Only thirty-four out of the first seven hundred claims which George examined had been handled by attorneys, but it took him over two days to get through those particular files. The claims in question were mostly of doubtful validity, and one or two were patently dishonest. In George’s view, no reputable lawyer would have touched any of them. But these had been disreputable lawyers; they had both touched and held on. They had quoted non-existent precedents and photographed useless documents. They had hired dishonest inquiry agents to conduct pointless investigations, and quack genealogists to draw up faked family trees. They had written portentous letters and uttered obscure threats. The only thing, apparently, that none of them had ever done was to advise his client to withdraw a claim. In one of these files there was a letter to the administrator from an old woman named Snyder, regretting that she had no more money left to pay her attorney to act for her, and asking that her claim should not on this account be overlooked.
In his second week on the records, George managed, in spite of a severe cold in the head, to push his score of examined claims up to nineteen hundred. In the third week he topped three thousand. By the end of the fourth week he was at the halfway mark. He was also feeling very depressed. The boring nature of the work and the cumulative effect of so much evidence of human stupidity were lowering in themselves. The amused commiseration of his new colleagues and the knowledge that he was beginning his career in Lavater, Powell and Sistrom at the wrong end of an office joke had done nothing to improve matters. Mr. Budd, when last encountered in the elevator on his way back from lunch, had talked cheerfully about baseball and had not even troubled to ask for a progress report. On the Monday morning of the fifth week George surveyed with loathing the stacks of records that still remained to be examined.
“Finish the O’s, Mr. Carey?” The speaker was the janitor who looked after the vaults, cleaned up the parcels, and carried them to and from George’s office.
“No, I’d better start on the P’s now.”
“I can ease the rest of the O’s out if you like, Mr. Carey.”
“All right, Charlie. If you can do it without bringing the lot down.” The inroads he had already made on the towering stacks of parcels had gradually reduced the stability of the remainder.
“Sure, Mr. Carey,” said Charlie. He took hold of a section near the floor and pulled. There was a slithering noise and a crash as an avalanche of parcels engulfed him. In the cloud of dust that followed the subsidence, he stumbled to his feet coughing and swearing, his hand held to his head. Blood began to pour from a long cut over his eye.
“For God’s sake, Charlie, how did that happen?”
The janitor kicked something solid under the heap of parcels about him. “This damned thing caught me on the head, Mr. Carey,” he explained. “Must have been stacked up in the middle somewhere.”
“Do you feel all right?”
“Oh, sure. It’s only a scratch. Sorry, Mr. Carey.”
“You’d better get it fixed anyway.”
When he had handed the janitor over to the care of one of the elevator men and the dust in the vault had settled again, George went in and examined the confusion. Both the O’s and the P’s had vanished under a rubble of S’s and W’s. He pushed several of the parcels aside and saw the reason for the janitor’s cut eye. It was a large, black, japanned deed box of the kind that used to line the walls of old family lawyers. Stencilled on it in white paint
were the words: “ SCHNEIDER-CONFIDENTIAL.”
George dragged the box clear of the parcels and tried to open it. It was locked and there was no key attached to either of the handles. He hesitated. His business in this case was with the claims files, and it was foolish to waste time satisfying his curiosity about the contents of an old deed box. On the other hand, it would take an hour to straighten out the mess at his feet. There was little point in his covering himself with dust and cobwebs in order to hasten the process, and Charlie would be back in a few minutes. He went into the janitor’s room, took a cold chisel and a hammer from the tool rack, and returned to the box. A few blows cut through the thin metal around the tongue of the lock, and he was able to wrench the lid open.