he lifted me in the air and crashed me down into the chair.

"No nonsense, Standing," he warned. "Make a clean breast of it. Where
is the dynamite?"

"I don't know anything of any dynamite," I protested.

Once again I was lifted and smashed back into the chair.

I have endured tortures of various sorts, but when I reflect upon them in
the quietness of these my last days, I am confident that no other torture
was quite the equal of that chair torture. By my body that stout chair
was battered out of any semblance of a chair. Another chair was brought,
and in time that chair was demolished. But more chairs were brought, and
the eternal questioning about the dynamite went on.

When Warden Atherton grew tired, Captain Jamie relieved him; and then the
guard Monohan took Captain Jamie's place in smashing me down into the
chair. And always it was dynamite, dynamite, "Where is the dynamite?"
and there was no dynamite. Why, toward the last I would have given a
large portion of my immortal soul for a few pounds of dynamite to which I
could confess.

I do not know how many chairs were broken by my body. I fainted times
without number, and toward the last the whole thing became nightmarish. I
was half-carried, half-shoved and dragged back to the dark. There, when
I became conscious, I found a stool in my dungeon. He was a
pallid-faced, little dope-fiend of a short-timer who would do anything to
obtain the drug. As soon as I recognized him I crawled to the grating
and shouted out along the corridor: