BURN, WITCH, BURN! [Part 2]

CHAPTER XIII

MADAME MANDILIP

I stood at the window of the doll-maker’s shop, mastering a stubborn revulsion against entering. I knew McCann was on guard. I knew that Ricori’s men were watching from the houses opposite, that others moved among the passersby. Despite the roaring clatter of the elevated trains, the bustle of traffic along the Battery, the outwardly normal life of the street, the doll-maker’s shop was a beleaguered fortress. I stood, shivering on its threshold, as though at the door of an unknown world.

There were only a few dolls displayed in the window, but they were unusual enough to catch the eyes of a child or a grown-up. Not so beautiful as that which had been given Walters, nor those two I had seen at the Gilmores’, but admirable lures, nevertheless. The light inside the shop was subdued. I could see a slender girl moving at a counter. The niece of Madame Mandilip, no doubt. Certainly the size of the shop did not promise any such noble chamber behind it as Walters had painted in her diary. Still, the houses were old, and the back might extend beyond the limits of the shop itself.

Abruptly and impatiently I ceased to temporize.

I opened the door and walked in.

The girl turned as I entered. She watched me as I came toward the counter. She did not speak. I studied her, swiftly. An hysterical type, obviously; one of the most perfect I had ever seen. I took note of the prominent pale blue eyes with their vague gaze and distended pupils; the long and slender neck and slightly rounded features; the pallor and the long thin fingers. Her hands were clasped, and I could see that these were unusually flexible—thus carrying out to the last jot the Laignel-Lavastine syndrome of the hysteric. In another time and other circumstances she would have been a priestess, voicing oracles, or a saint.

Fear was her handmaiden. There could be no doubt of that. And yet I was sure it was not of me she was frightened. Rather was it some deep and alien fear which lay coiled at the roots of her being, sapping her vitality—a spiritual fear. I looked at her hair. It was a silvery ash…the color…the color of the hair that formed the knotted cords!

As she saw me staring at her hair, the vagueness in her pale eyes diminished, was replaced by alertness. For the first time she seemed to be aware of me. I said, with the utmost casualness:

“I was attracted by the dolls in your window. I have a little granddaughter who would like one I think.”

“The dolls are for sale. If there is one you fancy, you may buy it. At its price.”

Her voice was low-pitched, almost whispering, indifferent. But I thought the intentness in her eyes sharpened.

“I suppose,” I answered, feigning something of irritation, “that is what any chance customer may do. But it happens that this child is a favorite of mine and for her I want the best. Would it be too much trouble to show me what other, and perhaps better, dolls you may have?”

Her eyes wavered for a moment. I had the thought that she was listening to some sound I could not hear. Abruptly her manner lost its indifference, became gracious. And at that exact moment I felt other eyes upon me, studying me, searching me. So strong was the impression that, involuntarily, I turned and peered about the shop. There was no one except the girl and me. A door was at the counter’s end, but it was lightly closed. I shot a glance at the window to see whether McCann was staring in. No one was there.

Then, like the clicking of a camera shutter, the unseen gaze was gone. I turned back to the girl. She had spread a half-dozen boxes on the counter and was opening them. She looked up at me, candidly, almost sweetly. She said:

“Why, of course you may see all that we have. I am sorry if you thought me indifferent to your desires. My aunt, who makes the dolls, loves children. She would not willingly allow one who also loves them to go from here disappointed.”

It was a curious little speech, oddly stilted, enunciated half as though she were reciting from dictation. Yet it was not that which aroused my interest so much as the subtle change that had taken place in the girl herself. Her voice was no longer languid. It held a vital vibrancy. Nor was she the lifeless, listless person she had been. She was animated, even a touch of vivaciousness about her; color had crept into her face and all vagueness gone from her eyes; in them was a sparkle, faintly mocking, more than faintly malicious.

I examined the dolls.

“They are lovely,” I said at last. “But are these the best you have? Frankly, this is rather an especial occasion—my granddaughter’s seventh birthday. The price doesn’t really matter as long, of course, as it is in reason—”

I heard her sigh. I looked at her. The pale eyes held their olden fear-touched stare, all sparkling mockery gone. The color had fled her face. And again, abruptly, I felt the unseen gaze upon me, more powerfully than before. And again I felt it shuttered off.

The door beside the counter opened.

Prepared though I had been for the extraordinary by Walters’ description of the doll-maker, her appearance gave me a distinct shock. Her height, her massiveness, were amplified by the proximity of the dolls and the slender figure of the girl. It was a giantess who regarded me from the doorway—a giantess whose heavy face with its broad, high cheek bones, mustached upper lip and thick mouth produced a suggestion of masculinity grotesquely in contrast with the immense bosom.

I looked into her eyes and forgot all grotesqueness of face and figure. The eyes were enormous, a luminous black, clear, disconcertingly alive. As though they were twin spirits of life, and independent of the body. And from them poured a flood of vitality that sent along my nerves a warm tingle in which there was nothing sinister—or was not then.

With difficulty I forced my own eyes from hers. I looked for her hands. She was swathed all in black, and her hands were hidden in the folds of her ample dress. My gaze went back to her eyes, and within them was a sparkle of the mocking contempt I had seen in those of the girl. She spoke, and I knew that the vital vibrancy I had heard in the girl’s voice had been an echo of those sonorously sweet, deep tones.

“What my niece has shown does not please you?”

I gathered my wits. I said: “They are all beautiful, Madame—Madame—”

“Mandilip,” she said, serenely. “Madame Mandilip. You do not know the name, eh?”

“It is my ill fortune,” I answered, ambiguously. “I have a grandchild—a little girl. I want something peculiarly fine for her seventh birthday. All that I have been shown are beautiful—but I was wondering whether there was not something—”

“Something—peculiarly—” her voice lingered on the word—“more beautiful. Well, perhaps there is. But when I favor customers peculiarly—” I now was sure she emphasized the word—“I must know with whom I am dealing. You think me a strange shopkeeper, do you not?”

She laughed, and I marveled at the freshness, the youthfulness, the curious tingling sweetness of that laughter.

It was by a distinct effort that I brought myself back to reality, put myself again on guard. I drew a card from my case. I did not wish her to recognize me, as she would have had I given her my own card. Nor did I desire to direct her attention to anyone she could harm. I had, therefore, prepared myself by carrying the card of a doctor friend long dead. She glanced at it.

“Ah,” she said. “You are a professional—a physician. Well, now that we know each other, come with me and I will show you of my best.”

She led me through the door and into a wide, dim corridor. She touched my arm and again I felt that strange, vital tingling. She paused at another door, and faced me.

“It is here,” she said, “that I keep my best. My—peculiarly best!”

Once more she laughed, then flung the door open.

I crossed the threshold and paused, looking about the room with swift disquietude. For here was no spacious chamber of enchantment such as Walters had described. True enough, it was somewhat larger than one would have expected. But where were the exquisite old panelings, the ancient tapestries, that magic mirror which was like a great “half-globe of purest water,” and all those other things that had made it seem to her a Paradise?

The light came through the half-drawn curtains of a window opening upon a small, enclosed and barren yard. The walls and ceiling were of plain, stained wood. One end was entirely taken up by small, built-in cabinets with wooden doors. There was a mirror on the wall, and it was round—but there any similarity to Walters’ description ended.

There was a fireplace, the kind one can find in any ordinary old New York house. On the walls were a few prints. The great table, the “baronial board,” was an entirely commonplace one, littered with dolls’ clothing in various stages of completion.

My disquietude grew. If Walters had been romancing about this room, then what else in her diary was invention—or, at least, as I had surmised when I had read it, the product of a too active imagination?

Yet—she had not been romancing about the doll-maker’s eyes, nor her voice; and she had not exaggerated the doll-maker’s appearance nor the peculiarities of the niece. The woman spoke, recalling me to myself, breaking my thoughts.

“My room interests you?”

She spoke softly, and with, I thought, a certain secret amusement.

I said: “Any room where any true artist creates is of interest. And you are a true artist, Madame Mandilip.”

“Now, how do you know that?” she mused.

It had been a slip. I said, quickly:

“I am a lover of art. I have seen a few of your dolls. It does not take a gallery of his pictures to make one realize that Raphael, for example, was a master. One picture is enough.”

She smiled, in the friendliest fashion. She closed the door behind me, and pointed to a chair beside the table.

“You will not mind waiting a few minutes before I show you my dolls? There is a dress I must finish. It is promised, and soon the little one to whom I have promised it will come. It will not take me long.”

“Why, no,” I answered, and dropped into the chair.

She said, softly: “It is quiet here. And you seem weary. You have been working hard, eh? And you are weary.”

I sank back into the chair. Suddenly I realized how weary I really was. For a moment my guard relaxed and I closed my eyes. I opened them to find that the doll-maker had taken her seat at the table.

And now I saw her hands. They were long and delicate and white and I knew that they were the most beautiful I had ever beheld. Just as her eyes seemed to have life of their own, so did those hands seem living things, having a being independent of the body to which they belonged. She rested them on the table. She spoke again, caressingly.

“It is well to come now and then to a quiet place. To a place where peace is. One grows so weary—so weary. So tired—so very tired.”

She picked a little dress from the table and began to sew. Long white fingers plied the needle while the other hand turned and moved the small garment. How wonderful was the motion of those long white hands…like a rhythm…like a song…restful!

She said, in low sweet tones:

“Ah, yes—here nothing of the outer world comes. All is peace—and rest—rest—”

I drew my eyes reluctantly from the slow dance of those hands, the weaving of those long and delicate fingers which moved so rhythmically. So restfully. The doll-maker’s eyes were on me, soft and gentle…full of that peace of which she had been telling.

It would do no harm to relax a little, gain strength for the struggle which must come. And I was tired. I had not realized how tired! My gaze went back to her hands. Strange hands—no more belonging to that huge body than did the eyes and voice.

Perhaps they did not! Perhaps that gross body was but a cloak, a covering, of the real body to which eyes and hands and voice belonged. I thought over that, watching the slow rhythms of the hands. What could the body be like to which they belonged? As beautiful as hands and eyes and voice?

