Абрахам Меррит - Burn, Witch, Burn!

awhile ago I meet McCann, an' somehow he knows somethin', I tell him an' he brings me here. An' just

fer what, I don't know."

"Do you want me to speak to the lieutenant?" I asked.

"What could you say?" he replied, reasonably enough. "If you tell him the drunk was right, an' that I'm

right an' I did see the doll run, what'll he think? He'll think you're as crazy as I must be. An' if you explain

maybe I was a little off me nut just for the minute, it's to the hospital they'll be sendin' me. No, Doctor.

I'm much obliged, but all I can do is say nothin' more an' be dignified an' maybe hand out a shiner or two

if they get too rough. It's grateful I am fer the kindly way you've listened. It makes me feel better."

Shevlin got to his feet, sighing heavily.

"An' what do you think? I mean about what the drunk said he seen, an' what I seen?" he asked

somewhat nervously.

"I cannot speak for the inebriate," I answered cautiously. "As for yourself-well, it might be that the doll

had been lying out there in the street, and that a cat or dog ran across just as the automobile went by.

Dog or cat escaped, but the action directed your attention to the doll and you thought-"

He interrupted me with a wave of his hand.

"All right. All right. 'Tis enough. I'll just leave the doll wit' you to pay for the diagnoses, sir."

With considerable dignity and perceptibly heightened color Shevlin stalked from the room. McCann was

shaking with silent laughter. I picked up the doll and laid it on my table. I looked at the subtly malignant

little face and I did not feel much like laughing.

For some obscure reason I took the Walters doll out of the drawer and placed it beside the other, took

out the strangely knotted cord and set it between them. McCann was standing at my side, watching. I

heard him give a low whistle.

"Where did you get that, Doc?" he pointed to the cord. I told him. He whistled again.

"The boss never knew he had it, that's sure," he said. "Wonder who slipped it over on him? The hag, of

course. But how?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Why, the witch's ladder," he pointed again to the cord. "That's what they call it down Mexico way. It's

bad medicine. The witch slips it to you and then she has power over you." He bent over the cord…"Yep,

it's the witch's ladder-the nine knots an' woman's hair…an' in the boss's pocket!"

He stood staring at the cord. I noticed he made no attempt to pick it up.

"Take it up and look at it closer, McCann," I said.

"Not me!" He stepped back. "I'm telling you it's bad medicine, Doc."

I had been steadily growing more and more irritated against the fog of superstition gathering ever heavier

around me, and now I lost my patience.

"See here, McCann," I said, hotly, "are you, to use Shevlin's expression, trying to kid me? Every time I

see you I am brought face to face with some fresh outrage against credibility. First it is your doll in the

car. Then Shevlin. And now your witch's ladder. What's your idea?"

He looked at me with narrowed eyes, a faint flush reddening the high check-bones.

"The only idea I got," he drawled more slowly than usual, "is to see the boss on his feet. An' to get

whoever got him. As for Shevlin-you don't think he was faking, do you?"

"I do not," I answered. "But I am reminded that you were beside Ricori in the car when he was stabbed.

And I cannot help wondering how it was that you discovered Shevlin so quickly today."

"Meaning by that?" he asked.

"Meaning," I answered, "that your drunken man has disappeared. Meaning that it would be entirely

possible for him to have been your confederate. Meaning that the episode which so impressed the worthy

Shevlin could very well have been merely a clever bit of acting, and the doll in the street and the

opportunely speeding automobile a carefully planned maneuver to bring about the exact result it had

accomplished. After all, I have only your word and the chauffeur's word that the doll was not down in the

car the whole time you were here last night. Meaning that-"

I stopped, realizing that, essentially, I was only venting upon him the bad temper aroused by my

perplexity.

"I'll finish for you," he said. "Meaning that I'm the one behind the whole thing."

His face was white, and his muscles tense.

"It's a good thing for you that I like you, Doc," he continued. "It's a better thing for you that I know you're

on the level with the boss. Best of all, maybe that you're the only one who can help him, if he can be

helped. That's all."

"McCann," I said, "I'm sorry, deeply sorry. Not for what I said, but for having to say it. After all, the

doubt is there. And it is a reasonable doubt. You must admit that. Better to spread it before you than

keep it hidden."

"What might be my motive?"

"Ricori has powerful enemies. He also has powerful friends. How convenient to his enemies if he could

be wiped out without suspicion, and a physician of highest repute and unquestionable integrity be

inveigled into giving the death a clean bill of health. It is my professional pride, not personal egotism, that I

am that kind of a physician, McCann."

He nodded. His face softened and I saw the dangerous tenseness relax.

"I've no argument, Doc. Not on that or nothing else you've said. But I'm thanking you for your high

opinion of my brains. It'd certainly take a pretty clever man to work all this out this-a-way. Sort of like

one of them cartoons that shows seventy-five gimcracks set up to drop a brick on a man's head at

exactly twenty minutes, sixteen seconds after two in the afternoon. Yeah, I must be clever!"

I winced at this broad sarcasm, but did not answer. McCann took up the Peters doll and began to

examine it. I went to the 'phone to ask Ricori's condition. I was halted by an exclamation from the

gunman. He beckoned me, and handing me the doll, pointed to the collar of its coat. I felt about it. My

fingers touched what seemed to be the round head of a large pin. I pulled out as though from a dagger

sheath a slender piece of metal nine inches long. It was thinner than an average hat-pin, rigid and

needle-pointed.

Instantly I knew that I was looking upon the instrument that had pierced Ricori's heart!

"Another outrage!" McCann drawled. "Maybe I put it there, Doc!"

"You could have, McCann."

He laughed. I studied the queer blade-for blade it surely was. It appeared to be of finest steel, although I

was not sure it was that metal. Its rigidity was like none I knew. The little knob at the head was half an

inch in diameter and less like a pinhead than the haft of a poniard. Under the magnifying glass it showed

small grooves upon it…as though to make sure the grip of a hand…a doll's hand a doll's dagger! There

were stains upon it.

I shook my head impatiently, and put the thing aside, determining to test those stains later. They were

bloodstains, I knew that, but I must make sure. And yet, if they were, it would not be certain proof of the

incredible-that a doll's hand had used this deadly thing.

I picked up the Peters doll and began to study it minutely. I could not determine of what it was made. It

was not of wood, like the other doll. More than anything else, the material resembled a fusion of gum and

wax. I knew of no such composition. I stripped it of the clothing. The undamaged part of the doll was

anatomically perfect. The hair was human hair, carefully planted in the scalp. The eyes were blue crystals

of some kind. The clothing showed the same extraordinary skill in the making as the clothes of Diana's