The Man Who Kept the Key

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a good many decisions sat with boards and vestries and committees of five, and a letter sent to all of them was a letter sent to the table it lay on. Your century has made that instant, and made it worse.

Two slaters in the old town, the same Welsh slate and the same copper nails.
Both were asked in the October to price the schoolroom roof behind the chapel.
Both wrote a fair estimate, and both posted on the same wet Thursday.
One addressed his to the Trustees, who were five, and heard nothing until the March.
One addressed his to the single trustee who kept the key, and had his answer in nine days.
Same roof, same price, same post. Why did the five say nothing?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is slating. A long ladder up the gable, the old slates stripped and sorted into what will serve again and what will not, the laths renewed where the nails have rusted through, the new work laid from the eaves up. Such a roof came to eleven pounds, and both men priced it within five shillings.

The schoolroom wanted it. Two tin baths stood under the valley, and on a wet Monday the children at the back sat in coats. Five trustees held the building: a corn factor, a surgeon, two chapel men, and a farmer from four miles out.

The first slater wrote the better letter. Three sides, the lap specified, the slate quantities set out, the price of making good the plaster below, and a line saying he could begin within the fortnight. He addressed it to the Trustees of the Chapel Schoolroom. It was read aloud at the November meeting. One man said it seemed reasonable, another that eleven pounds was a sum. They moved on to the coal account. Nobody said no to it. Nobody said anything to it, and it sat in the minute book until the March gale took eleven slates off in a night.

The second slater did one thing differently, and it cost him a quarter of an hour. On his way out he asked the woman who cleaned the schoolroom which of the five opened the place of a morning. The corn factor, she said, who kept the key on his own ring and paid the coal bill himself when the fund was short. So he wrote one side, to that one trustee, by name, at his place of business. The price and the lap took four lines, then came the part that did the work. He asked one thing: to be told by the Friday week whether the roof was wanted before the winter or not, adding that if the answer was no he would take it as settled and not write again.

The corn factor had it on the Tuesday. He called no meeting. He spoke to the surgeon in the street, got a yes from the farmer at the market, and wrote back on the eighth day. The roof was stripped before the frosts. The first man was neither lazy nor beaten on price. He was beaten by an address.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A request put to several people is put to nobody, because a duty shared out is a duty halved, and halved again, until every man concerned can be perfectly decent and perfectly silent. You did not fail to persuade the five. You failed to give any one of them a reason to be the one who moves.

Watch what happens inside a man reading a letter addressed to him and four others. He checks whether the thing is properly his, and finds it is not, quite. The surgeon knows buildings and the corn factor money, so an opinion from him would be out of turn. He sees that answering first commits the other four, and no man enjoys doing that on a Tuesday for eleven pounds. Each thought is reasonable. Together they make a silence that looks, from where you stand with your ladders, exactly like a refusal. Write to one man and the whole weight falls on him. Write to five and each carries a fifth, which is less than it takes to make anybody pick up a pen. A crowded street will watch a man fall down. A single passer by runs to him.

So the work is to find the one. Not the most important of them, the most answerable: the man who keeps the key and is already uneasy about the baths on the floor. He is seldom at the head of the notepaper, being close kin to the person who decides and never meets you.

Then ask him one thing, name the day, and leave the door marked no standing open. A letter that can only be answered yes gets answered by silence, because silence is the one polite way left to say not now, and costs a busy man nothing. Offer the no and the cheap reply becomes a real one, which is why nine estimates in a row come back as nothing at all.

In your century the letter goes to three addresses at once and dies the same death before dinner. The group thread, the enquiry sent to the office rather than to the man, the quote copied in to the partner so nobody is left out. All of it is the Trustees of the Chapel Schoolroom with faster post, and the cure is unchanged. One name at the head, one thing asked, one day named.

Two cautions. The one you choose must be able to do what you ask. Write to a man with no authority and you get the same silence, and have made him uneasy besides. If the decision truly belongs to all five, do not ask him to decide it. Ask the small thing he can do alone: put it before them on the ninth, or tell you when they sit. And do not let one name become a way round the others. Write to the man with the key, and say openly that you have.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which single person can give me the answer I am waiting for, and do I know his name? If the honest answer is the firm, the office or the family, you have nobody to write to yet.
2. What one thing am I asking of him, and by what day? Not consideration, not thoughts, not a chat when convenient. One act, small enough to do between other work, with a date on it.
3. Where in my waiting work is a message addressed to more than one person? Anything sent to two or more names has not been refused. It was left on the table, and is rescued by sending it again to one of them.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same roof, same price, same post. Why did the five say nothing?

Because each was waiting for one of the others, and each was right to. The estimate went to a body, and a body has no hand to hold a pen. The second slater did not write the better letter. He wrote to the one man who could not pass the duty along, asked one small thing, and named the Friday.

The verse:

A letter to five is a letter to none,
And every one of the five is kind,
So name the man, and name the day,
And ask him one small thing.

Until next time. Go and take the enquiry that has gone quiet on you, find which single person can answer it, and write to him alone asking one thing by a named day.

P.S. The woman who cleaned the schoolroom knew in four words what the minute book could not have told the first slater in four pages. The people at the edges of a concern, the one who unlocks the door, the one who answers the telephone, know whose word ends an argument and are never asked.

Also in the archive: The Man Who Was Not There, Two Answers Out of Nine and The Chair by the Glass.