There was an agony in her eyes that forbade the truth, so I lied to her.
"I can comfort you as to that, at least. Your husband died of entirely natural causes-from a blood clot in
the brain. My examination satisfied me thoroughly as to that. You had nothing to do with it. As for the
doll-you had an unusually vivid dream, that is all."
She looked at me as one who would give her soul to believe. She said:
"But I heard him die!"
"It is quite possible-" I plunged into a somewhat technical explanation which I knew she would not quite
understand, but would, perhaps, be therefore convincing-"You may have been half-awake-on what we
term the borderline of waking consciousness. In all probability the entire dream was suggested by what
you heard. Your subconsciousness tried to explain the sounds, and conceived the whole fantastic drama
you have recited to me. What seemed, in your dream, to take up many minutes actually passed through
your mind in a split second-the subconsciousness makes its own time. It is a common experience. A
door slams, or there is some other abrupt and violent sound. It awakens the sleeper. When he is fully
awake he has recollection of some singularly vivid dream which ended with a loud noise. In reality, his
dream began with the noise. The dream may have seemed to him to have taken hours. It was, in fact,
almost instantaneous, taking place in the brief moment between noise and awakening."
She drew a deep breath; her eyes lost some of their agony. I pressed my advantage.
"And there is another thing you must remember-your condition. It makes many women peculiarly
subject to realistic dreams, usually of an unpleasant character. Sometimes even to hallucinations."
She whispered: "That is true. When little Mollie was coming I had the most dreadful dreams-"
She hesitated; I saw doubt again cloud her face.
"But the doll-the doll is gone!" she said.
I cursed to myself at that, caught unawares and with no ready answer. But McCann had one. He said,
easily:
"Sure it's gone, Mollie. I dropped it down the chute into the waste. After what you told me I thought
you'd better not see it any more."
She asked, sharply:
"Where did you find it? I looked for it."
"Guess you weren't in shape to do much looking," he answered. "I found it down at the foot of the kid's
crib, all messed up in the covers. It was busted. Looked like the kid had been dancing on it in her sleep."
She said hesitantly: "It might have slipped down. I don't think I looked there-"
I said, severely, so she might not suspect collusion between McCann and myself:
"You ought not to have done that, McCann. If you had shown the doll to her, Mrs. Gilmore would have
known at once that she had been dreaming and she would have been spared much pain."
"Well, I ain't a doctor." His voice was sullen. "I done what I thought best."
"Go down and see if you can find it," I ordered, tartly. He glanced at me sharply. I nodded-and hoped
he understood. In a few minutes he returned.
"They cleaned out the waste only fifteen minutes ago," he reported, lugubriously. "The doll went with it. I
found this, though."
He held up a little strap from which dangled a half-dozen miniature books. He asked:
"Was them what you dreamed the doll dropped on the dressing table, Mollie?"
She stared, and shrank away.
"Yes," she whispered. "Please put it away, Dan. I don't want to see it."
He looked at me, triumphantly.
"I guess maybe I was right at that when I threw the doll away, Doc."
I said: "At any rate, now that Mrs. Gilmore is satisfied it was all a dream, there's no harm done."
"And now," I took her cold hands in mine. "I'm going to prescribe for you. I don't want you to stay in this
place a moment longer than you can help. I want you to pack a bag with whatever you and little Mollie
may need for a week or so, and leave at once. I am thinking of your condition-and a little life that is on
its way. I will attend to all the necessary formalities. You can instruct McCann as to the other details. But
I want you to go. Will you do this?"
To my relief, she assented readily. There was a somewhat harrowing moment when she and the child
bade farewell to the body. But before many minutes she was on her way with McCann to relations. The
child had wanted to take "the boy and girl dolls." I had refused to allow this, even at the risk of again
arousing the mother's suspicions. I wanted nothing of Madame Mandilip to accompany them to their
refuge. McCann supported me, and the dolls were left behind.
I called an undertaker whom I knew. I made a last examination of the body. The minute puncture would
not be noticed, I was sure. There was no danger of an autopsy, since my certification of the cause of
death would not be questioned. When the undertaker arrived I explained the absence of the
wife-imminent maternity and departure at my order. I set down the cause of death as thrombosis-rather
grimly as I recalled the similar diagnosis of the banker's physician, and what I had thought of it.
