of peace and security after some years of privation and anxiety. She learns to think of the future, if only in a modest way--that is, some girls do. I'm one of them. What could I do--alone?"

"Then you won't marry me?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then you will marry me?"

"I didn't say that, either. There's no hurry."

Thus she tantalized him always. It was unfair, of course--unless she intended to accept him eventually. In that case, it was merely unwise. It is accepted as a girl's privilege to be thus perverse and inconsistent in her treatment of the man she intends to marry, but sometimes she goes too far and loses him. However, Alice Jennings was herself uncertain. She had known Harry a long time, and she liked him. She had known Tom Nelson a shorter time, and she liked him also. It may be said, however, that she did not love either of them. Love is self-sacrificing and gives no thought to worldly affairs. Alice Jennings might have been capable of love, if she could have afforded the luxury, but circumstances had convinced her that she could not afford it, so she did not try. She would not sell herself solely for money, and her standard of comfort was not high, but she was trying hard to "like" the most promising man well enough to marry him. As far as possible, she was disposed to follow the advice of the man who said, "Marry for love, my son, marry for love and not for money, but, if you can love a girl with money, for heaven's sake do so."

As a natural result of her desire to make sure of escaping for all time the thraldom of poverty that was so galling to her, she was irresolute and capricious. She dressed unusually well for a girl in her position, but this was because she had taste and had learned to make her own clothes, so the money available for her gowns could be put almost entirely into the material alone. She was a capable housekeeper, because necessity had compelled her to give a good deal of time to housework in her own home. She had no thought of escaping all these duties, irksome as they were, but she did not wish to be bound down to them. A comfortable flat, with a maid-of-all-work to do the cooking and cleaning, and a sewing girl for a week once or twice a year, was her idea of luxury. This, even though there was still much for her to do, would give her freedom, and this, with reasonably careful management, either of the men could give her. But she looked beyond, and hesitated; she had schooled herself to go rather deeply into the future.

Tom Nelson found her quite as unreasonable and bewildering as did Harry. Tom was older and more resourceful than Harry, but he was not so steady and persistent. Harry was content to let his money accumulate in a savings' bank, but Tom deemed this too slow and was willing to take risks in the hope of larger profits. He made more, but he also spent more, and, all else aside, it was a question as to whether Harry would not be able to provide the better home. Then, too, Tom occasionally lost money, while nothing but a bank failure could endanger Harry's modest capital. So Tom had his own troubles with the girl. He knew her dread of poverty--amounting almost to a mania--and he made frequent incidental reference to his capital.

"But that isn't much," she said lightly. Her self-confessed mercenariness was always brought out in a whimsical, half-jocular way that seemed to have nothing of worldly hardness in it. "And there's no telling whether you'll have it six months from now," she added. "As long as I had you to take care of me, it would be all right, but--"

She always came back to the same point. Yet one of these two she intended to marry, her personal preference being for Harry, and her judgment commending Tom. The former would plod; the latter might be worth twenty thousand in a few years, or he might be in debt. Harry never would have much; Tom might have a great deal--enough to make the future secure, no matter what happened.

"Will you invest the money for me?" she asked.

"Why, no,--I must use it to make more."

Thus she flirtatiously, laughingly, but with an undertone of seriousness, kept them both uncertain, while she impressed upon them her one great fear of being left helpless. Yet even in this her ambition was modest: no income for life, but only something for her temporary needs until she could adjust herself to new conditions, if that became necessary. Anything more than that was too remote for serious thought.

Harry finally told his troubles to a friend, when these exasperating conditions had continued for some time. He wanted consolation; he got advice.

"A little too worldly to suit me," commented the friend. "Still, it might be better if some of the girls who marry hastily had just a little of such worldliness. There would be fewer helpless and wretched women and children."

"That's just it," returned Harry. "She knows what it means, and that two thousand of Tom Nelson's looks awful big to her. If I had as much I'd invest it for her outright, and that would settle it."

"Doesn't want it to spend, as I understand it?" queried the friend.

"Oh, no--just to know that she has something in case anything happens."

"Why don't you try life insurance?" asked the friend.

It took Harry a moment or two to grasp this. Then his face lighted up.

"By thunder! I never thought of that!" he cried.

"That's the trouble with lots of men," remarked the friend dryly. "Marriage is considered a dual arrangement when it should be a triple--man, woman and life insurance. That's the only really safe combination. The thoughtful lover will see that the life insurance agent and the minister are interviewed about the same time."

"Where did you learn all that?" asked the astonished Harry.

