Chapter 17: Kepler

He returned to London to find that Kepler had, in his absence, reorganized the filing system. This was not a catastrophe. Kepler's organizational logic was consistent if idiosyncratic — everything was now sorted by the color of the paper rather than by subject or date, which was problematic for locating specific documents but had a certain aesthetic coherence. The neighbor's note said Kepler had received three visitors in Crane's absence and had assessed each of them through the door before declining to open it. The assessments were described as: 'the orange one' (probably a consulting client, based on the business card slid under the door), 'the grey one' (official correspondence from a government office), and 'the one who smelled of machinery' (Van Cleef, who had apparently come to London and been denied entry by a cat). Crane sent a note to Van Cleef apologizing for Kepler's assessment process. Van Cleef's reply arrived the next morning: he had been aware that the cat was a test and had failed it, he assumed, by arriving unannounced on a grey day rather than in the sunshine that apparently improved Kepler's disposition toward strangers. He was returning to Rotterdam. He trusted the matter was resolved. Crane wrote back confirming that the matter was resolved and that Van Cleef's testimony had been instrumental. The reply to that was shorter: *Emmeline would have been glad it worked. She always said documentation outlasted people.* Crane put the letter in the case file, which had grown to substantial length. He gave the file to the Society's archive, along with the second chess player's instruction set and the draft reorganization proposal. They belonged to the Society. They were what Mrs. Farquhar had made for it.