She was humming some strange air. It was a slumberous, lulling melody. It crept along my tired nerves, into my weary mind—distilling sleep…sleep. As the hands were weaving sleep. As the eyes were pouring sleep upon me—

Sleep!

Something within me was raging, furiously. Bidding me rouse myself! Shake off this lethargy! By the tearing effort that brought me gasping to the surface of consciousness, I knew that I must have passed far along the path of that strange sleep. And for an instant, on the threshold of complete awakening, I saw the room as Walters had seen it.

Vast, filled with mellow light, the ancient tapestries, the panelings, the carved screens behind which hidden shapes lurked laughing—laughing at me. Upon the wall the mirror—and it was like a great half-globe of purest water within which the images of the carvings round its frame swayed like the reflections of verdure round a clear woodland pool!

The immense chamber seemed to waver—and it was gone.

I stood beside an overturned chair in that room to which the doll-maker had led me. And the doll-maker was beside me, close. She was regarding me with a curious puzzlement and, I thought, a shadow of chagrin. It flashed upon me that she was like one who had been unexpectedly interrupted—

Interrupted! When had she left her chair? How long had I slept? What had she done to me while I had been sleeping? What had that terrific effort of will by which I had broken from her web prevented her from completing?

I tried to speak—and could not. I stood tongue-tied, furious, humiliated. I realized that I had been trapped like the veriest tyro—I who should have been all alert, suspicious of every move. Trapped by voice and eyes and weaving hands by the reiterated suggestion that I was weary so weary…that here was peace…and sleep…sleep…What had she done to me while I slept? Why could I not move? It was as though all my energy had been dissipated in that one tremendous thrust out of her web of sleep! I stood motionless, silent, spent. Not a muscle moved at command of my will. The enfeebled hands of my will reached out to them—and fell.

The doll-maker laughed. She walked to the cabinets on the far wall. My eyes followed her, helplessly. There was no slightest loosening of the paralysis that gripped me. She pressed a spring, and the door of a cabinet slipped down.

Within the cabinet was a child-doll. A little girl, sweet-faced and smiling. I looked at it and felt a numbness at my heart. In its small, clasped hands was one of the dagger-pins, and I knew that this was the doll which had stirred in the arms of the Gilmore baby…had climbed from the baby’s crib…had danced to the bed and thrust…

“This is one of my peculiarly best!” The doll-maker’s eyes were on me and filled with cruel mockery. “A good doll! A bit careless at times, perhaps. Forgetting to bring back her school-books when she goes visiting. But so obedient! Would you like her for your granddaughter?”

Again she laughed—youthful, tingling, evil laughter. And suddenly I knew Ricori had been right and that this woman must be killed. I summoned all my will to leap upon her. I could not move a finger.

The long white hands groped over the next cabinet and touched its hidden spring. The numbness at my heart became the pressure of a hand of ice. Staring out at me from that cabinet was Walters! And she was crucified!

So perfect, so—alive was the doll that it was like seeing the girl herself through a diminishing glass. I could not think of it as a doll, but as the girl. She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform. She had no cap, and her black hair hung disheveled about her face. Her arms were outstretched, and through each palm a small nail had been thrust, pinning the hands to the back of the cabinet. The feet were bare, resting one on the other, and through the insteps had been thrust another nail. Completing the dreadful, the blasphemous, suggestion, above her head was a small placard. I read it:

“The Burnt Martyr.”

The doll-maker murmured in a voice like honey garnered from flowers in hell:

“This doll has not behaved well. She has been disobedient. I punish my dolls when they do not behave well. But I see that you are distressed. Well, she has been punished enough—for the moment.”

The long white hands crept into the cabinet, drew out the nails from hands and feet. She set the doll upright, leaning against the back. She turned to me.

“You would like her for your granddaughter, perhaps? Alas! She is not for sale. She has lessons to learn before she goes again from me.”

Her voice changed, lost its diabolic sweetness, became charged with menace.

“Now listen to me—Dr. Lowell! What—you did not think I knew you? I knew you from the first. You too need a lesson!” Her eyes blazed upon me. “You shall have your lesson—you fool! You who pretend to heal the mind—and know nothing, nothing I say, of what the mind is. You, who conceive the mind as but a part of a machine of flesh and blood, nerve and bone and know nothing of what it houses. You—who admit existence of nothing unless you can measure it in your test tubes or see it under your microscope. You—who define life as a chemical ferment, and consciousness as the product of cells. You fool! Yet you and this savage, Ricori, have dared to try to hamper me, to interfere with me, to hem me round with spies! Dared to threaten me—Me—possessor of the ancient wisdom beside which your science is as crackling of thorns under an empty pot! You fools! I know who are the dwellers in the mind—and the powers that manifest themselves through it—and those who dwell beyond it! They come at my call. And you think to pit your paltry knowledge against mine? You fool! Have you understood me? Speak!”

She pointed a finger at me. I felt my throat relax, knew I could speak once more.

“You hell bag!” I croaked. “You damned murderess! You’ll go to the electric chair before I’m through with you!”

She came toward me, laughing.

“You would give me to the law? But who would believe you? None! The ignorance that your science has fostered is my shield. The darkness of your unbelief is my impregnable fortress. Go play with your machines, fool! Play with your machines! But meddle with me no more!”

Her voice grew quiet, deadly.

“Now this I tell you. If you would live, if you would have live those who are dear to you—take your spies away. Ricori you cannot save. He is mine. But you—think never of me again. Pry no more into my affairs. I do not fear your spies—but they offend me. Take them away. At once. If by nightfall they are still on watch—”

She caught me by the shoulder with a grip that bruised. She pushed me toward the door.

“Go!”

I fought to muster my will, to raise my arms. Could I have done so I would have struck her down as I would a ravening beast. I could not move them. Like an automaton I walked across the room to the door. The doll-maker opened it.

There was an odd rustling noise from the cabinets. Stiffly, I turned my head.

The doll of Walters had fallen forward. It lay half over the edge. Its arms swung, as though imploring me to take it away. I could see in its palms the marks of the crucifying nails. Its eyes were fixed on mine—

“Go!” said the doll-maker. “And remember!”

With the same stiff motion I walked through the corridor and into the shop. The girl watched me, with vague, fear-filled eyes. As though a hand were behind me, pressing me inexorably on, I passed through the shop and out of its door into the street.

I seemed to hear, did hear, the mocking evil-sweet laughter of the doll-maker!

CHAPTER XIV

THE DOLL-MAKER STRIKES

The moment I was out in the street, volition, power of movement, returned to me. In an abrupt rush of rage, I turned to re-enter the shop. A foot from it, I was brought up as against an invisible wall. I could not advance a step, could not even raise my hands to touch the door. It was as though at that point my will refused to function, or rather that my legs and arms refused to obey my will. I realized what it was—post-hypnotic suggestion of an extraordinary kind, part of the same phenomena which had held me motionless before the doll-maker, and had sent me like a robot out of her lair. I saw McCann coming toward me, and for an instant had the mad idea of ordering him to enter and end Madame Mandilip with a bullet. Common sense swiftly told me that we could give no rational reason for such killing, and that we would probably expiate it within the same apparatus of execution with which I had threatened her.

McCann said: “I was getting worried, Doc. Just about to break in on you.”

I said: “Come on, McCann. I want to get home as quickly as possible.”

He looked at my face, and whistled.

“You look like you been through a battle, Doc.”

I answered: “I have. And the honors are all with Madame Mandilip—so far.”

“You came out quiet enough. Not like the boss, with the hag spitting hell in your face. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Just let me be quiet for awhile. I want to think.”

What I actually wanted was to get back my self-possession. My mind seemed half-blind, groping for the tangible. It was as if it had been enmeshed in cobwebs of a peculiarly unpleasant character, and although I had torn loose, fragments of the web were still clinging to it. We got into the car and rolled on for some minutes in silence. Then McCann’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Anyway,” he asked, “what did you think of her?”

By this time I had come to a determination. Never had I felt anything to approach the loathing, the cold hatred, the implacable urge to kill, which this woman had aroused in me. It was not that my pride had suffered, although that was sore enough. No, it was the conviction that in the room behind the doll-shop dwelt blackest evil. Evil as inhuman and alien as though the doll-maker had in truth come straight from that hell in which Ricori believed. There could be no compromise with that evil. Nor with the woman in whom it was centered.

I said: “McCann, in all the world there is nothing so evil as that woman. Do not let the girl slip through your fingers again. Do you think she knew last night that she had been seen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Increase the guards in front and back of the place at once. Do it openly, so that the women cannot help noticing it. They will think, unless the girl is aware that she was observed, that we are still in ignorance of the other exit. They will think we believe she managed to slip out unseen either at front or back. Have a car in readiness at each end of the street where she keeps the coupe. Be careful not to arouse their suspicions. If the girl appears, follow her—” I hesitated.

McCann asked: “And then what?”

“I want her taken—abducted, kidnapped—whatever you choose to call it. It must be done with the utmost quietness. I leave that to you. You know how such things are done better than I. Do it quickly and do it quietly. But not too near the doll-shop—as far away from it as you can. Gag the girl, tie her up if necessary. But get her. Then search the car thoroughly. Bring the girl to me at my house—with whatever you find. Do you understand?”

He said: “If she shows, we’ll get her. You going to put her through the third degree?”

“That—and something more. I want to see what the doll-maker will do. It may goad her into some action which will enable us to lay hands on her legitimately. Bring her within reach of the law. She may or may not have other and invisible servants, but my intention is to deprive her of the visible one. It may make the others visible. At the least, it will cripple her.”

He looked at me, curiously; “She musta hit you pretty hard, Doc.”

“She did,” I answered curtly. He hesitated.

“You going to tell the boss about this?” he asked at last.

“I may or I may not—tonight. It depends upon his condition. Why?”

“Well, if we’re going to pull off anything like a kidnapping, I think he ought to know.”

I said, sharply: “McCann, I told you Ricori’s message was that you were to obey orders from me as though they were from him. I have given you your orders. I accept all the responsibility.”

“Okay,” he answered, but I could see that his doubt still lingered.

