The Best Policy

AN INCIDENTAL DISCOVERY

The applicant for insurance was nervous and ill at ease, but that alone was not sufficient to make Dave Murray suspicious. A man taking out his first policy is very often nervous – he dreads the physical examination in many instances. He may think he is all right, but he fears the possibility of some serious latent trouble. If there is anything radically and incurably wrong with the average man, he prefers not to know it. He may not say so, but he does. He goes before the medical examiner with the fear that he may learn something disagreeable.

“I’m fairly contented now,” he says to himself, if he happens to be practical enough to put his thoughts into words, “but life will be a haunting hell to me if I learn that I am not a good risk. That will mean at least the probability of an early death. It will not change conditions, but it will seem to bring death nearer.”

These thoughts do not come to the very young man, but they do come to the man who has passed, or is passing, the optimism of youth. In the words of Dave Murray, “One of the great annoyances of the life insurance business is that the very young man is too well and strong to want to be insured, and the man of middle age is afraid of learning that he is not as well and strong as he thinks he is. We have to fight optimism first and cowardice later. Theoretically, the ‘risk’ ought to be caught young, but, practically, it is easier to catch him when he has begun to appreciate the responsibilities of life. The optimism is more difficult to overcome than the cowardice.”

Nevertheless, the man who has neglected to take out insurance when he could get the best rate is likely to be nervous when he applies for it later, however hard he may try to conceal the fact. And Elmer Harkness was nervous. He was a year short of forty, apparently in the best physical condition, but he was unusually nervous. He hesitated over his answers to the most ordinary questions, he corrected himself once or twice, and he betrayed a strong desire to get through with the ordeal in the quickest possible time. When, at last, he was able to leave, the physician having completed his examination, he gave a very audible sigh of relief.

“There’s something about this I don’t like,” commented Murray a little later.

“What?” asked the doctor.

“That’s the trouble,” returned Murray. “I can’t say exactly what it is, but I have a feeling that something is wrong. We’ve had nervous men here before. Remember the fellow who was brought up by his wife and who would have ducked and run if he could have got the chance? He was nervous enough, but not in the same way. He was afraid he would find he was going to die next week, but this fellow was shifty. How does he stand physically, doctor?”

“Fine,” answered the doctor. “You couldn’t ask a better risk.”

“Well, he doesn’t get the policy until I’ve made a pretty thorough investigation, in addition to the usual investigation from headquarters,” announced Murray.

It took a good deal really to disturb Murray, but this case disturbed him before he got through with it. His first discovery was that Elmer Harkness had been refused insurance by another company some years previous. This information came from the home office, which had secured it through the “clearing-house.”

“The risk was refused,” said the report, “on the advice of the company’s physician.”

“Must be another Harkness,” said the doctor, when Murray told him about it. “This man was in splendid physical condition.”

“The Elmer Harkness refused,” said Murray, consulting the papers before him, “was born at Madison, Indiana, January twentieth, 1866, and that is the place and date of birth given by the man who applied to us. You don’t suppose there were twins, do you?”

“Might look it up,” suggested the doctor.

“Of course, I’ll look it up,” returned Murray. “It’s mighty funny that a man who was refused on physical grounds five years ago should be a superb risk now.”

“There’s one satisfaction,” remarked the doctor. “With the safeguards thrown around the business in these modern days, a man can’t very well beat us.”

“There’s no game that can’t be beaten,” asserted Murray emphatically. “There is no burglar-proof safe. With improvements in safes there has come a corresponding improvement in cracksmen’s methods. No man is so much superior to all other men that he can devise a thing so perfect that some other can not find the flaw that makes it temporarily worthless. The burglar-proof safes have to be watched to keep burglars away from them. The insurance system is as good as we now know how to make it, but it has to be watched to keep swindlers from punching holes in it. When we further improve the system they will further improve their methods, and we’ll have to keep on watching. The business concern that thinks it has an infallible system to protect itself from loss is then in the greatest danger.”

“Do you think this case a swindle?” asked the doctor.

“It’s better to get facts before reaching conclusions,” replied Murray. “It may be only an extraordinary coincidence. The man who was refused insurance was not then living where the man who applied to us is now living. That’s worth considering.”

But investigation only made the case the more puzzling. From Madison, Indiana, a report was received that Elmer Harkness was born there on the date given, and that nothing was known of any second Elmer Harkness. The father of the Elmer born at Madison had been Abner Harkness, who was now dead. The name of the father of the man who had applied to Murray was given as Abner, and that also was the name of the father of the man whose application had been previously refused. Elmer, after the death of his parents, had left Madison, and nothing had been heard of him since, although he was supposed to be in Chicago.

“Strange!” commented Murray. “This Madison Harkness is our Harkness, beyond question, and he also corresponds, except physically, to the Harkness who was refused.”

So far as was known at Madison, Harkness was physically sound and well. He certainly had been considered a strong, healthy man.

“That,” said Murray, “answers the description of the man who was here, but it really means nothing, as far as the other refusal is concerned. Heart trouble was the cause of that refusal, and there hardly would have been any indication of that to the casual observer. This Madison Harkness may well have been the man who was refused or the man who applied to us, but he can hardly be both – unless you have made a mistake, Doctor.”

