There was a pause, and I could tell that the man was feeling in his pockets. I wondered what was coming, and nerved myself for the ordeal.
"This'll touch him up if there's any return of sensibility," he said with another laugh. I remember wondering at the use of such a term and jumping to the conclusion that the fellow must have had some sort of training as a medical man, and had fallen to his present low position as the result of dissipation.
I had not more than a few seconds for this speculation, for he seized my hand roughly and plunged a needle into the back. I bore it without flinching.
"I told you so," he said. "But we'll have another experiment."
He took my thumb in his strong fingers then, and holding it up tried to thrust the needle down into the quick. Fortunately for me the lurching of the car interfered with his intention, and the needle entered the flesh some slight distance from the nail.
Again I succeeded in repressing even the slightest quiver at the pain it caused, although it made me almost sick. He loosened his grip of the thumb with the needle still in it, and I had the presence of mind enough to let the hand fall limp and flaccid.
He was satisfied with the test. He gripped my hand again and drew out the needle roughly. "He's good for hours yet, Marlen," he announced with an oath.
"You'd better tell Dragen," said the other; and he leant forward and spoke to Dragen, who was apparently the leader in the affair.
I was free once more to think. The mention of the boat had sufficed to give me a slight indication of their plans. I was being taken by car to Wittenberge in order to be transferred to a boat of some sort in which the journey was to be continued. Probably to Hamburg, I guessed.
That seaport had a very unenviable reputation for deeds of violence. If the intention was to take my life, no better place could have been chosen for the work than Hamburg. It would be a comparatively easy matter to knock me on the head, dress me in some disguise without a mark of any sort which would lead to my identification, and then either drop me into the river or carry me ashore to one of the low quarters of the town, where violent deaths were matters of no uncommon occurrence.