The whisperings on the street continued, and a few surly growls from Kendrick reached Fred's ears. One day a close friend of Fred, who knew something of Insurance Exchange matters, said to him:

"There's something going on inside, but I can't quite get the dope...

I hope you're not giving Kendrick the chance to have you called for rebating... He's an ugly customer when he gets in action."

Fred was annoyed. "I've told you again and again," he retorted, "that I'm not yielding a cent on the Hilmer business."

"It isn't that," was the reply. "Kendrick knows better than to stir up a situation he's helped to befoul himself... No, it's another matter."

Fred shrugged and changed the subject, but his thoughts flew at once to Brauer. He decided not to say anything to his partner until he made a move toward investigating, himself.

The next morning he took a half dozen names of Brauer's customers at random from the ledger and he made out bills for their premiums.

Practically all of Brauer's business was fire insurance, so Fred had typical cases for his test. The first man he called on produced a receipt from Brauer for the premium paid on the very day the policy was issued. The second man protested that he had paid Brauer only the day before. The third man stated brusquely that he had placed his business through Brauer and he was the man he intended to settle with.

The fourth was noncommittal, but it was the fifth client who produced the straw that betrayed the direction of the wind.

"I want to see Brauer," the man said. "He promised to do something for me."

The sixth customer was even more direct.

"There's something to come off the premium," he said. "Brauer knows."

Fred did not wait for Brauer to come into the office--he went and took him to lunch instead, where he could prod him away from Helen's sight and hearing.

"I'm surprised at you, Brauer," Starratt broke out suddenly, once they were seated at Grover's and had given the girl their order.

"Over what?" Brauer's face clouded craftily.

"Why do you go about collecting premiums and holding them back from the office?... That isn't sound business tactics."

Brauer's sharp teeth glistened savagely in spite of his weak and bloodless mouth. "What have you been doing ... bothering _my_ people?

I'll trouble you to let me attend to my own clients in future. Those premiums aren't due for a good six weeks yet. When they are I'll turn them in."

Fred cooled a little in the face of Brauer's vehemence. "Oh, come now, what's the use of talking like that? I'm not intending to bother your customers, but there are some things due me... My name is on every one of those policies. Therefore I ought to know when they are paid and anything else about the business that concerns me. You know as well as I do what is reasonable and just. Suppose you were taken ill. It doesn't look right for a firm to go about making attempts to collect premiums that have been paid."

"Well ... you're pretty previous, Starratt, d.o.g.g.i.ng folks in March for money that isn't due until May," Brauer grumbled back. "What's the idea, anyway?"

Starratt leaned forward. "Just this, Brauer. I heard some ugly gossip yesterday, and I wanted to find out if it had any justification. It seems Kendrick is after us. He's going to try and get us on a rebating charge. I saw six of your people ... and I'm reasonably sure that two out of that six have been promised a rake-off... Do you call that fair to me?"

"That's a lie!" Brauer broke out, too emphatically.

"I doubt it!" Starratt replied, coldly. "But that's neither here nor there. What's done is done. But I don't want any more of it. I'm playing a square game. I was ready to throw Hilmer overboard rather than compromise, and I'll--"

"Do the same thing to me, I suppose!" Brauer challenged.

Fred looked at him steadily. "Precisely," he answered.

The waitress arrived with their orders and Starratt changed the subject... Brauer recovered his civility, but hardly his good temper.

At the close of the meal they parted politely. Fred could see that Brauer was bursting with spite. For himself, he decided then and there to eliminate Brauer at the first opportunity.

A few days later Brauer came into the office with an order to place a workmen's compensation policy. It covered the entire force of a canning concern, and the premium was based upon a large pay roll.

"I've had to split the commission with them," Brauer announced, defiantly. "That's legitimate enough with this sort of business, isn't it?"

Starratt nodded. "It's done, but I'm not keen for it. However, there isn't any law against it."

The policy was made out and delivered to Brauer, and almost immediately he came back with a check for the premium. "They paid me at once," he exulted.

Starratt refused to express any enthusiasm. Brauer sat down at a desk and drew out his check book. "I guess I might as well settle up for the other premiums I've collected," he said, "while I'm about it."

He made out a long list of fire premiums and drew his check for their full amount, plus the workmen's compensation premium in his possession. But he took 5 per cent off the latter item.

Starratt made no comment. But he was willing to stake his life that the check from the canning company to Brauer was for a full premium without any 5-per-cent reduction, and that Brauer, himself, was withholding this alleged rebate and applying it to making up the deficits on the fire premiums he had discounted.

