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 on to 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.