"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need to--they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire. They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street; they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are--to pose as a conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right--good-by." And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston. This was but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within a fortnight of making the Boston appointment he had seriously considered revoking it; but this would have necessitated the admission of his initial error, and he lacked the courage to carry out his better judgment. So, with a shrug of his mental shoulders and a cynical reflection that good luck might perhaps avert the results of his imprudence, he let the matter stand. But good luck failed to materialize, and it was not long before the expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always seemed--after the loss--that the risk was one on which the company should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"--where the loss occurred before the agents could issue the policy or report the acceptance of the risk to the New York office; and though Smith investigated these, and in each case was obliged to hold the agents blameless, the experience left an unfortunate impression. However, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy undoubtedly controlled an unusually large volume of business. If losses were heavy, so were premiums, and the relatively small losses which naturally attend a growing business where no policy has been in force more than a month or two, postponed, for a time at least, the worst of the evil days. But long before they came the heavens had grown dark with trouble in numerous other quarters.