NEW FORM OF TORTURE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 211, 19 May 1915, Page 2

NEW FORM OF TORTURE.

The "third degree" is a peculiar thing, says the Chicago "Tribune" of March 21st. In the old days they led a man into a sound-proof room and locked the door. A ring of rough detectives relied up their sleeves and things happened. Usually when the door was opened .there were bruises —and the jMsoher had to be supported back to his cell. Later on the method was refined. There was no more "beating up," but sometimes a man was allowed to go twenty-four hours without food. On Friday afternoon John Maclsaac was taken to a cell in the Chicago Avenue Police Station. The doer clanged behind him and he sat down to think. Twenty-four hours before Hazel Maclsaac had called a physician into the ward where she lay in the Poll•.liiiic Hospital. Her husband was at her bedside. "Doc," she mumbled through the bandages that swathed her face.and mouth, "you know what I told you about the automobile accident. We ran into jsomjething, and) I gjpt all smashed up. Don't—don't forget, will you, doc? An automobile —"

. Then she turned to her husband, managed part of a smile, and died. Hospital wards are not pleasant things to remember. John gazed at the wall and tried not to think. Across the .alley from his cell someone was playing "Nearer, My Gpd, to Thee," on an accordeon. The performer didn't play well, and the fifth note—the note he struck at the end of the second bar J was flat. John went to sleep. When he awoke the accordeon player was at it again. Always that same note was flat, and when it sounded John quivered. At intervals the detective came to the. door. Each time it was harder, somehow for John to shake his head. Late in the afternoon the prisoner heard the detective's steps in the hallway. He jumped to the door he was ready.

"Get me out of here!" he cried. "I'll tell you. Just get me out of here—any place where I can't hear that accordeon." In the captain's office Detectives Bolum and Tierney pulled some paper out of the desk and sat down complacently. "You write and I'll tell about it," said John wearily, and he went on to make a circumstantial con'fession of having murdered his wife. Now John is being held pending the continuance of the inquest, which was interrupted by the investigation, and Hazel ha s gone out to meet the Great Adventure with a useless lie on her lips.