The Best Policy

“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.”