After the body had been taken away, and as I sat waiting for McCann to return, I tried to orient myself
to this phantasmagoria through which, it seemed to me, I had been moving for endless time. I tried to
divest my mind of all prejudice, all preconceived ideas of what could and could not be. I began by
conceding that this Madame Mandilip might possess some wisdom of which modern science is ignorant. I
refused to call it witchcraft or sorcery. The words mean nothing, since they have been applied through the
ages to entirely natural phenomena whose causes were not understood by the laity. Not so long ago, for
example, the lighting of a match was "witchcraft" to many savage tribes.
No, Madame Mandilip was no "witch," as Ricori thought her. She was mistress of some unknown
science-that was all.
And being a science, it must be governed by fixed laws-unknown though those laws might be to me. If
the doll-maker's activities defied cause and effect, as I conceived them, still they must conform to laws of
cause and effect of their own. There was nothing supernatural about them-it was only that, like the
savages, I did not know what made the match burn. Something of these laws, something of the woman's
technique-using the word as signifying the details, collectively considered, of mechanical performance in
any art-I thought I perceived. The knotted cord, "the witch's ladder," apparently was an essential in the
animation of the dolls. One had been slipped into Ricori's pocket before the first attack upon him. I had
found another beside his bed after the disturbing occurrences of the night. I had gone to sleep holding one
of the cords-and had tried to murder my patient! A third cord had accompanied the doll that had killed
John Gilmore.
Clearly, then, the cord was a part of the formula for the direction of control of the dolls.
Against this was the fact that the intoxicated stroller could not have been carrying one of the "ladders"
when attacked by the Peters doll.
It might be, however, that the cord had only to do with the initial activity of the puppets; that once
activated, their action might continue for an indefinite period.
There was evidence of a fixed formula in the making of the dolls. First, it seemed, the prospective victim's
free consent to serve as model must be obtained; second, a wound which gave the opportunity to apply
the salve which caused the unknown death; third, the doll must be a faithful replica of the victim. That the
agency of death was the same in each case was proven by the similar symptoms.
But did those deaths actually have anything to do with the motility of the dolls? Were they actually a
necessary part of the operation?
The doll-maker might believe so; indeed, undoubtedly did believe so.
I did not.
That the doll which had stabbed Ricori had been made in the semblance of Peters; that the "nurse doll"
which the guards had seen poised on my window-ledge might have been the one for which Walters had
posed; that the doll which had thrust the pin into Gilmore's brain was, perhaps, the replica of little Anita,
the eleven-year-old schoolgirl-all this I admitted.
But that anything of Peters, anything of Walters, anything of Anita had animated these dolls…that dying,
something of their vitality, their minds, their "souls" had been drawn from them, had been transmuted into
an essence of evil, and imprisoned in these wire-skeletoned puppets…against this all my reason revolted.
I could not force my mind to accept even the possibility.
My analysis was interrupted by the return of McCann.
He said, laconically: "Well, we put it over."
I asked. "McCann-you weren't by any chance telling the truth when you said you found the doll?"
"No, Doc. The doll was gone all right."
"But where did you get the little books?"
"Just where Mollie said the doll tossed 'em-on her dressing table. I snaked 'em after she'd told me her
story. She hadn't noticed 'em. I had a hunch. It was a good one, wasn't it?"
"You had me wondering," I replied. "I don't know what we could have said if she had asked for the
knotted cord."
"The cord didn't seem to make much of a dent on her-" He hesitated. "But I think it means a hell of a lot,
Doc. I think if I hadn't took her out, and John hadn't happened home, and Mollie had opened the box
instead of him-I think it's Mollie he'd have found lying dead beside him."
"You mean-"
"I mean the dolls go for whichever gets the cords," he said somberly.
Well, it was much the same thought I had in my own mind.
I asked: "But why should anybody want to kill Mollie?"
"Maybe somebody thinks she knows too much. And that brings me to what I've been wanting to tell you.
The Mandilip hag knows she's being watched!"
"Well, her watchers are better than ours." I echoed Ricori; and I told McCann then of the second attack
in the night; and why I had sought him.
"An' that," he said when I had ended, "Proves the Mandilip hag knows who's who behind the watch on
her. She tried to wipe out both the boss and Mollie. She's onto us, Doc."
"The dolls are accompanied," I said. "The musical note is a summons. They do not disappear into thin air.
They answer the note and make their way…somehow to whoever sounds the note. The dolls must be
taken from the shop. Therefore one of the two women must take them. How did they evade your
watchers?"
"I don't know." The lean face was worried. "The fish-white gal does it. Let me tell you what I found out,
Doc. After I left you last night I go down to see what the boys have to say. I hear plenty. They say about
four o'clock the gal goes in the back an' the old woman takes a chair in the store. They don't think
nothing of that. But about seven who do they see walking down the street and into the doll joint but the
gal. They give the boys in the back hell. But they ain't seen her go, an' they pass the buck to the boys in
front.