Now, assuming Ricori had sufficiently recovered, there was no real reason why I should not tell him what had happened during my encounter with Madame Mandilip. It was different with Braile. More than suspecting, as I did, the attachment between him and Walters, I could not tell him of the crucified doll—and even now I thought of it not as a doll crucified, but as Walters crucified. If I told him, I knew well that there would be no holding him back from instant attack upon the doll-maker. I did not want that.

But I was aware of a most stubborn reluctance to tell Ricori the details of my visit. The same held good for Braile in other matters besides the Walters doll. And why did I feel the same way about McCann? I set it down to wounded vanity.

We stopped in front of my house. It was then close to six. Before getting out of the car I repeated my instructions. McCann nodded.

“Okay, Doc. If she comes out, we get her.”

I went into the house, and found a note from Braile saying that he would not be in to see me until after dinner. I was glad of that. I dreaded the ordeal of his questions. I learned that Ricori was asleep, and that he had been regaining strength with astonishing rapidity. I instructed the nurse to tell him, should he awaken, that I would visit him after I had dined. I lay down, endeavoring to snatch a little sleep before eating.

I could not sleep—constantly the face of the doll-maker came before me whenever I began to relax into a doze, throwing me into intense wakefulness.

At seven I arose and ate a full and excellent dinner, deliberately drinking at least twice the amount of wine I ordinarily permit myself, finishing with strong coffee. When I arose from the table I felt distinctly better, mentally alert and master of myself once more—or so I believed. I had decided to apprise Ricori of my instructions to McCann concerning the abduction of the girl. I realized that this was certain to bring down upon me a minute catechism concerning my visit to the doll-shop, but I had formulated the story I intended to tell—

It was with a distinct shock that I realized that this story was all that I could tell! Realized that I could not communicate to the others the portions I had deleted, even if I desired. And that this was by command of the doll-maker—post-hypnotic suggestion which was a part of those other inhibitions she had laid upon my will; those same inhibitions which had held me powerless before her, had marched me out of her shop like a robot and thrust me back from her door, when I would have re-entered!

During that brief tranced sleep she had said to me: “This and this you must not tell. This and this you may.”

I could not speak of the child-doll with the angelic face and the dagger-pin which had pricked the bubble of Gilmore’s life. I could not speak of the Walters doll and its crucifixion. I could not speak of the doll-maker’s tacit admission that she had been responsible for the deaths that had first led us to her.

However, this realization made me feel even better. Here at last was something understandable—the tangibility for which I had been groping; something that had in it nothing of sorcery—nor of dark power; something entirely in the realm of my own science. I had done the same thing to patients, many times, bringing their minds back to normality by these same post-hypnotic suggestions.

Also, there was a way by which I could wash my own mind clean of the doll-maker’s suggestions, if I chose. Should I do this? Stubbornly, I decided I would not. It would be an admission that I was afraid of Madame Mandilip. I hated her, yes—but I did not fear her. Knowing now her technique, it would be folly not to observe its results with myself as the laboratory experiment. I told myself that I had run the gamut of those suggestions—that whatever else it had been her intention to implant within my mind had been held back by my unexpected awakening—

Ah, but the doll-maker had spoken truth when she called me fool!

When Braile appeared, I was able to meet him calmly. Hardly had I greeted him when Ricori’s nurse called up to say her patient was wide-awake and anxious to see me.

I said to Braile: “This is fortunate. Come along. It will save me from telling the same story twice over.”

He asked: “What story?”

“My interview with Madame Mandilip.”

He said, incredulously: “You’ve seen her!”

“I spent the afternoon with her. She is most interesting. Come and hear about it.”

I led the way rapidly to the Annex, deaf to his questions. Ricori was sitting up. I made a brief examination. Although still somewhat weak, he could be discharged as a patient. I congratulated him on what was truly a remarkable recovery. I whispered to him:

“I’ve seen your witch and talked to her. I have much to tell you. Bid your guards take their stations outside the door. I will dismiss the nurse for a time.”

When guards and nurse were gone, I launched into an account of the day’s happenings, beginning with my summons to the Gilmore apartment by McCann. Ricori listened, face grim, as I repeated Mollie’s story. He said:

“Her brother and now her husband! Poor, poor Mollie! But she shall be avenged! Si!—greatly so! Yes!”

I gave my grossly incomplete version of my encounter with Madame Mandilip. I told Ricori what I had bidden McCann to do. I said:

“And so tonight, at least, we can sleep in peace. For if the girl comes out with the dolls, McCann gets her. If she does not, then nothing can happen. I am quite certain that without her the doll-maker cannot strike. I hope you approve, Ricori.”

He studied me for a moment, intently.

“I do approve, Dr. Lowell. Most greatly do I approve. You have done as I would have done. But—I do not think you have told us all that happened between you and the witch.”

“Nor do I,” said Braile.

I arose.

“At any rate, I’ve told you the essentials. And I’m dead tired. I’m going to take a bath and go to bed. It’s now nine-thirty. If the girl does come out it won’t be before eleven, probably later. I’m going to sleep until McCann fetches her. If he doesn’t, I’m going to sleep all night. That’s final. Save your questions for the morning.”

Ricori’s searching gaze had never left me. He said:

“Why not sleep here? Would it not be safer for you?”

I succumbed to a wave of intense irritation. My pride had been hurt enough by my behavior with the doll-maker and the manner she had outwitted me. And the suggestion that I hide from her behind the guns of his men opened the wound afresh.

“I am no child,” I answered angrily. “I am quite able to take care of myself. I do not have to live behind a screen of gunmen—”

I stopped, sorry that I had said that. But Ricori betrayed no anger. He nodded, and dropped back on his pillows.

“You have told me what I wanted to know. You fared very badly with the witch, Dr. Lowell. And you have not told us all the essentials.”

I said: “I am sorry, Ricori!”

“Don’t be.” For the first time he smiled. “I understand, perfectly. I also am somewhat of a psychologist. But I say this to you—it matters little whether McCann does or does not bring the girl to us tonight. Tomorrow the witch dies—and the girl with her.”

I made no answer. I recalled the nurse, and re-stationed the guards within the room. Whatever confidence I might feel, I was taking no chances with Ricori’s safety. I had not told him of the doll-maker’s direct threat against him, but I had not forgotten it.

Braile accompanied me to my study. He said, apologetically:

“I know you must be damned tired, Lowell, and I don’t want to pester you. But will you let me stay in your room with you while you are sleeping?”

I said with the same stubborn irritability:

“For God’s sake, Braile, didn’t you hear what I told Ricori? I’m much obliged and all of that, but it applies to you as well.”

He said quietly: “I am going to stay right here in the study, wide-awake, until McCann comes or dawn comes. If I hear any sounds in your room, I’m coming in. Whenever I want to take a look at you to see whether you are all right, I’m coming in. Don’t lock your door, because if you do I’ll break it down. Is that all quite clear?”

I grew angrier still. He said:

“I mean it.”

I said: “All right. Do as you damned please.”

I went into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. But I did not lock it.

I was tired, there was no doubt about that. Even an hour’s sleep would be something. I decided not to bother with the bath, and began to undress. I was removing my shirt when I noticed a tiny pin upon its left side over my heart. I opened the shirt and looked at the under side. Fastened there was one of the knotted cords!

I took a step toward the door, mouth open to call Braile. Then I stopped short. I would not show it to Braile. That would mean endless questioning. And I wanted to sleep.

God! But I wanted to sleep!

Better to burn the cord. I searched for a match to touch fire to it—I heard Braile’s step at the door and thrust it hastily in my trousers’ pocket.

“What do you want?” I called.

“Just want to see you get into bed all right.”

He opened the door a trifle. What he wanted to discover, of course, was whether I had locked it. I said nothing, and went on undressing.

My bedroom is a large, high-ceilinged room on the second floor of my home. It is at the back of the house, adjoining my study. There are two windows which look out on the little garden. They are framed by the creeper. The room has a chandelier, a massive, old-fashioned thing covered with prisms—lusters I think they are called, long pendants of cut-glass in six circles from which rise the candle-holders. It is a small replica of one of the lovely Colonial chandeliers in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, and when I bought the house I would not allow it to be taken down, nor even be wired for electric bulbs. My bed is at the end of the room, and when I turn upon my left side I can see the windows outlined by faint reflections. The same reflections are caught by the prisms so that the chandelier becomes a nebulously glimmering tiny cloud. It is restful, sleep-inducing. There is an ancient pear tree in the garden, the last survivor of an orchard which in spring, in New York’s halcyon days, lifted to the sun its flowered arms. The chandelier is just beyond the foot of the bed. The switch which controls my lights is at the head of my bed. At the side of the room is an old fireplace, its sides of carved marble and with a wide mantel at the top. To visualize fully what follows, it is necessary to keep this arrangement in mind.

By the time I had undressed, Braile, evidently assured of my docility, had closed the door and gone back into the study. I took the knotted cord, the witch’s ladder, and threw it contemptuously on the table. I suppose there was something of bravado in the action; perhaps, if I had not felt so sure of McCann, I would have pursued my original intention of burning it. I mixed myself a sedative, turned off the lights and lay down to sleep. The sedative took quick effect.

I sank deep and deeper into a sea of sleep deeper…and deeper…

I awoke.

I looked around me…how had I come to this strange place? I was standing within a shallow circular pit, grass lined. The rim of the pit came only to my knees. The pit was in the center of a circular, level meadow, perhaps a quarter of a mile in diameter. This, too, was covered with grass; strange grass, purple flowered. Around the grassy circle drooped unfamiliar trees…trees scaled with emeralds green and scarlet…trees with pendulous branches covered with fernlike leaves and threaded with slender vines that were like serpents. The trees circled the meadow, watchful, alert…watching me…waiting for me to move…

No, it was not the trees that were watching! There were things hidden among the trees, lurking…malignant things…evil things…and it was they who were watching me, waiting for me to move!

But how had I gotten here? I looked down at my legs, stretched my arms…I was clad in the blue pajamas in which I had gone to bed…gone to my bed in my New York house…in my house in New York…how had I come here? I did not seem to be dreaming…

Now I saw that three paths led out of the shallow pit. They passed over the edge, and stretched, each in a different direction, toward the woods. And suddenly I knew that I must take one of these paths, and that it was vitally important that I pick the right one…that only one could be traversed safely…that the other two would lead me into the power of those lurking things.