“I’ll examine him again,” said the doctor.

So he sent for Harkness again, on the plea that he had mislaid the record of the previous examination, and this time he gave particular attention to the heart.

“Normal and strong,” he reported. “No trouble there. It’s possible he had some slight temporary affection when he was examined for the other company. The heart is sometimes most deceptive, and there are occasionally apparent evidences of a serious malady where none really exists. In some cases I’ve discovered symptoms of heart trouble at one examination and found them absolutely lacking a little later. This man is all right.”

Nevertheless, Murray questioned Harkness closely.

“Are you sure,” he asked, the question having been previously answered when the application was made, “that you never were refused by any other company?”

“I never applied for insurance before,” replied Harkness, but there was the same shifty look in his eyes.

“Did you ever know another Harkness at Madison, Indiana?”

Harkness looked frightened, but he answered promptly in the negative.

“Where have you been since you left Madison?”

Harkness told briefly of his movements.

“Did you ever live at 1176 Wabash Avenue?”

“No.”

The case became even more mystifying. There was a record of only one Elmer Harkness at Madison, but it was evident that two had applied for insurance, for the Harkness who had been refused had given his address as 1176 Wabash Avenue.

“I am tempted,” said Murray later, “to make a strong adverse report. At the same time I don’t want to do an injustice and refuse a man who is rightfully entitled to insurance. My refusal, coupled with the mystifying record, would make it practically impossible to get insurance anywhere at any time, and he may be all right.”

“If there’s a fraud in it anywhere,” remarked the doctor, “there are some clever and experienced people behind it.”

“Quite the contrary,” returned Murray. “The experienced people are the people we catch, because they do things the way one naturally expects. As a general thing, you will find that the police are fooled, not by the professional criminal, but by the novice who is ignorant of the ways of the crook, and the same rule applies to insurance swindles. If there is anything wrong here our difficulty lies in the fact that this fellow and those behind him are not experienced and are not going at the thing the way an experienced swindler would.”

An attempt to identify the Harkness who had applied for insurance as the Harkness who had lived at 1176 Wabash Avenue failed utterly, owing to the fact that the woman who had formerly conducted a boarding-house at that number had moved and it was impossible to find her. It was a simple matter, however, to verify other statements made by Harkness. He was now living at 2313 Wesson Street, and was employed by a large wholesale grocery firm. His employer spoke highly of him, but knew nothing of his personal affairs. He might or might not be married. The employer had been under the impression that he was a bachelor, but could not recall that Harkness ever had said so. This confusion was partly explained at the Wesson Street boarding-house, for Harkness had recently told the landlady that he expected his wife to join him soon. He explained that she had been visiting relatives during the six months he had been at this house, but that they were planning to take a small flat. They had previously had a flat, the address of which he gave, and the agent for the building remembered that Elmer Harkness had been among his tenants for two years. He knew very little about them, except that Harkness had paid his rent promptly and had been a model tenant.

“And there you are!” grumbled Murray. “He’s all right, and I wouldn’t hesitate a minute, except for this other Harkness who hailed from the same place, lived in Wabash Avenue, and was refused insurance. Who was he? How can there be two Elmers from a town that produced only one?”

“Possibly it is the same Elmer,” suggested the doctor. “Possibly he was refused owing to some temporary trouble that deceived the first physician. Possibly he did live at the Wabash Avenue place, but thought his chance of getting insurance would be better if he denied that he ever had been refused, and, having once told that story, he has had to stick to it. Of course, he had no means of knowing our facilities for getting information.”

“I don’t see,” returned Murray, “that our facilities have succeeded in doing more than confuse us in this case. However, I’ll submit the whole matter to the home office.”

After taking some time for consideration, the home office decided that there was no reason for refusing the risk.

“If you are sure this man is physically all right,” was the reply received, “and that he is the man he represents himself to be, there would seem to be no reason for refusing the risk. There may have been some attempt at fraud, with which he had nothing to do, in the other case, and none in this. In any event, if the man who applied to you is a good risk physically, and a man of good reputation, as your report indicates, we are willing to give him the policy.”

In these circumstances there was no reason for refusal. Harkness was a man of good reputation. Because of the other apparently mythical Harkness, he had been investigated more thoroughly than was usually deemed necessary, and his references had proved to be good. The inquiries had been made cautiously and circumspectly, to avoid giving offense, and the replies had been generally satisfactory. Nevertheless, Murray had another talk with him before delivering the policy.

Harkness told whom and when he married, and the truthfulness of this statement was capable of easy verification. His wife, he said, had been away for some time, but was now returning.

“We shall take a small flat again,” he explained. “I have already selected one in Englewood – on Sixty-fourth Street. A fellow can get more for his money out there than he can nearer the city.”

Then Harkness got his policy, and a little later he notified the company that he had moved to the Sixty-fourth Street flat. Murray puzzled his head a little over the mysterious Harkness, and once took the trouble to learn that the Harkness he had insured was still employed by the wholesale grocery firm. Then other matters claimed his attention, and the Harkness case was forgotten. There seemed to be no doubt that it was a good risk, even if there was a mystery back of it somewhere.