Page:Scarface.pdf/169

 "He's a hard nut," he explained. "Got to take him to the cellar."

Rinaldo paled. He could shoot a man down without even giving serious thought to the matter but the mere thought of what was in that cellar made him weak.

"Come on!" snapped Tony and included them all with a comprehensive gesture of the automatic.

"Ya takin' me for a ride?" asked the prisoner as they descended in the elevator.

"No," retorted Tony grimly. "Not yet."

The place to which they took him was a sub­-cellar beneath the regular cellar under the hotel. It was reached by a rather rickety wooden stairway and proved to be a large square room with con­crete walls from which were suspended by chains various strange-looking iron appendages. Before Peluso could hardly realize what was happening he had been stripped to the waist and rigged up against the wall, his arms stretched high overhead, his body suspended from the wrists which were en­circled by tight iron bands. Tony motioned to one of his men who stepped over to a small, furnace­ like arrangement. Tony himself caught up a large, razor-edged knife and, fingering it significantly, looked at his prisoner.