The pit began to contract. I felt its bottom lifting beneath my feet. The pit was thrusting me out! I leaped upon the path at my right, and began to walk slowly along it. Then involuntarily I began to run, faster and faster along it, toward the woods. As I drew nearer I saw that the path pierced the woods straight as an arrow flight, and that it was about three feet wide and bordered closely by the trees, and that it vanished in the dim green distance. Faster and faster I ran. Now I had entered the woods, and the unseen things were gathering among the trees that bordered the path, thronging the borders, rushing silently from all the wood. What those things were, what they would do to me if they caught me I did not know…I only knew that nothing that I could imagine of agony could equal what I would experience if they did catch me.

On and on I raced through the wood, each step a nightmare. I felt hands stretching out to clutch me…heard shrill whisperings…Sweating, trembling, I broke out of the wood and raced over a vast plain that stretched, treeless, to the distant horizon. The plain was trackless, pathless, and covered with brown and withered grass. It was like, it came to me, the blasted heath of Macbeth’s three witches. No matter…it was better than the haunted wood. I paused and looked back at the trees. I felt from them the gaze of myriads of the evil eyes.

I turned my back, and began to walk over the withered plain. I looked up at the sky. The sky was misty green. High up in it two cloudy orbs began to glow…black suns…no, they were not suns…they were eyes…The eyes of the doll-maker! They stared down at me from the misty green sky…Over the horizon of that strange world two gigantic hands began to lift…began to creep toward me…to catch me and hurl me back into the wood…white hands with long fingers…and each of the long white fingers a living thing. The hands of the doll-maker!

Closer came the eyes, and closer writhed the hands. From the sky came peal upon peal of laughter…The laughter of the doll-maker!

That laughter still ringing in my ears, I awakened—or seemed to awaken. I was in my room sitting bolt upright in my bed. I was dripping with sweat, and my heart was pumping with a pulse that shook my body. I could see the chandelier glimmering in the light from the windows like a small nebulous cloud. I could see the windows faintly outlined. It was very still…

There was a movement at one of the windows. I would get up from the bed and see what it was—I could not move!

A faint greenish glow began within the room. At first it was like the flickering phosphorescence one sees upon a decaying log. It waxed and waned, waxed and waned, but grew ever stronger. My room became plain. The chandelier gleamed like a decaying emerald—

There was a little face at the window! A doll’s face! My heart leaped, then curdled with despair. I thought: “McCann has failed! It is the end!”

The doll looked at me, grinning. Its face was smooth shaven, that of a man about forty. The nose was long, the mouth wide and thin-lipped. The eyes were close-set under bushy brows. They glittered, red as rubies.

The doll crept over the sill. It slid, head-first, into the room. It stood for a moment on its head, legs waving. It somersaulted twice. It came to its feet, one little hand at its lips, red eyes upon mine—waiting. As though expecting applause! It was dressed in the tights and jacket of a circus acrobat. It bowed to me. Then with a flourish, it pointed to the window.

Another little face was peering there. It was austere, cold, the face of a man of sixty. It had small side whiskers. It stared at me with the expression I supposed a banker might wear when someone he hates applies to him for a loan—I found the thought oddly amusing. Then abruptly I ceased to feel amused.

A banker-doll! An acrobat-doll!

The dolls of two of those who had suffered the unknown death!

The banker-doll stepped with dignity down from the window. It was in full evening dress, swallowtails, stiff shirt—all perfect. It turned and with the same dignity raised a hand to the windowsill. Another doll stood there—the doll of a woman about the same age as the banker-doll, and garbed like it in correct evening dress.

The spinster!

Mincingly, the spinster-doll took the proffered hand. She jumped lightly to the floor.

Through the window came a fourth doll, all in spangled tights from neck to feet. It took a flying leap, landing beside the acrobat-doll. It looked up at me with grinning face, then bowed.

The four dolls began to march toward me, the acrobats leading, and behind them with slow and stately step, the spinster-doll and banker-doll-arm in arm.

Grotesque, fantastic, these they were—but not humorous, God—no! Or if there were anything of humor about them, it was that at which only devils laugh.

I thought, desperately: “Braile is just on the other side of the door! If I could only make some sound!”

The four dolls halted and seemed to consult. The acrobats pirouetted, and reached to their backs. They drew from the hidden sheaths their dagger-pins. In the hands of banker-doll and spinster-doll appeared similar weapons. They presented the points toward me, like swords.

The four resumed their march to my bed…

The red eyes of the second acrobat-doll—the trapeze performer, I knew him now to be—had rested on the chandelier. He paused, studying it. He pointed to it, thrust the dagger-pin back into its sheath, and bent his knees, hands cupped in front of them. The first doll nodded, then stood, plainly measuring the height of the chandelier from the floor and considering the best approach to it. The second doll pointed to the mantel, and the pair of them swarmed up its sides to the broad ledge. The elderly pair watched them, seemingly much interested. They did not sheath their dagger-pins.

The acrobat-doll bent, and the trapeze-doll put a little foot in its cupped hands. The first doll straightened, and the second flew across the gap between mantel and chandelier, caught one of the prismed circles, and swung. Immediately the other doll leaped outward, caught the chandelier and swung beside its spangled mate.

I saw the heavy old fixture tremble and sway. Down upon the floor came crashing a dozen of the prisms. In the dead stillness, it was like an explosion.

I heard Braile running to the door. He threw it open. He stood on the threshold. I could see him plainly in the green glow, but I knew that he could not see—that to him the room was in darkness. He cried:

“Lowell! Are you all right? Turn on the lights!”

I tried to call out. To warn him. Useless! He groped forward, around the foot of the bed, to the switch. I think that then he saw the dolls. He stopped short, directly beneath the chandelier, looking up.

And as he did so the doll above him swung by one hand, drew its dagger-pin from its sheath and dropped upon Braile’s shoulders, stabbing viciously at his throat!

Braile shrieked—once. The shriek changed into a dreadful bubbling sigh…

And then I saw the chandelier sway and lurch. It broke from its ancient fastenings. It fell with a crash that shook the house, down upon Braile and the doll-devil ripping at his throat.

Abruptly the green glow disappeared. There was a scurrying in the room like the running of great rats.

The paralysis dropped from me. I threw my hand round to the switch and turned on the lights; leaped from the bed.

Little figures were scrambling up and out of the window. There were four muffled reports like popguns. I saw Ricori at the door, on each side of him a guard with silenced automatic, shooting at the window.

I bent over Braile. He was quite dead. The falling chandelier had dropped upon his head, crushing the skull. But Braile had been dying before the chandelier had fallen…his throat ripped…the carotid artery severed.

The doll that had murdered him was gone!

CHAPTER XV

THE WITCH GIRL

I stood up. I said bitterly:

“You were right, Ricori—her servants are better than yours.”

He did not answer, looking down at Braile with pity-filled face.

I said: “If all your men fulfill their promises like McCann, that you are still alive I count as one of the major miracles.”

“As for McCann,” he turned his gaze to me somberly, “he is both intelligent and loyal. I will not condemn him unheard. And I say to you, Dr. Lowell, that if you had shown more frankness to me this night—Dr. Braile would not be dead.”

I winced at that—there was too much truth in it. I was racked by regret and grief and helpless rage. If I had not let my cursed pride control me, if I had told them all that I could of my encounter with the doll-maker, explained why there were details I was unable to tell, given myself over to Braile for a cleansing counter-hypnotization—no, if I had but accepted Ricori’s offer of protection, or Braile’s to watch over me while asleep—then this could not have happened.

I looked into the study and saw there Ricori’s nurse. I could hear whispering outside the study doors—servants, and others from the Annex who had been attracted by the noise of the falling chandelier. I said to the nurse, quite calmly:

“The chandelier fell while Dr. Braile was standing at the foot of my bed talking to me. It has killed him. But do not tell the others that. Only say that the chandelier fell, injuring Dr. Braile. Send them back to their beds—say that we are taking Dr. Braile to the hospital. Then return with Porter and clean up what you can of the blood. Leave the chandelier as it is.”

When she had gone I turned to Ricori’s gunmen.

“What did you see when you shot?”

One answered: “They looked like monkeys to me.”

The other said: “Or midgets.”

I looked at Ricori, and read in his face what he had seen. I stripped the light blanket from the bed.

“Ricori,” I said, “let your men lift Braile and wrap him in this. Then have them carry him into the small room next to the study and place him on the cot.”

He nodded to them, and they lifted Braile from the debris of shattered glass and bent metal. His face and neck had been cut by the broken prisms and by some chance one of these wounds was close to the spot where the dagger-pin of the doll had been thrust. It was deep, and had probably caused a second severance of the carotid artery. I followed with Ricori into the small room. They placed the body on the cot and Ricori ordered them to go back to the bedroom and watch while the nurses were there. He closed the door of the small room behind them, then turned to me.

“What are you going to do, Dr. Lowell?”

What I felt like doing was weeping, but I answered: “It is a coroner’s case, of course. I must notify the police at once.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“What did you see at the window, Ricori?”

“I saw the dolls!”

“And I. Can I tell the police what did kill Braile before the chandelier fell? You know I cannot. No, I shall tell them that we were talking when, without warning, the fixture dropped upon him. Splintered glass from the pendants pierced his throat. What else can I say? And they will believe that readily enough when they would not believe the truth—”

I hesitated, then my reserve broke; for the first time in many years, I wept.

“Ricori—you were right. Not McCann but I am to blame for this—the vanity of an old man—had I spoken freely, fully—he would be alive…but I did not…I did not…I am his murderer.”

He comforted me—gently as a woman…

“It was not your fault. You could not have done otherwise…being what you are…thinking as you have so long thought. If in your unbelief, your entirely natural unbelief, the witch found her opportunity…still, it was not your fault. But now she shall find no more opportunities. Her cup is full and overflowing…”

He put his hands on my shoulders.

“Do not notify the police for a time—not until we hear from McCann. It is now close to twelve and he will telephone even if he does not come. I will go to my room and dress. For when I have heard from McCann I must leave you.”

“What do you mean to do, Ricori?”

“Kill the witch,” he answered quietly. “Kill her and the girl. Before the day comes. I have waited too long. I will wait no longer. She shall kill no more.”

