Burn, Witch, Burn!

by Abraham Merritt

  I wrote, and passed it to them.

  "Don't damage me any more than you can help," I said, and laughed.

  They stared at each other, plainly disconcerted. "If you say so, Doc—" began the guard Bill, doubtfully.

  "I do say so. Do not hesitate. If you should be wrong, I'll not hold it against you."

  "The Doc knows what he's about, Bill," said the guard Jack.

  "Okay then," said Bill.

  I turned out all the lights except that beside the nurse's table. I stretched myself in her chair and adjusted the lamp so my face could be plainly seen. That little white cap I had picked from the floor had shaken me—damnably! I drew it out and placed it in a drawer. The guard Jack took his station beside Ricori. Bill drew up a chair, and sat facing me. I thrust my hand into my pocket and clutched the knotted cord, closed my eyes, emptied my mind of all thought, and relaxed. In abandoning, at least temporarily, my conception of a sane universe I had determined to give that of Madame Mandilip's every chance to operate.

  Faintly, I heard a clock strike one. I slept.

  Somewhere a vast wind was roaring. It circled and swept down upon me. It bore me away. I knew that I had no body, that indeed I had no form. Yet I was. A formless sentience whirling in that vast wind. It carried me into infinite distance. Bodiless, intangible as I knew myself to be, yet it poured into me an unearthly vitality. I roared with the wind in unhuman jubilance. The vast wind circled and raced me back from immeasurable space…

  I seemed to awaken, that pulse of strange jubilance still surging through me… Ah! There was what I must destroy… there on the bed… must kill so that this pulse of jubilance would not cease… must kill so that the vast wind would sweep me up again and away and feed me with its life… but careful… careful… there—there in the throat just under the ear… there is where I must plunge it… then off with the wind again… there where the pulse beats… what is holding me back?… caution… caution, "I am going to take his temperature"… that's it, careful, "I am going to take his temperature."… Now—one quick spring, then into his throat where the pulse beats… "Not with that you don't!"… Who said that?… still holding me… rage, consuming and ruthless blackness and the sound of a vast wind roaring away and away…

  I heard a voice: "Slap him again, Bill, but not so hard. He's coming around." I felt a stinging blow on my face. The dancing mists cleared from before my eyes. I was standing halfway between the nurse's table and Ricori's bed. The guard Jack held my arms pinioned to my sides. The guard Bill's hand was still raised. There was something clenched tightly in my own hand. I looked down. It was a strong scalpel, razor-edged!

  I dropped the scalpel. I said, quietly: "It's all right now, you can release me."

  The guard Bill said nothing. His comrade did not loose his grip. I twisted my head and I saw that both their faces were sallow white. I said:

  "It was what I had expected. It was why I instructed you. It is over. You can keep your guns on me if you like."

  The guard who held me freed my arms. I touched my cheek gingerly. I said mildly:

  "You must have hit me rather hard, Bill."

  He said: "If you could a seen your face, Doc, you'd wonder I didn't smash it."

  I nodded, clearly sensible now of the demonic quality of that rage, I asked:

  "What did I do?"

  The guard Bill said: "You wake up and set there for a minute staring at the chief. Then you take something out of that drawer and get up. You say you're going to take his temperature. You're half to him before we see what you got. I shout, 'Not with that you don't!' Jack grabs you. Then you went crazy. And I had to slam you. That's all."

  I nodded again. I took out of my pocket the knotcord of woman's pale hair, held it over a dish and touched a match to it. It began to burn, writhing like a tiny snake as it did so, the complex knots untying as the flame touched them. I dropped the last inch of it upon the plate and watched it turn to ash.

  "I think there'll be no more trouble tonight," I said. "But keep up your watch just as before."

  I dropped back into the chair and closed my eyes…

  Well, Braile had not shown me a soul, but—I believed in Madame Mandilip.

