desk of the General
Agent, and he took care that his remark might be overheard. "And it
looks to me like something we ought not to have had."

"What's that?" rejoined the older man, quickly. "We're not accepting
business that we shouldn't write, are we? What is it? And who passed
it?"

"Smith seems to have approved the line," O'Connor said slowly.
"Herbert, I thought I told you to leave that Providence map out for me."

"It's right there, sir," said the map clerk; "right where you left it,
sir."

"Here's the risk," said the Vice-president, pointing it out to his
superior with every sign of decent regret. "It seems to be a mattress
factory, a class we never write. . . . Smith appears to have passed
it--there's his initial. Of course, he may have had some special
reason for--"

Mr. Wintermuth interrupted him.

"Herbert, ask Mr. Smith if he will not step this way for a moment,
please."

To the man from Maine the General Agent said: "You'll excuse me for a
minute?"

And Darius Howell, with astonishing definiteness, replied: "Sure--go
ahead."

Smith found his two officers awaiting him by the open map. From the
expression on O'Connor's face he suspected that that gentleman had
discovered something not displeasing to him, and unconsciously he found
his own shoulders squaring themselves as though for a conflict.

"We have here," began the President, slowly, "a loss at Providence on a
risk which Mr. O'Connor seems to think we should not have written."

"Where is the risk, sir?" Smith asked quietly.

"Here. Here is the daily report. It is approved by you. . . .
Probably there is something about the risk which does not appear on the
face of it. Do you remember the circumstances?"

Smith looked the daily report over carefully. It certainly showed the
risk, just as plainly as the map also showed it, to be a mattress
factory, a class prohibited by the Guardian, and there were Smith's own
interwoven initials. Then, suddenly, at the sight of the hieroglyph,
he remembered. "Why, you passed this line yourself, Mr. O'Connor," was
on his lips to say. But he did not say it. For by the cold light in
the eyes of the Vice-President he knew that course useless.

"I remember the risk," he said, addressing himself to Mr. Wintermuth.
"It was a direct line of our local agents, and they were very anxious
to have us take a small amount. It was accepted as an accommodation,
and I reinsured one half, as you see, sir.