He drew toward them, and they stood aside. He entered the vaults where a gas-jet glimmered, its light glinting on the nickel-plated knobs of the great steel doors. He tried the doors. They were locked. He remained an instant in thought, and then took from his pocket a stick of red sealing-wax. He hesitated another instant. “No,” he said, “the great seal could not be utilized.” The great seal of state of the state of Illinois, though it has a political history, is, nevertheless, physically, but a huge overgrown seal such as notaries public use in their little businesses. And in Illinois the governor has no privy seal as he has in some commonwealths. The governor warmed the sealing-wax in the gas-jet that blazed beside him in the vault. When it began to melt he dribbled and daubed its softened substance, drop by drop, on the combination of the huge safe, as a girl would seal a letter. When he had quite covered the lock with the molten wax, he sealed it with the seal ring he wore on his left hand, a ring which bore the coat-of-arms of a colonial governor. The midnight secret of those two men, whatever it might be, was either safe with them or more safely still, sealed with other secrets behind those massive doors. And then he turned the gas down until only a tiny star blinked in the vault, and came out, and swung together the big steel gates that clanked like prison bars, their locks snapping automatically. He returned to the outer door of the department and placed his hand upon the knob. “Gentlemen,” he said ceremoniously, “I await your pleasure.” He bent his gaze full upon William Grigsby, and that little man, throwing back his head with something like defiance, strode on his short legs out of the high-ceiled room, and Mendenhall followed him, but meekly. As they filed past, Grigsby, with face upturned, a face that now in anger had taken on the blue tinge of butchered beef, drew his hands from his overcoat pocket and clasped them behind his back. The governor bowed as the little man and Mendenhall swept out before him. And then he drew the big walnut door to. Standing out in the corridor Grigsby waited, and as he stood and waited, he fumbled in the outer pocket of his overcoat. Suddenly he drew forth his hand. His face had turned white, the white of a fish’s belly. As the governor drew the big walnut door to, and as it swung behind him, it pushed before it, scraping with the peevish voice of a ratchet along the matted floor, a piece of crumpled paper. Grigsby, who had turned toward Mendenhall with a look of death’s despair, saw it, and started, a faint ray of hope beaming in his eye. But the paper lay under the governor’s feet. The governor closed the doors. “You may lock them, Mr. Mendenhall,” he said.