  Chapter 11 - A Doll Kills

  The balance of the night I slept soundly and dreamlessly. I awakened at my usual hour of seven. The guards were alert. I asked if anything had been heard from McCann, and they answered no. I wondered a little at that, but they did not seem to think it out of the ordinary. Their reliefs were soon due, and I cautioned them to speak to no one but McCann about the occurrences of the night, reminding them that no one would be likely to believe them if they did. They assured me, earnestly, that they would be silent. I told them that I wanted the guards to remain within the room thereafter, as long as they were necessary.

  Examining Ricori, I found him sleeping deeply and naturally. In all ways his condition was most satisfactory. I concluded that the second shock, as sometimes happens, had, counteracted the lingering effects of the initial one. When he awakened, he would be able to speak and move. I gave this reassuring news to the guards. I could see that they were bursting with questions. I gave them no encouragement to ask them.

  At eight, my day nurse for Ricori appeared, plainly much surprised to have found Butler sleeping and to find me taking her place. I made no explanation, simply telling her that the guards would now be stationed within the room instead of outside the door.

  At eight-thirty, Braile dropped in on me for breakfast, and to report. I let him finish before I apprised him of what had happened. I said nothing, however, of the nurse's little cap, nor of my own experience.

  I assumed this reticence for well-considered reasons. One, Braile would accept in its entirety the appalling deduction from the cap's presence. I strongly suspected that he had been in love with Walters, and that I would be unable to restrain him from visiting the doll-maker. Usually hard-headed, he was in this matter far too suggestible. It would be dangerous for him, and his observations would be worthless to me. Second, if he knew of my own experience, he would without doubt refuse to let me out of his sight. Third, either of these contingencies would defeat my own purpose, which was to interview Madame Mandilip entirely alone—with the exception of McCann to keep watch outside the shop.

  What would come of that meeting I could not forecast. But, obviously, it was the only way to retain my self-respect. To admit that what had occurred was witchcraft, sorcery, supernatural—was to surrender to superstition. Nothing can be supernatural. If anything exists, it must exist in obedience to natural laws. Material bodies must obey material laws. We may not know those laws—but they exist nevertheless. If Madame Mandilip possessed knowledge of an unknown science, it behooved me as an exemplar of known science, to find out what I could about the other. Especially as I had recently responded so thoroughly to it. That I had been able to outguess her in her technique—if it had been that, and not a self-induced illusion—gave me a pleasant feeling of confidence. At any rate, meet her I must.

  It happened to be one of my days for consultation, so I could not get away until after two. I asked Braile to take charge of matters after that, for a few hours.

  Close to ten the nurse telephoned that Ricori was awake, that he was able to speak and had been asking for me.

  He smiled at me as I entered the room. As I leaned over and took his wrist he said:

  "I think you have saved more than my life, Dr. Lowell! Ricori thanks you. He will never forget!"

  A bit florid, but thoroughly in character. It showed that his mind was functioning normally. I was relieved.

  "We'll have you up in a jiffy." I patted his hand.

  He whispered: "Have there been any more deaths?"

  I had been wondering whether he had retained any recollection of the affair of the night. I answered:

  "No. But you have lost much strength since McCann brought you here. I don't want you to do much talking today." I added, casually: "No, nothing has happened. Oh, yes�
��you fell out of bed this morning. Do you remember?"

  He glanced at the guards and then back at me. He said:

  "I am weak. Very weak. You must make me strong quickly."

  "We'll have you sitting up in two days, Ricori."

  "In less than two days I must be up and out. There is a thing I must do. It cannot wait."

  I did not want him to become excited. I abandoned any intention of asking what had happened in the car. I said, incisively:

  "That will depend entirely upon you. You must not excite yourself. You must do as I tell you. I am going to leave you now, to give orders for your nutrition. Also, I want your guards to remain in this room."

  He said: "And still you tell me—nothing has happened."

  "I don't intend to have anything happen." I leaned over him and whispered: "McCann has guards around the Mandilip woman. She cannot run away."

  He said: "But her servitors are more efficient than mine, Dr. Lowell!"

  I looked at him sharply. His eyes were inscrutable. I went back to my office, deep in thought. What did Ricori know?

