The thing on the torture-rack began to moan. There was a grating sound as the lever stretched the iron bed still one more space in length. The moaning grew to a piercing shriek of utter agony.
“Ah,” said Doctor Stugatche, “we have him at last.”
He bent over the tortured man on the iron grille and smiled tenderly into the anguished face. His eyes, tinged with delicate amusement, took in every detail of the body before him – the swollen legs, raw and angry from the embrace of the fiery boot, the lacerated back and shoulders, still crimson from the kiss of the lash, the bloody, mangled remnants of a chest crushed by the caress of the Spiked Coffin. With gentle solicitude he surveyed the finishing touches applied by the rack itself – the dislocated shoulders and twisted torso, the crushed and broken fingers, and the dangling tendons in the lower limbs. Then he turned his attention to the old man’s tormented countenance once again. He laughed, softly, in a voice like the tinkling of a bell. Then he spoke.
“Well, Hassan, I do not think you will prove stubborn any longer in the face of such – ah – eloquent persuasion. Come now, tell me where I can find this idol of which you speak.”
The butchered victim began to sob, and the doctor was forced to kneel beside the bed of pain in order to understand his incoherent mumblings. For perhaps twenty minutes the creature groaned on, and then at last fell silent. Doctor Stugatche rose to his feet once more, a satisfied twinkle in his genial eyes. He made a brief motion to one of the blacks operating the rack machinery. The fellow nodded, and went over to the living horror on the instrument. It was crying now – its tears were blood. The black drew his sword. It swished upward, then cleaved down once again. There was a dull sound of crunching impact, and then a tiny fountain spurted upward, spreading a scarlet blot upon the wall behind…
Doctor Stugatche went out of the room, bolted the door behind him, and climbed the steps to the house above. As he raised the barred trap-door he saw that the sun was shining. The doctor began to whistle. He was very pleased.
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