l me all about
it, Standing. Spit it out--all of it, if you know what's healthy for
you."

"I don't know anything about what has happened . . .", I began.

That was as far as I got. With a growl and a leap he was upon me. Again
he lifted me in the air and crashed me down into the chair.

"No nonsense, Standing," he warned. "Make a clean breast of it. Where
is the dynamite?"

"I don't know anything of any dynamite," I protested.

Once again I was lifted and smashed back into the chair.

I have endured tortures of various sorts, but when I reflect upon them in
the quietness of these my last days, I am confident that no other torture
was quite the equal of that chair torture. By my body that stout chair
was battered out of any semblance of a chair. Another chair was brought,
and in time that chair was demolished. But more chairs were brought, and
the eternal questioning about the dynamite went on.

When Warden Atherton grew tired, Captain Jamie relieved him; and then the
guard Monohan took Captain Jamie's place in smashing me down into the
chair. And always it was dynamite, dynamite, "Where is the dynamite?"
and there was no dynamite. Why, toward the last I would have given a
large portion of my immortal soul for a few pounds of dynamite to which I
could confess.

I do not know how many chairs were broken by my body. I fainted times
without number, and toward the last the whole thing became nightmarish. I
was half-carried, half-shoved and dragged back to the dark. There, when
I became conscious, I found a stool in my dungeon. He was a
pallid-faced, little dope-fiend of a short-timer who would do anything to
obtain the drug. As soon as I recognized him I crawled to the grating
and shouted out along the corridor:

"There is a stool in with me, fellows! He's Ignatius Irvine! Watch out
what you say!"

The outburst of imprecations that went up would have shaken the fortitude
of a braver man than Ignatius Irvine. He was pitiful in his terror,
while all about him, roaring like beasts, the pain-racked lifers told him
what awful things they would do to him in the years that were to come.

Had there been secrets, the presence of a stool in the dungeons would
have kept the men quiet, As it was, having all sworn to tell the truth,
they talked openly before Ignatius Irvine. The one great puzzle was the
dynamite, of which they were as much in the dark as was I. They appealed
to me. If I knew anything ab