  At eleven o'clock McCann called me on the telephone. I was so glad to hear from him that I was angry.

  "Where on earth have you been—" I began.

  "Listen, Doc. I'm at Mollie's—Peters' sister," he interrupted. "Come here quick."

  The peremptory demand added to my irritation. "Not now," I answered. "These are my office hours. I will not be free until two."

  "Can't you break away? Something's happened. I don't know what to do!" There was desperation in his voice.

  "What has happened?" I asked.

  "I can't tell you over—" His voice steadied, grew gentle; I heard him say, "Be quiet, Mollie. It can't do no good!" Then to me—"Well, come as soon as you can, Doc. I'll wait. Take the address." Then when he had given it to me, I heard him again speaking to another—"Quit it, Mollie! I ain't going to leave you."

  He hung up, abruptly. I went back to my chair, troubled. He had not asked me about Ricori. That in itself was disquieting. Mollie? Peters' sister, of course! Was it that she had learned of her brother's death, and suffered collapse? I recalled that Ricori had said she was soon to be a mother. No, I felt that McCann's panic had been due to something more than that. I became more and more uneasy. I looked over my appointments. There were no important ones. Coming to sudden determination, I told my secretary to call up and postpone them. I ordered my car, and set out for the address McCann had given me.

  McCann met me at the door of the apartment. His face was drawn and his eyes haunted. He drew me within without a word, and led me through the hall. I passed an open door and glimpsed a woman with a sobbing child in her arms. He took me into a bedroom and pointed to the bed.

  There was a man lying on it, covers pulled up to his chin. I went over to him, looked down upon him, touched him. The man was dead. He had been dead for hours. McCann said:

  "Mollie's husband. Look him over like you done the boss."

  I had a curiously unpleasant sense of being turned on a potter's wheel by some inexorable hand—from Peters, to Walters, to Ricori, to the body before me. Would the wheel stop there?

  I stripped the dead man. I took from my bag a magnifying glass and probes. I went over the body inch by inch, beginning at the region of the heart. Nothing there nothing anywhere… I turned the body over…

  At once, at the base of the skull, I saw a minute puncture.

  I took a fine probe and inserted it. The probe—and again I had that feeling of infinite repetition—slipped into the puncture. I manipulated it, gently.

  Something like a long thin needle had been thrust into that vital spot just where the spinal cord connects with the brain. By accident, or perhaps because the needle had been twisted savagely to tear the nerve paths, there had been paralysis of respiration and almost instant death.

  I withdrew the probe and turned to McCann.

  "This man has been murdered," I said. "Killed by the same kind of weapon with which Ricori was attacked. But whoever did it made a better job. He'll never come to life again as Ricori did."

  "Yeah?" said McCann, quietly. "An' me an' Paul was the only ones with Ricori when it happened. An' the only ones here with this man, Doc, was his wife an' baby! Now what're you going to do about that? Say those two put him on the spot—like you thought we done the boss?"

  I said: "What do you know about this, McCann? And how did you come to be here so—opportunely?"

  He answered, patiently: "I wasn't here when he was killed—if that's what you're getting at. If you want to know the time, it was two o'clock. Mollie got me on the 'phone about an hour ago an' I come straight up."

  "She had better luck than I had," I said, dryly. "Ricori's people have been trying to get hold of you since one o'clock last night."

  "I know. But I didn't know it till just before Mollie called me. I was on my way to see you. An' if you want to know what I was doing all night, I'll tell you. I was out on the boss's business, an' yours. For one thing trying to find out where that hell-cat niece keeps her coupe. I found out—too late."

  "But the men who were supposed to be watching—"

  "Listen, Doc, won't you talk to Mollie now?" he interrupted me, "I'm afraid for her. It's only what I told her about you an' that you was coming that's kept her up."

  "Take me to her," I said, abruptly.

