Eminent scientist, Dr. J. Greenaway, was injured today when he was hit by a car on the New Ocean Highway. Police are searching for the car, which is thought to be a grey Station Sedan. Dr. Greenaway was admitted to Highfield Hospital, suffering from shock and head injuries. Doctors say he is likely to lose the sight of his left eye, but apart from this and a few teeth knocked out he is in a satisfactory condition.
* * *
Greenaway Leaves Hospital
Brilliant scientist, Dr. Joseph Greenaway, this morning disappeared from Highfield Hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident last week.. Greenaway, who lost the sight of his left eye in the accident, is thought to have escaped through a window near his bed. Doctors believe that he may be suffering mentally and warn the public that he may be dangerous.
* * *
Another Car Disappears on New Ocean Highway
A grey Station Sedan and its driver mysteriously disappeared somewhere on the New Ocean Highway last night. The missing man is Tom Elder, a young hairdresser. All the people who have disappeared from the highway during the last two years were driving grey Station Sedans. Police are investigating.
* * *
As Bob Hays drove along the New Ocean Highway in his grey Station Sedan, he was feeling very happy. He was returning home from a business trip and would soon be seeing his young wife, Yvonne, again. He was so preoccupied with thinking of the happiness they had had in their first five months of marriage that he nearly ran over the middle-aged man standing on the road and signalling for him to stop.
Later he wished he had.
"What do you want? Are you trying to commit suicide or something?" asked Bob, annoyed at the interruption to his daydreams.
"Please, sir, my friend is sick. We must get him to a hospital," replied the man, who had a patch over his left eye.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Bob, getting out of the car. "Where is he? I'll help you bring him to the car."
"No need to. See. Here he is already."
Bob turned and shuddered at the sight of the man to whom the speaker pointed. He was about 5 ft. 6 in. in height, but he was hunchbacked. His hands looked terrifyingly strong, and his eyes were small and cruel.
"Meet John, my assistant. And just call me Joe. Looks like he's not so sick after all. But why don't you come and have a look at our laboratory?"
Bob looked towards the car, wondering if he could make a run for it.
"Oh, don't worry about the car," said Joe. "I'll take care of that while John takes you to the house. Look after our visitor, John. I'll see you soon."
As Joe drove the car off to somewhere, John gestured to Bob to go with him. Bob followed, terrified, knowing it would be futile to disobey. Through the trees they walked, getting further and further away from the road, until, after half an hour, they came to a large house. There were no roads or driveways leading to it. It was completely surrounded by trees. John, who apparently couldn't speak, showed him into a parlour, where they were later met by Joe.
"All right, John. Bring him into the surgery."
Bob was taken into a small, dark room where he was made to sit in something like a dentist's chair. "But what are you going to do to me?"
"I'm going to pull out a tooth! Hold him tight, John!"
Bob screamed in agony as he felt the tooth jerked from his gums, and blood started dripping from his mouth. He was then pushed into the parlour where he was left alone for a quarter of an hour. After he had recovered somewhat and had managed to stop the bleeding he looked around for a way out. But there was no escape. The door was locked, and the only window had bars across it.
When his two captors came to get him he was lying on the couch crying, thinking he might never see Yvonne again. He could not understand it! Who were these madmen?
John seemed to be just a poor idiot who was totally under the control of his master. Joe? Definitely insane. Insanely cruel - and yet, Bob thought he had seen a hint of pity in Joe's eyes even as he was extracting the tooth, as if he was not responsible for his own actions. But what were they going to do now?
"Come!" said the man who did all the talking. "Into my surgery. I will explain what I am doing."
"You see," said Joe, as Bob sat in the dentist's chair, "two years ago I lost my left eye and some teeth when I was run over by a car. It was a grey Station Sedan. You were the driver!"
"But I've never had an accident in my life!"
"It may not have been you. I can't be sure. But if it wasn't you, it was one of the others that I caught, or that I have yet to catch. I will get him. No one who drives a grey Station Sedan along the New Ocean Highway will escape me. I will have revenge on the person who did this to me. See here! See these teeth in this jar.
One of them is yours. I keep them carefully. One of them might belong to the person who knocked out mine."
Bob looked with disgust into the jar, half-filled with white and yellowish teeth, spotted with blood.
"But - but what have you got in the other bottle?"
Dr. Greenaway seemed to have a malicious smile on his face as he brought the jar closer to where Bob could see it. "Eyes," he said, unnecessarily.
Bob felt himself in the powerful grip of Joe's hunchbacked assistant. He struggled in vain as he watched the strange instrument in Joe's hand moving horribly close to his left eye. Closer and closer. Joe held the eyelids open with his left hand, then ¡K
When Bob woke up he wished he hadn't. With the one eye he had left he saw he was in a room full of corpses in varying stages of decay. There were no doors or windows - only a trapdoor in the roof, which there was no way of reaching. There he would be left, to die of starvation. Looking around him he saw signs that some people had tried to keep alive by means of cannibalism, but in vain.
Exhausted, he fell asleep again, and dreamt. He dreamt of Yvonne and his happy life with her, and he dreamt of his earlier life, His school days. How he had been hit in the eye with a ball. At the time he had said, "Oh, well! I didn't need that eye anyway!" That joke wasn't funny any more.
He woke again from his half-sleep to find himself painfully hungry. Wearily he watched as the trapdoor opened and a sleeping one-eyed person with a tooth missing plunged into the mass of stinking bodies below. In the distance he could hear Dr. J. Greenaway raving. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!" he was crying hysterically. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"
Bob could still hear the insane laughter in his head as he slowly returned to sleep, never to wake again.