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.