Jealous Woman by James M. Cain Read Free Book Online

puts first things first, and it knows what the first things are. What brings in its business is agents, and when one of them blows his top even the President’s not too proud to jump on a plane. He was just like any other guy as I drove him in, and we went direct to my office, as he was taking the sleeper back and wouldn’t need a room at the hotel. “What do they call you, Horner—Ed?”
    “My friends do, yes.”
    “And my name is Jason—Jace if you like me.”
    “I’d feel funny about that.”
    “Oh, this is the West.”
    “Yeah, but a corporation president, he ought not to have people getting familiar. J.P., though, I’d like that all right.”
    Well, that made him laugh, so by the time we hit town we were getting along fine. Keyes was there when we came in, looking pretty thick, but we went all over it, and then Norton took charge: “Keyes, you knew my father pretty well?”
    “Better than you did, perhaps.”
    “On insurance, I’m sure you did. But I knew him too, and on questions like this, I’ve heard him say a thousand times: ‘Insurance is the assumption of risk. Pig-iron under water is a perfect risk, but nobody takes out a policy on it. That’s what the underwriter must always bear in mind: if the applicant weren’t in some way uneasy, he’d never buy insurance. The risk must be there for the surety to be sought and the mere presence of risk is not in itself sufficient reason for rejection of the business.’ Do you recall his saying that?”
    “No.”
    “I do, distinctly.”
    “He never said it.”
    “He said it forty times a day for forty years.”
    “What he said was: ‘Insurance is the assumption of a calculated risk.’ He was, as you probably recall, opposed to conservatism in the acceptance of business. He accepted business that most companies turned down, but it was in no way a gamble with him, except as all of it is a gamble. He brought the calculation of a risk to a science that was way ahead of his time, with a department of investigation that brought in stuff that hadn’t even been heard of then. Yet the ratio of his losses was as sound as any in the business. I’ll recommend no risk I can’t calculate, and in this case there is concealment. There is concealment on the part of the beneficiary, of the assured, and I think on the part of the agent.”
    I flared up but Norton cut me off: “Ed, what is this?”
    “I’m stuck on the beneficiary, J. P.”
    “Mrs. Delavan?”
    “I’m going to marry her.”
    “Is that the matter that’s been concealed?”
    “No, I wouldn’t say so. The main item of concealment is that Mr. Keyes is stuck on the wife of the lady’s first husband, but she’s not going to marry him—and that’s what this is all about, though what romance has got to do with the calculation of risk I don’t exactly see—though I’m willing to be shown.”
    I guess it was a dirty crack at Keyes, but I was pretty sore. Norton’s mouth began to twitch and I could see he was having a hard time not to laugh. Keyes talked some more, and the trouble with him was that when he got that look in his eye, and told all the times before that he had been right when he smelled something wrong without even knowing what it was yet, he’d shake you, in spite of yourself. Away down deep in me, if I’d told the truth, he shook me, but I was getting bull-headed by then and nothing could change me. He shook Norton, I could see that, for a while we all three sat there, drumming our fingers on our chairs. I called to Linda to put through my New York call. It was the apartment of a big shot in a company that wanted me bad, and he was standing by, because I’d wired him to. Pretty soon it came through, but it was Norton that picked up the receiver. “He’s changed his mind, Linda. Doesn’t want the New York call.”
    I took them to the Palm Room of the Club Fortune, but at eight Norton had to run for his train. He thought it funny Keyes didn’t go with him, and as I put him