"Indeed it is hard offhand to calculate the possibilities of disaster, but this much is quite sure: Our enemy--and Germany is as much our enemy now as she was during active hostilities--would almost inevitably succeed in the very thing she has been plotting to bring about, which is the sowing of discord among the Allies, not to mention the increase of a racial distrust and a racial antagonism which exist in certain quarters, and, on top of all that, the widening and deepening of a problem which already has been sufficiently difficult and delicate." "I see. Well?" "Well, naturally everything possible was done at Washington to safeguard a dispatch of such tremendous importance. No copies of the communication were made. The original was put in a place where it was presumed to be absolutely safe. But within forty-eight hours it disappeared from the place where it had been put." "How did it disappear? Is that known?" "It was stolen. A government clerk named Westerfeltner, a man who held a place of trust and confidence, was the man who stole it. For it he was offered a sum of money which would make him independent for life, and under the temptation he weakened and he stole it. But first he stole the key to the cipher, which would make it possible for anyone having both the key and the message to decode the message. Once this is done the damage is done, for the signature is ample proof of the validity of the document. That is the one thing above all others we are trying to prevent now." "But why couldn't the thief have decoded the dispatch?" "He might have, excepting for two things. In the first place his principal, the man who corrupted him to betray his honour and incidentally to betray his Government, would not trust him to do this. The head plotter demanded the original paper. In the second place an interval of a day and a half elapsed between the theft of the code and the theft of the dispatch. Before the thief secured the dispatch the key had already passed out of his possession." "How do you know these things with such certainty?" "Because Westerfeltner has confessed. He confessed to me at three o'clock yesterday morning after the thefts had practically been traced to his door. He made a clean breast of it all right enough. The high points of his confession have all been verified. I am sure that he was honest with me. Fear and remorse together made him honest. At present he is--well, let's call it sequestered. No outsider knows he is now under arrest; or perhaps I should say in custody. No interested party is likely to feel concern regarding his whereabouts, because so far as he was concerned the crooked contract had been carried out and completed before he actually fell under suspicion." "Meaning by that, what?"