Silently, intently the three men waited, bending over the dial as the test proceeded, as the fiends of torture and death swept past in lurid triumph.
The picture machine whirled on with droning buzz, the accused sat still, eyes on the sheet, the red column pulsed steadily, up and down, up and down, now a little higher, now a little quicker, but—for a minute, for two minutes—nothing decisive happened, nothing that they had hoped for; yet Coquenil felt, he knew that something was going to happen, he knew it by the agonized tension of the room, by the atmosphere of pain about them. If Groener had not spoken, he himself, in the poignancy of his own distress, must have cried out or stamped on the floor or broken something, just to end the silence.
Then, suddenly, the tension snapped, the prisoner sprang to his feet and, tearing his arm from the leather sleeve, he faced his tormentors desperately, eyes blazing, features convulsed:
"No, no, no!" he shrieked. "You dogs! You cowards!"
"Lights up," ordered Hauteville. Then to the guard: "Put the handcuffs on him."
"'No, no, no!' he shrieked. 'You dogs! You cowards!'"
But the prisoner would not be silenced. "What does all this prove?" he screamed in rage. "Nothing! Nothing! You make me look at disgusting, abominable pictures and—why shouldn't my heart beat? Anybody's heart would beat—if he had a heart."
The judge paid no attention to this outburst, but went on in a tone as keen and cold as a knife: "Before you go to your cell, Groener, you shall hear what we charge against you. Your wife perished in the Charity Bazaar fire. She was a very rich woman, probably an American, who had been married before and who had a daughter by her previous marriage. That daughter is the girl you call Alice. Her true name is Mary. She was in the fire with her mother and was rescued by Martinez, but the shock of seeing her mother burned to death and, perhaps, the shock of seeing you refuse to save her mother——"