The Bank was in Chancery Lane, close to the office. The old clerk went off on his errand. 'A very careless mistake,' the lawyer repeated; 'any clerk of mine who committed such a mistake should be dismissed at once.' In fact, the certainty of full and speedy justice kept Mr. Dering's clerks always at a high level of efficiency. He returned to the letters, apparently with no further uneasiness. After ten minutes, Checkley taking longer than he expected, Mr. Dering became aware that his attention was wandering. 'Great transfers and many sales,' he repeated. 'After all, he must mean the investment of that Dalton-Smith money. Yet that was only a single transaction. What can he mean? He must have made a mistake. He must be thinking of another client. It's his memory, not mine, that is confused. That's it--his memory.' The large open safe in the corner was filled with stacks of paper tied up and endorsed. These papers contained, among other things, the securities for the whole of Mr. Dering's private fortune, which was now very considerable. Even the greatest City magnate would feel for Mr. Dering the respect due to wealth if he knew the amount represented by the contents of that safe. There they were, the leases, agreements, mortgages, deeds, bonds, conveyances, shares, all the legal documents by which the wicked man is prevented from seizing and appropriating the rich man's savings. Formerly the rich man kept his money in a box with iron bands. He locked up the box and put it in a recess in the cellar contrived in the stone wall. If he was only a bourgeois, it was but a little box, and he put it in a secret place (but everybody knew the secret) at the head of his bed. If he were a peasant, he tied his money up in a clout and put it under the hearthstone. In any case, thieves broke in and stole those riches. Now, grown wiser, he has no box of treasures at all: he lends it all in various directions and to various associations and companies. Every rich man is a money-lender: he is either Shylock the Great or Shylock the Less, according to the amount he lends. Thieves can steal nothing but paper which is no use to them. As we grow wiser still, we shall have nothing at all in any house that can be of any use to any thief, because everything in the least valuable will have its papers, without the production of which nothing of value will be bought or sold. And all the gold and silver, whether forks or mugs, will be lodged in the Bank. Then everybody will become honest, and the Eighth Commandment will be forgotten.