"There isn't any doubt about that," said I; "but consider this man here, whose limbs you are stretching beyond all endurance—"
"He should regard it as a splendid sacrifice," vouchsafed the novelist, lighting a cigarette and winking pleasantly at his victim.
"Is his a voluntary sacrifice?" I demanded.
"Rather good joke that, eh, Rogers?" laughed Mr. Caine, addressing the sufferer. "This simple-minded little American girl asks if you are there because you like it. Ha! ha! What a droll idea! Thinks you do this for pleasure, Rogers. Has an idea you tied yourself on there and racked yourself at first, so she has. Thinks you shriek so as to smother your laughter, which would be very inappropriate to the occasion."
The sufferer groaned deeply, and the novelist, turning to me, observed:
"No, madame. My poor unhappy friend Rogers is here against his will, I regret to say. It would be far pleasanter for me when I hear him bastinadoed to know that he derived a certain amount of personal satisfaction from it in spite of the pain, but it must be otherwise. Furthermore, in the story the newspaper man who is tortured is not supposed to like it, so that accuracy requires that I should have a man, like Rogers, who dislikes it intensely."
"And do you mean to say, sir, that you deliberately went out into the street and seized hold of this poor fellow, carried him in here, and subjected him to all this? Why, it's a crime!"
"Not at all," replied Mr. Caine, nonchalantly. "I am no common kidnapper. I do not belong to a literary press-gang. I have simply exercised my rights as the owner of this castle. This man came here on his own responsibility, just as you have come. I never asked him any more than I asked you, and he has had to take the consequences, just as you will have to abide by whatever may result from your temerity. Rogers is a newspaper man, and he tried to get a free interview out of me by deceit, knowing that I no longer do a gratis business. It so happened that I was at that moment in need of just such a person for my experiment. I gave him the interview, and now he is paying for it."
The novelist paused, and after eying me somewhat closely for a moment, turned to his notes, lying on his desk alongside the rack, while a tremor of fear passed over me.