Abraham Merritt - Burn, Witch, Burn!

Braile was pitiably shaken. So much so that I wondered whether there had been more than professional interest between him and the dead girl. If there had been, he did not confide in me.

It was close to four o'clock when we reached my house. I insisted that he remain with me. I called the hospital before retiring, but they had heard nothing of Nurse Robbins. I slept a few hours, very badly. Shortly after nine, Robbins called me on the telephone. She was half hysterical with grief. I bade her come to my office, and when she had done so Braile and I questioned her.

"About three weeks ago," she said, "Harriet brought home to Diana a very pretty doll. The child was enraptured. I asked Harriet where she had gotten it, and she said in a queer little store way downtown.

"'Job,' she said—my name is Jobina—'There's the queerest woman down there. I'm sort of afraid of her, Job.'

"I didn't pay much attention. Besides, Harriet wasn't ever very communicative. I had the idea she was a bit sorry she had said what she had.

"Now I think of it though, Harriet acted rather funny after that. She'd be gay and then she'd be—well, sort of thoughtful. About ten days ago she came home with a bandage around her foot. The right foot? Yes. She said she'd been having tea with the woman she'd gotten Diana's doll from. The teapot upset and the hot tea had poured down on her foot. The woman had put some salve on it right away, and now it didn't hurt a bit.

"'But I think I'll put something on it I know something about,' she told me. Then she slipped off her stocking and began to strip the bandage. I'd gone into the kitchen and she called to me to come and look at her foot.

"'It's queer,' she said. 'That was a bad scald, Job. Yet it's practically healed. And that salve hasn't been on more than an hour.'

"I looked at her foot. There was a big red patch on the instep. But it wasn't sore, and I told her the tea couldn't have been very hot.

"'But it was really scalded, Job,' she said. 'I mean it was blistered.'

"She sat looking at the bandage and at her foot for quite a while. The salve was bluish and had a queer shine to it. I never saw anything like it before. No, I couldn't detect any odor to it. Harriet reached down and took the bandage and said:

"'Job, throw it in the fire.'

"I threw the bandage in the fire. I remember that it gave a queer sort of flicker. It didn't seem to burn. It just flickered and then it wasn't there. Harriet watched it, and turned sort of white. Then she looked at her foot again.

"'Job,' she said. 'I never saw anything heal as quick as that. She, must be a witch.'

"'What on earth are you talking about, Harriet?' I asked her.

"'Oh, nothing,' she said. 'Only I wish I had the courage to rip that place on my foot wide open and rub in an antidote for snake– bite!'

"Then she laughed, and I thought she was fooling. But she painted it with iodine and bandaged it with an antiseptic besides. The next morning she woke me up and said:

"'Look at that foot now. Yesterday a whole pot of scalding tea poured over it. And now it isn't even tender. And the skin ought to be just smeared off. Job, I wish to the Lord it was!'

"That's all, Dr. Lowell. She didn't say any more about it and neither did I. And she just seemed to forget all about it. Yes. I did ask her where the shop was and who the woman was, but she wouldn't tell me. I don't know why.

"And after that I never knew her so gay and carefree. Happy, careless…Oh, I don't know why she should have died…I don't… I don't!"

Braile asked:

"Do the numbers 491 mean anything to you, Robbins? Do you associate them with any address Harriet knew?"

She thought, then shook her head. I told her of the measured closing and opening of Walters' eyes.

"She was clearly attempting to convey some message in which those numbers figured. Think again."

Suddenly she straightened, and began counting upon her fingers. She nodded.

"Could she have been trying to spell out something? If they were letters they would read d, i and a. They're the first three letters of Diana's name."

"Well, of course that seemed the simple explanation. She might have been trying to ask us to take care of the child." I suggested this to Braile. He shook his head.

"She knew I'd do that," he said. "No, it was something else."

A little after Robbins had gone, Ricori called up. I told him of Walters' death. He was greatly moved. And after that came the melancholy business of the autopsy. The results were precisely the same as in that of Peters. There was nothing whatever to show why the girl had died.

At about four o'clock the next day Ricori again called me on the telephone.

"Will you be at home between six and nine, Dr. Lowell?" There was suppressed eagerness in his voice.

"Certainly, if it is important," I answered, after consulting my appointment book. "Have you found out anything, Ricori?"

He hesitated.

"I do not know. I think perhaps—yes."

"You mean," I did not even try to hide my own eagerness. "You mean—the hypothetical place we discussed?"

"Perhaps. I will know later. I go now, to where it may be."

"Tell me this, Ricori—what do you expect to find?"

"Dolls!" he answered.

And as though to avoid further questions he hung up before I could speak.

Dolls!

I sat thinking. Walters had bought a doll. And in that same unknown place where she had bought it, she had sustained the injury which had so worried her—or rather, whose unorthodox behavior had so worried her. Nor was there doubt in my mind, after hearing Robbins' story, that it was to that injury she had attributed her seizure, and had tried to tell us so. We had not been mistaken in our interpretation of that first desperate effort of will I have described. She might, of course, have been in error. The scald or, rather, the salve had had nothing whatever to do with her condition. Yet Walters had been strongly interested in a child. Children were the common interest of all who had died as she had. And certainly the one great common interest of children is dolls. What was it that Ricori had discovered?

I called Braile, but could not get him. I called up Robbins and told her to bring the doll to me immediately, which she did.

The doll was a peculiarly beautiful thing. It had been cut from wood, then covered with gesso. It was curiously life–like. A baby doll, with an elfin little face. Its dress was exquisitely embroidered, a folk–dress of some country I could not place. It was, I thought, almost a museum piece, and one whose price Nurse Walters could hardly have afforded. It bore no mark by which either maker or seller could be identified. After I had examined it minutely, I laid it away in a drawer. I waited impatiently to hear from Ricori.

At seven o'clock there was a sustained, peremptory ringing of the doorbell. Opening my study door, I heard McCann's voice in the hall, and called to him to come up. At first glance I knew something was very wrong. His tight–mouthed tanned face was a sallow yellow, his eyes held a dazed look. He spoke from stiff lips:

"Come down to the car. I think the boss is dead."

"Dead!" I exclaimed, and was down the stairs and out beside the car in a breath. The chauffeur was standing beside the door. He opened it, and I saw Ricori huddled in a corner of the rear seat. I could feel no pulse, and when I raised the lids of his eyes they stared at me sightlessly. Yet he was not cold.

"Bring him in," I ordered.

McCann and the chauffeur carried him into the house and placed him on the examination table in my office. I bared his breast and applied the stethoscope. I could detect no sign of the heart functioning. Nor was there, apparently, any respiration. I made a few other rapid tests. To all appearances, Ricori was quite dead. And yet I was not satisfied. I did the things customary in doubtful cases, but without result.