  We went into the room where I had seen the woman and the sobbing child. The woman was not more than twenty-seven or—eight, I judged, and in ordinary circumstances would have been unusually attractive. Now her face was drawn and bloodless, in her eyes horror, and a fear on the very borderline of madness. She stared at me, vacantly; she kept rubbing her lips with the tips of her forefingers, staring at me with those eyes out of which looked a mind emptied of everything but fear and grief. The child, a girl of no more than four, kept up her incessant sobbing. McCann shook the woman by the shoulder.

  "Snap out of it, Mollie," he said, roughly, but pityingly, too. "Here's the Doc."

  The woman became aware of me, abruptly. She looked at me steadily for slow moments, then asked, less like one questioning than one relinquishing a last thin thread of hope:

  "He is dead?"

  She read the answer in my face. She cried:

  "Oh, Johnnie—Johnnie Boy! Dead!"

  She took the child up in her arms. She said to it, almost tranquilly: "Johnnie Boy has gone away, darling. Daddy has had to go away. Don't cry, darling, we'll soon see him!"

  I wished she would break down, weep; but that deep fear which never left her eyes was too strong; it blocked all normal outlets of sorrow. Not much longer, I realized, could her mind stand up under that tension.

  "McCann," I whispered, "say something, do something to her that will arouse her. Make her violently angry, or make her cry. I don't care which."

  He nodded. He snatched the child from her arms and thrust it behind him. He leaned, his face close to the woman's. He said, brutally:

  "Come clean, Mollie! Why did you kill John?"

  For a moment the woman stood, uncomprehending. Then a tremor shook her. The fear vanished from her eyes and fury took its place. She threw herself upon McCann, fists beating at his face. He caught her, pinioned her arms. The child screamed.

  The woman's body relaxed, her arms fell to her sides. She crumpled to the floor, her head bent over her knees. And tears came. McCann would have lifted, comforted her. I stopped him.

  "Let her cry. It's the best thing for her."

  And after a little while she looked up at McCann and said, shakily:

  "You didn't mean that, Dan?"

  He said: "No, I know you didn't do it, Mollie. But now you've got to talk to the Doc. There's a lot to be done."

  She asked, normally enough now: "Do you want to question me, Doctor? Or shall I just go on and tell you what happened?"

  McCann said: "Tell him the way you told me. Begin with the doll."

  I said: "That's right. You tell me your story. If I've any
questions, I'll ask them when you are done."

  She began:

  "Yesterday afternoon Dan, here, came and took me out for a ride. Usually John does not… did not get home until about six. But yesterday he was worried about me and came home early, around three. He likes… he liked… Dan, and urged me to go. It was a little after six when I returned.

  "'A present came for the kid while you were out, Mollie,' he said. 'It's another doll. I'll bet Tom sent it.' Tom is my brother.

  "There was a big box on the table, and I lifted the lid. In it was the most life-like doll imaginable. A perfect thing. A little girl-doll. Not a baby-doll, but a doll like a child about ten or twelve years old. Dressed like a schoolgirl, with her books strapped, and over her shoulder—only about a foot high, but perfect. The sweetest face—a face like a little angel. John said: 'It was addressed to you, Mollie, but I thought it was flowers and opened it. Looks as though it could talk, doesn't it? I'll bet it's what they call a portrait-doll. Some kid posed for that, all right.' At that, I was sure Tom had sent it, because he had given little Mollie one doll before, and a friend of mine who's… whose dead… gave her one from the same place, and she told me the woman who made the dolls had gotten her to pose for one. So putting this together, I knew Tom had gone and gotten little Mollie another. But I asked John: 'Wasn't there a note or a card or anything in it?' He said, 'No—oh, yes, there was one funny thing. Where is it? I must have stuck it in my pocket.'

  "He hunted around in his pockets and brought out a cord. It had knots in it, and it looked as if it was made of hair. I said, 'Wonder what Tom's idea was in that?' John put it back in his pocket, and I thought nothing more about it.

  "Little Mollie was asleep. We put the doll beside her where she could see it when she woke up. When she did, she was in raptures over it. We had dinner, and Mollie played with the doll. After we put her to bed I wanted to take it away from her, but she cried so we let her go to sleep with it. We played cards until eleven, and then made ready for bed.