White Ashes Part 3

"Mr. Hurd is President of the Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company," he began.

His visitor smiled affably.

"There is a popular impression to that effect," he admitted.

"Silas Osgood and Company and--" he paused a moment--"Bennington Cole are in the fire insurance business. The Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company carries no fire insurance on any of its properties.

Well," he said sharply, "do you begin to see how you come into this?"

"See what?" asked Wilkinson, blankly.

"The insurable value of the various properties of the company must amount to six or eight million dollars. The average rate on those properties would probably be about seventy-five cents per hundred dollars a year for insurance. That would make a premium of say fifty thousand dollars per annum. The commission to the insurance broker who handled that line--who could secure it and control it--would be ten per cent of fifty thousand, or five thousand dollars. Half that amount--I am doing these sums for you so that you can catch the idea--would be twenty-five hundred--without any risk to yourself and every year of your life. Do you think the game worth a try?"

Wilkinson sat up with eager interest.

"Why half? Why not both halves?" he inquired.

The other man spread his hands before him in a gesture as well recognized among elder peoples as it is to-day.

"Naturally I would expect half for originating the scheme, drawing up the schedule in its proper form, securing the lowest rate, and placing the line with the various companies. You couldn't do those things, you know; it takes knowledge of the business."

His visitor once more sat back in his chair.

"And all I have to do is to get Uncle John to take out an insurance policy on his trolley cars! A mere nothing! I'm astonished that you offer me so much as half--for so simple an office. Really, Benny, you are losing your faculties. I can almost see them evaporating. Yes, the time will come when some one of our mutual friends, driving past the Meadow Creek Paresis Club, where Dr. McMullen receives certain amiable but not entirely responsible persons, will behold you hanging cheerily by one hand from the pergola roof with a vacuous smile on your twitching lips, and will say to me sadly: 'Charlie, you knew him, didn't you, in the old days, when his mind was as keen and bright as an editor's knife?' And with chastened melancholy I will respond: 'Yes, George, it is true. And moreover I was with him on the day when his mind commenced to give way. The day he offered me a full half of the spoils of my own--what do you call it?--oh, yes, arbalest.'"

Cole laughed, and not altogether pleasantly.

"Well, if you can get John M. to carry insurance, I'll see that you are not disappointed in the terms of our agreement."

"Do you know, Benny, somehow I'd rather have it in writing. Suppose we say one third to you and two thirds to me. After all, I need the money, you see, and you don't."

"Aren't we counting our chickens a good while before they have emerged from the incubator?" the other suggested.

"Very likely," Wilkinson readily agreed. "But I find that if I ever indulge in that diverting form of mathematics it has to be before the hatching. The little yellow rascals never stay around long enough afterward to permit themselves to be counted."

Bennington Cole slowly picked up a pen and drew toward him a sheet of paper; more slowly still he wrote what he described as a gentleman's agreement between Charles Wilkinson and himself. That young man sat back and studied the face of his a.s.sociate with shrewd, half-shut eyes.

Presently Cole stopped writing.

"I fancy this will serve," he said.

"Read the Machiavellian doc.u.ment," demanded Wilkinson, placidly. And Cole read.

"'Agreement between Bennington Cole and Charles Wilkinson. Said Bennington Cole agrees that if said Charles Wilkinson shall secure control of the fire insurance of the Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, said Bennington Cole shall handle such account to the best of his ability and shall pay to said Charles Wilkinson two thirds of all brokerage commissions received thereby.'"

Said Charles Wilkinson reached for the paper.

"It seems to be in order," he said presently. "Sign it and date it, Benny, and bring in old Stewpan there to witness it. This is a business proposition, and I know how such things ought to be handled."

It was duly signed and duly witnessed by the aged and anemic cashier of the Osgood office, and Mr. Wilkinson placed it carefully in his pocketbook. Then he rose with alacrity.

