"'The name of the man in the War Office.' Forty times he asked me that, that devil they sent to tor-r-tur-re me." She was speaking too rapidly to swallow; the saliva gathered in bubbles at the corners of her lips. "Every sort of question! Every sort of trap! Insinuating; gentle; quick, sharp as pistol-shots. Over and over and over and over, till you long to die. Then at last, when he's worn out,—not I! not I!"—she cried to the walls,—"then I'm led away, back to my punishment cell,"—she staggered and caught blindly at the chair back—"and the board bed is soft as a cloud in paradise. Two minutes. The wardress! 'Come, they want you.' I'm taken back. 'The name of your friend in the War Office?' and da capo. You see the plan? Hein? The devils in hell must envy the inventor of that Third Degree."
"The name of the man in the War Office!"
The thing itself comes out of the Dark Ages, but the phrase was framed in America. Nan had heard it before. This method of procedure was contrary, perhaps is still contrary, to English law; but there was no more doubt that Greta von Schwarzenberg had been subjected to the Third Degree than there was doubt of its fearful effect.
"Surely they know it's possible not to answer," the girl said, bewildered.
"Oh, they know!" Greta had fallen back into that hoarse whisper. "It isn't in nature not to answer some things—to answer something that sounds innocent; that gives you a rest; or to answer something dastardly. Taunts—God! the things they say! Oh, you'd answer some of them as long as you could keep your wits and wag your tongue; and then—" She beckoned. Nan came to her round the table. Greta seized her by the shoulders, and with so fierce a grip the girl, in a new access of horror, tried to draw back. Those big, square fingers held like a vise. Greta bent her trembling, froth-flecked lips to the girl's ear. "They don't let you sleep. That's what does it—if anything will." She did not so much let go her hold as fling Nan from her as she raised her voice to its highest pitch. "Not even that is going to make Greta von Schwarzenberg a tool of the English. Never!" she flung to the right wall. "Never!" she screamed to the left. "Never!" She choked suddenly, fell sidewise against the chair, and dropped heavily to the floor.
Nan ran forward with a cry. The door opened, and a couple of wardresses rushed in.