I felt a wave of weakness. I dropped into a chair. My sight dimmed. Ricori gave me water, and I drank thirstily. Through the roaring in my ears I heard a knocking at the door and the voice of one of Ricori’s men:

“McCann is here.”

Ricori said: “Tell him to come in.”

The door opened. McCann strode into the room.

“I got her—”

He stopped short, staring at us. His eyes fell upon the covered body upon the cot and his face grew grim:

“What’s happened?”

Ricori answered: “The dolls killed Dr. Braile. You captured the girl too late, McCann. Why?”

“Killed Braile? The dolls! God!” McCann’s voice was as though a hand had gripped his throat.

Ricori asked: “Where is the girl, McCann?”

He answered, dully: “Down in the car, gagged and tied.”

Ricori asked: “When did you get her? And where?”

Looking at McCann, I suddenly felt a great pity and sympathy for him. It sprang from my own remorse and shame. I said:

“Sit down, McCann. I am far more to blame for what has happened than you can possibly be.”

Ricori said, coldly: “Leave me to be judge of that. McCann, did you place cars at each end of the street, as Dr. Lowell instructed?”

“Yes.”

“Then begin your story at that point.”

McCann said: “She comes into the street. It’s close to eleven. I’m at the east end an’ Paul at the west. I say to Tony: ‘We got the wench pocketed!’ She carries two suitcases. She looks around an’ trots where we located her car. She opens the door. When she comes out she rides west where Paul is. I’ve told Paul what the Doc tells me, not to grab her too close to the doll-shop. I see Paul tail her. I shoot down the street an’ tail Paul.

“The coupe turn into West Broadway. There she gets the break, a Staten Island boat is just in an’ the street’s lousy with a herd of cars. A Ford shoots over to the left, trying to pass another. Paul hits the Ford and wraps himself round one of the El’s pillars. There’s a mess. I’m a minute or two getting out the jam. When I do, the coupe’s outa sight.

“I hop down an’ telephone Rod. I tell him to get the wench when she shows up, even if they have to rope her off the steps of the doll-shop. An’ when they get her, bring her right here.

“I come up here. I figure maybe she’s headed this way. I coast along by here an’ then take a look in the Park, I figure the doll-hag’s been getting all the breaks an’ now one’s due me. I get it. I see the coupe parked under some trees. We get the gal. She don’t put up no fight at all. But we gag her an’ put her in the car. Tony rolls the coupe away an’ searches it. There ain’t a thing in it but the two suitcases an’ they’re empty. We bring the gal here.”

I asked: “How long between when you caught the girl and your arrival?”

“Ten-fifteen minutes, maybe. Tony nigh took the coupe to pieces. An’ that took time.”

I looked at Ricori. McCann must have come upon the girl just about the moment Braile had died. He nodded:

“She was waiting for the dolls, of course.”

McCann asked: “What do you want me to do with her?”

He looked at Ricori, not at me. Ricori said nothing, staring at McCann with a curious intentness. But I saw him clench his left hand, then open it, fingers wide. McCann said:

“Okay, boss.”

He started toward the door. It did not take unusual acumen to know that he had been given orders, nor could their significance be mistaken.

“Stop!” I intercepted him and stood with my back against the door. “Listen to me, Ricori. I have something to say about this. Dr. Braile was as close to me as Peters to you. Whatever the guilt of Madame Mandilip, this girl is helpless to do other than what she orders her. Her will is absolutely controlled by the doll-maker. I strongly suspect that a good part of the time she is under complete hypnotic control. I cannot forget that she tried to save Walters. I will not see her murdered.”

Ricori said: “If you are right, all the more reason she should be destroyed quickly. Then the witch cannot make use of her before she herself is destroyed.”

“I will not have it, Ricori. And there is another reason. I want to question her. I may discover how Madame Mandilip does these things—the mystery of the dolls—the ingredients of the salve—whether there are others who share her knowledge. All this and more, the girl may know. And if she does know, I can make her tell.”

McCann said, cynically: “Yeah?”

Ricori asked: “How?”

I answered grimly: “By using the same trap in which the doll-maker caught me.”

For a full minute Ricori considered me, gravely.

“Dr. Lowell,” he said, “for the last time I yield my judgment to yours in this matter. I think you are wrong. I know that I was wrong when I did not kill the witch that day I met her. I believe that every moment this girl is permitted to remain alive is a moment laden with danger for us all. Nevertheless, I yield—for this last time.”

“McCann,” I said, “bring the girl into my office. Wait until I get rid of anyone who may be downstairs.”

I went downstairs, McCann and Ricori following. No one was there. I placed on my desk a development of the Luys mirror, a device used first at the Salpetriere in Paris to induce hypnotic sleep. It consists of two parallel rows of small reflectors revolving in opposite directions. A ray of light plays upon them in such a manner as to cause their surfaces alternately to gleam and darken. A most useful device, and one to which I believed the girl, long sensitized to hypnotic suggestion, must speedily succumb. I placed a comfortable chair at the proper angle, and subdued the lights so that they could not compete with the hypnotic mirror.

I had hardly completed these arrangements when McCann and another of Ricori’s henchmen brought in the girl. They placed her in the easy chair, and I took from her lips the cloth with which she had been silenced.

Ricori said: “Tony, go out to the car. McCann, you stay here.”

CHAPTER XVI

END OF THE WITCH GIRL

The girl made no resistance whatever. She seemed entirely withdrawn into herself, looking up at me with the same vague stare I had noted on my visit to the doll-shop. I took her hands. She let them rest passively in mine. They were very cold. I said to her, gently, reassuringly:

“My child, no one is going to hurt you. Rest and relax. Sink back in the chair. I only want to help you. Sleep if you wish. Sleep.”

She did not seem to hear, still regarding me with that vague gaze. I released her hands. I took my own chair, facing her, and set the little mirrors revolving. Her eyes turned to them at once, rested upon them, fascinated. I watched her body relax; she sank back in her chair. Her eyelids began to droop.

“Sleep,” I said softly. “Here none can harm you. While you sleep none can harm you. Sleep…sleep…”

Her eyes closed; she sighed.

I said: “You are asleep. You will not awaken until I bid you. You cannot awaken until I bid you.”

She repeated in a murmuring, childish voice: “I am asleep; I cannot awaken until you bid me.”

I stopped the whirling mirrors. I said to her: “There are some questions I am going to ask you. You will listen, and you will answer me truthfully. You cannot answer them except truthfully. You know that.”

She echoed, still in that faint childish voice: “I must answer you truthfully. I know that.”

I could not refrain from darting a glance of triumph at Ricori and McCann. Ricori was crossing himself, staring at me with wide eyes in which were both doubt and awe. I knew he was thinking that I, too, knew witchcraft. McCann sat chewing nervously. And staring at the girl.

I began my questions, choosing at first those least likely to disturb. I asked:

“Are you truly Madame Mandilip’s niece?”

“No.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I do not know.”

“When did you join her, and why?”

“Twenty years ago. I was in a creche, a foundling asylum at Vienna. She took me from it. She taught me to call her my aunt. But she is not.”

“Where have you lived since then?”

“In Berlin, in Paris, then London, Prague, Warsaw.”

“Did Madame Mandilip make her dolls in each of these places?”

She did not answer; she shuddered; her eyelids began to tremble.

“Sleep! Remember, you cannot awaken until I bid you! Sleep! Answer me.”

She whispered: “Yes.”

“And they killed in each city?”

“Yes.”

“Sleep. Be at ease. Nothing is going to harm you—” Her disquietude had again become marked, and I veered for a moment from the subject of the dolls. “Where was Madame Mandilip born?”

“I do not know.”

“How old is she?”

“I do not know. I have asked her, and she has laughed and said that time is nothing to her. I was five years old when she took me. She looked then just as she does now.”

“Has she any accomplices—I mean are there others who make the dolls?”

“One. She taught him. He was her lover in Prague.”

“Her lover!” I exclaimed, incredulously—the image of the immense gross body, the great breasts, the heavy horse-like face of the doll-maker rising before my eyes. She said:

“I know what you are thinking. But she has another body. She wears it when she pleases. It is a beautiful body. It belongs to her eyes, her hands, her voice. When she wears that body she is beautiful. She is terrifyingly beautiful. I have seen her wear it many times.”

Another body! An illusion, of course…like the enchanted room Walters had described…and which I had glimpsed when breaking from the hypnotic web in which she had enmeshed me…a picture drawn by the doll-maker’s mind in the mind of the girl. I dismissed that, and drove to the heart of the matter.

“She kills by two methods, does she not—by the salve and by the dolls?”

“Yes, by the unguent and the dolls.”

“How many has she killed by the unguent in New York?”

She answered, indirectly: “She has made fourteen dolls since we came here.”

So there were other cases that had not been reported to me! I asked:

“‘And how many have the dolls killed?”

“Twenty.”

I heard Ricori curse, and shot him a warning look. He was leaning forward, white and tense; McCann had stopped his chewing.

“How does she make the dolls?”

“I do not know.”

“Do you know how she prepares the unguent?”

“No. She does that secretly.”

“What is it that activates the dolls?”

“You mean makes them—alive?”

“Yes.”

“Something from the dead!”

Again I heard Ricori cursing softly. I said: “If you do not know how the dolls are made, you must know what is necessary to make them alive. What is it?”

She did not answer.

“You must answer me. You must obey me. Speak!”

She said: “Your question is not clear. I have told you that something of the dead makes them alive. What else is it you would know?”

“Begin from where one who poses for a doll first meets Madame Mandilip to the last step when the doll—as you put it—becomes alive.”

She spoke, dreamily:

“She has said one must come to her of his own will. He must consent of his own volition, without coercion, to let her make the doll. That he does not know to what he is consenting matters nothing. She must begin the first model immediately. Before she completes the second—the doll that is to live—she must find opportunity to apply the unguent. She has said of this unguent that it liberates one of those who dwell within the mind, and that this one must come to her and enter the doll. She has said that this one is not the sole tenant of the mind, but with the others she has no concern. Nor does she select all of those who come before her. How she knows those with whom she can deal, or what there is about them which makes her select them, I do not know. She makes the second doll. At the instant of its completion he who has posed for it begins to die. When he is dead—the doll lives. It obeys her—as they all obey her…”

She paused, then said, musingly “All except one—”

“And that one?”

