The balance of the night I slept soundly and dreamlessly. I awakened at my usual hour of seven. The
guards were alert. I asked if anything had been heard from McCann, and they answered no. I wondered
a little at that, but they did not seem to think it out of the ordinary. Their reliefs were soon due, and I
cautioned them to speak to no one but McCann about the occurrences of the night, reminding them that
no one would be likely to believe them if they did. They assured me, earnestly, that they would be silent. I
told them that I wanted the guards to remain within the room thereafter, as long as they were necessary.
Examining Ricori, I found him sleeping deeply and naturally. In all ways his condition was most
satisfactory. I concluded that the second shock, as sometimes happens, had, counteracted the lingering
effects of the initial one. When he awakened, he would be able to speak and move. I gave this reassuring
news to the guards. I could see that they were bursting with questions. I gave them no encouragement to
ask them.
At eight, my day nurse for Ricori appeared, plainly much surprised to have found Butler sleeping and to
find me taking her place. I made no explanation, simply telling her that the guards would now be stationed
within the room instead of outside the door.
At eight-thirty, Braile dropped in on me for breakfast, and to report. I let him finish before I apprised him
of what had happened. I said nothing, however, of the nurse's little cap, nor of my own experience.
I assumed this reticence for well-considered reasons. One, Braile would accept in its entirety the
appalling deduction from the cap's presence. I strongly suspected that he had been in love with Walters,
and that I would be unable to restrain him from visiting the doll-maker. Usually hard-headed, he was in
this matter far too suggestible. It would be dangerous for him, and his observations would be worthless to
me. Second, if he knew of my own experience, he would without doubt refuse to let me out of his sight.
Third, either of these contingencies would defeat my own purpose, which was to interview Madame
Mandilip entirely alone-with the exception of McCann to keep watch outside the shop.
What would come of that meeting I could not forecast. But, obviously, it was the only way to retain my
self-respect. To admit that what had occurred was witchcraft, sorcery, supernatural-was to surrender to
superstition. Nothing can be supernatural. If anything exists, it must exist in obedience to natural laws.
Material bodies must obey material laws. We may not know those laws-but they exist nevertheless. If
Madame Mandilip possessed knowledge of an unknown science, it behooved me as an exemplar of
known science, to find out what I could about the other. Especially as I had recently responded so
thoroughly to it. That I had been able to outguess her in her technique-if it had been that, and not a
self-induced illusion-gave me a pleasant feeling of confidence. At any rate, meet her I must.
It happened to be one of my days for consultation, so I could not get away until after two. I asked Braile
to take charge of matters after that, for a few hours.
Close to ten the nurse telephoned that Ricori was awake, that he was able to speak and had been asking
for me.
He smiled at me as I entered the room. As I leaned over and took his wrist he said:
"I think you have saved more than my life, Dr. Lowell! Ricori thanks you. He will never forget!"
A bit florid, but thoroughly in character. It showed that his mind was functioning normally. I was relieved.
"We'll have you up in a jiffy." I patted his hand.
He whispered: "Have there been any more deaths?"
I had been wondering whether he had retained any recollection of the affair of the night. I answered:
"No. But you have lost much strength since McCann brought you here. I don't want you to do much
talking today." I added, casually: "No, nothing has happened. Oh, yes-you fell out of bed this morning.
Do you remember?"
He glanced at the guards and then back at me. He said:
"I am weak. Very weak. You must make me strong quickly."
"We'll have you sitting up in two days, Ricori."
"In less than two days I must be up and out. There is a thing I must do. It cannot wait."
I did not want him to become excited. I abandoned any intention of asking what had happened in the car.
I said, incisively:
"That will depend entirely upon you. You must not excite yourself. You must do as I tell you. I am going
to leave you now, to give orders for your nutrition. Also, I want your guards to remain in this room."
He said: "And still you tell me-nothing has happened."
"I don't intend to have anything happen." I leaned over him and whispered: "McCann has guards around
the Mandilip woman. She cannot run away."
He said: "But her servitors are more efficient than mine, Dr. Lowell!"
I looked at him sharply. His eyes were inscrutable. I went back to my office, deep in thought. What did
Ricori know?
At eleven o'clock McCann called me on the telephone. I was so glad to hear from him that I was angry.
"Where on earth have you been-" I began.
"Listen, Doc. I'm at Mollie's-Peters' sister," he interrupted. "Come here quick."
The peremptory demand added to my irritation. "Not now," I answered. "These are my office hours. I
will not be free until two."
"Can't you break away? Something's happened. I don't know what to do!" There was desperation in his
voice.
"What has happened?" I asked.
