She was not impressed by the appearance of the office. It was positively filthy. The floor looked as if it hadn’t been swept for weeks and dust lay thick on the furniture and the calendars and pictures on the walls. Compared with the spick and span establishment at the cinema, with its typewriters, calculating machines, filing cabinets, and busy air, this place seemed like a reversion to the conditions of a century earlier. Molly smiled as she contrasted this uncouth, almost imbecile looking youth, with his untidy clothes and his inkstained fingers, with the neatly dressed, efficient staff to which she was accustomed.
Presently there came the whistle of a speaking tube. The youth put down his pen and slowly shuffled across the room to just behind where Molly was sitting.
“Yeh,” he said. “Yeh. Two bob? Right.”
He plugged the speaking tube, and taking his cap, lounged slowly out into the street.
Then Style reentered. He in his turn went to the speaking tube.
“Just a moment, Miss Moran, and I shall be at your service,” he apologized as he picked it up. Then he began to speak. “Jenkins … Is that Jenkins? … Oh, Jenkins, I want you to get out that presentation shield that we did last month for Mr. Hargreaves. I’ve sold it to Otway’s people, and all we have to do is to change the inscription. You might—”
The voice suddenly trailed away into silence, as a sickening blow crashed down on Molly’s head. She gasped, while momentary stars flashed before her eyes, then great waves of darkness seemed to rise up round her and she felt herself sinking down, down, down, into the blackness of unconsciousness.
Aeons of time passed, and then slowly sensation began to return to Molly Moran. First she realized only pain, indefinite but terrible pain. Then this seemed to localize in her head and to pass from there down through her whole body. Still she was in darkness, still a roaring sounded in her ears, but gradually she became conscious of movement. The place that she was in was shaking. At first she knew it only as something which added to her misery, but as she slowly regained her senses she realized where she was.
The sounds and the movement told her that she was in a motor car, travelling at a fair rate of speed. She was lying on the floor of the tonneau, entirely covered with a rug. This intelligence having sunk into her brain, experiment told the rest. Attempted movement showed her that her wrists and ankles were bound together and at the same time she found that she was securely gagged. Recollection of the scene in the silversmith’s office then returned to her and she knew what had happened. She had been kidnapped by Style!
Cold terror took possession of her as she remembered the story French had told her of the fate of the three girls who had attempted to betray the gang to the police. Had Thurza Darke, she wondered, lain bound in the tonneau of this terrible car as it jolted her on towards her doom? And what had befallen her at the end of the journey? Was drowning painful? As Molly pictured what might have happened a cold sweat of fear broke out on her. It was too ghastly even to think of. And yet before many hours, before many minutes perhaps … Almost she swooned away again as she lay trembling in sick horror, her mind numb and scarcely functioning.
But she was young and strong. Gradually the paralyzing sharpness of the first shock passed. Whatever faults she had, cowardice was not one of them, and soon she was striving desperately to pull herself together and to put as brave a face on the situation as she could. Things in her case were not quite so hopeless as in that of poor Thurza Darke. French was looking after her and she would immediately be missed. He would trace her to the silversmith’s and so learn what had happened. With the great organization of the Yard behind him it could not be long until he found her. In fact he had evidently foreseen what might occur when he gave her his warning! Oh, that she had taken that warning!
But suppose he didn’t trace her in time? Resolutely Molly shut her mind to the suggestion. She was not dead yet. While there was life there was hope.
To divert her mind from these harrowing thoughts she fixed her attention more deliberately on her surroundings. Could she learn anything as to her destination from the sounds she heard?
It was immediately clear to her that they were bowling along at a fair speed on an extremely good road, asphalted, she thought. But she was conscious also of a reduction in the sound. She wondered if this were due to meeting fewer vehicles, as if so, it would indicate that they were getting farther from London. As she was considering the point they slowed down, and turning, she believed to the right, passed at a slower speed over a road with a much worse surface. After a few minutes they stopped altogether and she heard movements as if her driver were performing some gymnastic feat in the front seat. Then he got out and walked round the car and she heard a sort of click behind it. A moment later he reentered and again they drove off.
For what she judged as about ten minutes they drove slowly along the bad road, then a slack, a sounding of the horn, another turn and they were once more on the smooth surface of a main thoroughfare. A few
