The Best Policy

“It was easy,” replied Harkness. “I gave you my cousin’s place and date of birth, his parents, his marriage and his life up to the time he left Madison. Then I gave you my record up to the finish, with the exception of one year, when he was in the Chicago directory. We put that year in so you could get trace of the wife in case you made any investigation. I have no wife, and it was rather important, of course, that there should be a record of a wife somewhere.”

“It was a wise provision,” admitted Murray. “We got trace of the wife at that flat.”

“It was after leaving there,” Harkness continued, “that my cousin went to St. Louis. When he returned we met and a little later fixed up the job. As soon as I got the policy I rented the Sixty-fourth Street flat, and my cousin and his wife moved in. That’s all, I think, except that you ought to be a little easy on me, I think, for giving you such an entertaining story.”

Murray turned to the doctor with a pardonable air of triumph.

“Was I right, Doctor,” he asked, “in saying that it takes the novice to devise the really confusing scheme?”

“You were right,” said the doctor.

AN INCIDENTAL GRIEVANCE

Jane Moffat, widow, was sore distressed.

“Without Tom,” she said, “I don’t know what I’ll do. Tom was a good man, but unlucky. There was better providers than Tom, but he was better than none.”

This apparent reflection on her late husband did not mean that Mrs. Moffat confined herself to the financial point of view, for she had been a true and devoted wife, but her present need was great and her present resources were nothing. Furthermore, Tom Moffat certainly had been either unlucky or incapable. Mrs. Moffat, out of her affection for him, chose to attribute their misfortunes to ill luck; another, less considerate, might have said that Tom lacked ability and stability; no one, however, could have said that he was neglectful or indifferent – he did the best he could, and his family always had all he could provide. Nevertheless, Tom Moffat had drifted from one thing to another, and his wife and two children had drifted with him. He had worked at many things, and in many places, and there had been times when he lacked work entirely. So he left Mrs. Moffat practically nothing when he died.

“The neighbors was good,” continued Mrs. Moffat, “an’ I’ve got some sewing to do. I was pretty good at that in my younger days, but the children don’t give me time to earn much, even if the pay was what it should be. I had to sell some furniture already, an’ I don’t know what I’ll do. We’ve been going from bad to worse.”

“Didn’t he have no insurance?” asked the sympathetic Mrs. Crimmins, whose husband was a member of one of the fraternal organizations.

“Not when he died,” answered Mrs. Moffat. “Didn’t I say he was unlucky? He had insurance when it didn’t mean anything but paying out money, but there ain’t any when the time comes for getting it back.”

“They can’t take your money an’ not give you nothing for it,” declared Mrs. Crimmins.

“Sure they can!” said Mrs. Moffat.

“I say they can’t,” insisted Mrs. Crimmins. “There can’t nobody do that, if you got the sense to fight. There was a lawyer once told my man so.”

“Well, Tom paid the money, an’ it ain’t come back to me, has it?” demanded Mrs. Moffat, as if that settled the question.

“You ain’t tried to get it, that’s why!” retorted Mrs. Crimmins. “You go see a lawyer. He’ll make ’em pay, an’ he won’t charge you a cent if he don’t get the money. Some might, but I’ll tell you one that won’t.”

Mrs. Moffat was not in a position to overlook even a slight chance to get any money, especially if it cost nothing to make the attempt. She knew less about insurance than Mrs. Crimmins, and Mrs. Crimmins had only wild, weird, second-hand notions. Still, Mrs. Crimmins talked confidently, and Mrs. Moffat finally took the address of the lawyer recommended to her. This, of course, was a mistake – it would have been better to go direct to the insurance company. But the impression prevails in some quarters that insurance companies are ready to take advantage of any technicality to escape the payment of claims, and that a lawyer’s services are necessary to compel them to pay anything that can possibly be questioned. Some lawyers, for their own purposes, encourage this idea. Isaac Hinse, to whom Mrs. Moffat went, was one of this class.

“You did well to come to me,” he said pompously, as soon as she had stated her errand. “What chance has a woman, with no knowledge of the law, against a great corporation that has big lawyers engaged for the sole purpose of bulldozing or fooling the ignorant? Fortunately, I know how to deal with them. Now, where is this policy?”

“Tore up,” answered Mrs. Moffat.

