It was determined, if possible, to bring to Washington within the next four days the 2,500 tons of gold remaining in the New York vault, and to store it in the United States Treasury, according to the conference plan. The condemned gold was to be loaded at once on the _Massachusetts_, and the battleship was to be ready to proceed to sea the moment her foreign convoys arrived. Then the news should be given to the country in the form of a proclamation from the president, to be distributed to the press by telegraph late the night before the day agreed upon for publication. Brent and Wharton returned the same day to New York. It required sharp work to arrange for the transportation of the remaining contents of the big vault to the custody of the Treasury at Washington in the short time available. There was risk of discovery, too, in the large number of men employed at the task at both ends of the line, and some of the safeguards against detection and loss which had been used in all previous movements of portions of the treasure were now disregarded. Extraordinary precautions were hardly necessary now that the hour of disclosure was close at hand. The secret did not escape, in spite of the almost careless publicity of the hurried transfer by means of scores of wagons and several special trains. The clerks of the Treasury received the strange boxes, and made room for them with difficulty in the already crowded vaults. Their instructions were to store them unopened for the present in the strongrooms reserved for gold bullion, giving merely receipts for so many wooden boxes, “contents unknown.” Late in the afternoon of Friday, February 14, the managers of the Washington bureaus of the great news agencies received an intimation from the White House that an important piece of information would be given out by the president’s private secretary at eleven o’clock that evening. The correspondents who called at the Executive Mansion at the hour named received from the secretary a document which caused them some surprise when they first glanced at it. The secretary remarked in handing them each a copy that there was not a word additional to be said that night in regard to the matter contained in the paper either by the president or any member of the administration. The newspaper men read a paragraph or two, and then suddenly even the serene stoicism of well-seasoned Washington correspondents was disturbed. They scanned the succeeding pages of type-written manuscript hastily, and one or two of the men slipped out without waiting to say good-night. Others stopped to ask a vain question or two before joining in the race for the wires.