"I can't tell you over-" His voice steadied, grew gentle; I heard him say, "Be quiet, Mollie. It can't do no
good!" Then to me-"Well, come as soon as you can, Doc. I'll wait. Take the address." Then when he
had given it to me, I heard him again speaking to another-"Quit it, Mollie! I ain't going to leave you."
He hung up, abruptly. I went back to my chair, troubled. He had not asked me about Ricori. That in itself
was disquieting. Mollie? Peters' sister, of course! Was it that she had learned of her brother's death, and
suffered collapse? I recalled that Ricori had said she was soon to be a mother. No, I felt that McCann's
panic had been due to something more than that. I became more and more uneasy. I looked over my
appointments. There were no important ones. Coming to sudden determination, I told my secretary to
call up and postpone them. I ordered my car, and set out for the address McCann had given me.
McCann met me at the door of the apartment. His face was drawn and his eyes haunted. He drew me
within without a word, and led me through the hall. I passed an open door and glimpsed a woman with a
sobbing child in her arms. He took me into a bedroom and pointed to the bed.
There was a man lying on it, covers pulled up to his chin. I went over to him, looked down upon him,
touched him. The man was dead. He had been dead for hours. McCann said:
"Mollie's husband. Look him over like you done the boss."
I had a curiously unpleasant sense of being turned on a potter's wheel by some inexorable hand-from
Peters, to Walters, to Ricori, to the body before me. Would the wheel stop there?
I stripped the dead man. I took from my bag a magnifying glass and probes. I went over the body inch
by inch, beginning at the region of the heart. Nothing there nothing anywhere…I turned the body over…
At once, at the base of the skull, I saw a minute puncture.
I took a fine probe and inserted it. The probe-and again I had that feeling of infinite repetition-slipped
into the puncture. I manipulated it, gently.
Something like a long thin needle had been thrust into that vital spot just where the spinal cord connects
with the brain. By accident, or perhaps because the needle had been twisted savagely to tear the nerve
paths, there had been paralysis of respiration and almost instant death.
I withdrew the probe and turned to McCann.
"This man has been murdered," I said. "Killed by the same kind of weapon with which Ricori was
attacked. But whoever did it made a better job. He'll never come to life again as Ricori did."
"Yeah?" said McCann, quietly. "An' me an' Paul was the only ones with Ricori when it happened. An' the
only ones here with this man, Doc, was his wife an' baby! Now what're you going to do about that? Say
those two put him on the spot-like you thought we done the boss?"
I said: "What do you know about this, McCann? And how did you come to be here so-opportunely?"
He answered, patiently: "I wasn't here when he was killed-if that's what you're getting at. If you want to
know the time, it was two o'clock. Mollie got me on the 'phone about an hour ago an' I come straight
up."
"She had better luck than I had," I said, dryly. "Ricori's people have been trying to get hold of you since
one o'clock last night."
"I know. But I didn't know it till just before Mollie called me. I was on my way to see you. An' if you
want to know what I was doing all night, I'll tell you. I was out on the boss's business, an' yours. For one
thing trying to find out where that hell-cat niece keeps her coupe. I found out-too late."
"But the men who were supposed to be watching-"
"Listen, Doc, won't you talk to Mollie now?" he interrupted me, "I'm afraid for her. It's only what I told
her about you an' that you was coming that's kept her up."
"Take me to her," I said, abruptly.
We went into the room where I had seen the woman and the sobbing child. The woman was not more
than twenty-seven or-eight, I judged, and in ordinary circumstances would have been unusually
attractive. Now her face was drawn and bloodless, in her eyes horror, and a fear on the very borderline
of madness. She stared at me, vacantly; she kept rubbing her lips with the tips of her forefingers, staring
at me with those eyes out of which looked a mind emptied of everything but fear and grief. The child, a
girl of no more than four, kept up her incessant sobbing. McCann shook the woman by the shoulder.
"Snap out of it, Mollie," he said, roughly, but pityingly, too. "Here's the Doc."
The woman became aware of me, abruptly. She looked at me steadily for slow moments, then asked,
less like one questioning than one relinquishing a last thin thread of hope:
"He is dead?"
She read the answer in my face. She cried:
"Oh, Johnnie-Johnnie Boy! Dead!"
She took the child up in her arms. She said to it, almost tranquilly: "Johnnie Boy has gone away, darling.
Daddy has had to go away. Don't cry, darling, we'll soon see him!"
I wished she would break down, weep; but that deep fear which never left her eyes was too strong; it
blocked all normal outlets of sorrow. Not much longer, I realized, could her mind stand up under that
tension.
"McCann," I whispered, "say something, do something to her that will arouse her. Make her violently
angry, or make her cry. I don't care which."
He nodded. He snatched the child from her arms and thrust it behind him. He leaned, his face close to the
woman's. He said, brutally:
"Come clean, Mollie! Why did you kill John?"
For a moment the woman stood, uncomprehending. Then a tremor shook her. The fear vanished from
her eyes and fury took its place. She threw herself upon McCann, fists beating at his face. He caught her,
pinioned her arms. The child screamed.
The woman's body relaxed, her arms fell to her sides. She crumpled to the floor, her head bent over her
knees. And tears came. McCann would have lifted, comforted her. I stopped him.
"Let her cry. It's the best thing for her."
And after a little while she looked up at McCann and said, shakily:
"You didn't mean that, Dan?"
He said: "No, I know you didn't do it, Mollie. But now you've got to talk to the Doc. There's a lot to be
done."
She asked, normally enough now: "Do you want to question me, Doctor? Or shall I just go on and tell
you what happened?"
McCann said: "Tell him the way you told me. Begin with the doll."
I said: "That's right. You tell me your story. If I've any questions, I'll ask them when you are done."
She began:
"Yesterday afternoon Dan, here, came and took me out for a ride. Usually John does not…did not get
home until about six. But yesterday he was worried about me and came home early, around three. He
likes…he liked…Dan, and urged me to go. It was a little after six when I returned.
"'A present came for the kid while you were out, Mollie,' he said. 'It's another doll. I'll bet Tom sent it.'
Tom is my brother.
"There was a big box on the table, and I lifted the lid. In it was the most life-like doll imaginable. A
perfect thing. A little girl-doll. Not a baby-doll, but a doll like a child about ten or twelve years old.
Dressed like a schoolgirl, with her books strapped, and over her shoulder-only about a foot high, but
perfect. The sweetest face-a face like a little angel. John said: 'It was addressed to you, Mollie, but I
thought it was flowers and opened it. Looks as though it could talk, doesn't it? I'll bet it's what they call a
portrait-doll. Some kid posed for that, all right.' At that, I was sure Tom had sent it, because he had
given little Mollie one doll before, and a friend of mine who's…whose dead…gave her one from the same
place, and she told me the woman who made the dolls had gotten her to pose for one. So putting this
together, I knew Tom had gone and gotten little Mollie another. But I asked John: 'Wasn't there a note or
a card or anything in it?' He said, 'No-oh, yes, there was one funny thing. Where is it? I must have stuck
it in my pocket.'
"He hunted around in his pockets and brought out a cord. It had knots in it, and it looked as if it was
made of hair. I said, 'Wonder what Tom's idea was in that?' John put it back in his pocket, and I thought
nothing more about it.
"Little Mollie was asleep. We put the doll beside her where she could see it when she woke up. When
she did, she was in raptures over it. We had dinner, and Mollie played with the doll. After we put her to
bed I wanted to take it away from her, but she cried so we let her go to sleep with it. We played cards
until eleven, and then made ready for bed.
"Mollie is apt to be restless, and she still sleeps in a low crib so she can't fall out. The crib is in our
bedroom, in the corner beside one of the two windows. Between the two windows is my dressing table,
and our bed is set with its head against the wall opposite the windows. We both stopped and looked at
Mollie, as we always do…did. She was sound asleep with the doll clasped in one arm, its head on her
shoulder.
"John said: 'Lord, Mollie-that doll looks as alive as the baby! You wouldn't be surprised to see it get up
and walk. Whoever posed for it was some sweet kid.'
"And that was true. It had the sweetest, gentlest little face…and oh, Dr. Lowell…that's what helps make it
so dreadful…so utterly dreadful…"
I saw the fear begin to creep back into her eyes.
McCann said: "Buck up, Mollie!"
"I tried to take the doll. It was so lovely I was afraid the baby might roll on it or damage it some way,"
she went on again quietly, "but she held it fast, and I did not want to awaken her. So I let it be. While we
were undressing, John took the knotted cord out of his pocket.
"'That's a funny looking bunch of knots,' he said. 'When you hear from Tom ask him what it's for.' He
tossed the cord on the little table at his side of the bed. It wasn't long before he was asleep. And then I
went asleep too.
"And then I woke up…or thought I did…for if I was awake or dreaming I don't know. I must have been a
dream-and yet…Oh, God, John is dead…I heard him die…"
Again, for a little time, the tears flowed. Then:
"If I was awake, it must have been the stillness that awakened me. And yet-it is what makes me feel I
must have been dreaming. There couldn't such silence…except in a dream. We are on the second floor,
and always there is some sound from the street. There wasn't the least sound now…it was as though…as
though the whole world had suddenly been stricken dumb. I thought I sat up, listening…listening thirstily
for the tiniest of noises. I could not even hear John breathing. I was frightened, for there was something
dreadful in that stillness. Something living! Something wicked! I tried to lean over to John, tried to touch
him, to awaken him.
