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.

"As she came up and saw him waiti