“I found out what you wanted to know, Mr. McLeod. It was important like I thought.”

“You’re a fine laddie. You’ll earn your ten dollars, you will.”

“No, sir. I want five hundred dollars.” He shivered when he said it but did not look away.

“Now why should I pay that kind of money?”

“Because what I have are the real orders to the ships, to be opened only when the ships are all at sea. They are not going where everyone thinks they are. All the first orders are fakes.”

“So tell me then — where are they going?”

“It will cost you the five hundred to find out.” He straightened his back and stared the spy right in the eye.

This was big, Paisley realized. If the clerk was speaking the truth it would be worth the five hundred and more.

“All right, laddie.” Paisley rose and patted him on the back. “But I dinna carry that kind of silver around with me. I’ll be back in a half an hour. You wait here.”

The man in the cap watched the newcomer stand up and leave. He waited fifteen minutes more, watched Giorgio order another glass of wine. Craig’s stomach grumbled and he realized that it was past his dinner hour. He drained his beer glass and left. The Pinkerton Agency owned his daylight hours, but they couldn’t expect him to miss his dining hour. No more than five minutes after he left Paisley returned. He looked around before he passed the envelope to Giorgio.

“Just be careful when you count it — there’s plenty about who would knock you on the head for half of what you have there.”

Giorgio bent over the money as he counted it: all in twenty-dollar bills, twenty-five of them. He put the money into his jacket pocket as he withdrew the naval order and passed it across the table. Paisley took out the sheet of paper and held it to the light. His eyes opened wide and he muttered an imprecation under his breath as he understood its import. He pocketed it and hurried out without a word.

The clerk watched him leave and felt an immense feeling of relief. It was over, all over at last. Everything was over. All over with his work, and with his job — and with this country. He had asked for this impossibly large sum because this was really the end for him and America. He could now pay his fare on the boat back to Italy — and have enough money left over to set himself up in business in Napoli. A public letter writer was a respected man to the illiterate workers of the south. And one who could write English as well — why he could certainly earn a good living. He might even think of getting married. It would be a relief. Since his parents had died he had no one to worry about. He would turn his back on his rented room with pleasure. Everything he owned would fit in one suitcase.

He would be free at last! Tonight, he would leave this very night. He would be long gone before they found out that a letter was missing. Take the night cars to New York City. Bury himself in Little Italy there, until the next ship left for Naples, that great immigrant port that would surely welcome another immigrant going in the opposite direction.

No more than a hundred feet from his rooming house was an alley, its darkness untouched by the distant street lamp. As he passed it there was the sudden rush of feet. Even as he started to turn he felt a terrible pain in his chest. He tried to scream but could only gasp. He fell into an even darker night.

Paisley pulled the body into the alleyway. Wiped the big clasp knife on the dead man’s clothes, folded it and put it away. Groped through the dead man’s jacket pockets until he found his envelope, clutched it and smiled into the darkness, then hurried away. Only stopping for a moment under the streetlight to check its contents. Grunted in satisfaction.

“This is too much silver for you, wee man. You would only have wasted it.”

His footsteps died away and the street was silent again.

It was late afternoon before all the pieces fell into place for Gustavus Fox. The Pinkerton agent who was stationed in the War Department building had handed in a report about one of the clerks being noted in suspicious circumstances. This had eventually ended up on Fox’s desk. The agent had followed the suspect to a drinking house where he met a third party. The report ended there. It was filed and almost forgotten until the early edition of the newspaper arrived. One of his filing clerks brought it to Fox’s attention.

“One of the War Department clerks, a Giorgio Vessella, was found dead under suspicious circumstances. The suspicion being that he was murdered, since he died of a stab wound and no weapon was found.”

“What was that name?” Fox asked, suddenly attentive. “And get me the last report from agent Craig.”

They were the same. The clerk and the murder victim. The hurriedly summoned Craig amplified his report.

“Yes, sir. I followed him because one of the other clerks was suspicious about him. Like I said in the report, he met another man. Gray-haired, stocky build the stranger had.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

“Never, Mr. Fox, but I’ll tell you something else about him. I walked by and heard them talking, then later I spoke with the barman. I was right — he had a thick Scotch accent.”

So far there were just suspicions. Too many suspicions and he did not like it. A clerk in the copying section, handling vital documents of war. His blood ran cold at the thought of it. He went to the office where he asked for an emergency interview with Secretary of War Stanton. The wait was a short one; he still paced the floor like a caged animal until he was shown in.

“One of your copying clerks has been killed, murdered.”

“This is terrible. Do they know who did it?”

“We have our suspicions. But I will need your help to find out more about it. I could go through the proper channels but that would take too much time. No one in the copying section knows who I am. And this investigation must be carried out at once. Would you mind going with me now so we can find out what is going on?”

“No, of course not.”

Stanton’s presence opened all of the locked doors and, eventually, took them to the heart of the copying section. They sent for the clerk, Anderton, who had made the original complaint. He was visibly upset.

“The Pinkerton agents. They came and talked to us once. Told us to keep our eyes open and let them know if we saw something suspicious. I told them about Giorgio — and now he’s dead. Do you think he was killed because I went to the agent?”

“We have no way of knowing yet. But if you had your suspicions then you did the correct thing — whatever the outcome. Now, what did you observe?”

“It was the room where we copy only the absolute top secret orders. I came back from lunch and I saw Giorgio at the door and he had his hand on the key. He said that he saw that the door was unlocked and that he was just locking it for me. But, like I said — I was just coming in from the hall door. There is, well, a chance he might have been in the office and was on the way out of it when I saw him.” Fox saw that Anderton was sweating and he did not like it.

“Who is responsible for keeping that door locked?”

“I am, but—”

“Could Giorgio have been telling the truth? Could the door have been left unlocked?”

“There is always that possibility,” Anderton answered in a low voice.

“Then let us now go and see if anything is missing from that room.”

“I’m not authorized…”

“But I am, young man,” Stanton said sternly. “Open it up.”

Their suspicions were horribly justified when a careful count uncovered the fact that one of the envelopes containing the secret orders was indeed missing from the locked room. The count came out wrong. The names on all of the envelopes were compared to a master list until the stolen one was found.