"Could you do it on a modern safe?"
"I don't know."
President Mills rubbed his fingers on the mahogany desk. "I presume you
were planning that for other purposes?"
"What!" Hugo said.
"Very well done. Very well acted. I will play up to you, Mr.--"
"Danner."
"Danner. I'll play up to this assumption of innocence. You have saved a
man's life. You are, of course, blushingly modest. But you have shown
your hand rather clearly. Hmmm." He smiled sardonically. "I read a book
about a safe-cracker who opened a safe to get a child out--at the
expense of his liberty and position--or at the hazard of them, anyhow.
Maybe you have read the same book."
"Maybe," Hugo answered icily.
"Safe-crackers--blasters, light fingers educated to the dials, and ears
attuned to the tumblers--we can cope with those things, Mr.--"
"Danner."
"But this new stunt of yours. Well, until we find out what it is, we
can't let you go. This is business, Mr. Danner. It involves money,
millions, the security of American finance, of the very nation. You will
understand. Society cannot afford to permit a man like you to go at
large until it has a thoroughly effective defence against you. Society
must disregard your momentary sacrifice, momentary nobleness. Your
process, unknown by us, constitutes a great social danger. I do not dare
overlook it. I cannot disregard it even after the service you have
done--even if I thought you never intended to put it to malicious use."
Hugo's thoughts were far away--to the fort he had built when he was a
child in Colorado, to the wagon he had lifted up, to the long,
discouraging gauntlet of hard hearts and frightened eyes that his
miracles had met with. His voice was wistful when, at last, he addressed
the banker.
"What do you propose to do?"
"I shan't bandy words, Danner. I propose to hang on to you until I get
that secret. And I shall be absolutely without mercy. That is frank, is
it not?"
"Quite."
"You comprehend the significance of the third degree?"
"Not clearly."
"You will learn about it--unless you are reasonable."
Hugo bowed sadly. The president pressed a button. Two policemen came
into the room. "McClaren has my instructions," he said.
"Come on." Hugo rose and stood between them. He realized that the whole
pantomime of his arrest was in earnest. For one brief instant the
president was given a glimpse of a smile, a smile that worried him for a
long time. He was so worried that he called McClaren on the telephone
and added to his already abundant instructions.
A handful of bystanders collected to watch Hugo cross from the bank to
the steel patrol wagon. It moved forward and its bell sounded. The
policemen had searched Hugo and now they sat dumbly beside him. He was
handcuffed to both of them. Once he looked down at the nickel bonds and
up at the dull faces. His eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch.
Captain McClaren received Hugo in a bare room shadowed by bars. He was a
thick-shouldered, red-haired man with a flabby mouth from which
protruded a moist and chewed toothpick. His eyes were blue and bland.
He made Hugo strip nude and gave him a suit of soiled clothes. Hugo
remained alone in that room for thirty hours without food or water. The
strain of that ordeal was greater than his jailers could have conceived,
but he bore it with absolute stoicism.
Early in the evening of the second day the lights in the room were put
out, a glaring automobile lamp was set up on a table, he was seated in
front of it, and men behind the table began to question him in voices
that strove to be terrible. They asked several questions and ultimately
boiled them down to one: "How did you get that safe open?" which was
bawled at him and whispered hoarsely at him from the darkness behind the
light until his mind rang with the words, until he was waiting
frantically for each new issue of the words, until sweat glistened on
his brow and he grew weak and nauseated. His head ached splittingly and
his heart pounded. They desisted at dawn, gave him a glass of water,
which he gulped, and a dose of castor oil, which he allowed them to
force into his mouth. A few hours later they began again. It was night
before they gave up.
The remnant of Hugo's clenched sanity was dumbfounded at what followed
after that. They beat his face with fists that shot from the blackness.
They threw him to the floor and kicked him. When his skin did not burst
and he did not bleed, they beat and kicked more viciously. They lashed
him with rubber hoses. They twisted his arms as far as they
could--until the bones of an ordinary man would have become dislocated.
Except for thirst and hunger and the discomfort caused by the castor
oil, Hugo did not suffer. They refined their torture slowly. They tried
to drive a splinter under his nails; they turned on the lights and drank
water copiously in his presence; they finally brought a blowtorch and
prepared to brand him. Hugo perceived that his invulnerability was to
stand him in stead no longer. His tongue was swollen, but he could still
talk. Sitting placidly in his bonds, he watched the soldering iron grow
white in the softly roaring flame. When, in the full light that shone on
the bare and hideous room, they took up the iron and approached him,
Hugo spoke.
"Wait. I'll tell you."