"Yes I will."
"No you won't."
Bronson snorted. "Want to make a little bet? You can save yourself a lot of grief if you give in right now. Or would you rather be screaming for mercy later?"
"What can you do?" sneered Kingston.
Bronson chuckled. "The Chinese are accused of developing a number of fancy tortures," he said. "I've also known a fiction writer who used an incident to show the strength of his character's will power.
"This fellow, who used to tinker with radio on the side, decided that any man who could grab a couple of hundred volts and not quiver a muscle because a sudden motion would be as deadly, would be displaying a nervous control seldom realized. Now I'd guess his idea to have been impossible. But it gives me to think.
"Do you suppose you could stand a mild electrocution? Say a hundred volts at twenty cycles? Not enough to kill, for we'll insert a current-limiting resistance to prevent electrocution, but enough to make life most uncomfortable. The torture of the condemned will have nothing on what you will suffer, Kingston."
Kingston smiled wearily. "It will do you no good," he said. "The thing is set up like the time lock on a safety vault. No one can breach it."
"Big talk," snorted Bronson. He turned from the bound man and rummaged in a bench drawer for wire and parts. A variable-voltage transformer, some alternating current meters and a few lengths of wire were strewn over the table top. Bronson began to connect them into a circuit.
"We'll find out how your resistance is," he told Kingston over his shoulder.