"Your baggage is light," said the man.
"It will be heavier in a little while. Open it."
They obeyed.
"Do you think it is large enough?" asked Wrentz.
"Large enough for what—the girl?" demanded Rocco, who had been sulking since his rebuke.
"You are shrewd, Rocco. You have guessed rightly I suppose you'll want to put a pillow in it."
"Yes, I would," said Rocco, who was the youngest of the band, "or else
I would kill her first. What is the use of torture?"
Wrentz's dark fact grew even blacker as he eyed the young man.
"If you were a grown man, Rocco," he said, "instead of a soft-hearted boy, you would know that there is one form of murder that is always found out—the trunk murder. And I want to say this to you," he added with growing heat, "that if I hear one more word of rebellion from you this prisoner will be alive some hours after you have departed. Now, then, into the trunk with her."
Rocco sullenly helped the others in the grim task. The trunk, large as it was, was not deep enough to permit Pauline a sitting posture, nor long enough to prevent the painful cramping of her limbs. But she was deadened to physical pain. With the words of her doom still ringing in her ears—the calm discussion of her death—her terror was her torture. The choking gag, the cutting bonds, the stifling trunk—in which the knife of Wrentz had cut but a few air holes—these were as nothing to the agony of her spirit—the agony of a lingering journey toward a certain but mysterious end.