“Or something!” the Oriental mimicked him grimly. “I can think of something even simpler than a written note, my dear Count. With the information I can get from this Navy spy, by the use of a little pain.... But come with me to the Lantern Room and see for yourself! You, too, Lotus, dismiss your maid and come with us. It is time you should see what a little persuasion—Oriental style—can accomplish. I have machines, copied from the torture rooms of Ancient China, which can extract any secret!”
Chuckling evilly, the huge Scorpion leader motioned the two young people out of the room ahead of him.
As he turned away, Don fought an overpowering desire to smash his fist into Cho-San’s grinning yellow face. Only by ramming his hands deep in his pockets did he succeed in controlling them. Although on fire with anxiety for Red, he must pretend a careless, somewhat bored good humor.
“And I feared we were going to have a tiresome evening, Cho-San,” he murmured. “Chinese torture machines sound awfully entertaining, I must say! Er—by the way, I don’t recall how we get to the lamp room, as you call it.”
“Lantern Room!” growled the Chinese. “Lotus will lead the way and I will follow. Take the shortest corridor, girl! I am anxious to see your André’s face when he sets eyes on our latest captive.”
The doorway concealed by the carved screen opened into another dimly lighted vestibule. Don guessed that a number of its darkly shining panels were really hidden doors, communicating with as many passageways.
The girl, however, showed no hesitation in locating the one she wanted. Her small fingers played briefly with one of the carved dragons of the molding. There was the usual muffled click. Two seconds later a black opening gaped in the solid wall.
This time the narrow corridor ran almost straight, with a sharp downward slope. The distance might have been a hundred feet before another panel slid open at Lotus’ touch, and bright electric light streamed briefly into the dark passageway. Knowing, yet fearing, what he was going to see, Don Winslow stepped into the Room of a Thousand Torments.
The place was really a stone vault of immense proportions, fifty feet wide and perhaps a hundred long. Its groined ceiling was supported by thick stone pillars to which were affixed chains and ring bolts of iron.
Along the walls stood a weird array of mechanical monsters, some of them so crudely made that they might have been centuries old. Don glimpsed a medieval “rack” for pulling living human bodies apart, a rude “wheel” between whose heavy spokes human legs and arms could be broken like matchsticks, an “iron maiden” whose hinged and hollow halves were spiked with deadly knife blades.