PAGE 4
Hoodwinked
by
“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?”
“Meaning just this: On the night he secured possession of the key he handed it over to his principal, who still has it unless he has destroyed it. It is fair to assume that this other man, being a code expert, already has memorised the key so that he can read the dispatch almost offhand. At least that is the assumption upon which I am going.”
“All this happened in Washington, I suppose?”
“Yes, in Washington. The original understanding was that as soon as possible after stealing the dispatch Westerfeltner would turn it over to the other man. But something–we don’t know yet just what–frightened the master crook out of town. With the job only partially accomplished he left Washington and came to New York. But before leaving he gave to Westerfeltner explicit instructions for the delivery of the dispatch–when he had succeeded in getting his hands on it–to a third party, a special go-between, with whom Westerfeltner was to communicate by telephone.
“Late the next day Westerfeltner did succeed in getting his hands on the document. That same evening, in accordance with his instructions, he called up from his house a certain number. He had been told to call this number exactly at eight o’clock and to ask for Mrs. Williams. Without delay he got Mrs. Williams on the wire. Over the wire a woman’s voice told him to meet her at the McPherson Statue in McPherson Square at eleven-fifteen o’clock that night. He was there at the appointed hour, waiting. According to what he tells me, almost precisely on the minute a woman, wearing plain dark clothes and heavily veiled, came walking along the path that leads to the statue from Fifteenth Street. It was dark there, anyhow, and for obvious reasons both the conspirators kept themselves well shielded in the shadows.