Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/188

164 only laughed, and bade me remember that all this required work, and it was not his intention to spend his life at work.”

“Sir,” said Randolph Mason, interrupting, “you are overlooking the important matter in your disclosure. What was this insurance scheme?”

“Oh. yes,” said the coal operator, “I was coming to that. It was our plan to secure heavy insurance on the life of Hirst, making his wife the beneficiary, and later have him disappear under circumstances indicating suicide.”

“That plan,” said Mason, drawing down the heavy muscles of his mouth, “is ancient, and infantile, and trite; worthy of blunderers—children and blunderers.”

Gilmore looked at the lawyer for a moment critically, then he continued. “I presume the scheme is not new, but I rather think Hirst's plan for carrying it into effect was somewhat novel and unusually practical. At the time Hirst proposed this scheme he was unmarried, and, as a cold business proposition, he said that I should select some woman—any woman