“She who was your nurse. She will not obey. My aunt torments her, punishes her…still she cannot control her. I brought the little nurse here last night with another doll to kill the man my—aunt—cursed. The nurse came, but she fought the other doll and saved the man. It is something my aunt cannot understand…it perplexes her…and it gives me…hope!”

Her voice trailed away. Then suddenly, with energy, she said:

“You must make haste. I should be back with the dolls. Soon she will be searching for me. I must go…or she will come for me…and then…if she finds me here…she will kill me…”

I said: “You brought the dolls to kill me?”

“Of course.”

“Where are the dolls now?”

She answered: “They were coming back to me. Your men caught me before they could reach me. They will go…home. The dolls travel quickly when they must. It is more difficult without me that is all…but they will return to her.”

“Why do the dolls kill?”

“To…please…her.”

I said: “The knotted cord, what part does it play?”

She answered: “I do not know—but she says—” Then suddenly, desperately, like a frightened child, she whispered: “She is searching for me! Her eyes are looking for me…her hands are groping—she sees me! Hide me! Oh, hide me from her quick…”

I said: “Sleep more deeply! Go down—down deep—deeper still into sleep. Now she cannot find you! Now you are hidden from her!”

She whispered: “I am deep in sleep. She has lost me. I am hidden. But she is hovering over me she is still searching…”

Ricori and McCann had left their chairs and were beside me.

Ricori asked:

“You believe the witch is after her?”

“No,” I answered. “But this is not an unexpected development. The girl has been under the woman’s control so long, and so completely, that the reaction is natural. It may be the result of suggestion, or it may be the reasoning of her own subconsciousness…she has been breaking commands…she has been threatened with punishment if she should—”

The girl screamed, agonized:

“She sees me! She has found me! Her hands are reaching out to me!”

“Sleep! Sleep deeper still! She cannot hurt you. Again she has lost you!”

The girl did not answer, but a faint moaning was audible, deep in her throat.

McCann swore, huskily: “Christ! Can’t you help her?”

Ricori, eyes unnaturally bright in a chalky face, said: “Let her die! It will save us trouble!”

I said to the girl, sternly:

“Listen to me and obey. I am going to count five. When I come to five—awaken! Awaken at once! You will come up from sleep so swiftly that she cannot catch you! Obey!”

I counted, slowly, since to have awakened her at once would, in all likelihood, have brought her to the death which her distorted mind told her was threatened by the doll-maker.

“One—two—three—”

An appalling scream came from the girl. And then—

“She’s caught me! Her hands are around my heart…Uh-h-h…”

Her body bent; a spasm ran through her. Her body relaxed and sank limply in the chair. Her eyes opened, stared blankly; her jaw dropped.

I ripped open her bodice, set my stethoscope to her heart. It was still.

And then from the dead throat issued a voice organ-toned, sweet, laden with menace and contempt…

“You fools!”

The voice of Madame Mandilip!

CHAPTER XVII

BURN WITCH BURN!

Curiously enough, Ricori was the least affected of the three of us. My own flesh had crept. McCann, although he had never heard the doll-maker’s voice, was greatly shaken. And it was Ricori who broke the silence.

“You are sure the girl is dead?”

“There is no possible doubt of it, Ricori.”

He nodded to McCann: “Carry her down to the car.”

I asked: “What are you going to do?”

He answered: “Kill the witch.” He quoted with satiric unctuousness: “In death they shall not be divided.” He said, passionately: “As in hell they shall burn together forever!”

He looked at me, sharply.

“You do not approve of this, Dr. Lowell?”

“Ricori, I don’t know—I honestly do not know. Today I would have killed her with my own hands but now the rage is spent. What you have threatened is against all my instincts, all my habits of thought, all my convictions of how justice should be administered. It seems to me—murder!”

He said: “You heard the girl. Twenty in this city alone killed by the dolls. And fourteen dolls. Fourteen who died as Peters did!”

“But, Ricori, no court could consider allegations under hypnosis as evidence. It may be true, it may not be. The girl was abnormal. What she told might be only her imaginings—without supporting evidence, no court on earth could accept it as a basis for action.”

He said: “No—no earthly court—” He gripped my shoulders. He asked: “Do you believe it was truth?”

I could not answer, for deep within me I felt it was truth. He said:

“Precisely, Dr. Lowell! You have answered me. You know, as I know, that the girl did speak the truth. You know, as I know, that our law cannot punish the witch. That is why I must kill her. In doing that, I, Ricori, am no murderer. No, I am God’s executioner!”

He waited for me to speak. Again I could not answer.

“McCann”—he pointed to the girl—“do as I told you. Then return.”

And when McCann had gone out with the frail body in his arms, Ricori said:

“Dr. Lowell—you must go with me to witness this execution.”

I recoiled at that. I said:

“Ricori, I can’t. I am utterly weary—in body and mind. I have gone through too much today. I am broken with grief—”

“You must go,” he interrupted, “if we have to carry you, gagged as the girl was, and bound. I will tell you why. You are at war with yourself. Alone, it is possible your scientific doubts might conquer, that you would attempt to halt me before I have done what I swear by Christ, His Holy Mother, and the Saints, I shall do. You might yield to weariness and place the whole matter before the police. I will not take that risk. I have affection for you, Dr. Lowell, deep affection. But I tell you that if my own mother tried to stop me in this I would sweep her aside as ruthlessly as I shall you.”

I said: “I will go with you.”

“Then tell the nurse to bring me my clothing. Until all is over, we remain together. I am taking no more chances.”

I took up the telephone and gave the necessary order. McCann returned, and Ricori said to him:

“When I am clothed, we go to the doll-shop. Who is in the car with Tony?”

“Larson and Cartello.”

“Good. It may be that the witch knows we are coming. It may be that she has listened through the girl’s dead ears as she spoke from her dead throat. No matter. We shall assume that she did not. Are there bars on the door?”

McCann said: “Boss, I ain’t been in the shop. I don’t know. There’s a glass panel. If there’s bars we can work ’em. Tony’ll get the tools while you put on your clothes.”

“Dr. Lowell,” Ricori turned on me. “Will you give me your word that you will not change your mind about going with me? Nor attempt to interfere in what I am going to do?”

“I give you my word, Ricori.”

“McCann, you need not come back. Wait for us in the car.”

Ricori was soon dressed. As I walked with him out of my house, a clock struck one. I remembered that this strange adventure had begun, weeks ago, at that very hour…

I rode in the back of the car with Ricori, the dead girl between us. On the middle seats were Larson and Cartello, the former a stolid Swede, the latter a wiry little Italian. The man named Tony drove, McCann beside him. We swung down the avenue and in about half an hour were on lower Broadway. As we drew near the street of the doll-maker, we went less quickly. The sky was overcast, a cold wind blowing off the bay. I shivered, but not with cold.

We came to the corner of the doll-maker’s street.

For several blocks we had met no one, seen no one. It was as though we were passing through a city of the dead. Equally deserted was the street of the doll-maker.

Ricori said to Tony:

“Draw up opposite the doll-shop. We’ll get out. Then go down to the corner. Wait for us there.”

My heart was beating uncomfortably. There was a quality of blackness in the night that seemed to swallow up the glow from the street lamps. There was no light in the doll-maker’s shop, and in the old-fashioned doorway, set level with the street, the shadows clustered. The wind whined, and I could hear the beating of waves on the Battery wall. I wondered whether I would be able to go through that doorway, or whether the inhibition the doll-maker had put upon me still held me.

McCann slipped out of the car, carrying the girl’s body. He propped her, sitting in the doorway’s shadows. Ricori and I, Larson and Cartello, followed. The car rolled off. And again I felt the sense of nightmare unreality which had clung to me so often since I had first set my feet on this strange path to the doll-maker…

The little Italian was smearing the glass of the door with some gummy material. In the center of it he fixed a small vacuum cup of rubber. He took a tool from his pocket and drew with it a foot-wide circle on the glass. The point of the tool cut into the glass as though it had been wax. Holding the vacuum cup in one hand, he tapped the glass lightly with a rubber-tipped hammer. The circle of glass came away in his hand. All had been done without the least sound. He reached through the hole, and fumbled about noiselessly for a few moments. There was a faint click. The door swung open.

McCann picked up the dead girl. We went, silent as phantoms, into the doll-shop. The little Italian set the circle of glass back in its place. I could see dimly the door that opened into the corridor leading to that evil room at the rear. The little Italian tried the knob. The door was locked. He worked for a few seconds, and the door swung open. Ricori leading, McCann behind him with the girl, we passed like shadows through the corridor and paused at the further door.

The door swung open before the little Italian could touch it.

We heard the voice of the doll-maker!

“Enter, gentlemen. It was thoughtful of you to bring me back my dear niece! I would have met you at my outer door—but I am an old, old woman and timid!”

McCann whispered: “One side, boss!”

He shifted the body of the girl to his left arm, and holding her like a shield, pistol drawn, began to edge by Ricori. Ricori thrust him away. His own automatic leveled, he stepped over the threshold. I followed McCann, the two gunmen at my back.

I took a swift glance around the room. The doll-maker sat at her table, sewing. She was serene, apparently untroubled. Her long white fingers danced to the rhythm of her stitches. She did not look up at us. There were coals burning in the fireplace. The room was very warm, and there was a strong aromatic odor, unfamiliar to me. I looked toward the cabinets of the dolls.

Every cabinet was open. Dolls stood within them, row upon row, staring down at us with eyes green and blue, gray and black, lifelike as though they were midgets on exhibition in some grotesque peepshow. There must have been hundreds of them. Some were dressed as we in America dress; some as the Germans do; some as the Spanish, the French, the English; others were in costumes I did not recognize. A ballerina, and a blacksmith with his hammer raised…a French chevalier, and a German student, broadsword in hand, livid scars upon his face…an Apache with knife in hand, drug-madness on his yellow face and next to him a vicious-mouthed woman of the streets and next to her a jockey…

The loot of the doll-maker from a dozen lands!

The dolls seemed to be poised to leap. To flow down upon us. Overwhelm us.

