probably they don't know our underwriting policy yet."
He handed back the binder.

The placer, realizing that the decision was final, and irritated at the
declination of a risk which he had found impossible to place elsewhere,
laughed loudly.

"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need
to--they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what
it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire.
They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street;
they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt
the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me
tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are--to pose as a
conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston
through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right--good-by."

And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the
hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and
McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston.

This was but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs
came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that
every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some
detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the
East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even
he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged
their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within a
fortnight of making the Boston appointment he had seriously considered
revoking it; but this would have necessitated the admission of his
initial error, and he lacked the courage to carry out his better
judgment. So, with a shrug of his mental shoulders and a cynical
reflection that good luck might perhaps avert the results of his
imprudence, he let the matter stand.

But good luck failed to materialize, and it was not long before the
expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business
appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always
seemed--after the loss--that the risk was one on which the company
should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant
incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"--where the loss
occurred before the agents could issue the policy or report the
acceptance of the risk to the New York office; and though Smith
investigated these, and in eac