Archived report · 4 min read · Set in Halloran Cross ·
The Report of the Fifth Lift
The shaft inspection at Halloran Cross House counts five lifts where the plans of the building show four, and the pass certificate is drafted unsigned.
- filed: "before the insurance visit"
- reference: "HC/LF/02"
1. Instructions. The undersigned was instructed by the Halloran Cross Estate Company to inspect the passenger lifts of Halloran Cross House and to hand the report to the insurers' assessor on his visit, now set for Thursday. The building is of the firm's 1968 range, six storeys and a basement, with a banking hall at ground. The plans show four passenger shafts, numbered one to four, running the full height, and no fifth shaft. The plans have been the plans since the building was signed.
2. Method. The motor room at roof level was opened in the presence of the caretaker, Mr Douglas Fitton, who holds the keys and has held them since the commissioning. Each machine was put through the usual cycle: governor drawn and reset, compensation tested, brakes let down and lifted, the counterweights run to the head and back. Car speeds were taken with the spring clock the practice keeps. The hour-counters on the dashboards were read and booked. This is the routine the insurers pay for and it was done to the letter, three times.
3. The count. The routine produced five machines. The shafts are banked in one well along the west face. Standing on the basement gantry and running the hand torch along the well from left to right, one counts entrances beneath the landing markings and arrives at five. Running right to left, one counts four, and the left hand has counted one entrance that the right hand put down to a shadow. Both counts are noted here because both are the undersigned's own.
4. The fifth machine has a call board. The board is brass, of the same plate as the others, and is fixed at the landing between the third and the fourth, where the plans show a cable store with the door keyed. The legends on the five buttons have gone. The numerals can be read on the other three boards after eighteen years and a war of parcels; on this board the numerals never were, and in their place are small cast figures worn to suggestion: a house worn down to its roofline, a bridge worn down to one rail, a figure worn to a bow and no shoulder. Wear takes years of fingers. The other boards show wear of eighteen years. This board shows wear of a different order, and no record was asked for, and none offered.
5. The contract arithmetic is booked herewith. The maintenance agreement covers four machines, billed quarterly, paid without query since the building opened. The sub-meter board in the annexe carries five meters. The fifth meter has been read monthly for eighteen years by the same reader, who reads it because it is on the card, and the reading is paid under the lighting and power vote because the total never failed to fit. The total never failed to fit because the vote was always, and strangely, in the company's own phrase, drawn generous. The ledgers contain no line for a fifth lift because no ledger was asked to carry one.
6. The hour-counters of the four known machines, summed across the maintained period and held against the makers' duty schedule, come within one half per cent of the figure the schedule allots to five machines working the same floors. The surplus is not large. It is the surplus of one year of one machine, spread evenly, and it has been spread evenly since the building opened, which is not how surplus behaves.
7. No test was made of the fifth. The undersigned pressed the lowest of the worn figures once, was kept two hours at the firm's expense, and pressed nothing again. The button was warm when the rising main was checked above it at noon, and it had not been pressed since morning. The caretaker says the board runs warm in the sun. The sun was on the west face. The board is on the west face. It is the sort of thing a man can live on for years without chewing.
8. The pass certificate is printed in columns for four machines. A fifth line is entered in pencil, unruled. The question put to the insurers for Thursday is a narrow one, and it is put here as it will be put there: whether the certificate is to pass on the plans or on the count, because the two have made their different arrangements, and only one branch of this office is instructed to say which of them is in error.