I steadied my thoughts. I forced myself to meet that battery of living dolls’ eyes as though they were but lifeless dolls. There was an empty cabinet…another and another…five cabinets without dolls. The four dolls I had watched march upon me in the paralysis of the green glow were not there nor was Walters.

I wrenched my gaze away from the tiers of the watching dolls. I looked again at the doll-maker, still placidly sewing…as though she were alone…as though she were unaware of us…as though Ricori’s pistol were not pointed at her heart…sewing…singing softly…

The Walters doll was on the table before her!

It lay prone on its back. Its tiny hands were fettered at the wrists with twisted cords of the ashen hair. They were bound round and round, and the fettered hands clutched the hilt of a dagger-pin!

Long in the telling, but brief in the seeing—a few seconds in time as we measure it.

The doll-maker’s absorption in her sewing, her utter indifference to us, the silence, made a screen between us and her, an ever-thickening though invisible barrier. The pungent aromatic fragrance grew stronger.

McCann dropped the body of the girl on the floor.

He tried to speak—once, twice; at the third attempt he succeeded. He said to Ricori hoarsely, in strangled voice:

“Kill her…or I will—” Ricori did not move. He stood rigid, automatic pointed at the doll-maker’s heart, eyes fixed on her dancing hands. He did not seem to hear McCann, or if he heard, he did not heed. The doll-maker’s song went on…it was like the hum of bees…it was a sweet droning…it garnered sleep as the bees garner honey…sleep…

Ricori shifted his grip upon his gun. He sprang forward. He swung the butt of the pistol down upon a wrist of the doll-maker.

The hand dropped, the fingers of that hand writhed…hideously the long white fingers writhed and twisted…like serpents whose backs have been broken…

Ricori raised the gun for a second blow. Before it could fall the doll-maker had leaped to her feet, overturning her chair. A whispering ran over the cabinets like a thin veil of sound. The dolls seemed to bend, to lean forward…

The doll-maker’s eyes were on us now. They seemed to take in each and all of us at once. And they were like flaming black suns in which danced tiny crimson flames.

Her will swept out and overwhelmed us. It was like a wave, tangible. I felt it strike me as though it were a material thing. A numbness began to creep through me. I saw the hand of Ricori that clutched the pistol twitch and whiten. I knew that same numbness was gripping him as it gripped McCann and the others…

Once more the doll-maker had trapped us!

I whispered: “Don’t look at her, Ricori…don’t look in her eyes…”

With a tearing effort I wrested my own away from those flaming black ones. They fell upon the Walters doll. Stiffly, I reached to take it up—why, I did not know. The doll-maker was quicker than I. She snatched up the doll with her uninjured hand, and held it to her breast. She cried, in a voice whose vibrant sweetness ran through every nerve, augmenting the creeping lethargy:

“You will not look at me? You will not look at me! Fools—you can do nothing else!”

Then began that strange, that utterly strange episode that was the beginning of the end.

The aromatic fragrance seemed to pulse, to throb, grow stronger. Something like a sparkling mist whirled out of nothingness and covered the doll-maker, veiling the horse-like face, the ponderous body. Only her eyes shone through that mist…

The mist cleared away. Before us stood a woman of breath-taking beauty—tall and slender and exquisite. Naked, her hair, black and silken fine, half-clothed her to her knees. Through it the pale golden flesh gleamed. Only the eyes, the hands, the doll still clasped to one of the round, high breasts told who she was.

Ricori’s automatic dropped from his hand. I heard the weapons of the others fall to the floor. I knew they stood rigid as I, stunned by that incredible transformation, and helpless in the grip of the power streaming from the doll-maker.

She pointed to Ricori and laughed: “You would kill me—me! Pick up your weapon, Ricori—and try!”

Ricori’s body bent slowly, slowly…I could see him only indirectly, for my eyes could not leave the woman’s…and I knew that his could not…that, fastened to them, his eyes were turning upward, upward as he bent. I sensed rather than saw that his groping hand had touched his pistol—that he was trying to lift it. I heard him groan. The doll-maker laughed again.

“Enough, Ricori—you cannot!”

Ricori’s body straightened with a snap, as though a hand had clutched his chin and thrust him up…

There was a rustling behind me, the patter of little feet, the scurrying of small bodies past me.

At the feet of the woman were four mannikins…the four who had marched upon me in the green glow…banker-doll, spinster-doll, the acrobat, the trapeze performer.

They stood, the four of them, ranged in front of her, glaring at us. In the hand of each was a dagger-pin, points thrust at us like tiny swords. And once more the laughter of the woman filled the room. She spoke, caressingly:

“No, no, my little ones. I do not need you!”

She pointed to me.

“You know this body of mine is but illusion, do you not? Speak.”

“Yes.”

“And these at my feet—and all my little ones—are but illusions?”

I said: “I do not know that.”

“You know too much—and you know too little. Therefore you must die, my too wise and too foolish doctor—” The great eyes dwelt upon me with mocking pity, the lovely face became maliciously pitiful. “And Ricori too must die—because he knows too much. And you others—you too must die. But not at the hands of my little people. Not here. No! At your home, my good doctor. You shall go there silently—speaking neither among yourselves nor to any others on your way. And when there you will turn upon yourselves…each slaying the other…rending yourselves like wolves…like—”

She staggered back a step, reeling.

I saw—or thought I saw—the doll of Walters writhe. Then swift as a striking snake it raised its bound hands and thrust the dagger-pin through the doll-maker’s throat…twisted it savagely…and thrust and thrust again…stabbing the golden throat of the woman precisely where that other doll had stabbed Braile!

And as Braile had screamed—so now screamed the doll-maker…dreadfully, agonizedly…

She tore the doll from her breast. She hurled it from her. The doll hurtled toward the fireplace, rolled, and touched the glowing coals.

There was a flash of brilliant flame, a wave of that same intense heat I had felt when the match of McCann had struck the Peters doll. And instantly, at the touch of that heat, the dolls at the woman’s feet vanished. From them arose swiftly a pillar of that same brilliant flame. It coiled and wrapped itself around the doll-maker, from feet to head.

I saw the shape of beauty melt away. In its place was the horse-like face, the immense body of Madame Mandilip…eyes seared and blind…the long white hands clutching at her torn throat, and no longer white but crimson with her blood.

Thus for an instant she stood, then toppled to the floor.

And at that instant of her fall, the spell that held us broke.

Ricori leaned toward the huddled hulk that had been the doll-maker. He spat upon it. He shouted, exultantly:

“Burn witch burn!”

He pushed me to the door, pointing toward the tiers of the watching dolls that strangely now seemed lifeless! Only dolls!

Fire was leaping to them from draperies and curtains. The fire was leaping at them as though it were some vengeful spirit of cleansing flame!

We rushed through the door, the corridor, out into the shop. Through the corridor and into the shop the flames poured after us. We ran into the street.

Ricori cried: “Quick! To the car!”

Suddenly the street was red with the light of the flames. I heard windows opening, and shouts of warning and alarm.

We swung into the waiting car, and it leaped away.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DARK WISDOM

“They have made effigies comparable with my image, similar to my form, who have taken away my breath, pulled out my hair, torn my garments, prevented my feet from moving by means of dust; with an ointment of harmful herbs they rubbed me; to my death they have led me—O God of Fire destroy them!”

Egyptian Prayer

Three weeks had passed since the death of the doll-maker. Ricori and I sat at dinner in my home. A silence had fallen between us. I had broken it with the curious invocation that begins this, the concluding chapter of my narrative, scarcely aware that I had spoken aloud. But Ricori looked up, sharply.

“You quote someone? Whom?”

I answered: “A tablet of clay, inscribed by some Chaldean in the days of Assur-nizir-pal, three thousand years ago.”

He said: “And in those few words he has told all our story!”

“Even so, Ricori. It is all there—the dolls—the unguent—the torture—death—and the cleansing flame.”

He mused: “It is strange, that. Three thousand years ago—and even then they knew the evil and its remedy… ‘effigies similar to my form…who have taken away my breath…an ointment of harmful herbs…to my death they have led me…O God of Fire-destroy them!’ It is all our story, Dr. Lowell.”

I said: “The death-dolls are far, far older than Ur of the Chaldees. Older than history. I have followed their trail down the ages since the night Braile was killed. And it is a long, long trail, Ricori. They have been found buried deep in the hearths of the Cro-Magnons, hearths whose fires died twenty thousand years ago. And they have been found under still colder hearths of still more ancient peoples. Dolls of flint, dolls of stone, dolls carved from the mammoth’s tusks, from the bones of the cave bear, from the saber-toothed tiger’s fangs. They had the dark wisdom even then, Ricori.”

He nodded: “Once I had a man about me whom I liked well. A Transylvanian. One day I asked him why he had come to America. He told me a strange tale. He said that there had been a girl in his village whose mother, so it was whispered, knew things no Christian should know. He put it thus, cautiously, crossing himself. The girl was comely, desirable—yet he could not love her. She, it seemed, loved him—or perhaps it was his indifference that drew her. One afternoon, coming home from the hunt, he passed her hut. She called to him. He was thirsty, and drank the wine she offered him. It was good wine. It made him gay—but it did not make him love her.

“Nevertheless, he went with her into the hut, and drank more wine. Laughing, he let her cut hair from his head, pare his finger-nails, take drops of blood from his wrist, and spittle from his mouth. Laughing, he left her, and went home, and slept. When he awakened, it was early evening, and all that he remembered was that he had drunk wine with the girl, but that was all.

“Something told him to go to church. He went to church. And as he knelt, praying, suddenly he did remember more—remembered that the girl had taken his hair, his nail parings, his spittle and his blood. And he felt a great necessity to go to this girl and to see what she was doing with his hair, his nail parings, his spittle, his blood. It was as though he said, the Saint before whom he knelt was commanding him to do this.

“So he stole to the hut of the girl, slipping through the wood, creeping up to her window. He looked in. She sat at the hearth, kneading dough as though for bread. He was ashamed that he had crept so with such thoughts—but then he saw that into the dough she was dropping the hair she had cut from him, the nail parings, the blood, the spittle. She was kneading them within the dough. Then, as he watched, he saw her take the dough and model it into the shape of a little man. And she sprinkled water upon its head, baptizing it in his name with strange words he could not understand.

