Абрахам Меррит - Burn, Witch, Burn!

doll.

I saw now that the dangling leg was not held by a thread. It was held by a wire. Evidently the doll had

been molded upon a wire frame-work. I walked over to my instrument cabinet, and selected a surgical

saw and knives.

"Wait a minute, Doc." McCann had been following my movements. "You going to cut this thing apart?"

I nodded. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a heavy hunting knife. Before I could stop him, he had

brought its blade down like an ax across the neck of the Peters doll. It cut through it cleanly. He took the

head and twisted it. A wire snapped. He dropped the head on the table, and tossed the body to me. The

head rolled. It came to rest against the cord he had called the witch's ladder.

The head seemed to twist and to look up at us. I thought for an instant the eyes flared redly, the features

to contort, the malignancy intensify-as I had seen it intensify upon Peters' living face…I caught myself up,

angrily a trick of the light, of course.

I turned to McCann and swore.

"Why did you do that?"

"You're worth more to the boss than I am," he said, cryptically.

I did not answer. I cut open the decapitated body of the doll. As I had suspected, it had been built upon

a wire framework. As I cut away the encasing material, I found this framework was a single wire, or a

single metal strand, and that as cunningly as the doll's body had been shaped, just as cunningly had this

wire been twisted into an outline of the human skeleton!

Not, of course, with minute fidelity, but still with amazing accuracy…there were no joints nor

articulations…the substance of which the doll was made was astonishingly pliant…the little hands

flexible…it was more like dissecting some living mannikin than a doll…And it was rather dreadful…

I glanced toward the severed head.

McCann was bending over it, staring down into its eyes, his own not more than a few inches away from

the glinting blue crystals. His hands clutched the table edge and I saw that they were strained and tense as

though he were making a violent effort to push himself away. When he had tossed the head upon the

table it had come to rest against the knotted cord-but now that cord was twisted around the doll's

severed neck and around its forehead as though it were a small serpent!

And distinctly I saw that McCann's face was moving closer…slowly closer…to that tiny one…as though it

were being drawn to it…and that in the little face a living evil was concentrated and that McCann's face

was a mask of horror.

"McCann!" I cried, and thrust an arm under his chin, jerking back his head. And as I did this I could have

sworn the doll's eyes turned to me, and that its lips writhed.

McCann staggered back. He stared at me for a moment, and then leaped to the table. He picked up the

doll's head, dashed it to the floor and brought his heel down upon it again and again, like one stamping

out the life of a venomous spider. Before he ceased, the head was a shapeless blotch, all semblance of

humanity or anything else crushed out of it-but within it the two blue crystals that had been its eyes still

glinted, and the knotted cord of the witch's ladder still wound through it.

"God! It was…was drawing me down to it…"

McCann lighted a cigarette with shaking hand, tossed the match away. The match fell upon what had

been the doll's head.

There followed, simultaneously, a brilliant flash, a disconcerting sobbing sound and a wave of intense

heat. Where the crushed head had been there was now only an irregularly charred spot upon the polished

wood. Within it lay the blue crystals that had been the eyes of the doll-lusterless and blackened. The

knotted cord had vanished.

And the body of the doll had disappeared. Upon the table was a nauseous puddle of black waxy liquid

out of which lifted the ribs of the wire skeleton!

The Annex 'phone rang; mechanically I answered it.

"Yes," I said. "What is it?"

"Mr. Ricori, sir. He's out of the coma. He's awake!"

I turned to McCann.

"Ricori's come through!"

He gripped my shoulders-then drew a step away, a touch of awe on his face.

"Yeah?" whispered McCann. "Yeah-he came through when the knots burned! It freed him! It's you an'

me that's got to watch our step now!"

I took McCann up with me to Ricori's bedside. Confrontation with his chief would be the supreme test, I

felt, resolving one way or another all my doubts as to his sincerity. For I realized, almost immediately, that

bizarre as had been the occurrences I have just narrated, each and all of them could have been a part of

the elaborate hocus-pocus with which I had tentatively charged the gunman. The cutting off of the doll's

head could have been a dramatic gesture designed to impress my imagination. It was he who had called

my attention to the sinister reputation of the knotted cord. It was McCann who had found the pin. His

fascination by the severed head might have been assumed. And the tossing of the match a calculated

action designed to destroy evidence. I did not feel that I could trust my own peculiar reactions as valid.

And yet it was difficult to credit McCann with being so consummate an actor, so subtle a plotter. Ah, but

he could be following the instructions of another mind capable of such subtleties. I wanted to trust

McCann. I hoped that he would pass the test. Very earnestly I hoped it.

The test was ordained to failure. Ricori was fully conscious, wide awake, his mind probably as alert and

sane as ever. But the lines of communication were still down. His mind had been freed, but not his body.

The paralysis persisted, forbidding any muscular movements except the deep-seated unconscious

reflexes essential to the continuance of life. He could not speak. His eyes looked up at me, bright and

intelligent, but from an expressionless face…looked up at McCann with the same unchanging stare.

McCann whispered: "Can he hear?"

"I think so, but he has no way of telling us."

The gunman knelt beside the bed and took Ricori's hands in his. He said, clearly: "Everything's all right,

boss. We're all on the job."

Not the utterance nor the behavior of a guilty man-but then I had told him Ricori could not answer. I

said to Ricori:

"You're coming through splendidly. You've had a severe shock, and I know the cause. I'd rather you

were this way for a day or so than able to move about. I have a perfectly good medical reason for this.

Don't worry, don't fret, try not to think of anything unpleasant. Let your mind relax. I'm going to give you

a mild hypo. Don't fight it. Let yourself sleep."

I gave him the hypodermic, and watched with satisfaction its quick effect. It convinced me that he had

heard.

I returned to my study with McCann. I was doing some hard thinking. There was no knowing how long

Ricori would remain in the grip of the paralysis. He might awaken in an hour fully restored, or it might

hold him for days. In the meantime there were three things I felt it necessary to ascertain. The first that a

thorough watch was being kept upon the place where Ricori had gotten the doll; second, that everything

possible be found out about the two women McCann had described; third, what it was that had made

Ricori go there. I had determined to take the gunman's story of the happenings at the store at their face

value-for the moment at least. At the same time, I did not want to admit him into my confidence any

more than was necessary.