The first page of the 1977 policy explained that Grafalk Steamship was a closely held corporation, principal address at 132 North La Salle Street in Chicago. The summary of the coverage on the declarations page showed Grafalk with fifteen hundred employees in eight states. These included sailors, secretaries, stevedores, longshoremen, truck drivers, and general office workers. Directors and officers were excluded from coverage. The total premium for 1977 was four million eight hundred thousand dollars. I whistled to myself. A lot of money.

I flipped through the pages of state and class detail to the back where the audit of the premium was attached. This section was completed at the end of the year. It showed how many people had actually worked each day by class of job and how much premium Grafalk in fact owed Ajax for 1977. The reduction was substantial—down to three million dollars. Instead of three million hours of work, Grafalk’s employees had put in under two million for the year ending then.

I showed this result to Ferrant. He nodded and went back to the cargo policies. I finished the compensation ones, scribbling summary results on a sheet of paper. Ferrant handed me a stack of cargo policies. He was tabulating them by date, total value of contract, and vessel used. We’d compare them later to the tonnage figures of the individual ships.

Hogarth came in as we were finishing the masses of paper. I looked at my watch. It was almost six o’clock.

“Any luck?” Hogarth asked.

Ferrant pursed his lips, his long hair falling over his eyes again. “Well, we have to add up what we’ve got. Doesn’t look good, though. I say, Hogarth, be a sport and give us a hand—don’t look so sour. Think of this as an intellectual problem.”

Hogarth shook his head. “Count me out. I told Madeleine I’d be home on time for once tonight and I’m already late. I’m going to catch the six thirty-five.”

He left and Ferrant and I continued our work, tedious and uninspiring. In the end, though, it became clear that Grafalk had been using only forty of his sixty-three vessels for the last five years. In fact he’d sold three ships in the middle of 1979.

“He should have sold more,” Ferrant said gloomily.

“Maybe he tried and there wasn’t a market.”

By eight-thirty we’d completed a sketchy analysis of Grafalk’s finances. His ships cost about two thousand dollars a day to operate when they weren’t sailing, about ten thousand dollars a day when they were. So the total expense to Grafalk each season for running the steamship company was about a hundred twenty million dollars a year. And the total value of the cargoes he was carrying came out to only a hundred million in 1977. Things were a little bit better in ’78 and ’79 but hadn’t improved much the past two years.