With this understanding I saw Colonel Whiteley at his office in Bleecker Street, not far from Police Headquarters, and told him I believed Macdonnell had information of the missing treasury plate of which he was in search; that in the event the information didn’t pan out, there were several thousands of dollars in the deal for him anyway. With the incentive that he might add to his influence at Washington by discovering a plate from which counterfeit money was being spread abroad, together with the fact that there would be a fat roll of money in the bargain, Whiteley agreed to take energetic steps in the matter. At his first chance he went to Washington and placed the subject before an attorney highly versed in international law and who was a personal friend of George H. Williams, the United States Attorney-general. The colonel also consulted with members of the Department of Justice and, in fact, investigated at great length into the merits of the case. He returned with the report that the consensus of opinion of the Washington authorities was that the case, if properly handled before the courts, would result in favor of Macdonnell. In fact, the colonel made it plain that Attorney-general Williams would advise the Department of Justice that an extradition warrant in the case could not legally issue. I doubt not that great lengths would have been traversed in order to obtain any, almost inconsequential, information of the missing treasury plate. The mere construing of an enigmatical treaty clause was as nothing. The Treasury Department was in a heap of worry over the plate, not to mention others from which the counterfeiters were ever sending forth treasury notes to the loss of the United States. The recovery of the five-hundred-dollar plate alone would be worth the price of Macdonnell’s freedom, a dozen times over. Charles Ballard was serving a thirty-year sentence in Albany, New York, for turning work from this plate; but where was the plate? It had been so industriously used that it was becoming a menace to the financial market. Ballard had been offered a pardon if he would disclose its hiding-place, but he had scornfully thrown the pardon, so to speak, in the very face of Uncle Sam. Colonel Whiteley so wrought up the interest of the Washington authorities with my story of Macdonnell’s alleged information that he was empowered to offer almost any terms; was commanded, in fact, to exhaust every plausible means to obtain the coveted secret. Colonel Whiteley told me that he’d be sure to obtain the prisoner’s release on bail, provided there was any kind of chance of getting a clew to the plate.