"Oh, it's not original with me," was the reply. "I heard Dave Murray talk about insurance once. He's an enthusiast. He claims that the best possible wedding gift is a paid-up life insurance policy, and I guess he's right. It would be a mighty appropriate gift from the groom's father to the bride--a blame sight better than a check or a diamond necklace. A paid-up policy for five thousand would look just as big as a five-thousand-dollar check, and it wouldn't cost nearly as much--unless the old man plans to sneak back the check before it can be cashed. And what a lot of good it might do at a time when the need may be the greatest! If the bride is the one to be considered in selecting a wedding gift, as I understand to be the case, what better than this?"

"I guess Dave Murray is the man for me," said Harry in admiration of the originality of this idea.

"Of course he is," asserted the friend. "And if you want to make the argument stronger for your wavering girl, get an accident insurance policy, with a sick benefit clause, also, and then take out a little old age insurance. There ought to be no trouble about giving her all the assurance necessary to allay her fears."

Harry was a good risk, and he had no difficulty in getting a policy. He saw Murray personally, but, as he did not explain his purpose or situation, their conference was brief: Murray merely asked if he thought a thousand-dollar policy was all he could afford.

"Because," said Murray, "when you go after a good thing it's wise to take all you can of it. There ought to be enough so that something can be found after your estate is settled."

"I'd make it five hundred if I could," said Harry.

"Most of the good companies," said Murray, "wisely protect a man from his own economical folly by refusing to issue a policy for less than a thousand."

"It's an experiment. A fellow doesn't want to put too much money into an experiment."

Murray, the resourceful Murray, was bewildered. Life insurance an experiment! Surely he could not mean that.

"Well," he said, "your widow will be pretty sure to think the experiment a success."

"I haven't got a widow," asserted Harry.

"Of course not; but you may have."

"How can I have a widow when I am dead?" asked Harry. "How can I have anything when I am dead?"

"You can't tell by the looks of an electric wire how highly it is charged," mused Murray. "I guess I touched this one too recklessly." Then to Harry: "But there may be _a_ widow."

"There may," returned Harry.

"Well, she'll be sorry you didn't experiment on a larger scale, because it really isn't an experiment at all. There's only one thing surer than insurance."

"What's that?" asked Harry with interest.

"Death; and, with the popular gold bonds or any limited payment policy, you have a chance to beat death by some years. But suit yourself."

So Harry took the physical examination and got the policy, payable to his estate. Then he promptly assigned it to Alice.

"There's one thousand dollars sure, if anything should happen to me," he said. "That beats any old elusive two thousand that Tom Nelson may have."

"You're a dear, good, faithful boy, Harry," she said impulsively, and she gave him a kiss.

That was happiness enough for that day and the next, but on the third he began to get down to earth again and deemed the time propitious.

"You'll marry me?" he suggested.

"Perhaps," was her reply.

"Perhaps!" he cried. "It's always perhaps."

"Perhaps it won't be always perhaps," she returned.

In truth, she had wavered so long that she found it difficult to make up her mind. Besides, Tom was prospering, Tom was devoted, and Tom was a nice fellow. True, he was twenty-six while she was only eighteen, and Harry, at twenty, was nearer her own age, but--well, aside from any question of the future, it was rather nice to have two men so devotedly attentive. Then, too, Tom spent his money more freely, and she derived the benefit in present pleasures. There was no hurry; the future was now brighter, whichever she chose, and, things being so nearly equal, there was even less reason for haste. Alice, in addition to her dread of poverty, was a natural flirt: she enjoyed the power she exerted over these two men. But she said nothing to Tom of Harry's latest move; perhaps she thought it would be unfair, or perhaps she was a trifle truer to Harry than to Tom.

Harry, in his "simple" way, misinterpreted this irresolution. He was too devoted to criticize; he had begun to understand her dread and to think that she was quite right in taking such a very worldly view of the situation. Why should she not, so far as possible, endeavor to make her future secure? It was for him to convince her of his thoughtfulness and his ability to provide for her. Thereupon he got an accident insurance policy.

"You're awfully thoughtful, Harry," she said. "I like you."

"I don't want you to worry," said Harry, flattered and pleased.

"I'm not worrying," she told him.

"But I am," he retorted ruefully.

"Men," she asserted, "are _so_ impatient."

Harry could not quite agree to this--he thought he had been wonderfully patient. In his straightforward way he began to ponder the matter deeply. It had seemed to him he was doing a wonderfully clever thing that ought to settle the matter definitely. Had he made a mistake? If so, what was necessary to rectify it? Incidentally, he heard that some of Tom Nelson's little speculations had turned out favorably, and Tom was still quite as devoted as ever and seemed to be received with as much favor. Then to Harry came an idea--a really brilliant idea, he thought.

"Perhaps," he told himself, "I ought not to have assigned that policy to her; perhaps I ought to have kept it in my control so that a wedding would be necessary to give her the benefit of it. As it is now, she has the policy, no matter whom she marries. I don't think she would--"