After his escape from Holzminden it was at first believed that McKay had been drowned in (the River) Weser.  Later it was ascertained that he sailed for an American port via a Scandinavian liner sometime (in) October.

(This is his) description:  Age 32; height 5 feet 8 l/2 inches; eyes brown; hair brown; nose straight; mouth regular; face oval; teeth white and even—­no dental work; small light-brown moustache; no superficial identification marks.

The bones in his left foot were broken many years ago, but have been properly set.  Except for an hour or so every two or three months, he suffers no lameness.

He speaks German without accent; French with an English accent.

Until incarcerated (in Holzminden camp) he had never been intemperate.  There, however, through orders from Berlin, he was tempted and encouraged in the use of intoxicants—­other drink, indeed, being excluded from his allowance—­so that after the second year he had become more or less addicted (to the use of alcohol).

Unhappily, however, this policy, which had been so diligently and so thoroughly pursued in order to make him talkative and to surprise secrets from him when intoxicated (failed to produce the so properly expected results and) only succeeded in making of the young man a hopeless drunkard.

Sterner measures had been decided on, and, in fact, had already been applied, when the prisoner escaped by tunnelling.

Now, it is most necessary to discover this McKay (man’s whereabouts and to have him destroyed by our agents in New York).  Only his death can restore to the (Imperial German) Government its perfect sense of security and its certainty of (ultimate) victory.

The necessity (for his destruction) lies in the unfortunate and terrifying fact that he is cognisant of the Great Secret!  He should have been executed at Holzminden within an hour (of his incarceration).

This was the urgent advice of Von Tirpitz.  But unfortunately High Command intervened with the expectation (of securing from the prisoner) further information (concerning others who, like himself, might possibly have become possessed in some measure of a clue to the Great Secret)?  E. E.

The result is bad. (That the prisoner has escaped without betraying a single word of information useful to us.) E. E.

Therefore, find him and have him silenced without delay.  The security of the Fatherland depends on this (man’s immediate death).

M 17. (Evidently the writer of the letter) E. E.

For a long time Vaux sat studying cipher and translation.  And at last he murmured: 

“Surely, surely.  Fine—­very fine....  Excellent work.  But—­what is the Great Secret?”

There was only one man in America who knew.

And he had landed that morning from the Scandinavian steamer, Peer Gynt, and, at that very moment, was standing by the bar of the Hotel Astor, just sober enough to keep from telling everything he knew to the bartenders, and just drunk enough to talk too much in a place where the enemy always listens.