midnight
The car swung out into the main highway . Far ahead the red sardonic eye in the rear of the limousine leered as if mocking their hopes of keeping it in sight . Jules , however , proved unresentful ; and he was marvellously competent . `` To anybody who 's ever piloted a load of casualties through eighteen inches of mud , dodging shell holes and shells on their way to make new holes , in a black rainstorm at midnight -- this sort of thing , '' Jules announced -- `` a hard , smooth road under a clear sky -- is simple pie . '' So it may have seemed to him . But to Lanyard and Liane Delorme , hurled along a road they could not see at anywhere from forty to sixty miles an hour , with no manner of guidance other than an elusive tail-lamp which was forever whisking round corners and remaining invisible till Jules found his way round in turn , by instinct or second sight or intuition -- whatever it was , it proved unfailing -- it was a nervous time . And there was half an hour of it ... They were swooping down a long grade with a sharp turn at the bottom , as they knew from the fact that the red eye had just winked out , somewhere on ahead , there sounded a grinding crash , the noise of a stout fabric rent and crushed with the clash and clatter of shivered glass .