The next day Fred's friend said again: "Kendrick's doing some gum-shoe work, Starratt... You'd better go awful slow."

With the coming of May other anxieties claimed Starratt's attention.

Bills that he had forgotten or neglected began to pour in. There was his tailor bill, long overdue, and two accounts with dry-goods stores that Helen had run up in the days when the certainty of a fixed salary income had seemed sure. A dentist bill for work done in December made its appearance and, of course, the usual household expenditures went merrily on. The rent of their apartment was raised. Collections were slow. In March the commissions on collected premiums had just about paid the office rent and the telephone... April showed up better, but May, of course, held great promise. At the end of May the Hilmer premiums would be due and the firm of Starratt & Co. on its feet, with over two thousand dollars in commissions actually in hand. On the strength of these prospects Helen began to order a new outfit. Fred Starratt did not have the heart to complain. Helen had earned every st.i.tch of clothing that she was buying--there was no doubt about that; still, he would have liked to be less hasty in her expenditures. He had been too long in business to count much on prospects. He disliked borrowing more money from Brauer, but there was no alternative. Brauer fell to grumbling quite audibly over these advances, and he saw to it that Fred's notes for the amounts always were forthcoming. Hilmer did not come in quite so often to the office; a rush of shipbuilding construction took him over to his yards in Oakland nearly every day.

But Mrs. Hilmer was in evidence a good deal. Helen was constantly calling her up and asking her to drop downtown for luncheon or for a bit of noonday shopping uptown or just for a talk.

"She's a dear!" Helen used to say to Fred. "And I just love her to death..."

Fred could not fathom Helen. A year ago he felt sure that Mrs. Hilmer was the last woman in the world that Helen would have found bearable, much less attractive... He concluded that Helen was enjoying the novelty of watching Mrs. Hilmer nibble at a discreet feminine frivolity to which she was unaccustomed. After a while he looked for outward changes in Mrs. Hilmer's make-up. He figured that the shopping tours with Helen might be reflected in a sprightlier bonnet or a narrower skirt or a higher heel on her shoe. But no such transformation took place. Indeed, her costuming seemed to grow more and more uncompromising--more Dutch, to use the time-worn phrase, made significant to Fred Starratt by his mother. But Helen always made a point to compliment her on her appearance.

"You look too sweet for anything!" Helen would exclaim, rushing upon her new friend with an eager kiss.

At this Mrs. Hilmer always dimpled with wholesome pleasure. Well, she did look sweet, in a motherly, bovine way, Fred admitted, when the note of insincerity in his wife's voice jarred him.

One day Mrs. Hilmer brought down a hat the two had picked out and which had been altered at Helen's suggestion. She tried it on for Helen's approval, and Fred stood back in a corner while Helen went into ecstasies over it. Even a man could not escape the fact that it was unbecoming. Somehow, in a subtle way, it seemed to accent all of Mrs. Hilmer's unprepossessing features. When she left the office Fred said to Helen, casually:

"I don't think much of your taste, old girl. That hat was awful!"

Helen laughed maliciously. "Of course it was!" she flung back.

Starratt shrugged and said no more. There was kindliness back of many deceits, but he knew now that Helen's insincerities with Mrs. Hilmer were not justified by even so dubious virtue.

At the moment when the Hilmer shipyard insurance had been turned over to Fred Starratt he had at once made a move toward a reduction in the rate. Having gone over the schedule at the Board of Fire Underwriters, he had discovered that they had failed to give Hilmer credit in the rating for certain fire protection. On the strength of Starratt's application for a change a new rate was published about the middle of May. Starratt was jubilant. Here was proof for Hilmer that his interests were being guarded and that it paid to employ an efficient broker. He flew at once to Hilmer's office.

"Let me have your policies," he burst out.

"I've secured a new rate for you and I want the reduction indorsed."

Hilmer did not appear to be moved by the announcement.

"Better cancel and rewrite the bunch," he replied, briefly.

Fred gasped. This meant that only about a sixth of the premium on the present policies would be due and payable at the end of the month and the prospects of a big clean-up on commissions delayed until July.

"Oh, that won't be necessary," he tried to say, calmly. "This reduction applies from the original date of the policies. It's just as if they had been written up at the new rate."

Hilmer ripped open a letter that he had been toying with. "Better cancel," he announced, dryly. "It's a good excuse, and I'm a little pressed for money. It will delay a big expenditure."