"I'm sure you'll pardon my insistence on this little technicality," he said smoothly; "but you business men, you professional men, are so shrewd, so very alert and quick of mind, that a comparative novice like myself is mere wax in your strong, deft fingers. . . . And now to cipher out some way to secure the golden apple which hangs so close to hand, yet so very dragon-guarded."

"That's your work," rejoined Cole. "I won't attempt to offer suggestions. Nearly every insurance broker in Boston has at one time or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors.

Blackmail might accomplish something. But really I can't help you any, Charlie. If I had any plan, I'd deserve to hang from your friend's pergola roof for giving it to you instead of using it myself. I guess this is where you begin to do a little hard thinking."

"What marvelous incisiveness you possess, Benny," his friend commented.

"It is an uplift to hear you. But you see thinking is quite in my line. Any one who has had to think as hard as I how to keep the lean white wolf of the Green Mountains--or vice versa--from my shifting doorstep, certainly need not tremble before the necessity of thought.

But I have learned this--when I want to get something I don't know how to get, I invariably regard it the height of sapience to go and ask some one who does know how. In this case I can ask without going, for the very man is here at hand."

"I've already told you that I can a.s.sist you no further," said Cole.

"I've given you the idea. You'll have to do the rest, yourself."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you," Wilkinson rejoined coolly. "I meant a man of perhaps not better, but certainly rather broader, experience. I shall go for advice to Mr. Silas Osgood."

And he opened the door and disappeared through it before Cole could voice a protest. He would have much preferred that the senior partner know nothing of the scheme unless it should take concrete form by its success. If Wilkinson by any chance should secure the traction company's insurance, the business should properly be handled by the firm of Silas Osgood and Company, and not by Bennington Cole individually. However, the mischief was already done, for he could hear Charles' cheerful voice greeting the two men in the other office.

Rather reluctantly he followed.

He found Wilkinson sitting easily on the arm of a chair, talking rapidly and confidentially to Mr. Osgood, who regarded him with indulgence but wonder, as one who might come suddenly on a charming lady lunatic.

"I don't think I know your friend," Wilkinson was saying, _sotto voce_, in Mr. Osgood's ear. Then, as Cole entered, Smith rose to shake hands, and the introduction was made.

"Mr. Smith, General Agent of the Guardian of New York--Mr. Wilkinson."

"Delighted to meet you, Mr. Smith." He turned to the elder man. "Mr.

Osgood, I've come to see you on a matter of business--an important matter upon which I wish your advice. And I not only wish it, but I need it, as you will appreciate when I tell you that my occupation for the next few weeks, months, or years--as the case may be--will consist in endeavoring to extort a little money from Mr. John M. Hurd."

Cole coughed.

"A most expressive cough, my dear Benny, and the interpretation is clearly that there is no innovation about such a battle of wits. But, Mr. Osgood, there is a difference." He looked inquiringly at Cole.

"By the way, is there any reason why we should not speak freely before Mr. Smith?"

"Mr. Smith is a Company man; he will do nothing to disturb your plan,"

said Cole. "Go ahead, now you've started."

Wilkinson proceeded.

"I am about to take charge of insuring all the properties of the Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, John M. Hurd, President," he announced.

Mr. Osgood permitted himself a slight smile.

"My dear young friend," he said, "you have given yourself a life sentence at hard labor."

Wilkinson sat down.

"All the better reason why I need a.s.sistance," he rejoined. "I need everybody's a.s.sistance. But only to get started. When I'm started properly I can look after myself."

"My boy," said the veteran underwriter, kindly, "I have known John M.

Hurd since he was thirty years old. I knew him when what is now the Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company consisted of two cars, four horses, and three miles of single track. And he never carried a dollar of insurance then, and he never has since. I have seen the brightest brokers in Boston go into his office and come out in anywhere from three to twenty minutes; and not one of them ever got anything at all for his pains. Better give it up, my boy; you'll save yourself more or less trouble, and the result will be the same."