market and needs money. We know it because his
hundred thousand dollar Franz Hals goes to the art dealer's to be sold,
or some big mercantile building that he owns is mortgaged to the
Universal Savings Bank. Endorsement for our daily report. So they go."

"Well, I shall be afraid to have our furniture insured ever again after
this," said the girl, with a laugh.

"Insure it with the Guardian, and I myself will see that your family
skeletons are kept safely out of sight in the closets where they
belong."

"That's very nice of you."

"I'm afraid, though, that your insurance wouldn't be very interesting,
as regards sensation," the underwriter went on. "But there are lots of
people the investigation of whose insurance affairs is in the field of
a first-class detective agency. There are people, as you may or may
not know, who make their living by having fires. These fires are
fraudulent, of course, but fraud is very hard to prove. We can never
secure a witness, for no one applies a match to his shop while any one
is looking on; and with only circumstantial evidence and an individual
pitted against a rich corporation, the jury generally gives the firebug
the benefit of the doubt. Most of these people put in a claim for
goods supposed to have been totally burned but which in reality they
never possessed or which have been secretly removed just before the
fire. Usually they have a fraudulent set of books, too, to back up
their claim; and we have to keep a close watch all the time for birds
of that feather."

"But how can you?"

"Oh, we have a pretty complete fire record compiled from loss
experiences sent by every company to the publisher. All companies
subscribe to this record. If a man has several suspicious-looking
fires, nobody will insure him. If he gets such a bad fire reputation
in one town that he can't get insurance there, he moves somewhere else,
but the record keeps track of him, and finally he has to turn
honest--or change his name."

"Do many of them do that?"

"Not so many as you'd think. You see, it's not so easy to disguise
one's personality. The La Mode Cloak and Suit Company may turn out to
be our old friend Lazarus Epstein; but we have the service of the
principal commercial agencies to aid us in becoming better acquainted
with our policyholders. And any one who has no rating in these
commercial agencies we investigate very thoroughly, making our local
agent tell us all he knows of th