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“Mr. Stead,” I said, “I am a young and obscure man, compared with you, and I appeal to your chivalry. Will you come with me to the Rector of Copenhagen University and act as my witness to the questions I shall put to him, and to the answers he gives?”

“By all means,” he said, “and to make things quite beyond doubt, we will take two other witnesses—the correspondent who issued the statement about the denial, and another of established character.”

The two other witnesses were a French count, acting as the correspondent of a great French newspaper and the representative of a news agency who had issued the university statement, and believed in its truth.

It was a strange and exciting interview with that Rector. For a long time he refused to open his lips to say a single word one way or the other about the Cook case. He relented slowly when W. T. Stead made an eloquent plea on my behalf, and said that my honor was at stake on his word.

The correspondent who had published the denial of my interview tried to intervene, speaking in rapid German which I could hardly follow, endeavoring to persuade the Rector to uphold the statement issued with regard to the University. But the Frenchman, acting as my second, as it were, sternly bade him speak in English or French which all could understand, and to give me the right of putting my questions. This was upheld by Stead.