"Perhaps I did not make myself clear," Kroll said. He repeated his
offer.
"The answer is still no!"
Kroll sighed. "Very well," he said. A third hand slid from the
Inquisitor's body and a needle-thin finger traced a line down the
girl's bare arm. A bloody trickle appeared.
She began to sob again. Kroll stepped closer and lifted her head. "Why
must you hold out?" he asked. "Why don't you speak?"
Still silence. The finger rose again and sliced lightly across her
cheek.
* * * * *
"All right, take her away," Kroll said when twenty minutes had passed.
The Inquisitor was humming merrily, busily taping the data that had
been extracted from the girl and feeding it to the main computers
downstairs. They would integrate it and notify the State Police. It was
a smooth-functioning system.
The bloody thing that had been Florence Horniman was led away by
a guard, and the next prisoner led in. It was the middle-aged man,
Chester Wengrove.
"Get your hands off me," he snapped to the guard as he was shoved into
the room. "You have no right to--"
"Unfortunately, as a representative of the State he has every right,"
Kroll said calmly. He fed Wengrove's tape to the Inquisitor. The trial
proceeded.
Wengrove was stubborn; it took half an hour to break him down at all,
but when he did speak he sang freely, giving data on his cell of the
Movement.
"Very good," the Inquisitor said when Wengrove finally coughed and said
he knew no more. "You are completely exonerated from the charge of
treason, in view of the information you have given."