The coat of arms of William Bull is a gauntlet holding a dagger under a gorget. The image is definitely not a crescent moon as the points are facing up and are almost touching.
A vertical file is a file libraries keep that might hold articles, brochures, little tidbits of information they get asked often and don’t want to keep looking up. Like a brochure of hiking trails in the area, local history, etc. Most of them nowadays probably contain nothing newer than 1995. 
We just cleaned ours out at my library.