"I am instructed by Col. Evans to make this statement to you as coming from him," Irving announced early in the interview: "He desires all the information you can give him regarding your program that was to have been followed if you had succeeded in making your way beyond the enemy lines. He has certain plans in view, the success of which will depend largely on the correctness of your information. If you should misinform him, through us, those plans undoubtedly would fail. Moreover, if any enemy spy should get a tip through you or anybody else, that the information supplied by you was being used to attain important ends, those ends probably would never be reached.
"What we must have from you, therefore, is the truth, and the whole truth. To insure his receiving this, Col. Evans has asked me to inform you that the only thing that can save you is the success of his plan. If the plan fails, he will assume that the blame is yours and you will be shot."
Irving paused a moment, and Hessenburg seized the opportunity offered to interpose thus:
"You mean to say that he will have me shot for something for which I'm not the least responsible?"
"Not at all," Irving replied. "You will be shot for being a spy, which has already been proved against you. But if you're careful to tell us the truth, even though I don't cover some of it with my questions, your chances to escape that penalty are good."
"I understand," said the spy. "Fire away. I'll do the best I can."
The three were seated about a small table in a small room selected for the purpose. The door was closed. Irving drew a note-book and pencil from his pockets and prepared to jot down reminders of the information received by him.
"First," he said, "we'll all talk in low tones to prevent, if possible, anybody's overhearing us. Now, begin by telling me what was the extent of your acquaintance with spies in Canada and their system of operations."
"My acquaintance with those people and their affairs was very limited," Hessenburg replied. "I can't even say that my uncle was, or is, a spy, although it would be natural to suspect him. Government agents watched him pretty closely, and it's possible that he didn't actually do anything that would call for his arrest. But I'm pretty certain he knew a good deal more than I did. I think he knew all about my affair and approved of it. To tell the truth, I believe that it was through him that the spy organization learned that my sympathies were treasonable and decided to approach me on the subject of making a spy agent out of me.
"It was the man with whiskers at the hospital who first broached the subject to me: You seem to have a pretty complete report of that affair. That man was a physician, and I got acquainted with him while making business trips to the hospital for my uncle. He learned that I was an art student, and one thing led to another, until he knew I wanted England and France to be defeated and was willing to do anything I could secretly to bring that about. After that it didn't take him long to persuade me to be the bearer of a tattooed message on my arm into Germany. The other fellow who helped tattoo the message was the artist, an architectural draftsman with considerable skill at free-hand drawing."
"What are their names?" asked Irving.
"Dr. Adolph Marks and Jacob L. Voltz."
"What is your uncle's name?"
"Ferdinand J. Hessenburg."
"What does the 'J' stand for?"
"Johan."
Irving put a long string of questions of this kind, and thus obtained much detailed information regarding the spy and his family connections and home surroundings, also concerning the art school he attended in Toronto. He made copious notes of the answers, so that the process of questioning the confessed enemy agent was necessarily much slower than it otherwise would have been.
"I'm up against one difficulty that I'd like to clear away," the inquisitor mused in the course of his examination of the wounded "second looie"; "and that is the fact that this fellow is an artist and I am not. Suppose when I get over in Berlin, some wise fellow, full of information from Canada, should ask me to paint a cubist picture. What would I do? I must find out if there's any danger of my being asked to do anything of that sort to test my identity."
He continued his questioning thus:
"Did those two men who tattooed that picture on your arm know that you were an art student?"
"Oh, sure," Hessenburg replied. "That's how they happened to suggest the art method of conveying the message."
"And how about your credentials, your identification when you got into Germany? How were the German officials to know who you were, that you weren't a fake?"
"By the message itself."
"You think your instructors believed that was enough?"
"Yes, they said so. We had that question up for discussion. I raised it myself."
"How did you raise it?"
"I wanted them to get word to Berlin by another route to look out for me, but they said that would involve a danger that they were trying to avoid by the tattoo method. If they tried to get a wireless code message to Berlin, it might be intercepted and deciphered, and then a thorough search would be made for me."
Irving was much relieved by this statement. There was no reason to suspect Hessenburg of trying to deceive him in this regard. The spy could have no grounds to suspect that his inquisitor was planning to take his place and carry an altered copy of the cubist message to the war lords of the enemy.
"I guess I'm safe enough in that regard," he told himself. Then he added aloud:
"You think they have no information regarding you in Berlin?"
"Yes--I don't see why they should. I was informed that the contents of the message would be all the credential I'd need, that it would make me so popular among the high-ups that I could have anything I asked for."
"But they wouldn't tell you what was in the message?"
"I didn't ask. I knew better. The plan we were working on was directly opposed to my knowing the information I was to carry."
The quizzing of Hessenburg continued half an hour longer, and Irving and the lieutenant started back for the colonel's headquarters.
"Did I omit any questions I should have asked?" the spy-student inquired after they had ridden a short distance.
"You did fine," Lieut. Osborne replied. "I couldn't think of another question that I would have asked."