Kroll shrugged: "I repeat: I don't want to."
He looked at his watch. "Come; we are wasting time, and the Inquisitor is waiting. Miss Horniman, you must be first."
The girl shrank back behind the bitter-eyed young man. The third prisoner, a resigned-looking, balding man of fifty or so, did not change his expression.
"Take me first," the man said. "Leave her alone."
Again Kroll shrugged. "The Inquisitor would like Miss Horniman first, Mr. Leslie. This is the preferred order, and this is the order that will be."
A guard stepped forward and shoved the sobbing girl up and ahead, toward the door. The man named Leslie clashed his manacles impotently together and spat. "Butchers! Torturers!"
"Please, Mr. Leslie," Kroll said gently, a pained expression on his face. "You make our job even harder than it is."
He followed the girl into the adjoining room, where the Inquisitor was waiting. The Interrogation Chamber was an immense rectangular room with concrete floor and bleak white walls, in the center of which stood the Inquisitor.
"Good morning, Kroll," the Inquisitor said. Its metallic voice rattled and boomed in the big room. In the depths of the machine, relays clicked and hummed. Kroll bowed to it, and the Inquisitor responded with a gesture of a prolonged metal arm. "The first prisoner, Kroll."