CHAPTER XIV: THE DOLL-MAKER STRIKES
The moment I was out in the street, volition, power of movement, returned to me. In an abrupt rush of
rage, I turned to re-enter the shop. A foot from it, I was brought up as against an invisible wall. I could
not advance a step, could not even raise my hands to touch the door. It was as though at that point my
will refused to function, or rather that my legs and arms refused to obey my will. I realized what it
was-post-hypnotic suggestion of an extraordinary kind, part of the same phenomena which had held me
motionless before the doll-maker, and had sent me like a robot out of her lair. I saw McCann coming
toward me, and for an instant had the mad idea of ordering him to enter and end Madame Mandilip with
a bullet. Common sense swiftly told me that we could give no rational reason for such killing, and that we
would probably expiate it within the same apparatus of execution with which I had threatened her.