To business: Daniel handed the little box of gold cards to William Ham, who carried them over to a standing-desk by the window and weighed them on a scale. He called out numbers to the clerk, who repeated them aloud and pricked them down in a book. The cards were then placed in a strong-box that squatted on the floor-boards next to the banca . All, that is, save for one of them, which was handed to a third man: an aproned overseer, struck from the same mould as the ones down in the hemp-pounding shop, save that he was not brandishing a cane. With the care and pomp of a priest bearing the consecrated host across a chancel, he took this to the organ-like device, and set it down, for the nonce, on the music stand above the keyboard. Then he gripped a pair of heavy black wrought-iron handles that projected from the machine’s front panel, just above the keyboard, and gave them a mighty jerk. A slab of iron emerged from the machine like a tongue being thrust out. It was flat and smooth as if it had been extruded from a rolling-mill, and for the most part it was devoid of markings or features of any kind. But at the back of it was a shallow square depression perforated by a dense grid of holes, so that it looked like a grille or screen. The overseer plucked the gold card from the music-stand and laid it into the depression, where it fit perfectly and covered up all of the holes with a margin to spare around the edges. Then he put the heels of his hands against the two iron handles and rammed the slab, along with its golden burden, back into the bowels of the machine. As it boomed into place, the discriminating listener could hear a metallic snap, as though some latches had engaged to hold it all in place.