Burn, Witch, Burn!

of the Luys mirror, a device used first at the Salpetriere in Paris to induce hypnotic sleep. It consists of

two parallel rows of small reflectors revolving in opposite directions. A ray of light plays upon them in

such a manner as to cause their surfaces alternately to gleam and darken. A most useful device, and one

to which I believed the girl, long sensitized to hypnotic suggestion, must speedily succumb. I placed a

comfortable chair at the proper angle, and subdued the lights so that they could not compete with the

hypnotic mirror.

I had hardly completed these arrangements when McCann and another of Ricori's henchmen brought in

the girl. They placed her in the easy chair, and I took from her lips the cloth with which she had been

silenced.

Ricori said: "Tony, go out to the car. McCann, you stay here."

CHAPTER XVI: END OF THE WITCH GIRL

The girl made no resistance whatever. She seemed entirely withdrawn into herself, looking up at me with

the same vague stare I had noted on my visit to the doll-shop. I took her hands. She let them rest

passively in mine. They were very cold. I said to her, gently, reassuringly:

"My child, no one is going to hurt you. Rest and relax. Sink back in the chair. I only want to help you.

Sleep if you wish. Sleep."

She did not seem to hear, still regarding me with that vague gaze. I released her hands. I took my own

chair, facing her, and set the little mirrors revolving. Her eyes turned to them at once, rested upon them,

fascinated. I watched her body relax; she sank back in her chair. Her eyelids began to droop.

"Sleep," I said softly. "Here none can harm you. While you sleep none can harm you. Sleep…sleep…"

Her eyes closed; she sighed.

I said: "You are asleep. You will not awaken until I bid you. You cannot awaken until I bid you."

She repeated in a murmuring, childish voice: "I am asleep; I cannot awaken until you bid me."

I stopped the whirling mirrors. I said to her: "There are some questions I am going to ask you. You will

listen, and you will answer me truthfully. You cannot answer them except truthfully. You know that."

She echoed, still in that faint childish voice: "I must answer you truthfully. I know that."

I could not refrain from darting a glance of triumph at Ricori and McCann. Ricori was crossing himself,

staring at me with wide eyes in which were both doubt and awe. I knew he was thinking that I, too, knew

witchcraft. McCann sat chewing nervously. And staring at the girl.

I began my questions, choosing at first those least likely to disturb. I asked:

"Are you truly Madame Mandilip's niece?"

"No."

"Who are you, then?"

"I do not know."

"When did you join her, and why?"

"Twenty years ago. I was in a creche, a foundling asylum at Vienna. She took me from it. She taught me

to call her my aunt. But she is not."

"Where have you lived since then?"

"In Berlin, in Paris, then London, Prague, Warsaw."

"Did Madame Mandilip make her dolls in each of these places?"

She did not answer; she shuddered; her eyelids began to tremble.

"Sleep! Remember, you cannot awaken until I bid you! Sleep! Answer me."

She whispered: "Yes."

"And they killed in each city?"

"Yes."

"Sleep. Be at ease. Nothing is going to harm you-" Her disquietude had again become marked, and I

veered for a moment from the subject of the dolls. "Where was Madame Mandilip born?"

"I do not know."

"How old is she?"

"I do not know. I have asked her, and she has laughed and said that time is nothing to her. I was five

years old when she took me. She looked then just as she does now."

"Has she any accomplices-I mean are there others who make the dolls?"

"One. She taught him. He was her lover in Prague."

"Her lover!" I exclaimed, incredulously-the image of the immense gross body, the great breasts, the

heavy horse-like face of the doll-maker rising before my eyes. She said:

"I know what you are thinking. But she has another body. She wears it when she pleases. It is a beautiful

body. It belongs to her eyes, her hands, her voice. When she wears that body she is beautiful. She is

terrifyingly beautiful. I have seen her wear it many times."

Another body! An illusion, of course…like the enchanted room Walters had described…and which I had

glimpsed when breaking from the hypnotic web in which she had enmeshed me…a picture drawn by the

doll-maker's mind in the mind of the girl. I dismissed that, and drove to the heart of the matter.

"She kills by two methods, does she not-by the salve and by the dolls?"

"Yes, by the unguent and the dolls."

"How many has she killed by the unguent in New York?"

She answered, indirectly: "She has made fourteen dolls since we came here."

So there were other cases that had not been reported to me! I asked:

"'And how many have the dolls killed?"

"Twenty."

I heard Ricori curse, and shot him a warning look. He was leaning forward, white and tense; McCann

had stopped his chewing.

"How does she make the dolls?"

"I do not know."

"Do you know how she prepares the unguent?"

"No. She does that secretly."

"What is it that activates the dolls?"