Burn, Witch, Burn!

by Abraham Merritt

  Nor did the expected changes in expression occur. The horror and loathing persisted, and were commented upon by both Bartano and Somers as "unusual." They agreed that the condition must be caused by a brain lesion of some kind. They did not think there was any evidence either of microbic infection or of drugs or poison. Agreeing that it was a most interesting case, and asking me to let them know its progress and outcome, they departed.

  At the beginning of the fourth hour, there was a change of expression, but not what I had been expecting. In Walters' eyes, on her face, was only loathing. Once I thought I saw a flicker of the devilish anticipation flash over her face. If so, it was quickly mastered. About the middle of the fourth hour, we saw recognition again return to her eyes. Also, there was a perceptible rally of the slowing heart. I sensed an intense gathering of nervous force.

  And then her eyelids began to rise and fall, slowly, as though by tremendous effort, in measured time and purposefully. Four times they raised and lowered; there was a pause; then nine times they lifted and fell; again the pause, then they closed and opened once. Twice she did this—

  "She's trying to signal," whispered Braile. "But what?"

  Again the long-lashed lids dropped and rose—four times… pause… nine times… pause… once…

  "She's going," whispered Braile.

  I knelt, stethoscope at ears… slower… slower beat the heart… and slower… and stopped.

  "She's gone!" I said, and arose. We bent over her, waiting for that last hideous spasm, convulsion—whatever it might be.

  It did not come. Stamped upon her dead face was the loathing, and that only. Nothing of the devilish glee. Nor was there sound from her dead lips. Beneath my hand I felt the flesh of her white arm begin to stiffen.

  The unknown death had destroyed Nurse Walters—there was no doubt of that. Yet in some obscure, vague way I felt that it had not conquered her.

  Her body, yes. But not her will!

  Chapter 4 - The Thing in Ricori's Car

  I returned home with Braile, profoundly depressed. It is difficult to describe the effect the sequence of events I am relating had upon my mind from beginning to end—and beyond the end. It was as though I walked almost constantly under the shadow of an alien world, nerves prickling as if under surveillance of invisible things not of our life… the subconsciousness forcing itself to the threshold of the conscious battering at the door between and calling out to be on guard… every moment to be on guard. Strange phrases for an orthodox man of medicine? Let them stand.

  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 whi
ch 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.

  McCann and the chauffeur had been standing close beside me. They read my verdict in my face. I saw a strange glance pass between them; and obviously each of them had a touch of panic, the chauffeur more markedly than McCann. The latter asked in a level, monotonous voice:

  "Could it have been poison?"

  "Yes, it could—" I stopped.

  Poison! And that mysterious errand about which he had telephoned me! And the possibility of poison in the other cases! But this death—and again I felt the doubt—had not been like those others.

  "McCann," I said, "when and where did you first notice anything wrong?"

  He answered, still in that monotonous voice:

  "About six blocks down the street. The boss was sitting close to me. All at once he says 'Jesu!' Like he's scared. He shoves his hands up to his chest. He gives a kind of groan an' stiffens out. I says to him: 'What's the matter, boss, you got a pain?' He don't answer me, an' then he sort of falls against me an' I see his eyes is wide open. He looks dead to me. So I yelps to Paul to stop the car and we both look him over. Then we beat it here like hell."

  I went to a cabinet and poured them stiff drinks of brandy. They needed it. I threw a sheet over Ricori.

  "Sit down," I said, "and you, McCann, tell me exactly what occurred from the time you started out with Mr. Ricori to wherever it was he went. Don't skip a single detail."

  He said:

  "About two o'clock the boss goes to Mollie's—that's Peters' sister—stays an hour, comes out, goes home and tells Paul to be back at four-thirty. But he's doing a lot of 'phoning so we don't start till five. He tells Paul where he wants to go, a place over in a little street down off Battery Park. He says to Paul not to go through the street, just park the car over by the Battery. And he says to me, 'McCann, I'm going in this place myself. I don't want 'em to know I ain't by myself.' He says, 'I got reasons. You hang around an' look in now an' then, but don't come in unless I call you.' I says, 'Boss, do you think it's wise?' An' he says, 'I know what I'm doing an' you do what I tell you.' So there ain't any argument to that.

