“Yes.  All necessary preliminaries were gone through.  The medical gentleman—­since dead of the cholera, by the way—­examined the boy of course, and the insurance was legally effected for four thousand pounds, payable at his death.”

I did not speak; a suspicion too horrible to be hinted at held me dumb.

“Unfortunately,” Andrews continued, “this insurance was only effected about a fortnight before poor Archy’s death, and the office refuses payment, although, as I have told you, the lad was attended to the very hour of his death by Dr. Parkinson, a highly-respectable, most unexceptionable gentleman.  Very much so indeed.”

“I quite agree in that,” I answered after a while.  “Dr. Parkinson is a highly-respectable and eminent man.  What reason,” I added, “do the company assign for non-payment?”

“The very recent completion of the policy.”

“Nonsense!  How can that fact, standing alone, affect your claim?”

“I do not know,” Andrews replied; and all this time I had not been able to look fairly in his face; “but they do refuse; and I am anxious that your firm should take the matter in hand, and sue them for the amount.”

“I must first see Dr. Parkinson,” I answered, “and convince myself that there is no legitimate reason for repudiating the policy.”

“Certainly, certainly,” he replied.

“I will write to you to-morrow,” I said, rising to terminate the conference, “after I have seen Dr. Parkinson, and state whether we will or not take proceedings against the insurance company on your behalf.”

He thanked me, and hurried off.

Dr. Parkinson confirmed Mr. Jesse Andrews in every particular.  He had attended the boy, a fine, light-haired lad of eleven or twelve years of age, from not long after his seizure till his death.  He suffered dreadfully, and died unmistakably of Asiatic cholera, and of nothing else; of which same disease a servant and a female lodger in the same house had died just previously.  “It is of course,” Dr. Parkinson remarked in conclusion, “as unfortunate for the company as it is strangely lucky for Andrews; but there is no valid reason for refusing payment.”

Upon this representation we wrote the next day to the assurance people, threatening proceedings on behalf of Mr. Jesse Andrews.

Early on the morrow one of the managing-directors called on us, to state the reasons which induced the company to hesitate at recognizing the plaintiff’s claim.  In addition to the doubts suggested by the brief time which had elapsed from the date of the policy to the death of the child, there were several other slight circumstances of corroborative suspicion.  The chief of these was, that a neighbor had declared he heard the father indulging in obstreperous mirth in a room adjoining that in which the corpse lay only about two hours after his son had expired.  This unseemly, scandalous hilarity of her husband, the