the doll-maker's activities defied cause and effect, as I conceived them, still they must conform to laws of
cause and effect of their own. There was nothing supernatural about them-it was only that, like the
savages, I did not know what made the match burn. Something of these laws, something of the woman's
technique-using the word as signifying the details, collectively considered, of mechanical performance in
any art-I thought I perceived. The knotted cord, "the witch's ladder," apparently was an essential in the
animation of the dolls. One had been slipped into Ricori's pocket before the first attack upon him. I had
found another beside his bed after the disturbing occurrences of the night. I had gone to sleep holding one
of the cords-and had tried to murder my patient! A third cord had accompanied the doll that had killed
John Gilmore.
Clearly, then, the cord was a part of the formula for the direction of control of the dolls.