The Complete Detective by Rupert Hughes

Author:Rupert Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590774557
Publisher: M. Evans & Company

9.

A FEW HORS D’OEUVRE

As a tribute to French culinary skill, our bills of fare are full of French words. Instead of crudely speaking of “side-dishes” we make them sound smart and taste better—and cost more—by calling them hors d’oeuvre. Few of us can pronounce the term so that a Frenchman would know what we meant; but, in this case, it is permissible to point.

Literally, the term means “out of work.” It is applicable to this chapter because it will serve as a much-needed relief from the heavy dishes of murder, blackmail, and other crimes that make up the bulk of this book.

For a few pages let us trifle with some of the lighter phases of Ray Schindler’s manifold tasks. They concern people who make a business of being out of work. They like it; but their leisure keeps the insurance companies working overtime and causes Ray’s operatives to lose a lot of sleep.

As far back as the old Roman days, and doubtless farther back, it was well realized that when you put a guard over somebody or something, your troubles are only half over. The next problem is,

“Who will guard the guards?”

So it is with insurance. You can buy insurance against almost anything nowadays. The next problem is:

“Who will insure the insurers?”

A great part of the liabilities and expenses of insurance companies consists of the attempt, often vain, to keep swindlers from looting the funds so that there will be nothing left to pay the honest claimants. Thieves take out policies against theft. Firebugs take out policies on buildings, then set them on fire. Swindlers take out accident policies, then manufacture accidents. Even people of honest intent and careless performance take out huge policies to protect their jewels from theft, then mislay them, take affidavits that they could not have been mislaid, and demand the full value of the gems, or even more.

The story has already been told of how Ray Schindler, acting for an insurance company, followed a womans pet monkey and disclosed that he had been stealing her diamonds one by one and hiding them in a big jar.

A large part of Ray’s business, and that of other private detectives, is the business of keeping people from swindling insurance companies, and their policyholders, for whose follies and misfortunes the insurance companies are pledged to pay whatever amount the policy may stipulate.

Once a fraud or a crime is successfully committed, the perpetrator is apt to take it up as a business. Bilking insurance companies has long been a thriving industry, and the protective work of the private detective is a vitally important form of crime-prevention. Life insurance is one form of bequeathing money, and the beneficiary is often left in the dark as to his or her expectations. Often the insurance companies are instructed not to let the beneficiaries know what is waiting them until they learn it after the funeral of their benefactor.

On many occasions there are beneficiaries whom the insurance companies cannot trace at first. A letter to the latest address may be returned to the company.

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