  "We get down to this place an' Paul does like he's told, an' the boss walks up the street an' he stops at a little joint that's got a lot of dolls in the window. I looks in the place as I go past. There ain't much light but I see a lot of other dolls inside an' a thin gal at a counter. She looks white as a fish's belly to me, an' after the boss has stood at the window a minute or two he goes in, an' I go by slow to look at the gal again because she sure looks whiter than I ever saw a gal look who's on her two feet. The boss is talkin' to the gal who's showing him some dolls. The next time I go by there's a woman in the place. She's so big, I stand at the window a minute to look at her because I never seen anybody that looks like her. She's got a brown face an' it looks sort of like a horse, an' a little mustache an' moles, an' she's as funny a looking brand as the fish-white gal. Big an' fat. But I get a peep at her eyes—Geeze, what eyes! Big an' black an' bright, an' somehow I don't like them any more than the rest of her. The next time I go by, the boss is over in a corner with the big dame. He's got a wad of bills in his hand and I see the gal watching sort of frightened like. The next time I do my beat, I don't see either the boss or the woman.

  "So I stand looking through the window because I don't like the boss out of my sight in this joint. An' the next thing I see is the boss coming out of a door at the back of the shop. He's madder than hell an' carrying something an' the woman is behind him an' her eyes spitting fire. The boss is jabbering but I can't hear what he's saying, an' the dame is jabbering too an' making funny passes at him. Funny passes? Why, funny motions with her hands. But the boss heads for the door an' when he gets to it I see him stick what he's carrying inside his overcoat an' button it up round it.

  "It's a doll. I see its legs dangling down before he gets it under his coat. A big one, too, for it makes quite a bulge—"

  He paused, began mechanically to roll a cigarette, than glanced at the covered body and threw the cigarette away. He went on:

  "I never see the boss so mad before. He's muttering to himself in Italian an' saying something over an' over that sounds like 'strayga-' I see it ain't no time to talk so I just walk along with him. Once he says to me, more as if he's talking to himself than me, if you get what I mean—he says, 'The Bible says you shall not suffer a witch to live.' Then he goes on muttering an' holding one arm fast over this doll inside his coat.

  "We get to the car an' he tells Paul to beat it straight to you an' to hell with traffic—that's right, ain't it, Paul? Yes. When we get in the car he stops muttering an' just sits there quiet, not saying anything to me until I hear him say Jesu!' like I told you. And that's all, ain't it, Paul?"

  The chauffeur did not answer. He sat staring at McCann with something of entreaty in his gaze. I distinctly saw McCann shake his head. The chauffeur said, in a strongly marked Italian accent, hesitatingly:

  "I do not see the shop, but everything else McCann say is truth."

  I got up and walked over to Ricori's body. I was about to lift the sheet when something caught my eye. A red spot about as big as a dime—a blood stain. Holding it in place with one finger, I carefully lifted the edge of the sheet. The blood spot was directly over Ricori's heart.

  I took one of my strongest glasses and one of my finest probes. Under the glass, I could see on Ricori's breast a minute puncture, no larger than that made by a hypodermic needle. Carefully I inserted the probe. It slipped easily in and in until it touched the wall of the heart. I went no further.

  Some needle-pointed, exceedingly fine instrument had been thrust through Ricori's breast straight into his heart!

  I looked at him, doubtfully; ther
e was no reason why such a minute puncture should cause death. Unless, of course, the weapon which had made it had been poisoned; or there had been some other violent shock which had contributed to that of the wound itself. But such shock or shocks might very well bring about in a person of Ricori's peculiar temperament some curious mental condition, producing an almost perfect counterfeit of death. I had heard of such cases.

  No, despite my tests, I was not sure Ricori was dead. But I did not tell McCann that. Alive or dead, there was one sinister fact that McCann must explain. I turned to the pair, who had been watching me closely.

  "You say there were only the three of you in the car?"

  Again I saw a glance pass between them.

  "There was the doll," McCann answered, half-defiantly. I brushed the answer aside, impatiently.

  "I repeat: there were only the three of you in the car?"

  "Three men, yes."

  "Then," I said grimly, "you two have a lot to explain. Ricori was stabbed. I'll have to call the police."

  McCann arose and walked over to the body. He picked up the glass and peered through it at the tiny puncture. He looked at the chauffeur. He said:

  "I told you the doll done it, Paul!"

  Chapter 5 - The Thing in Ricori's Car (continued)

  I said, incredulously, "McCann, you surely don't expect me to believe that?"

  He did not answer, rolling another cigarette which this time he did not throw away. The chauffeur staggered over to Ricori's body; he threw himself on his knees and began mingled prayers and implorations. McCann, curiously enough, was now completely himself. It was as though the removal of uncertainty as to the cause of Ricori's death had restored all his old cold confidence. He lighted the cigarette; he said, almost cheerfully: