"I hardly knew what to think," she replied shivering. "A feeling sometimes comes over me that eventually ... that my father..."
"That your father? ... What? ..." queried the doctor.
"I don't rightly know," she stammered. "But if you had seen the look in my father's eyes when he bade me go and bring back the two wooden figures he had secretly sent to the two Dreyel cousins, if you had heard his tearful appeal, you would understand me better. It was one evening early in July that he persuaded me to undertake the journey. 'It is a matter of life or death to your father, Elaine,' he said, 'you must tell them that Toroni has discovered the secret, and you must bring back the wooden dolls, but take good care of them; go alone and speak to no one.' At that moment I thought him not responsible for his words and actions, but I went. I felt that I was fulfilling a duty—abstract, but imperative—I can't express myself more clearly. My father gave me one of the dolls as a sort of pattern."
"And which, I am afraid, we forgot to give you back," said Wallion, laughing.
"I never want to see it again," she answered, with another shiver. "I have told you all I know of the abominable transactions which prevented my getting the dolls, and you know more than I do."
"Only another question or two," said Wallion. "How did your father know the addresses of the two cousins?"
"I believe he was in correspondence with an Information Bureau in Stockholm. Just before being taken to the asylum he indulged in an enormous amount of letter writing to various places."
"Had he told you to send that telegram provisionally to Dreyel from Gothenburg?"
"Yes ... as a warning; he said that every hour might be fatal."
"Extraordinary!" remarked Wallion, looking at Doctor Corman. "Under these circumstances do you really believe the appearance of the assassin to have been accidental?"