Preferred Risk. Lester Del Rey
He fell less than a yard in front of the slim nose of the Diesel. I don’t suppose the speed of the train was even five miles an hour, but the engineer hadn’t a chance in the world to stop.
While I watched, struck motionless, along with all the others on that platform, the engine passed over the huddled form. The brakes were shrieking, but it was much, much too late. Even in that moment I thought he would not be killed—not instantly, at least, unless he died of loss of blood. The trunk of his body was safely in the well between the tracks. But his legs were sprawled over a rail. And the slow click-click of the wheels didn’t stop until his uniformed body was far out of sight.
It was shocking, sickening, unbelievable.
And it didn’t stop there. A strange thing happened. When the man had dived into the path of the train, there was a sudden fearful hush; it had happened too suddenly for anyone to cry out. And when the hush ended, there was only a momentary, instinctive gasp of horror. Then there was a quick, astonished babble of voices—and then cheers! And applause, and ringing bravos!
I didn’t understand.
The man had thrown himself deliberately under the train. I was sure of it.
Was that something to cheer?
* * * *
I finally made it to where the Regional Director was waiting for me—nearly an hour late.
It was at a hotel overlooking the Bay, and the sight was thrilling enough to put the unpleasant accident I had seen out of my mind for a moment. There was nothing so beautiful in all the world, I thought, as the Bay of Naples at sunset. It was not only my own opinion; I had seen it described many times in the travel folders I had pored over, while my wife indulgently looked over my shoulder, back in those remote days of marriage. “La prima vista del mundo,” the folders had called it—the most beautiful sight of the world. They had said: “See Naples, and die.”
I hadn’t known, of course, that Marianna would die first…
But that was all behind me. After Marianna’s death, a lot of things had happened, all in a short time, and some of them very bad. But good or bad, I had laid down a law for myself: I would not dwell on them. I had started on a new life, and, I was going to put the past in a locked compartment in my mind. I had to!
I was no longer an ordinary civilian, scraping together his Blue Heaven premiums for the sake of a roof over his head, budgeting his food policies, carrying on his humdrum little job. I was a servant of the human race and a member of the last surviving group of gentleman-adventurers in all the world: I was an Insurance Claims Adjuster for the Company!
All the same, I couldn’t quite forget some of the bad things that had happened, as I walked into the hotel dining room to meet the Regional Director.
* * * *
Regional Director Gogarty was a huge, pale balloon of a man. He was waiting for me at a table set for four. As he greeted me, his expression was sour. “Glad to meet you, Wills. Bad business, this. Bad business. He got away with it again.”
I coughed. “Sir?” I asked.
“Zorchi!” he snapped. And I remembered the name I had heard on the platform. The madman! “Zorchi, Luigi Zorchi, the human jellyfish. Wills, do you know that that man has just cashed in on his twelfth disability policy? And not a thing we could do to stop him! You were there. You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Thought so. The twelfth! And your driver said on the phone it was both legs this time. Both legs—and on a common carrier. Double indemnity!” He shook his enormous head. “And with a whole corps of expediters standing by to stop him!”
I said with some difficulty, “Sir, do you mean that the man I saw run over by the train was—”
“Luigi Zorchi. That’s who he was. Ever hear of him, Wills?”
“Can’t say I have.”
Gogarty nodded his balloonlike head. “The Company has kept it out of the papers, of course, but you can’t keep anything from being gossiped about around here. This Zorchi is practically a national hero in Naples. He’s damn near a millionaire by now, I guess, and every lira of it has come right out of the Company’s indemnity funds. And do you think we can do anything about it? Not a thing! Not even when we’re tipped off ahead of time—when, what, and where!
“He just laughs at us. I know for a fact,” Gogarty said bitterly, “that Zorchi knew we found out he was going to dive in front of that express tonight. He was just daring us to stop him. We should have! We should have figured he might disguise himself as a porter. We should—”
I interrupted, “Mr. Gogarty, are you trying to tell me this man deliberately maims himself for the accident insurance?” Gogarty nodded sourly. “Good heavens,” I cried, “that’s disloyal!”
Gogarty laughed sharply and brought me up standing. There was a note to the way he laughed that I didn’t like; for a moment there, I thought he was thinking of my own little—well, indiscretion. But he said only, “It’s expensive, too.” I suppose he meant nothing by it. But I was sensitive on the subject.
Before I could ask him any more questions, the massive face smoothed out in a smile. He rose ponderously, greeting someone. “Here they are, Wills,” he said jovially. “The girls!”
The headwaiter was conducting two young ladies toward us. I remembered my manners and stood up, but I confess I was surprised. I had heard that discipline in the field wasn’t the same as at the Home Office, but after all—Gogarty was a Regional Director!
It was a little informal of him to arrange our first meeting at dinner, in the first place. But to make a social occasion of it was—in the straitlaced terms of the Home Office where I had been trained—almost unthinkable.
And it was apparent that the girls were mere decoration. I had a hundred eager questions to ask Gogarty—about this mad Zorchi, about my duties, about Company policy here in the principality of Naples—but it would be far out of line to bring up Company matters with these females present. I was not pleased, but I managed to be civil.
The girls were decorative enough, I had to admit.
Gogarty said expansively, all trace of ill humor gone, “This is Signorina dell’Angela and Miss Susan Manchester. Rena and Susan, this is Tom Wills.”
I said stiffly, “Delighted.”
Susan was the blonde one, a small plump girl with the bubbly smile of a professional model. She greeted Gogarty affectionately. The other was dark and lovely, but with a constant shadow, almost glowering, in her eyes.
So we had a few drinks. Then we had a few more. Then the captain appeared with a broad menu, and I found myself in an embarrassing position. For Gogarty waved the menu aside with a gesture of mock disgust. “Save it for the peasants,” he ordered. “We don’t want that Blue Plate slop. We’ll start with those little baby shrimps like I had last night, and then an antipasto and after that—”
I broke in apologetically, “Mr. Gogarty, I have only a Class-B policy.”
Gogarty blinked at me. “What?”
I cleared my throat. “I have only Class-B coverage on my Blue Plate policy,” I repeated. “I, uh, I never went in much for such—”
He looked at me incredulously. “Boy,” he said, “this is on the Company. Now relax and let me order. Blue Plate coverage is for the peasants; I eat like a human being.”
It shook me a little. Here was a Regional Director talking about the rations supplied under the Company’s Blue Plate coverage as “slop.” Oh, I wasn’t naive enough to think that no one talked that way. There were a certain number of malcontents anywhere. I’d heard that kind of talk, and even worse, once in a while from the Class-D near-uninsurables, the soreheads with a grudge against the world who blamed all their troubles