“Back we go to the sixteenth century. We are in Cadiz, one of the most important seaports in the world. If you are tired of Cadiz, you are tired of life and so on. Naturally, there is a Fugger office in the High Street, offering low-interest overdrafts, mortgages (the word mortgage literally means “dead hand”, which I find terribly evocative, don’t you?), bottomry loans, whatever they were, and the inevitable life insurance. It is a Thursday.”
“Into the Fugger office walks a relatively prosperous sea captain in his early thirties. He has become rather concerned about the risks involved in his profession now that the seas are full of English pirates, and he wants to take out some insurance on his ship. This is perfectly natural, because his ship is his living, and if somebody puts a culverin ball through its bows, our sea-captain will be out of a job.”
“The manager of this particular Fugger office is well versed in the basic tenets of his trade, and the fundamental rule of insurance is, Don’t take bad risks—that, by the way, is what an insurer calls a sucker bet when you offer it to him. There is a severe risk that what the sea-captain fears so much will actually come to pass. Therefore, regretfully, the manager has to refuse to insure the ship. But he is nothing if not a tryer; it hurts him severely if someone walk out of his office without making at least a small bet, and so he suggests to the sea-captain that he might do worse than take out a little life insurance.”
Again Mr Gleeson paused, and Jane noticed to her amazement that he was quivering slightly. Mr Gleeson must have noticed her noticing, for he smiled.
“This is the good bit,” he said, “don’t go away. I remember when I was told it. By rights, of course, I should never have been told it at all. You see, the story is handed down from generation to generation of managing directors of the House of Fugger or whatever they’re calling it this week. Fortunately, the managing directors of the bank had always died in their beds with plenty of notice from the medical authorities, and so there was always time to pass the story on. The way I got to hear it was extremely fortuitous, a complete break with tradition, you might say. You see, I was at Oxford with the son of the then managing director, and I was staying with the family one long vacation. We all went out rough shooting and there was a terrible accident, the old man got shot. No time to get a doctor, he just rolled over and with his dying breath blurted the whole horrible thing out. I happened to be there, and so of course I heard it. I wasn’t even qualified then, but of course I became the bank’s chief auditor on the spot, just as my friend became the next managing director, because of what we had heard. You see, the system is that the whole board knows there’s a secret, but only the MD knows what the secret is. I’ve introduced the same system at Moss Berwick, but it doesn’t seem to have worked so well there.”
“So what is the secret, exactly?” Jane asked.
“I’m coming to that,” said the senior partner. “I was just trying to put it off for as long as possible, because it’s so…so silly, I suppose is what you’d have to call it, if you were going to be savagely honest. I’ve lived with this for thirty years, my entire life and phenomenal successes in my career are built around it and I’ve never ever told anyone before.”
Jane looked him in the eye. She was sorry for him. “Go on,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Mr Gleeson. He was probably quite nice when you got to know him, should you live that long. “The policy that the manager sold Captain Vanderdecker—the sea-captain’s name was Vanderdecker—was a perfectly standard policy specially designed to meet the needs, or rather the gullibility, of sea-captains. You had the choice of paying regular premiums or a single lump-sum premium—the sea-captains found it difficult to pay regular premiums in those days, you see, because they rarely knew where they’d be at any given time from one year’s end to the next—and in return you got an assured sum on death. It wasn’t exactly a fortune, but it would tide your nearest and dearest over until the plague or the Inquisition finally finished her off, and since there was no income tax in those days it was guaranteed tax free.”