“He was frightened, this man. But also he was greatly enraged. Also he had courage. He watched until she had finished. He saw her wrap the doll in her apron, and come to the door. She went out of the door, and away. He followed her—he had been a woodsman and knew how to go softly, and she did not know he was following her. She came to a crossroads. There was a new moon shining, and some prayer she made to this new moon. Then she dug a hole, and placed the doll of dough in that hole. And then she defiled it. After this she said:

“‘Zaru (it was this man’s name)! Zaru! Zaru! I love you. When this image is rotted away you must run after me as the dog after the bitch. You are mine, Zaru, soul and body. As the image rots, you become mine. When the image is rotted, you are all mine. Forever and forever and forever!’

“She covered the image with earth. He leaped upon her, and strangled her. He would have dug up the image, but he heard voices and was more afraid and ran. He did not go back to the village. He made his way to America.

“He told me that when he was out a day on that journey, he felt hands clutching at his loins—dragging him to the rail, to the sea. Back to the village, to the girl. By that, he knew he had not killed her. He fought the hands. Night after night he fought them. He dared not sleep, for when he slept he dreamed he was there at the cross-roads, the girl beside him—and three times he awakened just in time to check himself from throwing himself into the sea.

“Then the strength of the hands began to weaken. And at last, but not for many months, he felt them no more. But still he went, always afraid, until word came to him from the village. He had been right—he had not killed her. But later someone else did. That girl had what you have named the dark wisdom. Si! Perhaps it turned against her at the end—as in the end it turned against the witch we knew.”

I said: “It is curious that you should say that, Ricori…strange that you should speak of the dark wisdom turning against the one who commands it…but of that I will speak later. Love and hate and power—three lusts—always these seem to have been the three legs of the tripod on which burns the dark flame; the supports of the stage from which the death-dolls leap…

“Do you know who is the first recorded Maker of Dolls? No? Well, he was a God, Ricori. His name was Khnum. He was a God long and long before Yawvah of the Jews, who was also a maker of dolls, you will recall, shaping two of them in the Garden of Eden; animating them; but giving them only two inalienable rights—first, the right to suffer; second, the right to die. Khnum was a far more merciful God. He did not deny the right to die—but he did not think the dolls should suffer; he liked to see them enjoy themselves in their brief breathing space. Khnum was so old that he had ruled in Egypt ages before the Pyramids or the Sphinx were thought of. He had a brother God whose name was Kepher, and who had the head of a Beetle. It was Kepher who sent a thought rippling like a little wind over the surface of Chaos. That, thought fertilized Chaos, and from it the world was born…

“Only a ripple over the surface, Ricori! If it had pierced the skin of Chaos…or thrust even deeper…into its heart…what might not mankind now be? Nevertheless, rippling, the thought achieved the superficiality that is man. The work of Khnum thereafter was to reach into the wombs of women and shape the body of the child who lay within. They called him the Potter-God. He it was who, at the command of Amen, greatest of the younger Gods, shaped the body of the great Queen Hat-shep-sut whom Amen begot, lying beside her mother in the likeness of the Pharaoh, her husband. At least, so wrote the priests of her day.

“But a thousand years before this there was a Prince whom Osiris and Isis loved greatly—for his beauty, his courage and his strength. Nowhere on earth, they thought, was there a woman fit for him. So they called Khnum, the Potter-God, to make one. He came, with long hands like those of…Madame Mandilip…like hers, each finger alive. He shaped the clay into a woman so beautiful that even the Goddess Isis felt a touch of envy. They were severely practical Gods, those of old Egypt, so they threw the Prince into a sleep, placed the woman beside him, and compared—the word in the ancient papyrus is ‘fitted’—them. Alas! She was not harmonious. She was too small. So Khnum made another doll. But this was too large. And not until six were shaped and destroyed was true harmony attained, the Gods satisfied, the fortunate Prince given his perfect wife—who had been a doll.

“Ages after, in the time of Rameses III, it happened that there was a man who sought for and who found this secret of Khnum, the Potter-God. He had spent his whole life in seeking it. He was old and bent and withered; but the desire for women was still strong within him. All that he knew to do with that secret of Khnum was to satisfy that desire. But he felt the necessity of a model. Who were the fairest of women whom he could use as models? The wives of the Pharaoh, of course. So this man made certain dolls in the shape and semblance of those who accompanied the Pharaoh when he visited his wives. Also, he made a doll in the likeness of the Pharaoh himself; and into this he entered, animating it. His dolls then carried him into the royal harem, past the guards, who believed even as did the wives of Pharaoh, that he was the true Pharaoh. And entertained him accordingly.

“But, as he was leaving, the true Pharaoh entered. That must have been quite a situation, Ricori—suddenly, miraculously, in his harem, the Pharaoh doubled! But Khnum, seeing what had happened, reached down from Heaven and touched the dolls, withdrawing their life. And they dropped to the floor, and were seen to be only dolls.

“While where one Pharaoh had stood lay another doll and crouched beside it a shivering and wrinkled old man!

“You can find the story, and a fairly detailed account of the trial that followed, in a papyrus of the time; now, I think, in the Turin Museum. Also a catalogue of the tortures the magician underwent before he was burned. Now, there is no manner of doubt that there were such accusations, nor that there was such a trial; the papyrus is authentic. But what, actually, was at the back of it? Something happened—but what was it? Is the story only another record of superstition—or does it deal with the fruit of the dark wisdom?”

Ricori said: “You, yourself, watched that dark wisdom fruit. Are you still unconvinced of its reality?”

I did not answer; I continued: “The knotted cord—the Witch’s Ladder. That, too, is most ancient. The oldest document of Frankish legislation, the Salic Law, reduced to written form about fifteen hundred years ago, provided the severest penalties for those who tied what it named the Witch’s Knot—”

“La Ghana della strega,” he said. “Well, do we know that cursed thing in my land—and to our black sorrow!”

I took startled note of his pallid face, his twitching fingers; I said, hastily: “But of course, Ricori, you realize that all I have been quoting is legend? Folklore. With no proven basis of scientific fact.”

He thrust his chair back, violently, arose, stared at me, incredulously. He spoke, with effort: “You still hold that the devil-work we witnessed can be explained in terms of the science you know?”

I stirred, uncomfortably: “I did not say that, Ricori. I do say that Madame Mandilip was as extraordinary a hypnotist as she was a murderess—a mistress of illusion—”

He interrupted me, hands clenching the table’s edge: “You think her dolls were illusions?”

I answered, obliquely: “You know how real was that illusion of a beautiful body. Yet we saw it dissolve in the true reality of the flames. It had seemed as veritable as the dolls, Ricori—”

Again he interrupted me: “The stab in my heart…the doll that killed Gilmore…the doll that murdered Braile…the blessed doll that slew the witch! You call them illusions?”

I answered, a little sullenly, the old incredulity suddenly strong within me: “It is entirely possible that, obeying a post-hypnotic command of the doll-maker, you, yourself, thrust the dagger-pin into your own heart! It is possible that obeying a similar command, given when and where and how I do not know, Peters’ sister, herself, killed her husband. The chandelier fell on Braile when I was, admittedly, under the influence of those same post-hypnotic influences—and it is possible that it was a sliver of glass that cut his carotid. As for the doll-maker’s own death, apparently at the hands of the Walters doll, well, it is also possible that the abnormal mind of Madame Mandilip was, at times, the victim of the same illusions she induced in the minds of others. The doll-maker was a mad genius, governed by a morbid compulsion to surround herself with the effigies of those she had killed by the unguent. Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, carried constantly with her the embalmed hearts of a dozen or more lovers who had died for her. She had not slain those men—but she knew she had been the cause of their deaths as surely as though she had strangled them with her own hands. The psychological principle involved in Queen Marguerite’s collection of hearts and Madame Mandilip’s collection of dolls is one and the same.”

He had not sat down; still in that strained voice he repeated: “I asked you if you called the killing of the witch an illusion.”

I said: “You make it very uncomfortable for me, Ricori—staring at me like that…and I am answering your question. I repeat it is possible that in her own mind she was at times the victim of the same illusions she induced in the minds of others. That at times she, herself, thought the dolls were alive. That in this strange mind was conceived a hatred for the doll of Walters. And, at the last, under the irritation of our attack, this belief reacted upon her. That thought was in my mind when, a while ago, I said it was curious that you should speak of the dark wisdom turning against those who possessed it. She tormented the doll; she expected the doll to avenge itself if it had the opportunity. So strong was this belief, or expectation, that when the favorable moment arrived, she dramatized it. Her thought became action! The doll-maker, like you, may well have plunged the dagger-pin into her own throat—”

“You fool!”

The words came from Ricori’s mouth—and yet it was so like Madame Mandilip speaking in her haunted room and speaking through the dead lips of Laschna that I dropped back into my chair, shuddering.

Ricori was leaning over the table. His black eyes were blank, expressionless. I cried out, sharply, a panic shaking me: “Ricori—wake—”

The dreadful blankness in his eyes flicked away; their gaze sharpened, was intent upon me. He said, again in his own voice:

“I am awake, I am so awake—that I will listen to you no more! Instead—listen, you to me, Dr. Lowell. I say to you—to hell with your science! I tell you this—that beyond the curtain of the material at which your vision halts, there are forces and energies that hate us, yet which God in his inscrutable wisdom permits to be. I tell you that these powers can reach through the veil of matter and become manifest in creatures like the doll-maker. It is so! Witches and sorcerers hand in hand with evil! It is so! And there are powers friendly to us which make themselves manifest in their chosen ones.

“I say to you—Madame Mandilip was an accursed witch! An instrument of the evil powers! Whore of Satan! She burned as a witch should burn in hell—forever! I say to you that the little nurse was an instrument of the good powers. And she is happy today in Paradise—as she shall be forever!”

He was silent, trembling with his own fervor. He touched my shoulder:

“Tell me, Dr. Lowell—tell me as truthfully as though you stood before the seat of God, believing in Him as I believe—do those scientific explanations of yours truly satisfy you?”

I answered, very quietly:

“No, Ricori.”

Nor do they.