I received the same pulping as the rest.

And this was merely the beginning, the preliminary to the examination each man was to undergo alone in the presence of the paid brutes of the state.

It was the forecast to each man of what each man might expect in inquisition hall.
I have been through most of the red hells of prison life, but, worst of all, far worse than what they intend to do with me in a short while, was the particular hell of the dungeons in the days that followed.
Long Bill Hodge, the hard-bitten mountaineer, was the first man interrogated.

He came back two hours later--or, rather, they conveyed him back, and threw him on the stone of his dungeon floor.

They then took away Luigi Polazzo, a San Francisco hoodlum, the first native generation of Italian parentage, who jeered and sneered at them and challenged them to wreak their worst upon him.
It was some time before Long Bill Hodge mastered his pain sufficiently to be coherent.
"What about this dynamite ?" he demanded.