A sinister, neurotic white girl Lula, with the provocation of her lovely, half-naked body and of her startlingly lascivious speech, lures to his doom a good-looking young black man Clay, a stranger whom she has picked up in the subway and whom she mocks for wearing the clothes and employing the voice and manners of the conventional white intellectual. The man, who, at first seeing no reason to resist the girl's advances, perceives too late that he is being used by her, drops his "white" disguise, and launches a wild and bitter counterattack on her and on the entire white race.