"I could not move! I could not stir a finger! I tried to speak, to cry out. I could not!
"The window curtains were partly drawn. A faint light showed beneath and around them from the street.
Suddenly this was blotted out. The room was dark-utterly dark.
"And then the green glow began-
"At first it was the dimmest gleam. It did not come from outside. It was in the room itself. It would flicker
and dim, flicker and dim. But always after each dimming it was brighter. It was green like the light of the
firefly. Or like looking at moonlight through clear green water. At last the green glow became steady. It
was like light, and still it wasn't light. It wasn't brilliant. It was just glowing. And it was everywhere-under
the dressing table, under the chairs…I mean it cast no shadows. I could see everything in the bedroom. I
could see the baby asleep in her crib, the doll's head on her shoulder…
"The doll moved!
"It turned its head, and seemed to listen to the baby's breathing. It put its little hands upon the baby's arm.
The arm dropped away from it.
"The doll sat up!
"And now I was sure that I must be dreaming the strange silence the strange green glow…and this…
"The doll clambered over the side of the crib, and dropped to the floor. It came skipping over the floor
toward the bed like a child, swinging its school books by their strap. It turned its head from side to side
as it came, looking around the room like a curious child. It caught sight of the dressing table, and
stopped, looking up at the mirror. It climbed up the chair in front of the dressing table. It jumped from the
chair seat to the table, tossed its books aside and began to admire itself in the mirror.
"It preened itself. It turned and looked at itself, first over this shoulder and then over that. I thought: 'What
a queer fantastic dream!' It thrust its face close to the mirror and rearranged and patted its hair. I thought:
'What a vain little doll!' And then I thought: 'I'm dreaming all this because John said the doll was so
life-like he wouldn't be surprised to see it walk.' And then I thought: 'But I can't be dreaming, or I
wouldn't be trying to account for what I'm dreaming!' And then it all seemed so absurd that I laughed. I
knew I had made no sound. I knew I couldn't…that the laugh was inside me. But it was as though the doll
had heard me. It turned and looked straight at me-
"My heart seemed to die within me. I've had nightmares, Dr. Lowell-but never in the worst of them did I
feel as I did when the doll's eyes met mine…
"They were the eyes of a devil! They shone red. I mean they were-were-luminous…like some animal's
eyes in the dark. But it was the-the-hellishness in them that made me feel as though a hand had gripped
my heart! Those eyes from hell in that face like one of God's own angels…
"I don't know how long it stood there, glaring at me. But at last it swung itself down and sat on the edge
of the dressing table, legs swinging like a child's and still with its eyes on mine. Then slowly, deliberately,
it lifted its little arm and reached behind its neck. Just as slowly it brought its arm back. In its hand was a
long pin…like a dagger…
"It dropped from the dressing table to the floor. It skipped toward me and was hidden by the bottom of
the bed. An instant and it had clambered up the bed and stood, still looking at me with those red eyes, at
John's feet.
"I tried to cry out, tried to move, tried to arouse John. I prayed-'Oh, God, wake him up! Dear
God-wake him!'
"The doll looked away from me. It stood there, looking at John. It began to creep along his body, up
toward his head. I tried to move my hand, to follow it. I could not. The doll passed out of my sight…
"I heard a dreadful, sobbing groan. I felt John shudder, then stretch and twist…I heard him sigh…
"Deep deep down…I knew John was dying…and I could do nothing…in the silence in the green glow…
"I heard something like the note of a flute, from the street, beyond the windows. There was a tiny
scurrying. I saw the doll skip across the floor and spring up to the windowsill. It knelt there for a moment,
looking out into the street. It held something in its hand. And then I saw that what it held was the knotted
cord John had thrown on his table.
"I heard the flute note again…the doll swung itself out of the window…I had a glimpse of its red eyes…I
saw its little hands clutching the sill…and it was gone…
"The green glow…blinked and…went out. The light from the street returned around the curtains. The
silence seemed…seemed…to be sucked away.
"And then something like a wave of darkness swept over me. I went down under it. Before it swept over
me I heard the clock strike two.
"When I awakened again…or came out of my faint…or, if it was just a dream, when I awakened…I
turned to John. He lay there…so still! I touched him…he was cold…so cold! I knew he was dead!
"Dr. Lowell…tell me what was dream and what was real? I know that no doll could have killed John!
"Did he reach out to me when he was dying, and did the dream come from that? Or did I…dreaming…kill
him?"