“I will aid you, Mr. Morning, as you request, by keeping our transactions secret as far as possible, though I can’t promise you success in that. At least a dozen men will be required to print the gold notes in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and those men will know of the issuance of so vast a sum as $300,000,000. Half a dozen more must know of the removal of the two hundred millions of paper money now in the treasury vaults, and at least a dozen men will be needed to weigh and remove the gold bars from your warehouse. What is known to thirty men will soon, I fear, be known to the world. I will detail only discreet men, who shall work under pledges of secrecy, the violation of which shall cost them their places, but, after every precaution shall have been taken, who shall baffle the ubiquitous newspaper reporter in search of a ‘scoop’? He will crawl through the coal hole or the area railings. He will walk with the cats on the top of spikes and broken bottles. He will act as a car-driver, a barber, or a purchaser of old clothing. I verily believe that if he had lived in the olden days he would have coaxed Cæsar to reveal the plan of his next campaign, and wrested from the Egyptian Sphinx her secret. I fear, Mr. Morning, that the reporters will prove too much for us.” “I have had some experience in keeping secrets, Mr. Secretary, and if you will permit me to direct the details of the movement, I will undertake that no inkling of it shall reach the ears of the reporters.” “How will you avoid it, Mr. Morning?”