Four Weird Tales | Page 9

a curve of agony, resting on the iron frame only where the chains
held wrists and ankles fast. Cries and gasps filled the air, and Jones felt exactly as though
they came from his own throat, and as if the chains were burning into his own wrists and
ankles, and the heat scorching the skin and flesh upon his own back. He began to writhe
and twist himself.
"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, he heard the
faint fizzing of it, and felt his own eyes burst in frightful pain from his head. At the same
moment, unable longer to control himself, he uttered a wild shriek and dashed forward to
seize the torturer and tear him to a thousand pieces. Instantly, in a flash, the entire scene
vanished; darkness rushed in to fill the room, and he felt himself lifted off his feet by
some force like a great wind and borne swiftly away into space.
When he recovered his senses he was standing just outside the house and the figure of
Thorpe was beside him in the gloom. The great doors were in the act of closing behind
him, but before they shut he fancied he caught a glimpse of an immense veiled figure
standing upon the threshold, with flaming eyes, and in his hand a bright weapon like a
shining sword of fire.
"Come quickly now--all is over!" Thorpe whispered.
"And the dark man--?" gasped the clerk, as he moved swiftly by the other's side.
"In this present life is the Manager of the company."
"And the victim?"
"Was yourself!"
"And the friend he--I refused to betray?"
"I was that friend," answered Thorpe, his voice with every moment sounding more and
more like the cry of the wind. "You gave your life in agony to save mine."
"And again, in this life, we have all three been together?"
"Yes. Such forces are not soon or easily exhausted, and justice is not satisfied till all have
reaped what they sowed."
Jones had an odd feeling that he was slipping away into some other state of

consciousness. Thorpe began to seem unreal. Presently he would be