“What!” cried Hinse.

“Tom tore it up when he couldn’t pay any more on it. I ain’t looking for the whole thousand dollars, but only to get back what he paid in. Mrs. Crimmins said I could do that.”

Hinse leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling thoughtfully.

“Well,” he said at last, “that makes more trouble, of course. An insurance company can’t escape its obligations because the policy has been destroyed, but it makes it more difficult to prove the claim. Do you know what kind of policy it was?”

“How should I?” returned Mrs. Moffat. “I’m no lawyer nor no insurance man. I come to you to learn my rights.”

“Quite right, quite right,” conceded Hinse; “but I must know something of the circumstances. When was this policy taken out?”

“Fifteen or sixteen years ago,” answered Mrs. Moffat. “We was doing pretty well then. Tom’s aunt left him a bit of money, an’ Tom was workin’ steady an’ I got some money a little later. But Tom was always unlucky. He didn’t seem to hold on well, an’ we kept movin’ an’ movin’ an’ gettin’ harder up – ”

“And he finally let the policy lapse,” suggested Hinse.

“Lapse!” exclaimed Mrs. Moffat, as if she had made an important discovery unexpectedly. “That’s it; that’s what he said when he tore it up an’ threw it in the fire. I only knew he didn’t think it was good, but Mrs. Crimmins says they got to pay back what he paid them.”

“That depends on the policy and circumstances,” said Hinse in his most impressive way – and Hinse prided himself upon being impressive. “How long did he pay premiums?”

“Eight or ten years.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Hinse. “There is a chance, but it is a desperate chance – so desperate that I really can’t afford to take this on my usual contingent fee.”

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Moffat.

“I mean,” explained Hinse, “that I’ll get the money for you if any one can, but I’ll have to charge five dollars in advance.”

Mrs. Moffat hesitated.

“I got it,” she said, “but it’s rent money.”

“There’s more than rent in this,” declared Hinse, “but why should I take all the risk? It is a hard case and will take a great deal of my time, but I know these people, and I think I can work it out of them. You happened to come to just the right man.”

Mrs. Moffat was sitting on the opposite side of the desk from Hinse, which she deemed fortunate at this critical moment.

“There ain’t any safe place to leave money at home,” she explained apologetically, “an’ a woman don’t have safe pockets like a man.”

She made a dive down behind the desk, there was a sound of moving skirts, and she straightened up with three bills in her hand – a five and two ones. She handed the five to Hinse, who promptly tucked it away in his vest pocket.

“I don’t know what I’ll do about the rent,” she sighed.

“Think of the insurance,” suggested Hinse, “and remember that you’ve got the best man cheap. I’ll see these insurance people to-day.”

Hinse was a large pompous man, who wore a long rusty frock coat, because he thought that kind of coat properly impressed his police-court clients. His speeches also were for his clients, rather than for the judge – he wanted to show them he was not afraid of the court. He talked loud and aggressively. His whole life being what is popularly termed a “bluff,” it naturally followed that he considered bluffing the main element of success.

That is where he made his mistake when he went to see Dave Murray about Mrs. Moffat’s claim. Murray was not in particularly good humor that day. A friend had been arguing to him that corporations are notoriously ungrateful for services rendered, and another friend had endeavored to demonstrate that life insurance companies had a way of forcing a man to the limit of his endurance, of squeezing all the life and energy out of him in a few years, and then dropping him.

The worst of it was that some of the cases cited Murray knew to be true: men were “forced” and then left to seek other avenues of employment when insurance had got the best that was in them. He had argued that it was the universal business rule of “the survival of the fittest”; that the man who had the ability to get near the top need have no fear, and that men who could stand the pace prospered wherever they might be in the great system. But an unexpected and rather harsh criticism from headquarters had given him a more pessimistic view of the situation: it could not be denied that comparatively few men grew old in the service. Then there was a gloomy outlook for a promotion he had expected, to add to his annoyance, and – well, Murray, the energetic and enthusiastic Murray, was momentarily dissatisfied. He was in no humor to be “bluffed” by a pompous shyster lawyer.

“I am representing Mrs. Jane Moffat,” announced Hinse.

“What about her?” asked Murray shortly.

“She has a claim against your company.”

“Policy?”