self.

"Spain!" whispered the voice at his side, "and four hundred years ago."

"And the purpose?" gasped the perspiring clerk, though he knew quite
well what the answer must be.

"To extort the name of a friend, to his death and betrayal," came the
reply through the darkness.

A sliding panel opened with a little rattle in the wall immediately
above the rack, and a face, framed in the same red glow, appeared and
looked down upon the dying victim. Jones was only just able to choke
a scream, for he recognised the tall dark man of his dreams. With
horrible, gloating eyes he gazed down upon the writhing form of the old
man, and his lips moved as in speaking, though no words were actually
audible.

"He asks again for the name," explained the other, as the clerk
struggled with the intense hatred and loathing that threatened every
moment to result in screams and action. His ankles and wrists pained him
so that he could scarcely keep still, but a merciless power held him to
the scene.

He saw the old man, with a fierce cry, raise his tortured head and spit
up into the face at the panel, and then the shutter slid back again, and
a moment later the increased glow beneath the body, accompanied by awful
writhing, told of the application of further heat. There came the odour
of burning flesh; the white beard curled and burned to a crisp; the body
fell back limp upon the red-hot iron, and then shot up again in fresh
agony; cry after cry, the most awful in the world, rang out with
deadened sound between the four walls; and again the panel slid back
creaking, and revealed the dreadful face of the torturer.

Again the name was asked for, and again it was refused; and this time,
after the closing of the panel, a door opened, and the tall thin man
with the evil face came slowly into the chamber. His features were
savage with rage and disappointment, and in the dull red glow that fell
upon them he looked like a very prince of devils. In his hand he held a
pointed iron at white heat.

"Now the murder!" came from Thorpe in a whisper that sounded as if it
was outside the building and far away.

Jones knew quite well what was coming, but was unable even to close his
eyes. He felt all the fearful pains himself just as though he were
actually the sufferer; but now, as he stared, he felt something more
besides; and when the tall man deliberately approached the rack and
plunged the heated iron first into one eye and then into the other