Several years before I had been told by a court-joker, of which there are many in Europe, that the name of Hanson is borne by one-third of the people of Denmark and that the remainder of the populace in that country is largely of the Holst, Peters and Larsen families. Now, under these circumstances, if I would gain the confidence of this fellow traveler, I could not reveal my real identity, but, instead, must choose one or more of the methods of concealment which are so common in detective work. "I take you to be an Englishman, or at least an English subject," said I, after a pause. He smiled knowingly and answered affirmatively, saying, "Your guess is correct in both particulars." "Well," I continued, "I was born English, that is, I hail from the Australian state of Victoria, near the city of Hamilton, where my father settled on land nearly seventy years ago." "Oh, indeed," said he, "then you must know much of Ballarat and Melbourne and Geelong, where I have been often." After this our conversation was easy and covered a wide range of topics. Luckily we did not occupy seats in the same Pullman car, hence we agreed to meet at Albany and take dinner together on the run from that city to New York. I indicate that it was fortunate that we did not occupy seats in the same car, and I found it so, because it gave me an opportunity to plan a line of conversation for the evening ride. III--THE "SIGN OF SILENCE"--THE SPY'S PASSPORT At Albany all passengers for New York were required to change cars and it was necessary to wait a brief time to make connections. On the platform I met my new acquaintance, who had made himself known to me as John Fenwick of Adelaide, Australia, and here he was in earnest conversation with two young men. These he introduced to me as George Fenton and James Barton, the former a stout man with blue eyes and auburn hair and the latter a tall individual with keen, dark eyes and slightly gray hair. In greeting them I took the right hand in mine and pressed the last joint of the small finger between my thumb and second finger of my right hand. Then I opened the back cover of my watch and inside of it exposed the _Sign of Silence_, saying, "This is the safe side." They answered, each for himself, "I notice." Having made the impression that I had knowledge of this order of secret agents and their manner of identification, I won their confidence. This way of winning them to trust me I had learned in Chicago several weeks before, where I met a number of large buyers of horses, who confided in me because I knew much of the horse market and the shipment of horses from Iowa. Although Mr. Fenwick and his companions looked upon me as one of their class of people, I was far from it and entered upon a study of this line of operations as an interesting adjunct of the great war in Europe and Asia.