Then to his apparitors he said:
"Strip him."
The court-slave, the charcoal-tender, stood up off his folded blanket and shook it out. The janitor, stripped and bound, ankles lashed, hands trussed behind him, was haled towards the brazier. The blanket was flung round him and four apparitors lifted him as if he had been a log and held him near the brazier, the enveloping blanket drawn tight over his left thigh and its outer underside nearest the coals, tilting him sideways to bring the soft thickness of the thigh closest to the heat. They watched the tight blanket over his thigh and moved him a little away from the brazier when the wool began to smoke.
I had never seen nor heard of this kind of torture, but it seemed effectual. The fellow writhed, groaned, squalled and protested. After Corbulo had him brought back before him he confessed that he had been asleep in his cell from some time before Falco's murder until he was aroused by Dromo, just before the arrival of Casperius and Vespronius.
One by one the other slaves were questioned. Three declared that they had seen the janitor asleep not long before they heard the alarm.
Several more testified that the janitor had often been asleep. More than half of them confirmed my story of the theft of the silver on the Nones of May. Except the janitor not one was tortured, though Corbulo threatened with torture several who hesitated in their testimony.
After the slaves Corbulo questioned Asellio and Lustralis.
Then, when they had stood aside, he gazed about at the spectators in the nave, at the crowd behind them, interested in the next case or in others to come up later, at the hangers-on in the side aisles; for a time, mute, he stared at the glowing charcoal fire in the big brazier.
When he spoke he said:
"It is my opinion that Phorbas is innocent. I have inspected the house where the murder took place. From the condition of the looted rooms it is plain that more jewelry was stolen than any one man could carry off. Manifestly two men participated in the robbery and murder and escaped with their booty, very likely the same pair who robbed Falco's triclinium on the Nones of May. The janitor's confessed delinquency explains how they entered and got away unhindered and unseen. The dead man's heirs should punish the janitor. I hold no other slave at fault. Has any man anything which he wishes to say before I pass formal judgment for official record?' Lustralis asked permission to speak and amazed me by his fluency, his ingratiating delivery, his vehemence, his ingenuity and the fantastic malignity of his contentions. Corbulo heard him out to the end, unmoving as a statue.