The Best Policy Part 15

"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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 circ.u.mstances, 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," a.s.serted 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 a.s.sociations 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."