The matter did not, of course, pass unnoticed in Washington, for it soon became evident that secret dispatches were being misappropriated. Vigorous efforts were made to discover the guilty person in the Navy Department, but they all proved vain for the following reason: Among the wireless stations used for maintaining constant communication between the Navy Department at Washington and the various naval ports and naval stations, and the fleet itself when at sea, was the large station on Wilson's Peak near the observatory, whose shining tin-roof can be seen plainly from Los Angeles when the sun strikes it. All messages arriving there for transmission to San Diego and Mare Island could be readily intercepted by the wireless apparatus attached inconspicuously to the huge wind-wheel on an orange plantation between Pasadena and Los Angeles. The uninitiated would have concluded that the wires had something to do with a lightning-rod. The Japanese proprietor of the plantation had simply to read the messages from the Morse key of his apparatus and forward what he considered advisable to Mr. Stephenson by mail. A few hours later the _Evening Standard_ was in a position to make a scoop with the dispatches of its infallible naval correspondent. Thus Stephenson, without having the slightest suspicion of it, formed a wheel in the great chain which prepared the way for the enemy, and since the _Evening Standard_ had earned a reputation for publishing absolutely reliable news in this field, no one for a moment doubted the announcement of Admiral Perry's attack, although this was the first spurious message which Stephenson had furnished to his paper. _Chapter IX_ A FORTY-EIGHT-HOUR BALANCE