“Well, at least you’ve gotten into the early years, I see, if you’re on livery stables and saddlemakers,” Greta commented.
“You’d think that it would be easier,” Maggie murmured. “I mean, if you wanted to find out what year the Ziegfeld Theater was licensed, for instance, would you have to go through all that?”
“Oh, no,” Peggy answered. “They have an alphabetical index by name, and you could go right to it. But we don’t know the names of the places we’re looking for, and that’s what makes it so difficult.”
“Even so ... what if the police needed to know, for example, and they had to know really fast? Suppose they wanted the names of all the theaters? Would they have to do what you’re doing?” Maggie asked.
“No,” Peggy answered, “and that’s one of the things that makes this so frustrating. The Police Department has all its own files, and the clerk who’s been helping us says that we could find out what we want to know from them in no time at all.”
“Then why...?” Greta began.
“Police files are for the use of the Police Department for police business,” Peggy interrupted. “We’ve been told that very emphatically.”
“And there aren’t any exceptions,” Amy added, “so poor Peggy and I have had to make our own police files.”
“And what’s worse,” Peggy went on gloomily, “is the hours we’ve had to work at it. The bureau closes at four-thirty sharp, and isn’t open on Saturday, and we’re busy with school all day long. Amy and I don’t finish with our last class until three o’clock, and then we make a mad dash downtown. That gives us about an hour a day to go through the books.”
“How close are you to finishing?” Greta asked.