I yelped, "Mr. Gogarty! This is a fraud!"
"What?"
"Look at this! 'On 21st October, the insured suffered severe injuries while trapped in a rising elevator with faulty safety equipment, resulting in loss of both legs above knees, multiple lacerations of—' Well, never mind the rest of it. But look at that, Mr. Gogarty! He already lost both legs! He can't lose them twice, can he?"
Gogarty sat back in his chair, looking at me oddly. "You startled me," he complained. "Wills, what have I been trying to tell you? That's the whole point, boy! No, he didn't lose his legs twice. It was five times!"
I goggled at him. "But—"
"But, but. But he did. Wait a minute—" he held up a hand to stop my questions—"just take a look through the folder. See for yourself." He waited while, incredulously, I finished going through the dossier. It was true. I looked at Gogarty wordlessly.
He said resentfully, "You see what we're up against? And none of the things you are about to say would help. There is no mistake in the records—they've been double and triple-checked. There is no possibility that another man, or men, substituted for Zorchi—fingerprints have checked every time. The three times he lost his arms, retina-prints checked. There is no possibility that the doctors were bribed, or that he lost a little bit more of his leg, for instance, in each accident—the severed sections were recovered, and they were complete. Wills, this guy grows new arms and legs like a crab!"
I looked at him in a daze. "What a fantastic scientific discovery!" I said.
He snorted. "Fantastic pain in the neck! Zorchi can't go on like this; he'll bankrupt the Company. We can't stop him. Even when we were tipped off this time—we couldn't stop him. And I'll tell you true, Wills, that platform was loaded with our men when Zorchi made his dive. You weren't the only Adjuster of the Company there."