The Early Ayn Rand

"Then you better remember that my name is whispered with terror from coast to coast!"

"What's your name? Mine's Jinx Winford."

"You'll be sorry to learn my name! Everybody will tell you that my hand is of steel; that my heart is of granite; that I pass in the night like a death-bearing lightning, leaving terror and desolation behind!"

"Oh, really? I am sorry and you have all my sympathy: it must be awfully hard to live up to such a reputation!"

Laury looked at her strangely. Then he remembered that great bandits are always courteous to women. So he spoke gallantly:

"However, you have nothing to fear: I crush all men, but I spare women!"

"That's nothing to be proud of: women are the bunk and you ought to know it!"

"I'm profoundly sorry that I have to do this," he continued, "but you'll be treated with the greatest respect and courtesy, so you don't have to be afraid."

"Afraid? What of?"

"Say, will you please step out of your car and get into mine?"

"Is that absolutely necessary?"

"Yes!"

"Will you please kindly tell me what the hell this is all about?" she asked very suavely.

"You are being kidnapped," he explained politely.

"Oh!"

He didn't like that "Oh!" — it was not what he had expected at all. There was no terror or indignation in it; it sounded rather simple, matter-of-fact, as a person would say: "Oh, I see!"

She jumped lightly to the ground, her short skirt whirling high above graceful legs in tight, glistening stockings. The wind blew her clothes tight around her body and for a moment she looked like a slim little dancer in a wet, clinging dress, on an immense black stage, torn out of the darkness by the bright circle of the car's spotlight. And behind her, as a background — a gray, sandy piece of hill with bushes of dry, thorny weeds sticking out like deer horns.

"Will you please kindly wait while I lock my car?" she asked. "I don't mind being kidnapped, but I don't want some other gentleman to get the notion of kidnapping my car."

Calmly, she turned off the headlights, locked the car, and slipped the key into her pocketbook. She approached his old sports car and looked it over critically.

"Your business doesn't pay, does it?" she asked. "That buggy of yours doesn't look as though you get three meals a day."

"Will you please step in!" he almost shouted, exasperated. "We have no time to waste!"

She stepped in and snuggled comfortably on the seat, stretching her pretty legs far out on the slanting floorboard, her pleated skirt hardly covering the knees. He jumped to the wheel beside her.

"Do you expect a lot of money out of this?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"Are you desperately in love with me, then?"

"I should say not!" he snapped.

With a sharp, hoarse growl and a convulsive jerk from top to tire, the sports car tore forward, snorted, shuddered and rolled, wavering, into the darkness, towards the lights of Dicksville.

The wind and the dark hills rushed to meet them and rolled past. They were both silent. She studied him furtively from the corner of her eye. All she could see was a black mask between a gray cap and gracefully curved lips. He did not look at her once. All he knew of her presence was a faint, expensive perfume and tangled locks of soft hair that the wind blew into his face occasionally.

The first houses of Dicksville rose by the side of the road. Laury drove into town cautiously, choosing the darkest, emptiest streets. There were few streetlamps and no passersby. He stepped on the gas involuntarily, when passing through the white squares of light streaming from lonely corner drugstores.

Laury lived in an old apartment house in a narrow little street winding up a hill, in a new, half-built neighborhood. The house had two floors, big windows, and little balconies with no doors to them. There was an empty, unfinished bungalow next to it and a vacant lot across the street. Only two apartments on the first floor were occupied. Laury was the sole tenant on the second floor.

As the car swung around the corner into his street, Laury turned off the headlights and drove up to the house as noiselessly as he could. He looked carefully around before stopping. There was no one in sight. The little street was as dark and empty as an abandoned stage setting.

"Now, not a sound! Don't make any noise!" he whispered, clutching the girl's arm and dashing with her to the front door.

"Sure, I won't," she answered. "I know how you feel!"

They tiptoed noiselessly up the carpeted steps to Laury's door. The first thing that met Jinx's eyes, as Laury politely let her enter first, was one of his dirty shirts in the middle of the little hall, that had rolled out of an open clothes closet. Laury blushed under his mask and kicked it back into the closet, slamming its door angrily.