She said good night and walked out. She got into her coupé, turned south along the Hudson toward where the lights of the great city glowed in the sky. And that was almost the end of Lila Morel!
There was a big truck taking up over half the road ahead of her. She paid little attention to the van. There is always a lot of night trucking. She simply blew her horn, started to pass, then got one glimpse of a face.
The face was reflected in the closed truck’s rear-view mirror which stuck out at the left side of the cab. The mirror was highlighted by her headlights so that the reflected face swam out at her like the head of an evil monster.
Deadly, slitted eyes; a sort of grin shaping a thin gash of a mouth; face like a hatchet blade and with just about as much human emotion to it.
Then the truck had stopped with all the swiftness of oversized airbrakes, and Lila’s coupé slammed into its rear.
After that, things were pretty confused.
Lila’s head banged against the side upright of the coupé with the shock and drew a curtain of white wool over her senses. Then she was in a kind of moving room with men around her, and queerly enough she was still sitting in the coupé.
What had happened, though she hadn’t seen it, had been a marvel of co-ordination and planning.
With the crack of her car against the truck’s flat tail, the big thing had suddenly become a cave instead of a closed box. That is, the rear had suddenly lowered, after the truck had gone on a few feet, so that it formed a steep incline up into the van.
Then, from the van, men came jumping. Five or six of them, with their presence inside unsuspected as the truck rolled innocently along.
One of the men shoved Lila away from the wheel and took it himself. There was a roar from the coupé’s motor and a creaking jounce as it took the short, steep incline with a rush.
Then car and girl and men were inside, and the rear of the truck slid up into place again, smoothly, without sound.
The van started toward New York, innocent-looking.
The man at the wheel slouched half out of the cab window, cigarette drooping from his mouth, apparently alone.
There had been a van and a coupé. Now, there was just a van. That was all.
That is, for a moment that was all. Then there came a scream from inside the van that had a great deal of girlish enthusiasm behind it.
There was a small window in the back of the cab. The driver turned his head sideways, keeping his eyes on the road, and snarled out of the corner of his mouth:
“Keep that dame quiet, you punks! There’re cops around.”
The words were not necessary. With the first sound, one of the men had clamped dirty fingers over Lila’s lips. The scream died in a gurgle, like that of a drowning person. Lila felt something prick her arm, hard. And then for the second time a white fog settled over her so that she was aware only of swaying around in the van for what seemed weeks, and finally of its stopping.
The second time she came to, she was alone.
She was still in the coupé, this time shoved back under the steering wheel where she had been in the first place. Her shoulder ached like fire, where a hypodermic needle had been shoved home. In addition, there was a moist feeling on her skin, there, and a slight wet patch on her dress.
The needle, in the hands of men not skilled in such matters, inserted hurriedly, had not discharged its full load into her veins, which accounted for her not being still senseless.
She decided it was the better part of wisdom to pretend she was still unconscious, however, while she looked around from under lowered lids.
She was on a road unfamiliar to her, next to the river. There was a railing along the road, but the railing was broken in one section. Sounds of motors to her right indicated that the main highway was off there a quarter of a mile or so.
Then she shut her eyes in a hurry, as voices sounded.
“O K, Dutch?” somebody said.
The answer came: “O K! I got the marks of the truck tires brushed out where you nosed the railing over. The only tracks anybody’ll find will be the tracks of the dame’s car.”
“I still think we’re makin’ this too complicated,” somebody else protested. “Why don’t we just bop her on the bean, or send a slug through her?”
“You dope! This way she just had an accident and ran her buggy off the road, through the railing and into the river. Start the motor, Jake.”
Lila stayed very still, slumped behind the wheel of the coupé. She felt the car sag as a man got in the right side. Her foot was kicked aside while his felt for the starter button.
The coupé’s motor roared into life.
“Put her in first, Jake,” called the man. “Then slide out and slam the door.”
“The front of her car’s busted where she connected with the back of the truck,” protested the gloomy voice again. “That’ll tell the cops that this wasn’t any accident.”
“The front of her car would be busted up anyhow, from hitting the railing, wouldn’t it?” snapped the other man. “O K, Jake, let ’er roll.”
