is whiskered chin.

It was the signal for a general rush in Jenkins' direction, but Jenkins
wasn't waiting. He hadn't even waited to see the effect of his hook. The
instant the blow was delivered, he had turned and leaped for the wide
entrance. He ran with all speed, his mind busy trying to remember the
turns and danger points which might lie before him.

There was no need of that, he discovered. The shouting voices which
bayed the alarm brought other guards to the chase. Jenkins came to a
sliding halt as he made a turn in the corridor. The grin was still wide
on his lips when his capturers brought him back to face Lucretia.

"I find it unseemly," she said as the guards forced him into a chair,
"that a guest should feel so strongly about not wanting my hospitality.
Surely, I have not been amiss in my attentions? If so, I must remedy
that."

A roar of laughter went up at the words.

"Therefore," she went on, "we will do more than we have. Take him below
and make him feel as welcome as he should have felt from the beginning."

* * * * *

Sweat streamed from the dank walls. Feeble light came from a pair of
torches set into wall brackets, light which was offset by the heavy
smoke the resinous torches gave forth. A dozen cloaked figures stood
around the almost naked figure of a man chained wrists, ankles, and neck
to the wall. Standing directly in front of the chained man, and facing
him, was another man, with a look of cunning cruelty on his face. The
one chained to the wall was Jenkins; and the man facing him was Griffin.

[Illustration]

"Look, my friend," Lucretia Borgia said to Griffin, "all about you are
the implements of the trade. Here," she pointed with daintily gesturing
fingers to a many-thonged whip, "is a tickler to make this fool dance.
And when he tires, why here," she pointed to something which looked like
a coal scuttle, "we have a bucket in which he can rest his wearied feet.
Of course you may have to heat it a trifle, but I'm sure he won't mind."

The others shouted in glee at the humor they found in her remark.

Jenkins listened in bitter silence. The only visible sign of his
desperate feelings was a tiny trickle of blood which seeped from one
corner of his mouth and ran down to the side of his chin. He had given
up straining against the steel chains which bound him. They had been set
too strongly into the wall. He prayed that he could take the physical
tortures