"Then about eleven o'clock one of the relief lads comes in with worse news. He says he's down at the
foot of Broadway when a coupe turns the corner an' driving it is the gal. He can't be mistaken because
he's seen her in the doll joint. She goes up Broadway at a clip. He sees there ain't nobody trailing her, an'
he looks around for a taxi. Course there's nothing in sight-not even a parked car he can lift. So he
comes down to the gang to ask what the hell they mean by it. An' again nobody's seen the gal go."
"I take a couple of the boys an' we start out to comb the neighborhood to find out where she stables the
coupe. We don't have no luck at all until about four o'clock when one of the tails-one of the lads who's
been looking-meets up with me. He says that about three he sees the gal-at least he thinks it's the
gal-walking along the street around the corner from the joint. She's got a coupla big suitcases but they
don't seem to trouble her none. She's walking quick. But away from the doll joint. He eases over to get a
better look, when all of a sudden she ain't there. He sniffs around the place he's seen her. There ain't hide
nor hair of her. It's pretty dark, an' he tries the doors an' the areaways, but the doors are locked an' there
ain't nobody in the areaways. So he gives it up an' hunts me.
"I look over the place. It's about a third down the block around the corner from the doll joint. The doll
joint is eight numbers from the corner. They're mostly shops an' I guess storage up above. Not many
people living there. The houses all old ones. Still, I don't see how the gal can get to the doll joint. I think
maybe the tail's mistaken. He's seen somebody else, or just thinks he's seen somebody. But we scout
close around, an' after a while we see a place that looks like it might stable a car. It don't take us long to
open the doors. An' sure enough, there's a coupe with its engine still hot. It ain't been in long. Also it's the
same kind of coupe the lad who's seen the gal says she was driving.
"I lock the place up again, an' go back to the boys. I watch with 'em the rest of the night. Not a light in
the doll joint. But nigh eight o'clock, the gal shows up inside the shop and opens up!"
"Still," I said at this point, "you have no real evidence she had been out. The girl your man thought he saw
might not have been she at all."
He looked at me pityingly.
"She got out in the afternoon without 'em seeing her, didn't she? What's to keep her from doing the same
thing at night? The lad saw her driving a coupe, didn't he? An' we find a coupe like it close where the
wench dropped out of sight."
I sat thinking. There was no reason to disbelieve McCann. And there was a sinister coincidence in the
hours the girl had been seen. I said, half-aloud:
"The time she was out in the afternoon coincides with the time the doll was left at the Gilmores'. The time
she was out at night coincides with the time of the attack upon Ricori, and the death of John Gilmore."
"You hit it plumb in the eye!" said McCann. "She goes an' leaves the doll at Mollie's, an' comes back.
She goes an' sets the dolls on the boss. She waits for 'em to pop out. Then she goes an' collects the one
she's left at Mollie's. Then she beats it back home. They're in the suitcases she's carrying."
I could not hold back the irritation of helpless mystification that swept me.
"And I suppose you think she got out of the house by riding a broomstick up the chimney," I said,
sarcastically.
"No," he answered, seriously. "No, I don't, Doc. But them houses are old, and I think maybe there's a rat
hole of a passage or something she gets through. Anyway, the hands are watching the street an' the
coupe stable now, an' she can't pull that again."
He added, morosely:
"At that, I ain't saying she couldn't bridle a broomstick if she had to."
I said, abruptly: "McCann, I'm going down to talk to this Madame Mandilip. I want you to come with
me."
He said: "I'll be right beside you, Doc. With my fingers on my guns."
I said: "No, I'm going to see her alone. But I want you to keep close watch outside."
He did not like that; argued; at last reluctantly assented.
I called up my office. I talked to Braile and learned that Ricori was recovering with astonishing rapidity. I
asked Braile to look after things the balance of the day, inventing a consultation to account for the
request. I had myself switched to Ricori's room. I had the nurse tell him that McCann was with me, that
we were making an investigation along a certain line, the results of which I would inform him on my
return, and that, unless Ricori objected, I wanted McCann to stay with me the balance of the afternoon.
Ricori sent back word that McCann should follow my orders as though they were his own. He wanted to
speak to me, but that I did not want. Pleading urgent haste, I rang off.
I ate an excellent and hearty lunch. I felt that it would help me hold tighter to the realities-or what I
thought were the realities-when I met this apparent mistress of illusions. McCann was oddly silent and
preoccupied.
The clock was striking three when I set off to meet Madame Mandilip.