Using his own narrative to me, which I had scribbled down as he talked, I enlisted the help of Peter Freuchen and other Arctic travelers, to analyze his statements about his distances, his sledge weights, the amount of food drawn by his dogs, and his time-table. They proved to be absurd, and when he contradicted himself to other interviewers, I was able, with further expert advice, to contradict his contradictions. It was a great game, which I thoroughly enjoyed, though I worked day and night, with only snatches of rest for food and sleep.
But I had some nasty moments.
One was when a statement was published in every newspaper of the world that the Rector of the Copenhagen University had flatly denied my interview with him and reiterated his satisfaction with the proofs submitted by Doctor Cook.
The Daily Chronicle telegraphed this denial to me and said, “Please explain.”
I remember receiving that telegram shortly after reading the same denial in the Danish newspapers, brought to me by Mr. Oscar Hansen, the Danish correspondent of my own paper, who was immensely helpful to me. I was thunderstruck and dismayed, for if the Rector of the University denied what he had told me, and maintained a belief in the bona fides of Cook, I was utterly undone.
At that moment W. T. Stead approached me and put his hand on my shoulder. He, too—still the ardent champion of Cook—had read that denial.
“Young man,” he cried, in his sonorous voice, “you have not only ruined yourself, which does not matter very much, but you have also ruined The Daily Chronicle, for which I have a great esteem.”
“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.