Page:The woman in battle .djvu/526

470 with a general plan I had laid out, for, especially when I had any business of real importance on my hands when visiting Washington, I thought it best to call on him and give an account of myself, than to have him or his men getting sight of me unexpectedly, and perhaps wondering what I was up to. Baker's vigilance having thus been disarmed, I went to a clerk in the Treasury Department, and telling him briefly what I wanted, but without giving him the details of the whole scheme, I asked him to assist me in gaining access to the private rooms in the building where none but the officials in charge, and the employees immediately under them, were ever allowed to go, except by written permits signed by the secretary. These rooms were chiefly those of the printing bureau, where the Federal bonds and currency were manufactured, although I also wanted opportunities for visiting such other portions of the department as I might think expedient.

This clerk was a Confederate sympathizer, like a number of other Federal employees of various grades, and he carried his sympathies so far as that he was willing and anxious to aid the Confederacy by every means in his power, so long as he could do so with safety to himself. He was not the sort of a man I had much liking for; but in the kind of work I was engaged in prosecuting, it did not do to be too fastidious about the characters of one's associates. Moreover, he had proved himself, during a long period, to be a very efficient spy, and was constantly in communication with the Confederate agents, giving them information which often was of extreme importance.

It was probably through him that my associates first learned what was going on in the printing bureau, but of this I am not certain. At any rate, they knew that he was the best person to apply to for the sake of getting such an introduction to the private rooms of the treasury building, as it was necessary for me to have, as he was thoroughly posted with regard to the villanies that were being practised there. In response to my application to this clerk for assistance, he gave me a letter of introduction to a man occupying a very high and very responsible position; so high and so responsi-